The 2012 U.S. Presidential Campaign: What I Want

I have some things I want to say about the candidates and the upcoming election:

1.  I want someone who doesn't want to be president to be president. You have to ask yourself: what kind of person really would want to be president? You have to be a fucking idiot to want to be president. You get old and grey really fast, few really like or trust you, and you actually have little power to fix much of anything. I want a Jewish banker or an Organizational Psychologist or maybe even a Social Worker. Those folks know what the score is.

2.  I want a ceiling placed on campaign expenditures. After the Supreme Court decided that corporations are people, money has poured in as predicted. So what would happen if we set a limit, of say 10 million dollars? No TV ads, no constant mailers, no robocalls, no bullshit. Well, there would be lots more emails.

3.  I want each and every candidate to take the MMPI with professional interpretation and an FBI background check. I want all the neighbors who these candidates have ever had to be interviewed and those interviews put on YouTube. Guess what? Obama would come out way ahead.

4.  I want Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman back in the race. I miss those batshit crazy gals. I really am entertained by folks who don't have a clue how narcissitic, stupid and intollerant they actually are.

5.  I want to see whether these candidates know how to do laundry and go shopping using coupons. If they get confused at any time during these activities, they're out!

6.  I want to see film of Newt Gingrich talking to his various wives, in their homes. Think about this: he is using daughters from his first marriage to serve as witnesses against his second wife who he says is lying about his third one, who he cheated on his second wife with, who he went to see in the hospital to serve divorce papers on. I think we'd all breathe easier knowing that he is as we all suspect: completely narcisssistic and controlling; that he really is a person of low character and a complete faker when he pretends to give a shit about you and me.

7.  I want our president to come clean: he (or if we are lucky, she) doesn't control the economy. We are globally intertwined such that this is not posssible. The congress is so unable to reach consesnsus that this is now impossible. Doesn't the congress have incredible authority to make fundamental changes in economic policy? They blame the president while they sit on their fat, rich asses and do nothing. Ask yourself this: what policies has anyone in congress come up with that in any way fundamentally improves our economy in the last ten years? Can't even tell you. Why would they change anything so lucrative to them?

8.  I want to end to offshore money hiding/laundering/banking by anyone, anywhere. No more Swiss bank accounts or Cayman Island bank accounts that simnply deprive us of useful and appropriate funds to do our country's business. No more corporations hiding in foreign countries to pay slave wages and hide under lenient tax codes. Folks who hide money are not patriotic Americans who give a damn about anything but themselves. They certainly aren't creating any jobs.

9.  I want an end to congressional insider trading. That's just so incredibly wrong, at every level.

10. I want every president to get sex on demand. I'm serious. The world becomes instantaeously both clearer and rosier at those moments, doesn't it?

That should just about do it.

My New New Year's Resolutions

1.  I vow to love my family more than they thought I could, maybe even more than I thought I could.

2.  I wish I was half the man I am, so I vow to lose weight this year. I don't know how to do it yet, but I will do it somehow. Perhaps fewer tubs of popcorn will do the trick. That will, however, create misery on movie nights.

3.  I will make great strides writing my book on Diabetes. I simply must. I don't know if any publisher will want it, but if they don't maybe I can publish it myself. A double-edged, if not triple-edged blade.

4.  I promise to continue my withering satirical, sarcastic, pessimistic view of the wold, especially of the people in it. That way I won't be disappointed in any outcome.

5.  I vow to do everything in my power to not have Christmas or Thanksgiving at our house in the next few years (but I have no say in this, actually.) We have 10-14 of my wife's family over.  If this were my entire family collected in one place, under these circumstances, I would kill myself.

6.  I want to improve my audio-visuals for my classes. More in-class exercises, and out-of-class real world assignments too.

7.  I bought new shoes, new socks, and new underwear. I love new underwear. I vow to wear these. The crimson briefs will be reserved for OU game day use only.

8.  No one in my immediate sphere of influence will be deprived of my lack of humility this year.

9.  I promise to get rid of crap I no longer use, wear, or in the case of the kitchen cupboards, eat.

10. I vow to never create a list of New Year's Resolutions again, ever.

Deep Thoughts and Shallow Rantings

I decided to collect some ideas I have had recently. I wanted to think about my thinking, to examine what is making me who I am this year:

1.  In God, we trust, resides the source of our dreams, desires, and salvation. Nothing less. Do we name this place God because we cannot believe that these things are the products of each individual?

