integrity

Slogans

Aug 25

At the National Speakers Association convention earlier this year, Bruce Terkel delivered a powerful keynote presentation on marketing. During that speech he explained that President Obama’s 2008 slogan “Yes we can” was the second best marketing slogan ever. It is positive, it is inclusive and it is enabling. Sadly, Republicans utilize a different slogan strategy.

Tom Coburn (R–OK), Ted Kruz (R-AZ), Michele Bachmann (R-Mars) and a bunch more Republicans want President Obama impeached. They offer no high crimes or misdemeanors of which they think he is guilty. They just want the sentence carried out without bothering with an indictment or conviction. Their slogan seems to be, “Say anything to marginalize him.”

Paul Ryan continues to promote his Republican budget – only it isn’t a budget. It is a plan to privatize nearly all of government. This is just another example of Republicans putting lipstick on a pig and telling us it isn’t a pig, like the original Patriot Act that actually was unpatriotic and like Operation Iraqi Freedom that didn’t free the Iraqis but did chain us to perpetual war. Their sleight-of-hand slogan is, “Fooling you with a lying label.”

I wrote here recently that the Republicans got nuthin’ because they propose nothing that will benefit America or Americans, other than the billionaires to whom they are indentured. They lambasted President Obama at every opportunity regarding a budget. Then Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Tanning Salon) presented the 2010 Republican budget that had no numbers in the entire document other than page numbers. (Accounting note: If there are no numbers, it can’t be a budget.) On the infrequent occasions that congress does manage to pass legislation to make things better, like the Dodd-Frank bill, Republicans immediately start the process to dismantle it piece by piece. This slogan is obvious: “Whatever it is, we’re against it even if we used to be for it.”

The House did pass a farm bill. It gives Big Agri-Business multi-billions of dollars. That same bill eliminates support for food stamps. One in six American children lives in poverty – it is double that number for people of color – and The House intends to take the food out of the mouths of those kids. The slogan: “Starvation makes children more self-reliant.”

Two of three poling places in North Carolina are being closed, leaving local college students with obstacles nearly impossible to overcome in order to vote. A pregnant woman in Kansas, victim of a brutal rape, cannot do anything about it. The school teachers in Wisconsin, who have sacrificed pay over and over in exchange for the promise of an adequate pension when they retire, are now having their pensions stolen from them. None of that is an accident.

The Republicans are so bereft of offerings that they are putting the majority of their effort into stopping Americans from voting in order to win elections and cram through legislation to produce results like the examples above. If they can’t stop people from voting, they use district gerrymandering to make votes inconsequential. For example, Texas is 45% white but the Republican controlled state legislature has ensured that 70% of the districts are white Republican, thus marginalizing people of color.

Perhaps this kind of Constitutional blasphemy has not permeated your world yet. Just understand this: it will. Right now they are coming after people of color, poor people, first time voters, the elderly and the infirmed. After that it will be another group, then another, because a power hungry minority will never have enough control to satisfy themselves. Look to history and you will see the repeated story of incremental loss of rights concurrent with the rise of totalitarianism. That is what voter suppression accomplishes, so “Coup by disenfranchisement” is the Republican slogan.

“You know, I would have at least some respect for the Republicans who pass these laws if they would just come clean and admit they are trying to keep everyone but old white guys from voting like it used to be in the good old days. But instead, they make up stuff.”

Gaylard French of Waxahachie, TX
The Dallas Morning News
Letters to the Editor, August 18, 2013

We can sit back and pretend that our country is not being stolen from us, but sooner or later we’re going to have a very bad day. The Republican slogan for that is, to quote Dick Cheney, “So?”

Bruce Terkel was asked the obvious question by a member of the audience at the close of his keynote to the National Speakers Association convention. “If ‘Yes we can’ is the second best marketing slogan ever, what is the best one?” Terkel didn’t miss a beat, replying, “See your doctor for an erection lasting longer than four hours.”

Are we that easy to manipulate – with just a slogan?

Morale, Knees and Common Elements

Jul 28

I was on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to San Diego and somewhere over the Rockies I just couldn’t sit any longer, so I took a stroll to the galley at the back of the plane. Half-squats, twisting and tugging this way and that restored circulation, and I felt considerably better.

This happened about a year after the first United Airlines bankruptcy filing, so after my physical contortions I struck up a conversation with a flight attendant. I asked about morale, now that all the employees had taken a 20% blow to their wallets. She rolled her eyes and said, “Not good.”

