F16’s Don’t Kill People, 500 Lb. Bombs Kill People

Legislators in Nebraska are trying to pass a law that women seeking an abortion must watch an ultrasound of the fetus an hour before the procedure. It won’t pass, but it really does offer a glimpse into the sick minds that dream this kind of legislation up. It certainly doesn’t help the anti-abortion movement to have nutcases like this dreaming up ways to punish women for having what is, like it or not, a legal procedure. Now I know it would be too much to think we might be able to prevent abortions by oh, I don’t know…raising the standard of living? Offering free prenatal care? Insurance? Better access to food stamps? Hey I know, how about sex education classes that aren’t based on abstinence?  I mean, I could go on and on. Sure, some people do not want to be parents, but even the process of carrying a child to term and placing the child for adoption can be demeaning and humiliating-I love these people who glibly suggest a woman should "just give the child up for adoption." They make it sound as simple as returning a pair of tennis shoes. Before we start pointing fingers and shaming women for getting pregnant (because lord knows, they didn’t get that way alone), and insisting that they view the fetus they are about to terminate, it would do a world of good to get an honest assessment of what drives a large number women to have abortions.

 

Yeah, I know-that ain’t happening, not in Nebraska anyway. We’re gonna make bloodthirsty harlots take a good long look at their fetus. Nice.

 

I really like the commenter at the bottom of the article that suggests a law be passed forcing people to look at a picture of the State senator sponsoring the bill before having sex.

 

 

 

 

Optimist that I am, it is always such a letdown when I’m reminded again (and again) what turds people can be. Perhaps it’s the Internet, making us think we’re way more important than we are (I’m not important-and you’re probably not either-get over yourself). Maybe it’s the lure of an anonymous comment thread. Whatever it is, it stinks, people.

 

 

THIS poor woman had to disable her comments because people who should know better decided to vent the frustrations of their pitiful (unimportant) lives on someone for (gasp) baking something imaginative that she liked. Yes, that’s right-they attacked her over a batch of cookies that apparently offended their sensibilities. It probably didn’t, but you know how nasty people are when they’re looking for a vulnerable person to attack. Cookies people, they’re attacking the woman over cookies.

 

 

Of course I immediately wonder why we can’t get this sort of worked-up anger over truly horrific things (no shortage of outrages lately, at least not by my count)? Oh you know, it’s just so much easier to attack someone over a cookie recipe you didn’t like than to think about really uncomfortable things like the dead bodies being piled-up in our wars, the people being tortured in our names, the staggering number of people imprisoned in the US, people freezing, starving, dying in the streets from treatable diseases…but no, let’s attack the cookie baker instead. Really, grow the hell up, would you people? And get over yourselves; no one cares what you think about someone’s cookie recipe.

 

 

Asswipes.

Indulge me; I feel a rant coming on.

 

This time of year we get all sorts of news stories telling us the best way to be charitable. I suppose, given the nature of the Internet, it makes some sense to read-up on an organization you are not familiar with-that’s just common sense. What irks me is the message conveyed is that donations must be through a registered charity with a board of directors and paid employees. Personally, that’s when I get uncomfortable. Don’t misunderstand, if you want to donate to the United Way, don’t let me dissuade you, but absence of a board of directors isn’t a sign of a corrupt group-I seem to recall a scandal not too many years ago about a director at the United Way mismanaging funds.

 

Those of you who’ve been reading along and are twitching to fire off some furious email in my direction, here’s the part you’re going to want to quote: I suggest performing charitable acts without weighing the worthiness of the recipient (uh oh, here it comes) and just doing what we can to help when seeing the need (oh my gosh, she’s suggesting handing out food and money to homeless human beings-somebody call the cops).

 

Wait; don’t hit the send button on that email calling me a pinko yet-there’s more!

 

I know what you’re thinking; "What if I get scammed?"  Or, "There are "services" to help people."