2.  It is the profundity of our connections with others that makes life's travels worth the journey. Nurture them, and keep them sacred.

3.  I am shaken and disappointed to see the evil in men's hearts and deeds. But I am no longer surprised.

4.  There is nothing special about any particular church. Except, maybe, the ones in which folks hold deadly snakes. Oh yeah, and that Catholic bling.

5.  Why do I get the feeling that there is no one looking out for me except me? Because it's true. That feeling I believe!

6.  There can never be any explanation for randomness. There is no meaning behind good or bad luck.

7.  Bad things happen to good people in the same way good things happen to bad people. The question is, what will you do when your chips are down?

8.  Religion is not about God. Religion is about collectively fearing and ameliorating our loneliness. 

9.  A gene pool is only as clean as the decision to add a little Chlorine to it once in a while. We are the only animals that preserve the most violent, other-destructive members of our group. Do you really want to preserve the life of a hardened, murderous, unrepentant, chaotically violent person? But what happens to us when we end lives like these?

10. There remains a group of people that is not a minority who is still universally mistreated, with all the accompanying marginalization and disservice: women.

11. Question everything you think and don't believe everything you feel.

12. My students ask, "Why should I buy that textbook if he isn't going to ask questions from it on the tests?" I answer, "Because the only question that matters is: have you learned all you could learn about this subject? Only you can ask, and answer that question."

13. It is fundamentally irresponsible to not have spoken with comfort and truth, beginning when a child is young, about sex and love and relationships, or to not provide them with immediate access to multiple methods of birth control. Don't be a coward!

13. As I age, there is more often too much week left at the end of my energy.

(and sometimes I repeat myself)

14. Is there a way to die well? Is there a better way to live? Does living well allow death to be more, or will it be less, tolerable?

15. As I lecture, I see my students' eyes. They glow, they widen, they stare. Unfortunately, the recipient of their attention is usually their phones.

My Latest Submission to be Published...

Expectations

When you touch me:

Sliding-by,

I have to get to the refrigerator,

Inadvertent, unpremeditated,

You’re in my way.

I hope for renewal.

When you look at me:

Downward or sideways or piercing,

With stealth and my curiosity that follows,

Even when I’m not really sure you are seeing me kind of gaze.

I sometimes imagine you want me.

When we trade words:

Terse exchange of schedules,

Concise and demanding,

Disappointed, unfocused,

Not gonna talk about that.

I pretend we are newly in love, just trying to figure each other out.

Do I ask too much?

Mutated Thoughts and Other Wee Beasties in My Brain

Can you die from lack of touch? This is not the strange question it may at first appear to be. If you are a newborn, the answer is certainly yes. A syndrome called "failure to thrive" has been documented, mostly among kids in orphanages where there are few staff to care for many babies. A child who isn't cuddled and emotionally warmed stops eating and can die. No, really. This has been known for a long time, and has given rise to the routines in neonatal intensive care units in which babies are held periodically, on schedule. Touch makes it more likely that the babies will eat and respire and heal well. Most of these babies are premature; they would still be in the womb if born full term. Yet they respond to human touch all the same as if born at nine months. Fascinating. How important touch must be!

But can adults suffer this same fate? I'll bet yes. We know that existing pathologies can be made worse, like depression. I would even bet that depression can be triggered by lack of touch, at least in those predisposed to it. Irritability, fear, loneliness, depression;  I know that folks can get mighty cranky when they get lonely, and aloneness can give rise to things like psychosis, believe it or not. It has been determined that isolation is perhaps the severest form of torture, and severe symptoms can arise in less than hours. Ask any jailer about the newly incarcerated.

And you can be in a room full of people and feel quite lonely, you know, so it's not just locking someone up in a cell that causes separation and desperation. We all need fair amounts of interaction, both physical and emotional, in order to do well psychologically, to stay on track. And although I'm not talking about sex, any physical touch can be soothing; we just hope the touch is wanted and appropriate. I have recommended to my depressed patients who experience no physical touch to get a massage at least weekly. That has been a great suggestion, according to them.

