Category: News

The Matters & The Change

Stormy Daniels was on Sixty Minutes. I watched. Didn’t learn anything new. Her situation with Donald Trump isn’t changing anything.

Nor will Karen McDougal’s situation with Donald Trump change anything.

Nor will what the other sixteen women who claimed, with graphic details, how he sexually assaulted and molested them, change anything.

Trump supporters will not, or do not, care for the most part. A few outliers will quit supporting him for this behavior. Most of Trump’s supporters will not. They’ll say, as Rush Limbaugh has said, “Bill Clinton,” cherry-picking exactly what happened, and twisting memory into making history different. And, or, Trump supporters will say that his personal behavior doesn’t matter, that it’s his political agenda, and what he’d doing, draining the swamp, that matters.

All that infuriates Democrats, many Independents, and those on the left. They’re disgusted when this behavior is uncovered, no matter who the person is, from Bill Clinton to Al Franken, to Hollywood actors and producers. Anger and support withdrawal usually quickly follows.

It’s been pointed out multiple times that Trump hasn’t drained the swamp with the quality of people he’s selected for his cabinet and leadership positions. Trump claims the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were huge mistakes, but he hired one of the architects, John Bolton, to be his NSC advisor, and John Bolton is hiring more of the thinkers behind PNAC and the horrific continuing wars of the Middle East. That’s one more point that seems to prove that what Trump says doesn’t matter, just as he said he’d never be on vacation as POTUS, and never go golfing, because he’d be too busy.

The children’s protests, walk-outs, and March for Our Lives won’t matter either, to Trump supporters and the NRA. They’re doing their damn best to ensure that the narratives are twisted to fit into a surreal political reality.

In the larger context of our politics, it all matters to the world’s citizens. What Trump and his supporters say, how they say it, and what they do, reveal enormous logic gulfs, and shreds their claims to ethics and morals. They can’t see it, won’t acknowledge it, or, when they acknowledge it, rationalize that it doesn’t matter.

No, the best that can be said about these matters is that America’s youth are bending more sharply to the left and equality every day.

Left is such an easy label, but we’re forced to use it, because gun control and equality are defined as left issues. So, every mass murder in a school followed by nothing more than thoughts and prayers pushes America’s youth further left. Every action against equality for transgender people and the LGBT citizens of America that Trump announces, like his ban on who can serve in the military, pushes them further left.

Because here is the funny thing. Not many of the youngest American generations watch television. They don’t read the mainstream media. They find their own news. Those children who organized, who hear Trump’s words and see how his statements don’t align with his behavior, how he flat-out flips on issues and lies about what’s going on, are being pushed further to the left. Every time they go through these lock outs and lock downs in their schools, and hide in fear, they think, “I am tired of this. It’s not fair.”  That’s what they said this weekend. And they move further to the left.

Which isn’t good news for Democrats and the Democratic Party. That party holds itself in the center. It’s opportunistic, short on principles and leadership, and doesn’t offer a great vision for America itself. No, this isn’t about whether Hillary should have won, would have won, or did win. Hillary, despite what so many on the right say, has nothing to do with it.

This is about, for example, stripping away the laws put in place after the last economic meltdown, which is what Democrats and Republicans in Congress just did. This is about, as Trump supporters have pointed out, business as usual in Washington D.C., and the merry-go-round of elected officials and lobbyists, and the influence of money in politics.

Trump wasn’t the answer to that.

Neither was Hillary.

No, this is about a new political will that’s growing and shaping itself. It’s growing among the young people. I’m not sure what shape it’ll take. I’m old, male, and white. They, the young, no matter what their color, race, gender and sexual identity, don’t think as I do. They create their own spin, decide their own truths, and pursue their own actions. Egged on by the high costs of living in America, dwindling opportunity, and failed government leadership, they’re moving away from the institutions and norms that were set up as the functioning center for the last one hundred years. Fewer of them are driving, so cars matter less. Manufacturing had already drifted away and they, the young, no longer see it as the savior it was after World War II. Money matters less because they have to do without it. Bankers have already betrayed them, and revealed their infinite greed, so the young have grown up not trusting them.

Water matters more because they see and experience what happens without it. The environment happens more because they see the impact of the plastic dumped into our waters. Equality matters more, because they know people who are transgender, and LGBT, and recognize them as equals and friends, regardless of the law.

And that is the change that matters, because they are bold and powerful, and growing in numbers. When they finally take control, it’ll be something to behold.

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Friday’s Theme Music

So, confession, again. I enjoy the original Mad Max trilogy. The first is the least of them, but I will watch The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome again and again without too much thought.