 
Look at it this way, I’ve been paying taxes for decades, and all those years I’ve been told that my money was going to feed people, house people, take care of those who are in desperate need-and you know what? They fucking lied. Yeah, that’s right, they used my taxes to starve and maim and kill and torture. How’s that for appropriate channels and "services" to help people. Conversely, over the years I’ve tried to do what I could for people directly and yeah, maybe I was "scammed" but as far as I know, the guy I used to share lunch with in Harvard Square never starved, or maimed, or tortured or killed anyone-at least not through official, state sanctioned offices. I can’t think of a single instance where a Catholic Worker I’ve met has taken the box of food, or clothing, or toiletries and done anything other than distribute it to the people that need it-directly. No board of directors, paid employees, or tax-exempt status.
 
It frightens me that generosity has been turned into institutionalised charity. I suppose the example that really makes my skin crawl was the Red Campaign (and sadly, not "red" in the way that would be a compliment to people like me) where the charitable work was achieved through consumerism. "Yeah, I want to help-what can I buy?" How much more distant can one get from the human beings they’re trying to help? Are they even human at that point, or just images of generic sick, poor people that our new bauble will somehow lift out of misery? And of course, it doesn’t actually cost anything because we were going to buy the bauble anyhow. It is offensive that laws are being passed around the country to literally prohibit people from performing the Works Of Mercy, (Feed the hungry, Clothe the Naked, Visit the Imprisoned, etc.). People are being arrested for feeding the hungry. Catholic Worker houses are being run out of town through clever little clauses in zoning laws. No, we’re not permitted to interact with each other. Just send money to an approved agency and they’ll take care of everything for us-or you know, we can go shopping if we really want to help. Really, sometimes I think I must be in a coma and imagining all of this, as it seems so impossibly unreal.
 
I’d personally rather hand someone twenty bucks. If they take it and buy booze, that’s none of my business-if I were living on the street and trying to navigate the bullshit from police and other parties interested in kicking people when they’re already down-I’d sure as hell want a drink. I’d also want someone to look me in the eye and treat me like a human being.
 
By the time someone needs help, it is irrelevant what he or she should have done to prevent the circumstances (assuming the circumstances were in fact, preventable). I’m going to stand there and lecture someone asking for change about how to pull his or her lives together? Are you kidding me? Still, that seems to be the attitude around here (Eastern Nebraska) that the destitute are somehow getting what they deserve. Unbelievable, I know. When did we become so brutish and cruel that we can behave this way without the slightest twinge of guilt? Sure, I’m worried about myself-who isn’t? Does that entitle me to become an insensitive creep? I mean, even if I can’t help, or do what’s being asked, I don’t have to be an asshole about it. How can I walk past someone without looking up, or acknowledging the person, the human being? The only way one can do that, is to cease viewing them as human, and that’s not someplace I’d be proud of arriving at.
 
Look, I know I can’t single-handedly do much (though if you’re interested in helping build a large, outdoor brick oven to do quantity bread baking to feed the hungry, get in touch with me via email) but at the very least I can feel uncomfortable with how fortunate I’ve been. The idea that I can post a donation to a charity and get a tax receipt in return-all without ever having to set eyes upon the recipients, is really sort of obscene. Equally obscene is the marketing of charitable works as a "feel good" activity. You know what? I’d "feel good" if the conditions that made the suffering possible in the first place were eliminated. I’d "feel good" if I could say that I wasn’t in many, many, many ways complicit in the system that makes the suffering possible. I don’t feel "good" making a tax-deductible donation. If anything, I’d feel dirty.
 
Am I saying all organised charities are wrong? Certainly not-heck, where would we be without the ACLU? I’m suggesting that sending money does not exclude us from responsibility. I’m suggesting that contrary to the newspaper articles, there are other less institutionalised ways to be helpful. My concern is that these articles frighten people. Not everything in life comes neatly packaged with a Good Housekeeping seal of approval and money back guarantee. Sometimes, we simply have to trust our guts when they tell us to embrace our best human qualities-whether it is tax deductible or not.
 
