Numb With Worry

Today is a defining moment in the history of the United States. Today a black man will be inaugurated as the 44th president of this country; a first unimaginable for most of us who grew up in the homes of the 1950s and 60s when the N word was part of the common lexicon. Based upon my observations during and since the presidential campaign, there are a lot of white folks who still cannot or will not let go of their smoldering distrusts and ambiguous hatred of persons of color. I characterize this hatred as ambiguous because most of the people in this country have become accustomed to the superiority of various black athletes who have become legends in their respective sports; e.g., Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. The public generally reveres these men, but most of us white folk don't have a single black friend or acquaintance with whom we would feel comfortable sharing our dinner table. I received a hateful e-mail just yesterday of a picture of an older and heavy black woman in a bathing suit standing on a beach. She had obviously put her bathing suit on backwards and the caption accompanying the picture said "We know which party she voted for." I play golf on occasion with a Detroit lawyer who uses the term "Democrats" for black people. These types of incidents arouse within me on this wonderful day a protective parental-like instinct that diminishes my ability to fully enjoy the moment in time; a feeling akin to the first day a sixteen year old drives a car alone, or a young child swims in water over her head.

What is it about all this that makes me numb with worry? I read an article this morning that will help make my point. The author stated that one of the reasons that Obama has been so widely received (with an 83% approval rating) is that most Americans "play inside the forty yard lines" when it comes to politics. Continuing the metaphor based on my observations, I would say that most white people "play inside the twenty yard lines" when it comes to the issue of acceptance of blacks. What I worry about, however, is not those people inside these boundaries, but the crazies outside these zones who carry ideas and beliefs which will never be amenable to change. To be specific, there are plenty of people in our country who would kill Obama if the opportunity was presented. For reasons real or imagined, there is a lunatic fringe within our society that the added factor of Obama's race is the clincher. I am numb with worry that one of these nut cases will destroy one of the finest moments in American history.

Shell Shocked

I remember it well; the days following the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 by the New York Times and the hubbub that followed. To put it mildly, all hell broke out as these papers described with particularity the waste, incompetence, fixated ideology and corruption that cost American taxpayers billions upon billions of dollars because of the Vietnam war. In large part, the response that followed the release of these papers led to the resignation, albeit indirectly, of Nixon. One of the many tragedies of that war turned out to be the significant number of vital young men who returned home with a glazed look on their face that belied the horrors they had seen and experienced. A fanciful name has been given to this altogether too-frequent reaction; post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It was formerly known as "shell shock" and carried with it a bias that suggested somehow that the sufferer had a predisposed weakness for this condition when placed under the stress of battle. As an aside, this condition made the papers this past week as the concept that warriors who suffered this real and crippling disorder would not be considered as candidates for Purple Heart awards, presumably because someone in the Bush administration bought this "weakness" bias.

However, I digress. I would submit that the American public is at this very moment in history exhibiting a mass form of PTSD in its lack of response to the Iraq version of the Pentagon Papers which makes the Vietnam version appear like child's play. A near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of the Iraq nation-building fiasco assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction was reported in this past week's New York Times. This report describes the loss of 50 billions of taxpayer dollars of the 117 billion dollars spent on Iraq reconstruction. The loss, described with particularity, occurred because of incompetence, cronyism, lying and fraud and was spearheaded by those same people who brought us the Katrina response and the current financial crisis. The report was prepared by a Bush appointee and pinpoints, among other transgressions, "a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a 'new' Iraq." The report quotes Colin Powell on how the scam worked. Back in 2003, Powell said, the Defense Department just “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000,’” all manufactured into duping the American public into thinking they were getting something for their investment of young American lives and money.

Our collective lack of response to this information illustrates just how deeply we have all been wounded by the last eight years. We have become so accustomed to incompetence and fraud that we just sit and look off into the distance with a glaze in our collective eyes. No protest, however feeble, is heard.

Pay To Study

A sense of dismay arises from within me as I read about the burgeoning number of Americans who are unemployed or underemployed. The New York Times this morning estimates the current number at 21 million and increasing monthly. After reading this I sat and thought for a while about those who are caught in the headlights of this national dilemma. What is a person to do if his/her job has simply disappeared? What is the possibility/likelihood that another job opportunity will come along, one that offers advancements with pay increments so that one currently faced with this dilemma can eventually resume life with a sense of satisfaction and achievement? The key, as I see it, is re-training and re-education. In order to bring the nation's abilities up to snuff we, of course, must allow each individual in the nation the oopportunity to start over. This would cost money, lots of it. Not only would schools and training programs need to be expanded, people would/should be paid to attend and obtain new training. This is the educational and training equivalent of the bailout billions given to our greedy financial sector with one exception; the unemployed and underemployed did not create the mess we are in.

