Tannishblog

For all those Dittohead Righties out there who like to talk about the holy grail of "capitalism" and "free markets", a precautionary tale illustrating just how "free" a business man within an industry is these days. Not very.

"I had an awakening," the 64-year-old Dutch-born dairyman said. "It’s not totally free enterprise in the United States."

Or maybe it’s a belated reminder of how the 109th congress (RIP) may be known as the Best Congress Money Can Buy ™. Either way, the reality is that markets are owned in America. Owned things aren’t free at all…

Today is World AIDS Day. While America sleeps, tens of thousands of people are living with a highly transmittable disease of which we aren’t supposed to speak.

It’s sad to think that such a pervasive disease cannot get the airtime and attention given to breast cancer. I remember the outcry many years ago where a few prominent televangelists labeled AIDS "the gay disease," and summarily doomed any effort to combat the problem in the USA. Others of similar beliefs dismiss AIDS as a heavenly retribution for promiscuity. Or for poverty, as if that is ever a conscious choice. I can’t help wondering how those same people would react if their virginal daughters contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion, for example. Would they then believe their own rhetoric?

Meanwhile, over in the UK, they’re seeing RED and organizing fund raising in harmony with the single thing people share in all the affluent, industrialized nations: shopping. Buy a RED product, wear a red ribbon. Force the world to acknowledge a disease that affects us all.

While AIDS is the Disease That We Must Not Mention, breast cancer, by comparison, is widely publicized. Everybody worries about breast cancer these days although fewer women die from it than from AIDS. Even conservative ministers like tits, it seems.

No Friday Night Zen this week. Our daughter was performing in her high school’s jazz band last night. A long and enjoyable concert. She impressed me with what she’s learned the only a half year. Being a failed rock musician, I’m especially tickled at her new skills on the electric bass. (note to self: sort that thought under "Living Vicariously.")

They practice a lot, asking much out of the kids. Niles North Fine Arts Department has a reputation to uphold in the fine arts department, and they take their ambitions out on the students. The students rise to the occasion consistently and last night was no exception. While not quite a polished performance, it was impressive. Mostly the sound tech crew needs work. I’m confident all will be resolved for the next performance.

So my Zen lesson was to support the consequences of my actions in the form of supporting my offspring and the community I choose to live in. Also to ponder the amazing capacity of humanity to pursue non-violent expression and to build community. How refreshing!

Being an early riser afforded me the honor of being the first in my precinct to cast my paper ballot. At 6:12 this morning I fed the cards into the reader. No touch-screen for me…

Here in the hinterlands of the Southwest coast of Lake Michigan, in the County of Cook, the Blue Party rules. Notwithstanding the added political clout that money brings to the Red Party, we are mostly content with cooler colors. Not that the Blues are innocent of the same temptations that so pervade the Reds on a national level recently - far from it - still, we are happy where we stand.

This year there area few other colors available to choose. The Green Party is getting some traction in Illinois, and I applaud their efforts. It’s not easy being the outsiders. The governorship is a three way race this year, both Red and Blue have dirty fingernails, so aren’t easy to recommend, too mired in their prospective machines for my liking. So I chose Green instead.

At the county level, mostly a mystery to most voters, I think, because little air time is given to local candidates, a couple of Greens are available to choose as well. Out of ignorance of the local issues and the candidates stances, I vote Green there, too. Here’s why:

Lately our national congress has been lax in oversight of the Iraq debacle, of outrageous spending and waste, and of the behavior of many of the personalities in government. This is because the Reds control all three branches of federal government and because they can’t resist behaving like spoiled children on holiday. For the past few years debate has been dead in the hill. Debate is the heartbeat of a healthy Democratic process. Without the tug-of-war of polite argument a nation has no right to call itself either a Democracy or a Republic.

How, then, to defibrillate our nation’s heart again? By offering more choices of political parties. Imagine a congress made of three or four viable, competitive political affiliates, each with a voice commensurate with the fickleness of the voting public. Less chance of one-party rule, less chance of the resulting authoritativeness we’ve been experiencing. Parties would be forced to (gasp!) compromise, form alliances and (gasp again!) work together to further the will of the many instead of the power of the few.

Isn’t that what we’re all about in this country?

I’ve been impressed with the systems in Europe and in Israel of a multi-party congressional aggregate. This provides more flexibility on behalf of representation, and gives smaller voices a chance to be heard. In our current system, the small voices are easily shouted over. I’d live to see that become reality, however unlikely it seems. Because of this, I vote Green even if I don’t know how they stand. If enough people try this, the Greens will gain traction and (hopefully) become a force. Perhaps other fringe groups will also make gains. They can greatly change how our government works just by being big enough to gain a few seats.

So: Gimme some choice! I want more parties available to me, so I can better vote my conscience instead of forcing it to fit into someone else’s.

I own a war game called Fortress America. It’s a bit of a collector’s item, made during the last throes of a dying gaming industry that had yet to re-emerge, phoenix-like, into the ether of the online gaming world. Circa 1983, I think.