 

I’m not sure which was worse, the dental work or the antibiotics I’m taking for it, but I’m not really feeling my moxie at the moment. Here are some things that caught my eye recently, but I didn’t get around to blogging.

 

I want one of these. I’m not into the Tarot stuff, but if this is one way to get people to think about the periodic table, I’m for it. I had actually thought about cartooning flash-cards, but this is much, much better. It beats singing the periodic table to your kid at lunchtime. What? You don’t sing the periodic table to your kid at lunchtime? Yes, I do have a life, thank you. I have a slide-rule as well…just what are you insinuating?

 

School cameras being monitored in real-time at the police station in New Jersey. If you need me to point out what’s wrong with this, maybe this blog isn’t for you.

 

Nebraska just landed a major wad of dough for one of these "Fusion Centers." I’m really glad that American companies are stepping up to the plate to cooperate with the plan to turn this country into an authoritarian hell hole. Nice work. Give yourselves a raise…or a no-bid contract, or war booty, or whatever.

 

What? No! I don’t believe it. Racial bias in the foster care system? No way. I mean, it’s not like we have our prisons filled with minorities, or have employment discrimination or any of that stuff anymore. Gee whiz, it’s not 1961.

 

This article is concerned that people will use genetic information to discriminate by race, citing subtle differences. I’m sorry to say, they probably will. It won’t matter how well the biologists explain nature vs. nurture-someone that is looking for evidence to back up their racist assertions will jump on this to what I’m sure will be popular support. Genetic predisposition isn’t carved in stone, but it may as well be once this gets around. I’m not convinced it will lead to more racism, but it almost certainly will lead to people feeling it is more socially acceptable to voice it.

 

A follow-up to the post from Halloween where the Omaha police were trying to do "outreach" (indoctrination) in North Omaha so the kids would trust the cops. Hey, here’s my unsolicited advice for the day-maybe if you stop beating children down (in front of Granny, no less) for no reason other than being poor black kids, they might not run every time you screech up to the corner and bodily threaten them. Again, if you need me to explain what’s wrong with this, you’re probably reading the wrong blog.

 

Oh, and there isn’t any racism on college campuses either. I swear, it’s like I’ve been in a freaking coma and I’ve imagined the last forty years or so. How the hell could children reared in the post-civil rights era…I just don’t understand this. I really don’t. Some days I just want to go back to bed, hide under the covers and wait to die.

 

Yes, please. Let’s stop wasting food. If you’re unsure how to proceed, email me and I’ll give you suggestions for your particular leftover. I’m serious.

 

This is just scary. Now I have to worry about baby lotion?

 

Another unsolicited opinion-when writing an article about how to discern whether or not your child has some serious "behaviour disorder" (they probably don’t) try to quote an expert that isn’t associated with a school currently under investigation for torturing children with electric shocks as behaviour modification. I dunno, it sort of undermines the credibility.

 

Wait, there’s money to be made off all those "mentally ill" children. Lots, and lots of money-and what the heck, it’s involunatry-they can’t say no! How awesome is that? Most cash cows like that require consent of some sort but here all you do is scare the shit out of the parents, promise to fix the bad parenting with pills and hey-you get a 40 fold increase over nine years in the number of kids being treated for these "disorders." God, I love capitalism.

 

-It’s a good thing I’m not swimming in outrage or it might be boring to read my outbursts. Regular, thought-out blogging to resume soon (I hope).

 

 

 

 

 

Mike Smith at Now Magazine Toronto-I love you. Yes, I do.

 

THIS is one of the best responses I’ve read to the business owners determined to drive off the poor so they, and their patrons won’t be forced to acknowledge the suffering of other human beings:

 
 
 

"If Aldridge wants to run a business, fine. But where is it written that it’s our responsibility to help his patrons ignore economic realities?"

 

Of course down here, we’ve resorted to police stopping homeless persons and demanding Breathalyzer tests so that they may be hauled off for public intoxication. Strangely, the police never seem to have time to administer similar tests to the throngs of college students leaving the Haymarket pubs at closing time. Could you imagine the outcry if people in business suits were randomly stooped on their way back from luncheon and tested to see if they were walking back to the office after a three-martini lunch? 

