All together now

I’ll be so glad when we can get back to being one country again. There are too many serious issues that need to be addressed in the world for us to continue fighting each other. I work every day with people who are on the opposite side of the political spectrum, but we get along, we like each other enough to accomplish our various tasks and most of the time enjoy ourselves. I know they don’t believe the way I do but I still respect them and their right to do so. The fact that I see things differently doesn’t mean I have to hate them for not being like me. I am old enough and have enough life experience to know that hating is rarely a good thing. People can use hatred for all sorts of reasons. Once it starts inside you it can be manipulated and turned into actions, actions you may not have anticipated.

With all we’ve been through in the last few years I count myself lucky to still be alive with no serious health problems and living in a country where work is plentiful, along with all the necessities of life. I continue to work with those who are different from me and am thankful for them. Most are as kind and helpful as you could ask them to be. That makes me hopeful for us as a nation, in spite of every pundit’s assessment that our differences can’t be reconciled, that we are doomed to fighting each other forever. Maybe so, but I hope not. Let’s just accept the fact that we have our differences but that’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is that we work to make it work.

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Osama bin Laden has won

Think about it. Shortly after 9/11 there were comical, I thought then, photoshopped images of George W. Bush wearing a turban. Twenty years later we see that instead of Iraq and Afghanistan becoming functioning democracies, the United States is becoming a one-man nation. Crowds storming the US Capital buildings at the instigation of their leader, who time and time again informs us that he is the only one who can save us. Stick with me and everything will be all right, I’ll watch out for you, he says. Millions of people have voted not to uphold democracy. Donald Trump doesn’t believe in democracy, he doesn’t believe in government at all. He believes one man should have total power, just like a CEO of some company which he owns. He has no respect for the institutions of government created by the founding fathers, people who were far more intelligent and less morally corrupt than he is.

Is it really time to toss it all in? Give up on democracy, where power is always balanced between the three branches in order to constrain men, or women, like Donald Trump? Men who want to become dictators? Look at all the people he admires, they are every single one brutal dictators who execute those who oppose them.

I am so glad my father, who fought in Germany during WWII is not here to see this. The sacrifices he and hundreds of thousands of others made to protect our democracy, and the belief that all men are created with equal rights under the law, that living in a country governed by laws, not individuals, was worth the sacrifice. He, thankfully returned home after the war, but it scarred him for life as it did many others who fought to oppose a mad man. Just remember, Hitler was voted into power, and then stoked the resentment the German people felt for the hardships that had been forced on them after WWI. That resentment erupted into hatred and into world conflict. Hitler started out saying he would address those grievances. Once in power, he didn’t stop there, he used the state he had seized control of to create what he hoped would be world domination. Anyone who opposed him was simply imprisoned or killed. This is the terrible danger involved in electing a person who does not uphold the law, who does not believe in the rule of law. The constitution becomes meaningless.

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Too Much Noise

Earlier this week I was working with a colleague at a customer site. My colleague encountered a technical problem and since she is fairly new at her position she jumped on Teams to get advice about what to do. Several people responded but they were all saying something different. So she chose a procedure that she hoped would save her a lot of time and get the customer up and running much more quickly. Unfortunately, it fixed the immediate issue, but created other problems down the road, meaning that instead of saving her time, it actually cost her much more time because in the end she had to start over, which was what she was trying to avoid. Late in the afternoon she got a message from one of the more experienced techs who advised that the method recommended earlier might not work.

I have long had the option to join a Teams group at work, and I did for a while. But it seemed to me that the people who did the most talking were the ones who knew the least. I never saw the people who really knew their business responding; they, like me, were too busy working to deal with the constant chatter. If I’m in a tough spot and need help, I have several different people I can call, depending on the situation, and that’s what I do. No general consensus from the tribe, just expert advise from someone who knows.

I have always been a quiet person. Maybe that’s why I can’t quite understand the new group think mentality. Yes, email and messaging are nice to have, and it’s very difficult to function these days without a smart phone. But for the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would sign up for Twitter. I had an account at the very beginning of it’s existence and quickly decided that, 1) I don’t have that much to say of any importance, and 2) I am not giving anyone the ability to spam me whenever they want to. It’s one thing to be interested in someone, their career or even their opinion on things. But to be constantly on the ready for whatever they want to say, no thank you. I notice that most news sites now prefer that you sign up for their ‘alerts’. I much prefer the old way, of when I want to hear from you, I will turn on the television, or go to your website, not the other way around. It gives me a little bit more control in a world where soon I’m concerned we will have none.