I need a new goal. I need to focus on something tangible that I can later point to and say, "I did that."

I am feeling my age. My knees hurt, two of my fingers simply don't work any longer, I am having trouble balancing when I stand, I no longer have any sensation below my ankles, and I am getting tired. So? If someone had told me that getting older sucks, would I have enjoyed myself more when I was still fully functional?

When should a parent put their daughter on birth control, specifically the pill? This is a complicated issue. If she is sexually active, the answer is almost always yes. But what if she's not? Can you know when she will be? Would she come to you and say, "I think I am almost ready to start having sex. I think I wish to explore my birth control options." Yeah, sure.

But if you start her too early, there can be risks to her health. Too late, and she may become pregnant.

I vote for early and unabashed communication about everything, including sex. I think kids make better decisions when they have good information. The problem is that most parents are too fearful or embarrassed, or are simply not equipped with enough information to do an adequate job. I am a huge supporter of comprehensive sex education in K-12. That's right, K-12.

When comprehensive sex education is employed, most of what you discuss isn't about sex. That may come as a shock to many of you, but it's true. And such programs also offer abstinence as a viable, useful option. It's also true that such programs use age-appropriate language and don't offer the nitty-gritty all at once. That's a myth. Now, there aren't many excellent teachers in this area, and that's a real shame. I have been a sex educator since the 80's (although I'm not saying I'm a great one), so I have some street cred here. And lastly, talking about sex and offering birth control doesn't make kids want to run out and have sex; no more than talking with someone who's depressed about whether they have considered suicide will make them kill themselves. The kids are already thinking about sex. They just don't have the facts, although they have tons of mythologies. I heard from one not long ago: a 15 year old who is pregnant, said, "I though if you stood up after you had sex you couldn't get pregnant." That's her parent's fault.

I wish it were true that parents provided such material and discussions, but that's not what's happening. There is a positive correlation between teen pregnancy, STI rates and kids not getting comprehensive education and services. In other words, the states that are far right religiously that preach abstinence only typically have the highest rates of STIs and teen pregnancies. Our state is number one. I think that's irresponsible.

If you look at foreign analogs to this the data are clear: teach kids what they need to know about building relationships, how sex is and is not connected to real relationships, how to protect yourself, how to make good decisions, how to know when you're really in love, how to know when people lie and why they do that, provide access to full health care including sexual care to everyone (don't get me started) and so on, and you get kids waiting longer to have sex, lower pregnancy rates, and fewer sexually transmitted infections. I'll take the Scandinavians over us any day.

Fallacies of the Christian Right

reprinted from:  http://www.seolawfirm.com/2010/03/fallacies-of-the-christian-right/

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By Gode Davis,  March 25, 2010

The Christian Right and their interpretations of Christianity have become a “given” in American society in recent decades. The current culture of Christianity boasts luminaries such as George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Tim LaHaye, and Joel Osteen among many contemporaries wielding pervasive influence and power. It goes without saying, according to such luminaries and their tens of millions of adherents, that Christianity and the principles of laissez-faire capitalism are synonymous with salvation and a well-lived life.

To varying degrees, the message is that success and prosperity breeds more of the same while altruism and empathy for the less fortunate is not necessarily a prerequisite for earning a posthumous berth in a celestial paradise. In fact, casting aspersions toward outcast “others” including “relativists” and secular humanists has emerged as a Christian Right staple. Since American “corporacracy” is now a “given” within our mindset, it all seems to fit.

The operative word is seems.

In actuality, historical Christianity has disagreed vehemently with such a message.

It can be argued that America has experienced three Great Spiritual Awakenings, as pertains to the Christian.

The First in this tradition’s history stems from mid-eighteenth century Calvinism. During this event, adherents passed into a state of sanctity through a theophany like that experienced by Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul) as he rode a donkey along the road to Damascus. Such a vision assured these American Calvinists of their salvation. Sweeping pre-Revolutionary America, the first Great Awakening became a model of revivalism. Although critics lambasted the degree of enthusiasm expressed by devout believers, any suggestion that salvation’s fruits could be had merely for the taking was a heresy railed against from thousands of pulpits.