She continued, telling me that the CEO had just taken a multimillion dollar bonus, while none of the employees had received back pay, nor restoration of pay rates, both of which had been promised. That pretty much killed any “we’re in this together” spirit. Employee give-a-damn level was down here, she reported, with an ankle level gesture and a glare that could laser cut her CEO’s investment statements.

I travel quiet a bit, delivering workshops and keynote presentations all over the United States and Canada, so I have the opportunity for lots of, shall we say, airplane adventures. Some are influenced by airline employees whom I encounter directly, like that flight attendant. Some of those adventures are influenced by airline employees whom I will never meet but whose work products affect me on every flight.

For example, when I cannot get a preferred seat as a perk of my frequent flyer status, I sit in aluminum tube steerage. I’m not a big guy, but I do want half of the elbow rests and 100% of my seat width. Both of those are compromised when a 370 pound seatmate shows up. Fully 15% of my seat back is occupied by his shoulder and the armrest has disappeared into a sea of flesh. I have lots of stories about trips with interesting seatmates. They encompass all the senses and are not uniformly pleasant.

It is well known that we Americans are an overweight bunch. So, while the FAA standard human being weighs 170 pounds, that number is exactly that – a standard – meaning some people weigh lots more than that. The seat designers know that, but they engineer the seating in their planes as though we all weigh 170 pounds, which gets me buried by my over-sized seatmate. The designers also engineer leg room as though we were all no taller than 5’8″, which makes my greatest fear of flying that the guy sitting in front of me will recline his seat back and smash my knees. Memo to commercial airliner design people: Some of us are taller than your standard and some of us are wider and that impacts lots of people.

Here is the connection between flight attendants’ low morale, portly seatmates and the knee crushing machine: These conditions continue because we tolerate them. The flight attendants continue to work for less and the flying public continues to reward the airlines for stuffing us into insufficient space. That is to say, corporate management does what it does because it can.

It is exactly the same with our government and our politics. The NSA is snooping on you and will continue to do so because you allow it. Congress acts as though confrontation and stagnation were virtues. They do that because we tolerate their behavior by electing those who create the confrontation and stagnation. The NRA strong-arms congress and everything is voted as they like and not as you like. That happens because we elected the fools who would do that and we will continue to get exactly the same kinds of results as long as we tolerate it.

“The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity,” advises Harlan Ellison. We have to be smarter than the people who do the things we don’t want them to do and strong enough to stop tolerating their behavior.

Bankruptcy

Jul 14

No, not that kind.

This is about political bankruptcy. It is about a Republican Party that doesn’t make decisions based on fact and, in fact, ignores fact and instead creates fatuous fantasies. It is a party that brought us a president who doesn’t read, who ignores facts and who makes decisions based on gut hunches. No, I didn’t make that up. It is what President George W. Bush told us about the way he makes decisions. And, yes, he had the “football” and could have pushed the button to send nuclear missiles to annihilate millions based solely on his “gut hunch.”

This is a party that is legally bankrupt, as it seeks to institutionalize discrimination with a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This is a party that is legally bankrupt as state house after state house finds diabolical ways to prohibit from voting American citizens who are not white or who are poor.

This is a party that is morally bankrupt, as it chants the same mantra year after year, that it is all about jobs, jobs, jobs, but every opportunity to stimulate job growth has been filibustered by Republicans on the floor of the Senate or voted down by the Republican dominated House. Okay, there was one bill – the veterans jobs legislation – but the Republicans had to be shamed into passing it.

But let’s be fair. The Democrats took over in 2009 and have steadfastly refused to prosecute Wall Street bankers who defrauded the public with their swamp of mortgage derivatives. The same Justice Department has refused to prosecute bankers for their millions of fraudulent home mortgage foreclosures. This is the same Democratic Party that refused to create legislation to prevent another round of “too big to fail” and, guess what, once again the banks are too big to fail.

This is the Democratic administration that has refused to prosecute the prior administration for its blatant lawbreaking by torturing prisoners and for illegal detention. And it is the same party and administration that has expanded the war in Afghanistan, a war that plainly cannot be won. History would have told President Bush that fact before he commanded an invasion, but he would have had to have read a history book to know that.

This is a war with ever-morphing goals, no strategy for success, with a continuing supply of dead bodies and an economic cost that will eventually reach $4 to 6 trillion dollars. And this is a war that President Obama has continued and expanded, notwithstanding his pledge to end American military involvement by the end of next year. How many more dead Americans will we have created between now and then? Would you like to be the last soldier or marine to die for that unholy cause?

The far righties hold dear a deep distrust of government. They are right to do that, because they continue to champion and elect untrustworthy legislators.

The far lefties are never happy because government continues to eviscerate the values and rights they hold dear. But they sit on their recliners on election day or fail to jump through the hoops necessary to register to vote or they just drop out entirely and complain loudly.