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Parking lot woes

Last week after work I stopped by the Neighborhood Market for a few groceries. It happened to be in an upper class neighborhood, with homes selling for much higher than the median home price in our city. I was checking emails on my work phone when I heard sirens going by, I thought, which is not unusual, a major medical center was just up over the hill. But when I looked up I saw that police had pulled up behind me and in front of me, lights flashing on their black SUVs, three of them, while another quickly followed. Two spaces away and facing me, was an older man in what looked to be a 1980s Toyota pickup. The officers approached the truck. I could not hear what was being said but the suspect apparently said something they didn’t like. When he got out of his truck one of the officers, a big burly guy, immediately threw him to the ground. There were no weapons of any kind. Now it is certainly the police officer’s right to apprehend someone they believe has broken the law. But the response was so overboard it seemed ridiculous. I could’ve taken that old man out and I’m 5’6″. He was no threat to anyone. But four officers, all stronger and much younger thought it necessary to tackle him on the asphalt. Again, I did not hear what was said between them but the tackling officer was so angry it seemed way out of proportion to the situation. I don’t know what he had done, I suspect he took something from the store. Walmart has a very aggressive policy towards shoplifting. And I don’t condone stealing but I am certain that the whole thing could’ve been accomplished without violence. They put handcuffs or zip ties, I could not see which, on him and took him away.

So much anger, everywhere. Was it because the man, who was obviously experiencing hard times, he was rough looking, driving an old worn out car, with worn out clothes and generally unkempt, had ventured into an upper class neighborhood? It was Walmart, after all, not Saks Fifth Avenue. Was it because the officer knew he could get away with it? It could’ve been something totally unrelated to the parking lot I was in, but still, the man did not resist and was no physical threat to anyone, especially the policemen.

It makes me sad to realize that this is the new normal. I tried to back up and leave when I saw this happening, but the officer’s vehicle blocked me in. A few other customers came out to their cars, most tried to ignore what they saw, didn’t want to get involved. I have seen, over the years many people being apprehended by police either inside a store or outside in the parking lot. This was the first time I have seen someone thrown to the ground, who was not even trying to resist. So much anger, it can’t be a good thing for our society.

One thing I did do, was drive away without entering the store. After the police moved their SUVs I decided that I would take my business elsewhere. Which is a shame because I shop at that location frequently. I’ll find another store that’s more peaceful. It may not change anything. But the least I can do is not ignore it.

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Pro Life Sentence

All those protesting abortion who claim to be pro life are really pro life sentence. They haven’t shown one ounce of compassion for anything other than the unborn. Once that baby is born it can be neglected, deprived of love, of nourishment, of education, of opportunity. And if it happens to be a black or Hispanic male when it gets to be an adolescent you can shoot and kill it without any of the pro-lifers uttering a peep. You never hear those who shout and scream pro life from the rooftops that they care anything about that same child after it’s born. None of them advocate for health care for infants, child care, early education. Their caring stops the moment that baby passes through the birth canal and enters the world. An unwanted child is in most cases going to have a very hard time making it in our society. He or she does not grow up with all of the necessary ingredients for a healthy, happy childhood which leads to them becoming, in time, a contributing adult in our society. Most often they are contributing to those who make money from the prison system, from cheap labor provided by the undereducated and underprivileged. So let’s be clear about what it is they are really for, which is a life sentence of struggle for themselves and their mothers.

Abortion is a terrible thing, there’s no question. But is it worse than what an unwanted child suffers in this world? I suspect in many cases it is not.

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There’s right and wrong and then there’s money

In the United States, money always wins. Just watching the news regarding the climate change summit in Glasgow. Everyone agrees what needs to be done but who is missing from the stage? All the major polluters did not sign the pledge to reduce their use of coal. why? money. Too much money is being made and too much money is being pumped into political campaigns, thank you Justice John Roberts, for real change to happen. Can’t commit to what you know is right because the big business robber barons are still in power.

The real question is, is the science really correct on this issue. If it is, they are dooming the next generation to a world that is increasingly uninhabitable. Possibly dooming the whole human race, but hey, as long as they have their Mercedes, multiple homes, country clubs and tax write offs, who cares?

The United States likes to call itself a Christian nation. I suspect what it really is is a capitalist nation. Remember when George W. Bush tried to equate the two? What happened in Iraq and Afghanistan? Democracy? Not hardly. Not even capitalism could topple their inbred allegiance to a dictator. And in fact the United States has become more like their countries than the reverse. We now prefer a dictator, only one man who can save us from the terrors that are just over the horizon. We would give up our democracy, arguably the greatest nation on earth, not because of military power or wealth of natural resources, but because of the combined strengths of immigrants from every nation on earth.