The premise of the game was simple: America was under attack on three fronts; to the East, a shadowy Euro-Russian alliance was establishing beachheads. The game designers chose red plastic to represent this army. To the West, a vague aggregate of Sino-Japanese aggression is storming the Pacific coast (yellow pieces, of course.) Finally to the South, a federation (of blue pieces) from the nations in that direction. Our Great Beleaguered Nation has, as it’s unique tactical advantage, a deck of "Partisan Cards" that initiate a random sequence of guerilla attacks against the invaders. This is to represent the can-do spirit of the average Americans to repel enemies wherever they may be found. Yea, America!

An interesting premise, ahead of its time, perhaps, yet a rather bland board game. Game mechanics aside, though, the game illustrated common fears of a populace of which I was heretofore unaware. That demographic has been in power for the entirety of this young century. During their tenure, they’ve done a bang-up job of making this fantasy real. Europe likes us even less that they did, the Chinese soon won’t need any help in attacking the Left Coast, besides, we’ve been selling our future to then to pay for our failed war efforts. And in the South…

President Bush signed his "Secure Fence Act of 2006" (he just had to get a derivative of the word security in there…) where in he mandates the building of a 700 mile fence along a 1900 mile border. You do the math. Just to keep it interesting, he doesn’t bother to try to fund the $7 billion project. Washington Post, of all entities, notes the irony in that as well as a short historical perspective on the effectiveness of walls.

I guess the Fortress America campaign is proceeding - however slowly. Those Southern Invaders should watch out for the turning over of America’s Partisan Cards along the remaining 2/3 of our border-down-under. Now all we have to worry about is how to build walls on the oceans.

Life is like a maze. You know there’s a way through, but there’s no map. Not only that, but once your in, there’s only one way to go - forward. And at every corner, and there are many, there’s no telling what you’ll find.

As I have stumbled with trepidation through my personal maze, moments of clarity sometimes occur. Occasionally I turn the corner to find a whole new, unexpected path in front of me. These moments are forever imprinted on the mind. One such turning happened 16 years ago today. I had been preparing for it for months, so I thought, but one cannot prepare for an event outside one’s experience.

Sixteen years ago, I stood bewildered and nervous in a birthing ward while my wife delivered our daughter. No sleep for two days, high on caffeine and endorphins, holding my wife’s hand while watching her experiencing pain akin to organ failure, and now a red, mewling - something - clasped firmly to a breast. To see her and her new wet bundle literally sent me into a shock. I don’t know how I got home that evening.

My next semi-lucid moment came when I was busy assembling a crib with the help of a concerned cat, when the phone rang. She was - they were - ready to come home. I shot out the door and across town to retrieve them. Enough of the shock wore off by then that as the hospital elevator opened and glanced up, I noticed how different things were. I had turned the corner.

Gaining a child is not unlike loosing a hand. Both are life-altering events. Both force one to readjust to the entirety of life, not just a portion, and all future decisions are determined as viewed against this new criteria. This is an new maze, now.

To speak of the joys of parenting, or any other overworked cliche, just doesn’t convey the reality. Parenting - the act of being a parent - is literally the meaning of life. Life is purposeless otherwise. To nurture, love, guide a new spirit until they can take wing, is the essence of humanity. There is no greater challenge, no duty of higher importance than to allow your progeny to flourish by neither pushing nor holding back. And there is no higher reward than to see a child morph into a sensible, sensitive young adult.

The next corner, I assume, is when our daughter packs off to college. Her wings will get their workout then. I’ll know, when the shock wears off and I take note of the tiniest details, that the next segment of the maze will be revealed.

Only two years from now… She’ll be ready: that’s obvious. But will I?

Have you ever wondered how life would be in BushAmerika? Here’s a glimpse of what happens to people as a result of a loose-cannon, NRA gun policy like they have in Florida: Gruesome Highway Shootings.

[T]he four victims were shot multiple times while kneeling or lying on the ground. "The woman in a defensive posture, had both of the children surrounded, underneath her arms, in an effort that we can assume was to protect them from the gunfire," [St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken J.] Mascara said.

Our growing national penchant for random acts of violence would escalate like it has in Jeb country, land of Tasered Children. The Boston Globe notes that the victims were well loved by friends.

“Everybody loves them. They would do anything for anybody. There’s not enough words — they were just funny, caring, very lovely people," said Lisa Salazar, a relative in Brownsville, Texas.

The tragic irony is that they were moving from Texas to "start a new life" in Florida. A quick Google shows that , while the national average of violent crime is plummeting, Florida cannot boast the same trend. There, as in Texas, crime has increased.

Welcome to a view of Red Amerika, land of the pistol and home of the frightened. While urbanites, living in small spaces within big cities, are forced to recognize the values of promoting welfare through acceptance of diversity, others in our great nation are still able to pretend that their towns are largely unchanged since the days of  the Wild, Wild West. It looks like their vision of the New American Century is similar to America’s nineteenth century.

…Why isn’t America doing stuff like this? From Washington Post:

MERIGNAC, France – Braving queasy stomachs, a five-man team of French physicians took to the skies for the first surgical procedure on a human in zero-gravity conditions, as the aircraft soared and dived to create weightlessness.