Levels

At first, what I need to do is explain what I mean by 'levels'. It is simply this; in the understanding of issues, complex or simple, there are levels of understanding and insight that must be considered. Most of us, all of us, may not possess the necessary fount of knowledge to understand some of the complex financial instruments that are wreaking havoc to the American way of life. Most of us may not possess the necessary expertise to run a hedge fund or manage a huge bank with billions of dollars of assets. Most of us cannot perform delicate brain surgery in the correction of a ruptured intracranial aneurysm. Most of us cannot hit a golf ball 320 yards or play sub-par golf under the rigors of a professional golf tournament. But most of us do know the difference between right and wrong. Bankers lending money to people when they know that those people cannot possibly meet the required payments have violated the basics of right and wrong. Traders selling bundled mortgages to others knowing full well that they are passing on a risky instrument that they themselves don't want to hold are simply wrong at the basic level of honesty/dishonesty. A brain surgeon who does know how to repair a ruptured aneurysm also knows that time is the essence in doing so and is wrong at the most basic level when he decides not to interrupt his weekend by delaying such a surgical procedure. A golf pro who constantly acts like an [expletive] surely realizes at the basic level that his actions are wrong and no amount of denial or rationalization is going to change that fundamental reality. These are but a few examples of a sickness that has spread like a plague throughout America. The majority of people are good and do recognize the difference between right and wrong. However, move one step away from this basic level and most people become forgetful. Rather than incorporate their own considerable personal morality into their conduct at a professional or business level, some mechanism kicks in to result in a 'me first' approach with all of the attendant negative results. In my previous life as a trial lawyer, I once hired a physician to testify in a large series of birth defect cases. Thousands of children were born with missing or defective limbs after their mothers had taken a specific prescription drug during the critical period of limb development during their respective pregnancies. This particular physician was known worldwide for discoveries that saved the lives of untold numbers of children. He was knighted by the queen of England for his work. At our initial meeting, he explained carefully to me that his basic philosophy could be summed up in one phrase; What's in it for me? This physician was ultimately exposed as a fraud for conducting sham scientific studies that were fabricated to bolster his opinions to the ultimate detriment of the thousands of children that I represented. I was shocked at the time, but since then on an informal basis, I have noticed that this characteristic seems to be the basic philosophy of many high achievers. Winning, according to this precept, carries a tag line that implies that winning at all costs, or any cost, is proper. Forget what is right or wrong, seize the moment, is how it goes. Our current economic crisis is the net result of a series of seize the moment ruinous decisions that abandoned the basic level of which I write. Exhibit number one; a man named Madoff. I rest my case.

Where do We Get Our Ideas?

As the country (and the world) listens to the Nameless one in his last moments, it is like a washing machine stuck on the spin cycle. To listen to his version of his presidency is to understand why he will be considered the worst president in the history of our great nation. It is clear from what he says that he is either the greatest liar of all time, or, more likely, he doesn't have a clue about the damage he has done to the very fabric of our society during his imperial presidency. But, this diatribe is not about He Who Would Have Been King but is, rather, a query about how and where each of us acquired our ideas and understanding of our great country as we have grown up. Point One: Think back to your school days and try to recall any information you received about the role of slavery in our society as this country moved from revolutionary times to the true Civil Rights Era (circa 1965 and Martin Luther King). Looking back, it is clear that the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation were just the initial baby steps in the process which, in essence, has culminated in the election of our first black president. What has triggered this is my thinking this morning is an uncomfortable moment during a holiday Christmas party where a person I like very much stood with me and chatted for a few minutes and used the "n" word no fewer than five times. How this relates to this morning's theme is it indicates to me that many white people still have not owned up to the fact of life that black people are human beings too and not some inferior living things that arrogance and ignorance can relegate to a human trash pile. This likeable and funny and warm human being at the party got this idea from somewhere and it is my contention that the official story of our country, like Bushy's current spinning, has downplayed what for black people must consider a really bad joke; i.e. the notion that all men are created equal with the asterisk for a large part of our history that this concept did not apply to blacks. How could Thomas Jefferson, the owner of many slaves, sit down and pen these words is one question. But, to me, the greater question is how we as young kids and adults could listen and learn to believe that we are the greatest nation in the world because of our principles and completely ignore the question about Jefferson? I am, if course, only using Jefferson as an example because our history is replete with incidents of racism that if lined up side-by-side could only spell out a final historic conclusion that we have been, and in fact continue to be, a de facto racist society. One has only to drive along Jefferson Avenue from Grosse Pointe, Michigan into Detroit where, literally, in a few hundred yards, homes move from small mini-mansions to the ghetto, from white to black skin color, to have this point illustrated most dramatically. But, this diatribe is not completely about racism. My intention is to apply it to any number of other idealistic notions in our society such as dissent and minority points of view. As a nation, we, on paper, pride ourselves in our wonderful and historical guarantee of freedom of speech, but witness what we do to one or another who dares to express anything other than the dogma of majority opinion. We get these ideas from somewhere. We need to change them. We need to move from a nation that says "do as I say" to one that says"do as I do."