 

I suspect (though I really hope I’m wrong) that it won’t be long before Toronto passes laws similar to ours prohibiting the "feeding" (don’t you love how they further de-humanise people with this term?) of "The homeless" (homeless persons).

 

A trend I’ve noticed here (at least, judging by radio call-in shows and the comment threads at the newspaper) is how the poor have been turned against one another. We make distinctions between homeless and "working poor". The poor are pitted against the destitute as though they had opposing interests. The organizations that claim to be "helping" these groups play into the same rubbish running radio fundraising spots assuring you that their money only goes to those willing to take a stab at the Protestant work ethic.

 

I could go on, but you know, it’s Tuesday and I try to distribute my outrage (as there’s so much of it these days) so I’ll just leave you with the thought that it would be a lovely day to engage in an act of resistance and help someone that asks for your help, regardless of what you think may be done with the money. You know, swallow hard, bite your tongue and try to push the middle-class indoctrination out of the way for a moment as you (I know, this will take some practice so I’ll walk you through it) reach into your pocket, pull out some cash and (here’s the hard part for you bourgeois types) hand the money to the human being that asked you, make eye contact and (if you can manage it) speak to them in a way that is not humiliating or condescending.

 

Then, do it again.

I wasn’t going to write this post. After all, it’s a bit on the presumptuous side to declare what is, and is not a valid Lenten sacrifice. Yes, I cringe every time I pass a restaurant with a large sign advertising Friday lobster specials (“oh, the sacrifice!”). And yes, given that we’re (the US) about to begin yet another pre-emptive slaughter in the Middle East it does seem more appropriate to be rending one’s clothing and taking to the streets instead of giving up some silly luxury like chocolate. I wasn’t going to write this post because I didn’t want to sound like a finger-pointing-gloom and doom asshole.

 

I just came from another blog where the author is scolding herself for being sad. Frankly, in her shoes, I’d take it as an encouraging sign that my intellect is still intact enough to register unhappiness. While everyone is so quick to pathologise sadness as some horrible disease, I tend to view it as a mature response-more mature than the standard resolution of distraction these days. I’ve always thought that there ought to be an official North American slogan of ;

“I Don’t Want To Think About It. Let’s Go Shopping!”

 Depression may well be the sanest response to late capitalist society. I’m absolutely convinced that the majority of what we diagnose as “depression” is reality slamming up against the ideological field. There’s a disconnect between what we experience and what we’re told, and the smart people sense this. Because outrage has become socially unacceptable, it gets internalised as the more acceptable “depression.” The stupid people will always be able to find distraction in consumption or the cruelty of “reality television” an entertainment which seems to my mind a modern version of the coliseum.

 

I’d go as far as saying, if you’re not unhappy, if you’re not uncomfortable, if you are not deeply troubled by everything from violence to one’s work being undervalued to the way we interact with one another-there is in fact something terribly wrong with you. I wouldn’t go as far as to slap a psychiatric label on it, but I’d surely wonder just what sort of a human being can glide through their days oblivious to the world around them. Yes, unhappiness can seem terribly self indulgent yet I’m inclined to think that we personalise general unease, again when running up against our ideological fields. It is always easier to believe that we’ve personally done “something wrong” than to accept that the odds were stacked against us from the outset. Easier to think it is oneself being “depressed” than society being sick. We focus on our individual circumstances from familiarity, but they hardly exist in a vacuum.  

 

Which brings me back to Lent. Don’t take my word for it as I’m by no means a theologian, but it does seem a good time for serious reflection. Giving up one’s daily pleasures for the duration of Lent seems an empty offering if it is not accompanied by an honest examination of our individual complicity in the world’s horrors. Certainly a depressing endevour, but one borne of honesty and maturity and from where I sit (with STRATCOM practically in my backyard) necessity. The question is no longer what shall we do about our sadness, but rather, what will we do with it?