The Second Awakening, which swept the Northeast during the early nineteenth century, laid the groundwork for other cultural and political threads such as the women’s suffrage movement, a revived temperance consciousness which one day would lead to Prohibition, and abolitionism. More caustically referred to by contemporary writers as “religious mania,” this revival too was based upon the belief of a reachable heaven – but only in the aftermath of an emotional/mystical connection experienced firsthand.

The Third Great Awakening is still in progress. It first began gathering its holy steam during the Administration of actor-come-President Ronald Reagan. Although divorced from Jane Wyman (1917-2007), Reagan was still considered a right-wing Conservative in good standing, helping to cement many Christian Right tenets in America’s collective memory. Many such tenets became entrenched for reasons somewhat divorced from religion, as the United States was again describing itself as “fundamentalist” – while still devoutly embracing every principle of laissez-faire capitalism. During post-1980 America, our nation began evolving into what one-time reformist politician John Edwards referred to as “two Americas” in a display of resonating populist sentiment during his failed Presidential run just a few years ago – prior to his very public personal failures. This characterization intended to describe a widening gap between the country’s richest and poorest, and was perceived as evidence of a misplaced social Darwinism, survival of the fittest, an attitude which never would have gained a foothold among Christians populating the first two Great Awakenings, but was and is deemed acceptable if not also preferable to denizens of the contemporary Christian Right.

In one of history’s more ironic twists, the First Great Awakening was inspired by another Edwards — Congregationalist minister and historical figure Jonathan Edwards. He believed that salvation occurred in a stand-alone, clear-cut charismatic experience which he called “conversion,” but which has come to be called being “born again.” Edwards’ signature sermon, the legendary “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” did not encourage his devoted following to believe in their own special sanctity.

The current Third Great Awakening seems to be asserting that very thing, loudly proclaiming a pious aversion toward “secular culture,” likely a code phrase with clear and present implications for those who dissent from positions embraced in lockstep by the Christian Right.

The human force spearheading the Second Great Awakening, the Presbyterian lawyer and abolitionist Charles Grandison Finney, placed a great deal of emphasis not only on slavery and its abolition, but also on the education of women – laying an early foundation for suffrage and temperance movements that followed. It became a natural progression for this Christian revival to address inequality in several familiar archetypes as assumed during that period – black and white, women and men, rich and poor.

By contrast, the current Awakening pays little mind to inequality of the sort alluded to by the lapsed politician John Edwards in the early 2000s. Instead, it embraces ideology espoused by the so-called “evangelical” and “born-again” President George Walker Bush – a myriad of economically-discriminating policies which unambiguously favored the wealthiest one percent of Americans – widening the dichotomy between our country’s wealthy and poor to historic levels resembling a South American oligarchy. According to some of the luminaries mentioned at this essay’s outset – poverty itself is benignly considered to be a social sin to be overcome.

A century ago, the great political leader and Christian orator William Jennings Bryan was a great champion of what were then known as “the fundamentals.” A Democrat, he was a pacifist and staunch opponent of economic structures that he believed created American poverty. His signature “Cross of Gold” speech equated the poor of America with the crucified Christ. Bryan feared the loss of belief in the sanctity of the human person as the only barrier against racism, colonialism, eugenics, and war.

If you listen to those on the Christian Right, circa 2010, the crucial tenets of Christian belief are the existence of God and the literal truth of the Bible. Born-again believers trumpet a “right to life,” but only in respect to abortion of the not-yet-borns, as for surviving conception and being born into poverty, it seems that post-slap on the derrière, reasonable expectations of health or happiness during childhood and beyond are not really a given so you’re on your own, kid.

While those spokespersons within the Christian Right like to assert that Christianity is under siege by liberalism, the passage in Matthew 25 where Jesus identifies himself with the poorest, and says, “I was hungry, and ye fed me not,” seems to have become irrelevant. To those who have not recognized him in the hungry and the naked, he says “Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels.” In Uzbekistan, dissenters under the current regime were said to be boiled alive. Ironically, the recent Bush-Cheney Administration simultaneously regarded Uzbekistan’s leader as a “friend” and his nation as an important ally in “born-again” Bush’s much ballyhooed but never-ending War against Terror.