We get the government we deserve – or do we deserve the government we get? Either way, we’ll continue to get what we are getting now until we require better. Until then, you can expect a government in the pocket of corporations and fabulously wealthy people who crave money and power above all else. They are the ones who pull the strings of the Marionette America and bringing to us our national bankruptcy. We are the ones who tolerate that.

Are You an Old, Rich White Guy?

Jul 07

Pollution is an ordinary part of manufacturing. For example, those shiny, chrome plated gizmos like your ballpoint pen and the reflectors of the tail lights of your car are bathed in toxic chrome when they are made and they drip chrome into the water that rinses them. Capturing that residual chrome is much more expensive than just flushing it down the drain, so chrome platers don’t much like EPA regulations that make them install expensive waste water treatment facilities. Those who own and run other companies subject to EPA regulations feel pretty much the same way.

Come to think of it, lots of companies don’t much care for OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, either. That government bureau makes companies do expensive things, like install safety devices that prevent people from being decapitated or electrocuted or having their hands chopped off in manufacturing machinery. OSHA requires construction companies to ensure that their employee wear hard hats so that their heads don’t get sliced or crushed. All of that costs money that companies don’t like to spend.

Those pesky state legislatures have passed laws that require that your children be in child safety seats and that you be belted in and air bagged. All of that costs money that car manufacturers don’t like spending.

Old, rich white guys like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and others who own the companies that we force to spend extra money in order to protect all of us want to do away with lots of government driven protection. They want that precisely because that protection costs old, rich white guys money. Indeed, over the years the car companies resisted pollution controls, safety glass, turn signals, safety belts and more because those things cost money. If you’d like to know more about the thinking of such people, those who seek money and power over all else, have a look at the words of Vice President Henry A. Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s number two from 1941 – 1945. He wrote a blistering Op-Ed for the New York Times on April 9, 1944 focused on American Fascism, the blending of government and business. You will likely find that the description in his essay is stunningly and disturbingly similar to our socio-political circumstances today, including the lying, the cheating, the demonizing and, worst of all, greed masquerading as patriotism. The bulk of that comes from old, rich white guys. You can find Wallace’s article here and here.

The old, rich white guys are thankful that elections are so expensive that candidates have to continuously grub for cash, especially big pots of it, because then those who are elected become indebted to those old, rich white guys. That stimulates those politicians to take every measure possible to thwart legislation that might be good for most Americans who are not old, rich white guys.

Those politicians do things like make it harder for non-rich, non-white Americans to vote, because doing so keeps the old, rich white guys in power and in the money and that keeps the politicians well funded and in office. The flow is so pleasingly circular. Our national history is replete with egregious examples of voter suppression and the current voter ID laws about to be enacted in Texas, North Carolina and Ohio are the newest. Those laws will disenfranchise millions of non-rich , non-white Americans and will have the effect of being the final nail in the coffin of democracy. Hail to the John Roberts Supreme Court for enabling those voter suppression laws through its democracy killing decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case. That completed the task of ensuring that old, rich white guys control all the money and all the power, a task started with naked hypocrisy by Ronald Reagan in 1981.

In the not-too-distant future history may be written with deference to the old, rich white guys – after all, history is always written by the victors. But the multitudes who live in subsistence because of the loss of American democracy will not stay there willingly.

The fight for freedom and liberty is never ending and we are at a tipping point in America right now.

Are you an old, rich white guy? If so, things are working quite well for you and you like the path we’re on. On the other hand, if you are not an old, rich white guy you will care deeply about this far sooner than you might imagine. When it starts to pinch, you will squeak and you will fight back. What do you suppose it will look like when 310 million Americans who are not old, rich white guys are doing that? I fear for us, because we always seem to wait too long to act and we have always been a violent society.

Nothing To See Here

Jun 16

A Roundup of the Ridiculous

The IRS investigated several 501(c)4 organizations. We grant these businesses tax exempt status because they, “. . . operate exclusively for social welfare.” That’s great, except the outfits in question were spending nearly all of their money for political attack advertising. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Mandate On Reproducing Obviously Nuitty ScandalMania (“MORONS”) Committee, thinks there is a problem because the IRS was doing its job. More, his own investigation has completely exonerated the White House, but he has refused to release those testimonies and he has continued to implicate the Administration in this scandal that does not actually exist.

On the other hand, the IRS got caught spending taxpayer money in what can reasonably be described as irresponsible, stunningly stupid ways. Good that the fools got caught. Great that Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) reamed them publicly on the deeply personal implications of their actions.