The operation, more than three years in the making and part of a three-phase exploration of weightless surgery, is a step toward one day having surgery performed in space, either by a surgeon or a remotely controlled robot. It also is an experiment that may be instructive for a future medical emergency on the international space station.

The flight lasted three hours, but the operation to remove a cyst from a patient’s arm took just about the same amount of time it would have taken in a hospital, physicians said.

While America is concerned with small thinking concepts like Global Hegemony, Europe is quietly eyeing the solar system. One must ask: What is the future of mankind? Where can we go after all the wars resolve themselves into a single global powerhouse? What then?

Humans are curious beasts, ever pondering the unknown. We are explorers, conquerors who have run out of places to annex in the name of "God and Country." When the dust of looming global warfare settles, the remnants will find themselves with a damaged, nearly depleted planet. Small prize for all the bloodshed and sorrow. Meanwhile forward-thinking institutions are planning long term toward what may be the inevitable expansion of the human race. It is, at least, a hope in dark times, one that should be explored until evidence piles up on the futility of hope itself.

What have we, as a nation, to lose that we don’t already risk in global conflict? More importantly: What do we have to gain? To pursue space science, to give the average grunt a vision and hope for future generations (something that is slipping from us,) is to breath life into what is rapidly becoming an untenable condition - the combined effect of climate change, global ideological strife, depleted resources and the consolidation of wealth.

It may seem wacky, now, but our future is up.

Christian conservatives are getting their knickers in a twist over *gasp* hotel porn. CNN notes a gathering of 13 groups, including the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, are asking their buddies in the Justice Department to "look into" hotel video services to se if they violate federal and state obscenity laws.

I can almost hear the phone call: "We got you your jobs, now go to work. We want you to get rid of filthy pornography so we don’t have to worry about what our kids are watching in the hotel rooms while we’re downstairs getting drunk and gambling."

Ahhh… There’s no substitute for applied parenting…

My daughter is almost 16. She has already gone through three regimens of "health" courses masquerading as "hygiene" or some such, which deal primarily with human reproductive systems: sixth grade; eighth grade; and ninth grade. By now, I’m sure she knows how things fit together. She won’t need to ask us anything, public schools have done it all. That’s what our tax dollars are for. Nevermind that we’re the strange sort of parents who wouldn’t be embarrassed to discuss avians and insects with her… like I said, we’re strange…

For the rest, especially  for the sexually repressed, uptight and paranoid parents who cannot handle procreative topics, it is better to legislate them into our schools and out of our vacation spots. Better yet to avoid the subject altogether. Then we can finish turning our children into neurotic messes when they find out about pregnancy accidentally and the parental hammer falls on them. It sure beats a warm, family discussion about just how they got here in the first place.

Oh, yeah… storks. Right.

A poor black man in a rented van, during an extensive police chase, crashed into a car filled with affluent, white suburban teens in Wheeling, IL., killing one. the driver of the van is now indicted for murder along with several other charges. His trail and sentencing is likely to be swift, partly because of the details of the incident and partly because he is black.

I know. It’s just not politic to point this out. We cannot acknowledge our latent racism, or our history of slavery and segregation outside the sterile confines of the classroom. We must remain in denial about how our concepts of race factor into all of our interactions between blacks and whites in America. But, as is sung in the Broadway musical Avenue Q, "Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist".

As I see it, the harm from racism comes from our denial of it. I hurts everyone. White are forever shadowed by a specter of the Master Race ethos. Blacks, in turn, suffer from the stigmata of oppression with its attendant  - and also unacknowledged - low cultural self-esteem. This poor cultural image gives rise to urban black’s insistence on creating a unique mark on American culture, thereby giving themselves credibility they don’t feel they already have.

This feeling is as unfortunate as it is false. Already, many black men and women have made substantial positive impacts on American society, without which we wouldn’t be the nation we are today. Many more will emerge. Too slowly perhaps are curricula changing to celebrate the vast legacy of black Americans, but it is happening.

Whites, meanwhile, still cling to the illusion of lordship. This too still plays out in our education system. While immigration continues in our "melting pot" of a nation, bringing people from non-European countries, white Americans - especially those who have chosen to distance themselves from diverse neighborhoods - are becoming edgy. They feel encroached upon. As my work friend and red-stater said yesterday, "Mexico is invading." He worries needlessly about the state of the union. I see it as making America stronger, and perhaps more importantly, more representative of the global community. Such a melange of cultural viewpoints may temper our latent racism by forcing people to learn to live with differences instead of arming themselves against them. That would really be the spreading of Democracy.

Meanwhile if impoverished inner-city blacks continue to cause havoc, stereotypes will prevail in media and in the justice department. The Wheeling tragedy is sad, all the more so because it was avoidable. Not by the police, perhaps (who are being sued by the family of the victim in what I see as a shameless ploy to profit from their tragedy by trading the life of their son for possible financial gain), but by common sense among communities and an outreach between cultures. Fist, however, we must admit our racial biases before any progress is made.