What used to be the America dream, home ownership, permanent employment with enough money to educate the kids, take a vacation every year and retire at sixty-five, has changed drastically. Now, the ambition is to get in, make your millions and get out, putting your money where it can make enough to live on for the rest of your life. What kind of country is that? A money worshiping society where money always wins.

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United we stand

Working as a technical contractor a few years ago I was offered a position working for a major computer company doing a refurbish of computer equipment inside the patient rooms and at nurse’s stations at one of our best hospitals. I completed all of the forms required for employment but before I could begin work I had to have a current MMR vaccine, for the prevention of measles, mumps and rubela. Without the vaccine I could not take the job.

When I was a child we had to have a polio vaccination to attend public school. Before the vaccine was available children did not go swimming. My mother never learned to swim because they weren’t allowed to go in the water when she was growing up, the risk of contracting polio was too great.

When traveling abroad as a teenager I had to carry proof of vaccinations, not to travel but to return to the United States. I still have the booklet with all of my ‘shots’ listed in it, filled out by my pediatrician.

So vaccinations are nothing new, but the outcry against them is. I happen to have family members who follow a religious practice that does not rely on medicine for healing. Even those devout family members took vaccinations when required to, for school attendance or to enter the army during WWII. And I can tell you positively that there are not enough truly religions objections to make up the numbers of vaccination protesters, those religious groups are, and always have been, very small in the US, thousands but certainly not millions of followers. It would be very easy to check, the churches keep records of those who attend. If that happened you would find that most of the so-called ‘religious objectors’ have never attended a church whose beliefs would cause them to forego medical treatment.

So what it boils down to is that we just don’t want to be told what to do, that we don’t trust our government to govern us. That is a real shame and I suspect that right now there is no one on earth that most Americans would trust, except maybe Santa Claus. Which pretty much sums up the national status right now, we are all acting like a bunch of children. Whenever we have faced crisis before we have done it together, as a nation. After 9/11, people were kind to total strangers, there was a sense of ‘us’ and not ‘us and them’. Now, we are fighting each other when we need to get together and fight the enemy, which is a disease that is causing major disruptions to our society. If we get rid of the disease we move forward, everyone gets back to work, the supply chain heals and the good things in life that we enjoy in such abundance are restored to us. That has always been the great thing about America, is that now matter how different we are, we are united.

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Social Media Madness

I have not been on Facebook more than a few times in the last two years. Oddly enough, my queue looks just like it always does, my friends posting the same things they always did. I’m sure I missed a few important updates, and I do miss it. The reason I don’t use SM anymore is that I decided the negative impacts of the platform far outweigh the positive. Yes, it’s nice to feel connected to friends and family, many of whom live in different cities now. If that’s all there was to it I would not hesitate to use it.

But the last couple of weeks have shown the dangers of allowing anybody and everybody a free platform to speak, to plan, to organize violent attacks on anyone. That is what we have allowed the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s empire, Twitter, et al to do. They post it all up there and say, it’s not my fault if somebody gets killed. It is their fault and if we weren’t so besotted with our love of technology those who have allowed this behavior would face consequences, and I don’t mean just a few millions out of their multiple billion dollar bank accounts. That’s just a tax write-off for them.

Government can try to step in and hopefully it will. Until users like you and I stop using the service, the tech giants will just try to side step any rules that might be imposed. While they may still be speaking their mantras, helping people connect, and free information, they long ago fell in love with the billions of dollars they were able to get for selling us to advertisers. That kind of money is like heroin, once they taste it they can’t give it up willingly.

I remember the internet before the tech giants took over. Google was truly a great service. Facebook would be a nice platform as well if it were severely limited in scope. It’s a gossip column, that’s all it ever was or ever will be, yet people think it’s substantive and real. People get news feeds from Facebook. That’s like asking the devil to deliver messages from God. I just don’t know what people are thinking. Maybe they’re not.

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Sed non cupla mea est

Latin class in high school, many decades ago now. Not sure I remember which Latin scholar said it, I want to say Seneca, but it’s been a long time and that may not be correct. If I trusted search engines more these days I would look it up, but my faith in getting a correct answer has diminished in the last few years. But that’s another story.

But it’s not my fault! We loved the translation back in Latin class, it made us laugh. Such was our naiveté. We thought only teenagers used that expression. Little did we know that adults made use of it far more than we adolescents every dreamed of. How nice to be able to go through life not acknowledging that our actions have consequences, and accepting that we are responsible for the actions we take.