In the earlier revivals, Calvinists and evangelical Christians predominately believed that God alone judges, and the hearts of mortals can be known truly only by him, in the light of his grace. But the current crop of believers, perhaps forty million strong in America (but not the disgraced Tiger Woods – he’s Buddhist), have checked their empathy and compassion for all those not like them – homosexuals, liberals, Democrats, David Letterman if you’re Sarah Palin – at the proverbial celestial door. While St. Paul’s verses are often cherry-picked by those passing for conservative Christians in the present day – perhaps they don’t realize, “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2) is actually a part of the New Testament where Paul was echoing and amplifying Christ.

Love or damnation is not stressed from pulpits the way it used to be. What is stressed is “the prosperity gospel” of Christian hawkers in the vein of Joel Osteen. A new phenomenon fed by technological advances and materialistic Christianity epitomized by this Third Great Awakening is mainstream nondenominational megachurches like popular TV preacher and best-selling author Osteen’s Houston-based Lakewood Church, the largest in America.

Osteen’s 4 million+ -copy best seller Your Best Life Now (2004) proved one thing – that Christianity packaged as greed sells even better than ‘The faith’ packaged as fear of the Other – as evidenced by Tim Lahaye’s Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction never doing better than 3.2 million copies for a single title. While Osteen’s church is the Goliath of megachurches, prosperity preachers like Phoenix’s Tommy Barnett and T.D. Jakes in Dallas aren’t far behind. In fact, it was reported by journalist Hanna Rosin in the December 2009 issue of The Atlantic that 50 of the 260 largest U.S. churches are so-called “prosperity churches” – where the predominant core belief is that wealth will be granted to the faithful, in much the same way that motivational speakers have been promising riches since the days of Dale Carnegie and Zig Ziglar.

Worse perhaps, than the 19th century poet Emily Dickinson becoming despondent while considering herself a “no-hoper” during the Second Great Awakening because she’d been denied her own private theophany, is when financially-challenged members of prosperity churches confess their poverty and are often told, “You’re not praying hard enough” when riches don’t materialize. This message is eerily similar to that received by homosexuals attempting to “renounce their sin” or by others deemed somehow suspect from within the ranks of the Christian Right.

It all seems more than a little too convenient and perhaps, dare I say it in the wake of the traditional Christian ideology, not very Christian?

Is There Any End in Sight...

1.  To the hatred and ignorance of religious fanatics? I was browsing a website recently and happened upon a thread that claimed with certainty, among other things, that:  Jesus hated gay people, gay people were going to hell, and science was all "opinion." First of all, let's get specific: are we referring to the central figure in the bible or are we referring to the many thousands of folks named "Jesus?" Just askin'. When we say "gay" are we talking about all happy people, or are we speaking about happy homosexuals, or are we limiting our comments to those who romantically respond to their own gender? What is this obsession with demonizing the sex lives of homosexuals? Could it be reaction formation? I think Jesus did love gay people, and I'll bet he would have a few really close friends who happened to be gay if he was around today.

2.  To the tolerance of foul language and suggestive if not obscene dress? I'm no prude, not by a long shot, but it's now common to refer to female friends as "whores," and "bitches," use F-bombs in any and all settings, and show as much skin as won't get you arrested. I don't want the pendulum to return to covering ourselves to the point of anonymity. If we ever got to the point where even pets had to be covered, would dogs be required to wear "barkas?"

3.  To the fascination with the superficial? I guess by this I mean to include the Kardashians, texting, and worrying whether we have just the right pair of shoes. I know what it is: it's about permissive parenting in a wealthy culture. No limits, no consequences, no responsibilities, no effort, no waiting. Wow, sounds like capitalism is working!

4.  To the decline in the quality of music? I'm talking about fidelity. Music heard now is mostly compressed and lacks density, timbre and depth; it is of a significantly lower quality than ever before. In the next ten years it has been predicted that even CDs won't be produced. MP3 downloads, the worst quality available, will prevail. That's about convenience, of course. Sad. When I was sixteen nothing was more tantalizing, nothing more seductive than obtaining a really good stereo system. Over a summer I washed dishes at Woolworth's; $366 bought me an entry level Rotel amp with Frazier speakers and a Garrrard turntable with a Shure cartridge. I loved the smell of vinyl in the morning!