Death Penalty for Corporate Wrongdoers

In our capitalistic society, corporations are given the benefits of citizens in that they are treated legally as if they are persons. I am thinking about this quirkiness, that is what it is, in the law that allows a corporation to do things to other people that any live, breathing human being would be imprisoned forever or executed for doing. The first example that comes to mind is the damage that is caused to individuals (damage= death) by various drug companies that market products indiscriminately with inadequate and sometimes fraudulent testing which results in the deaths of users. A company that does such things should be put to death. A court should be empowered to dismantle a corporation that has done things that, if done by an individual, would result in the death penalty. The current means of inflicting punishment, the assessment of fines, allows a company to continue doing business in a manner akin to an elephant brushing a fly off its back. Another example: This Bernard Madoff business. While the story that he has been permitted to circulate is that he, alone, created and managed the Ponzi scheme and that no one, including his two sons, knew of the arrangement. When he was near to being caught, he apparently spilled his guts to his sons and they turned him in. It is a good story, but I don't think it's true. I think he arranged this so that they could continue in business and make their millions of dollars even after he is gone. While such familial loyalty is to be admired, think of how Mr. Madoff may have adjusted his conduct if he knew beforehand that his scheme would result not only in his imprisonment, but the total destruction of his company and the removal of all assets from the people who owned that company including his own family, rather than business as usual. The examples could go on and on, but the net observation is the same. We let corporations get away with murder and acts that ruin the lives of others. Unlike the individual human being, a corporation has no soul or conscience. We should not reward this amorality.

A Christmas Gift to the America Public

What if there is a party and no one shows up? Impossible you say, yet that is exactly what happened in the running of several vital components of the federal government during the Bush tenure. Take the EPA for example;. this agency is empowered by statute to regulate greenhouse gases in the United States. In the eight years of the Bush presidency the EPA did exactly nothing to perform this function despite the near-universal recognition that greenhouse gases are a major component in global warming, the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation.
Global surface temperature increased during the 100 years ending in 2005. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that most of the temperature increase is "very likely" due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. This basic conclusion haa been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with these findings,[the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC's main conclusions.

Climate model projections indicate that global surface temperature will likely rise further and will cause sea levels to rise. Rising temparatures will also change the amount and pattern of precipitation, likely including an expanse of the subtropical desert regions. Other likely effects include increases in the intensity of extreme weather events, changes in agricultural yields, modifications of trade routes, glacier retreat, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.

Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, one of the first acts of the Bush administration was to withdraw its support of this project despite the fact that the United States is the largest contributor to the greenhouse effect.

Wait, it is worse than that. In 2007 the EPA chief issued a ruling that prevented California from taking action on its own greenhouse gas plan to limit emissions from autos and trucks. Not only has the U.S. missed the party, it has planned actively to hurt those who would benefit from attending. As an example, people suffering from asthma have their conditions chronically aggravated by the presence of noxious fumes.

On this Christmas morning, I submit that the American public and the world have received the greatest gift of all in the soon-to-be replacement of the Neanderthals in the current administration by morally responsible persons who are serious about changing things for the better. The damage done by the EPA is a good place to start. Merry Christmas.