Which is what I did this week. Thunderdome ends with Tina Turner singing “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” Which makes sense in that context; they’ve already lost it all. Civilization has been wiped out, and they’re trying to rebuild something out of the wreckage, something more humane than Bartertown and the Thunderdome.

But I wake up and read the news, and think, we need a hero. Seems like any fucking day, someone is going to decide, “Today is a nice day to nuke! Let’s find someone and make a radioactive statement.” Then a shit storm of retaliation will fire up. Anarchy and chaos get stirred in as civilization’s plastic veneer melts, and norms, morals, and ethics get tossed.

(As an ironic aside, I first saw The Road Warrior on VHS while I was on temporary duty with the Air Force in South Korea.)

Yeah, gloomy fucking Friday, right? Not really. A hero can stop all that. I don’t see anyone riding in at the moment, but I’m always an optimistic person that eventually sanity prevails.

So listen to Tina singing in 1985, and think about it. Focus on the song’s words, “Looking for something we can rely on, there’s got to be something better out there.”

Yes, there’s got to be.

 

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“Plastics.”

“Plastics.”

Some of you will read that one word sentence and recognize the allusion to The Graduate. It comes to mind now as how accurate it was in the movie.

Plastics was said to be the future. The writers (novelist Charles Webb and screenwriters Buck Henry and Calder Willingham) were prescient. Plastics are everywhere, floating and polluting the oceans and other aspects of our environment, and is now found to be in bottled drinking water. What’s that mean to our health? The effects are being studied.

We’ll find out in the future, won’t we?

 

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United Airlines Lottery

United Airlines put me on a roller coaster this week. First, they announced plans to stop giving employees bonuses. They would instead use a lottery to reward them.

I thought it was a great idea. I always feel like it’s a lottery flying with United. Yes, I have a ticket for the flight, but do I have a seat? Will I get on a plane? And will it be on the day that I’m scheduled to be flying? Let’s start a betting pool!

The betting pools always made those of us waiting in the gate area feel better. Even though there was a chance we wouldn’t make the flight (or the flight wouldn’t go today), at least there was a small chance that we might win. It was a little rain of sunshine on a bitter day traveling on United Airlines.

I thought having employees rewarded by lottery would help employees and passengers bond. Now employees would feel how we passengers feel when we wait to see if we’re going to fly on the flight that we bought a ticket for.

I don’t think the executives were going to participate in the lottery. I felt sorry for them. It seemed mean of United to exclude them. I accuse United of being executivists, treating executives differently just because they’re executives. It seems like companies will discriminate about anything these days.

But then, United announced they were not going to do the lottery. Say whaaat? Apparently, the employees weren’t as excited about the bonus lottery as I was.

That surprised the president of United Airlines, Scott Kirby (which admittedly sounds like a movie star’s name in the 1940s). Kirby said, “Our intention was to introduce a better, more exciting program, but we misjudged how these changes would be received by many of you.”

I admit, I paused when I read that. The company president was surprised that people weren’t happy that they weren’t going to receive the bonus money that they were probably counting upon. I think that gives us a little more insight into why United sucks more each year (hell, each month) as an airline. It explains why they’re surprised when passengers are pissed about paying extra for the blankets, food, and a seat that isn’t out on the wing.

Is it surprising that United will start selling priority boarding for coach passengers? I believe they’ll next be selling priority exiting, too. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they’re going to start charging for the seats in the crowded waiting areas around the gate. “I’m sorry, sir, can I see your ticket for that seat? You can’t sit there if you don’t have a ticket. Would you like to buy a ticket? Just five dollars per hour. What’s your flight number? Oh, you’ll need about six hours, then.”

Then, like all of United’s twisted, greedy thinking, they’ll oversell the tickets for the seats in the waiting area. “Sorry, just because you have a ticket, it doesn’t mean that you have a seat.”

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that United Airlines employees must buy desk time at work.

United Airlines: “Fly with us. It’s a lottery.”

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I’ve always enjoyed this song’s beginning. A chorus, a softly strumming acoustic guitar, and then a gentle French horn, each remarkable by themselves but coming together to set you up in an introspective mood.

When I first heard it, I thought, “Is that a French horn? Who is playing it?” Because a French horn isn’t part of the Rolling Stones’ typical composition. Later, there’s organ and piano, and wondered, “Who is on those?” I learned it was Al Kooper on them, along with the French horn. Pretty cool.

The song is, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” a well-known Rolling Stones song from that terrific album, Let It Bleed. I like the song’s story-telling style, how it touches on different political and social elements of that period, rising rises from a reflection on a female addict into a rousing anthem for rebellion and struggle.

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need

h/t AZLyrics.com

It’s a stirring rallying cry: try, and you might find that you get what you need, and it may not be what you thought it was.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Thinking about music, I know some music because it pervaded popular culture and the American music, television, and movies. That said….