Recently in Sunday school class, our pastor was leading a discussion on race relations in our Southern state. (this was pre-pandemic, we are gathering online these days). One of the church members made the comment that he had worked in real estate right after college, he is retirement age now, and he remembered a client telling him that when she and her husband bought their house they had to decide between the house they lived in now and one, at the same price, in a neighborhood across town. Her house now was worth slightly more than what she paid for it, while the house across town, the one she made the decision not to buy, was worth several times the original purchase price, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Her neighborhood had become mostly black, while the other was almost exclusively white. I felt compelled to point out that what was really important about that fact, aside from the loss of value of the investment, was that in the United States, property taxes fund education. So the schools in that area have a meagre amount to spend on their schools, while the schools in the upper class neighborhood have money for every amenity. What shocked me about this SS class was that the member who brought up the subject of real estate, said he had never thought about the disparity in the school systems.

Sed non culpa mea est. Is it really not our fault that a zip code determines what kind of education a child receives? I suspect it really is all of our faults and until we are willing to admit that we have participated in systemic racism we are unlikely to change it.

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Log off Facebook

You know how it started out. As an app for college students to assist nerds in their dating endeavors. If they could get coeds to post their status, whether they were involved in a relationship, looking, or not interested, half their battle was won. They wouldn’t have to muster up the courage to ask or find a way to engage a girl when they had no idea how to go about it. To this day, the tech world is still saturated with guys, and yes, they are still mostly guys, who are nervous around the female sex, and especially attractive members of the female sex. Oh, there’s lots of bravura, lots of boasting and objectification of females, but in reality, most of the guys are scared to death. Believe, I know, I’ve worked professionally in the tech industry for twenty years.

And wasn’t it cool, how you could get most people to post up private information about themselves. Of course, the assumption was, and the deliberate subterfuge was, that it was all secure. You were only giving information to those friends you had added to your group. It didn’t take long for skeptics to find that the privacy was a joke, not a funny one. But still people signed up until billions are invested in Facebook. I myself have an account, which I check once every three or four months. The app comes pre-installed on smart phones and it’s vacuuming up information about you whether you use it or not. And what happens to that information? How does Mark Zuckerberg get to be one of the richest men (not actually a man yet, really still just a nerdy boy) in the world? It’s not because he has ‘provided a service to humanity’, or allowed ‘people to connect’. It’s because he knows everything about you. He knows your birth date, not just the day but the date, where you were born, where you went to school and when, your married and maiden name if you were both, where you live, where you work now and where you have worked, organizations you are connected with, he knows everything about you. He has photos, he knows what you like and what you don’t. And it was all for free. I’ve never used the feature, but I’m guessing many people do, of storing all of your online logins and passwords inside your Facebook account. So when you login to your bank account, or any account to place orders, he knows it. Not him personally of course, but his company.

When you really stop to think about it, which most people don’t and which our society does not encourage, it’s amazing that one company could amass so much information about billions of people on the planet without paying a dime for it. So who does pay for it and how did MZ get to be one of the richest men in the world?

By selling your information to whoever has the money to pay for it. It’s not cheap, advertising on Facebook. But look what you get in exchange. If you want to target white folks over the age of 20 who are conservative and own guns, you can. If you want to get your message to teenage girls in a certain area of the country, you can. If you want to sell something to young professionals in the US and Europe, you can. Everyone knows you can’t sell ice to Eskimos and Facebook has your audience shopped, chopped and diced, packaged and ready for your advert. It has sucked up all the advertising dollars that used to go into local newspapers, magazines and radio, causing their virtual collapse. We are left with Facebook as a substitute for journalism, where anyone with a cell phone becomes a reliable source of information. They have a picture, or a video, and pictures don’t lie, or so we were taught to believe. That was before the advent of Photoshop where a twenty year old can make changes that prior to the 1990’s would take a video editor hours to accomplish. Just a few clicks and someone can be where they weren’t, they can be ‘quoted’ as saying something they never said. And it’s all lumped together there with your best friend’s photo of last nights dinner. What a mess.

It’s time to log off Facebook. I know no one wants to do it, they will lose their connection with their friends and their family. What about their logins and passwords? It will be hard, it was hard for me. I used to spend an hour every day on Facebook and sometimes more. But you can do it. You still have a telephone. You can call (!). You can text or email, or my God, send a card or a letter! Spend five dollars on a card and a stamp, it means more than a hundred posts, I guarantee it.

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