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June 27 Mistakes ReduxGuilty, as individuals and as a culture. We should know better.
The media is full of 40th anniversary flashbacks to 1968: the "Summer of Love," Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the Tet Offensive.... the media is full of lots of stuff. Our news sources feed us exactly what we want to hear even if it isn't true and we eat it up. 40 years ago we were fighting an unpopular, unilateral, unjustified war in SE Asia. Today we're repeating the same actions in the Mideast. We are displaying mental and moral illness: repeating the same faulty actions over and over again but expecting a different, positive outcome this time around. If a naive child intentionally puts his hand on a hot stove we write it off the first time. If he does it again a 2nd, 3rd and 4th time, we wonder if he's a bit slow. We do that as parents. We don't seem to have the same concern as citizens, do we?
Change was what 1968 was all about. Some proposals were valid and universal. Some were hedonistic and unrealistic. Here's a line from a song by a dead guy that reflects 1968, his era, and today:
"We gotta make a change...
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes. Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live and let's change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do what we gotta do, to survive." June 18 America, AmericaNow they want a bone scan. Wonderful. What a way to start the summer.
Made me think a little: what are the advantages that the US offers in 2008 compared to the rest of the world?
Stable economy? Look at the stock market, the relative value of the dollar, the unemployment rate, the price of energy, the housing market, the balance of payments.
Beacon of democratic values? Remember rendition, our record of torture, our domestic incarceration rate, the Justice Department scandals, our unilateral military record in the past 5 years.
Domestic accomplishments? Google our international standings on elementary & High School achievement, mortality, and poverty rates.
We excel in a few areas:
Highest per-capita energy use of any nation on earth.
The world's best testing and major medical system. If you are a Saudi Prince, an elected federal official, independently wealthy, or one of the lucky ones with good medical coverage, and in need of surgery for cancer, a transplant, or heart surgery, the US is the place to visit. Otherwise you get to go to the local emergency room.
The most prestigious university degrees. If you are a Saudi prince, your dad is an elected federal official, or you are independently wealthy, a Harvard or Yale PhD is well within your grasp. If you are an average US citizen.... here's a clue: After a tour during the Vietnam era and 20 years of total military service I was eligible for enough funding to finish the last 2 years of a B.S. through a NYS external degree program (mail order credentials, yes?) I couldn't afford the room and board to complete it in residence at a NYS campus. My daughter financed herself through a Masters degree and is now facing $100,000 in student loan repayments. My son is on active duty in the Army and will get out with enough to pay for an Associates degree from a nonresident state community college.
What's the point you say? Because I have medical insurance I will get an expensive test based on "inconclusive blood work results." I have no symptoms or problems but I DO have insurance through my spouse's employer. Luck of the draw. If I didn't have it, there would be no bone scan. Meanwhile my next door neighbor's kid with asthma and no health insurance coughs and gasps for air when the ragweed blooms. They live across the road. Might as well live in another country. Chances are she won't go to Harvard, either.
If I were a NY Senator or the President I would ask myself, "what kind of a hamburger stand is this?"
June 15 Just Another SundayA perfect late spring day upstate. Birds in the yard, lawn mostly mowed, and I'm keeping my own solitary company for a change. The past few weeks have been full of appointments, social engagements with neighbors, friends and relatives, and all the chores that have to be done at the end of winter. I've processed about 20 pounds of fresh ground pork into bulk sausage and meatballs, made some more kimchee, and experimented with home cured corned beef and smoked pastrami. A few failures, a few pleasant surprises.
I've talked with more people in the past few weeks than in the past two years... went to several parties at friends' houses, attended a peace rally, caught a blues concert in a nearby city, negotiated with a number of contractors called in to do work at the house, and cut 4" off my beard the other day. I look almost human for the first time in over a year. If the heat gets any worse I may shave all the way down to my facial skin before summer ends. For trips to town I've taken to wearing real clothing and shoes instead of sweat pants and bedroom slippers. I quit smoking then fell off the wagon. I smoke 5 or 6 ciggies a day instead of a pack or two.
Because of petty and unplanned personal setbacks (real life bites us all in the backside sometimes) I've lost contact with my closest friends, the ones I really care about. I regret that loss. I offer no excuses. My story isn't special or extraordinary in the least... we've all been there, done that. Failures and experiments gone wrong vs. the occasional pleasant surprise. As long as we do our best and keep a bit of our sense of humor what more could we ask for?
I'll gladly take a day like today whenever it happens.
June 01 Vanity of Vanities"In less than a year the Bush administration
will strut ot of office leaving the country
in roughly the same condition
a toddler leaves a diaper."
Graydon Carter
Editor of Vanity Fair
Despite multiple pages of glitzy, expensive ads by Cartier, Disney, Rolex, Lexus, Tiffany, Ralph Lauren, and so on for conspicuous consumers of high-end retail goodies, and the mandatory vignettes of the Rich, Famous, Beautiful and The Recently Busted, Vanity Fair Magazine is still worth the price of admission just because the editor HATES Bush. Besides that, there is usally an article or two well worth the read.
"vanity of vanities; all is vanity...
Is there anything whereof it may be said, See this is new?
it has been already of old time, which was before us.
There is no rembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come
with those that shall come after..."
from Ecclesiates, King James version
The biblical way of saying we're doomed to repeat the same mistakes we made before: The Roman Empire, Vietnam, the Third Reich, the Nixon Imperial Presidency, warfare rather than diplomacy.
Let's come right out and admit it: Vanity Fair just might be the serial voice of 21st Century America that captures our national vision between two covers for a buck fifty per month: 90% fantasy, bling, success oriented, corporate sponsored and selfish vs. 10% substance.
Abbie Hoffman was arrested for wearing an American flag shirt in the 60's in a political protest of US involvement in SE Asia(dishonoring a Sacred American Symbol) yet Keith Richards is pictured in a two page ad in this month's Vanity Fair advertising a $2000 + Louis Vuitton leather briefcase for personal financial gain. What's with that? An icon is an icon after all. Which is more obscene?
Drive through bottom line: Live and let live. Let Hitler be Hitler and Pol Pot be himself. The same for Nixon and Bush and Caligula and Nero and George III. Let them do what they want to do until it comes to the point where entire countries, empires, and social systems are in danger of collapsing due to mismanagement and ignorance.
I wonder what "vanity fair" is in Latin?
p.s.
Physically I'm in worse shape than I've ever been and 8 years into another generation's century. Psychologically and politically, I'm still 22 and ready for the Second Tea Party, hence, dangerous with nothing to lose, and probably on a government list.
That's the news from the backwoods.
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