Ever reach that point where you shout, “Enough is enough!” Then you vow to change things. Change hopefully arises from that determination. As deaths, revelations, and accusations flew after last week’s high school mass murders, this song sprang into my music stream. Two great singers and performers, Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand combined to sing “No More Tears (Enough is Enough)” in 1979, during the peak of the disco phenomena. It starts as a slow ballad, but then erupts into a defiant stance.

I admit, I cringed a little, listening to this. Disco just isn’t my thing. Sorry.

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Let’s start with a wall of sound to blow these thoughts down, the thoughts that arrive after another mass shooting hits the news, another school’s day marked in red.

We’d just returned from living in Germany for four years, courtesy of our favorite uncle, when this song was released back in 1991. Another time? Well, we’d gone to war and were going to war back then, and we’re at war now, so nothing changed there. The Berlin Wall was torn down back then, a great moment in history, but the American border wall is being expanded this year. We thought the nuclear threat was diminishing because the U.S.S.R. had dissolved, but here we are, moving closer to midnight on the Doomsday clock twenty-six years later. Crime was higher then than now, but mass shootings were lower in 1991 than they are in 2018.

The worst mass shooting in 1991 the Luby’s shooting in Killeen, Texas. The gunman killed twenty-three people that day. It was the worse mass shooting in the U.S. at the time. It’s been surpassed. We’ve had five worse mass murders by a single shooter since then, including February 14th’s shooting in Parkland, Florida. That one, at a high school, ranks number one in the number of murders at a high school shooting in America, passing Columbine’s 1999 murders of thirteen people. 

Let’s listen to Metallica with “Enter Sandman” and think about our national nightmare.

 

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Tracy Chapman’s first album came out while we were living in Germany. This song, “Talkin’ ’bout A Revolution,” was one of several favorites from the album. We quickly became Chapman fans, and her second album cemented her status in our minds.

“Talkin’ ’bout A Revolution” seems apropos for this mild winter Wednesday. The White House released its budget. Since a budget was signed a few days before its release, the WH budget does little as far as being a law, but it provides insights into their thinking, and the thinking seems to be feed the rich, starve the poor, cut the arts, and increase the world’s largest military and nuclear forces into a larger force. Depressing thinking.

I think Chapman understands the gist:

While they’re standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

h/t azlyrics.com

In short, as larger numbers of common Americans have less to gain by maintaining the status quo, and the status quo moves into more conservative modes that favor wealthy individuals and corporations, there’s less vested interest for the multitudes to maintain the status quo.

There will eventually be change. History shows that revolution and change is a dance. The time and beat vary, as do the moves. Sometimes it’s a structured box step, forward, sideways, backwards as changes take place.

That seems to be the dance we’re doing now.

 

2

Thursday’s Theme Music

In 1971, I was fifteen years old, and entering high school. Richard Nixon was president.  The Vietnam War continued, and the Pentagon Papers were printed while the U.S and U.S.S.R. continued their arms race. Protesters marched against the war and the bomb. Although it was a new decade, we hadn’t turned the page socially. The summer of love, Watts riots, and Chicago ’68, among many events, all still resonated through our awareness.

Peace was a major topic. From it came songs, like this one, “Peace Train.” Cat Stevens wrote and released it. He’d soon add to the national conversation by becoming a Muslim and changing his name to Yusuf Islam after almost drowning.

He’s an interesting, talented person.

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Disaster Mind

Does an early morning telephone call kick a worried hiss into your mind, “Oh, no, what’s gone wrong? Who died?” Do you sit and think, if there’s a disaster here, how will we survive? Do you ever wonder if you left something on, such as the oven, after you departed the house, or if you closed the garage door, or locked the doors after leaving?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, you might be suffering from disaster mind.

Disaster mind is a chronic condition that afflicts millions of Americans. It can strike at any time. Recent studies conducted on the Internet estimate over ninety-nine percent of Americans suffer disaster mind. Although the middle-aged and elderly suffer disaster mind more often, students, professional athletes, sales managers, single people, married couples and parents are frequently prone to disaster mind.

Disaster mind affects more women then men, except during football season. Symptoms include worrying, anxiety, and eating comfort food to cope with worries. Extreme cases of disaster mind cause some people to drink more than one glass of wine or beer a night, complain, and wish for the “good old days.” People suffering from disaster mind tend to dawdle, read a great deal, and watch television and movies. Disaster mind sufferers often follow politics, and self-label as “political junkies.”

If you think you might be suffering from disaster mind, doctors suggest you try not to think about it. If that doesn’t work, indulge in wine or beer with pizza, followed by ice cream or pie, and lose yourself in a good book or movie. Chips with guacamole and cheesy foods also work well.

That’s what works for me.

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