Antony Weiner is running for mayor of New York. This is political comedy at its finest.

Speaker of the House John Boehner wants officials jailed and the Attorney General impeached over the AP cell phone records issue. He demanded that even before anything had happened other than wild accusations. How do you suppose he would define “due process?”

Benghazi is still in the news, as Obama opponents struggle to alchemize nothing into horrific political scandal.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has announced that she won’t be running for re-election. She declared in no uncertain terms that her decision has nothing to do with her having just squeaked out a win in 2012 (by 0.8%), her being behind in polling in her district for the 2014 race or that she and her election campaign are under federal investigation for fiddling with funds and other no-no stuff.

Sen. Saxby Chamliss (R-GA), a member of the Senate Armed Services committee, explained away a big problem in the military by saying to the top brass testifying before his committee, “The young folks coming in to each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22 or 23. Gee whiz, the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things [rapes] to occur.” So, according to Senator Explain-Away-Rape, the assault that is rape is just a youthful hormone thing, not the brutal, demeaning and destructive act of aggression that people who actually have information about such things know it to be. Bear in mind that Chambliss, who was of draft age during the Vietnam War but who never served in the military, is the same guy who won his senate seat by questioning the patriotism of Max Cleland, his senate seat opponent and a Vietnam War triple amputee.

Rahm Emanuel is closing 49 public schools in Chicago, this being a gift, in that he won’t be closing five more. This was done in the face of clear and consistent data that shows that the single most powerful driver of academic success and its follow-on, life success, is student preparedness created during pre-K, kindergarten, first and second grades.

The gun bill failed in congress due to Republican manipulation of the process and a bunch of legislators who lack the starch in their spines to stand up to the NRA, but that’s old news. The new news is that we’ve killed over 30 people per day with guns since then. News flash for tough, “cold, dead hands” guys: Those people who were shot dead are all still dead and will remain dead, including those little kids murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. There is nothing theoretical about gun violence and failing to take action assures a continuation of the killing of our children.

“Safety is at the heart of everything we do,” says the British Petroleum spokesperson wearing a hardhat and narrating the currently running, feel-good PR commercial. Actually, the record clearly shows that not to be true. From 2007 – 2010 two of BP’s refineries accounted for 97% of all flagrant refinery violations. BP has been convicted of three environmental crimes, including felonies in both Alaska and Texas. There were dozens of safety violations at the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, including disabling emergency alarms just weeks before the rig exploded, killing eleven men (no bodies recovered) and dumping four million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Then they dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic, potentially carcinogenic dispersant onto the oil so that we wouldn’t be able to see the mess they had made. After all, out of sight is out of mind and maybe they would be able to limit the cost of their irresponsibility through such chicanery. Which they did. “Safety at the heart of everything they do?” Really? It is short term profit that is at the heart of everything BP does, safety be damned. Oh, and how about some gulf shrimp for dinner tonight?

Mitt and Ann Romney announced they are planning to rejoin the national dialog, perhaps as “severely conservative” voices or possibly to give a progress report on the construction of their car elevator. Surely, they can’t think that after all the gaffs, the 47% elitist attitude and the rest that they have something to offer Americans or even Republican candidates. Oh, wait, they probably do think that.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), America’s most unpopular senator, tells us that it was wrong when Richard Nixon used the IRS to target his political opponents and it is just as wrong for Barack Obama to do that. Of course, he conveniently fails to give any specifics and instead damns with that vague accusation. It is reminiscent of half-governor Sarah Palin during her “Obama is un-American” campaign following her 2008 election loss that she screeched, “It isn’t wrong to love your country.” Damning by vague accusation. Here is a heads up for Sen. Flake: Unlike President Obama, Richard Nixon was guilty of multiple felony violations of law. Are you able to understand that distinction? (Am I now damning Flake by vague accusation?)

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, as well as the Paycheck Fairness Act, said that women, “. . . don’t want” equal pay laws. Surely, that will come as a surprise to the millions of women who are paid a fraction of what their male co-workers are paid for doing the same job.

It is just a couple of ordinary political weeks in America. Our problems expand and our elected officials make sure that they don’t get solved. But we do get continuous political posturing and accusations, manipulation of facts and a never ending string of stupid stuff that, strangely, we voted for.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

———————-

What do you think?
Keep the conversation going by adding your comments below and passing this along to three friends.
That’s how things get better.

Melting Pot?

May 18

Since the first immigrants arrived this has always been a Euro-centric place. Surely that’s understandable, since it was Europeans who were the primary immigrants for a very long time. Of course, after a while we started importing Africans to be our slaves, but there was no need to change our orientation, since Africans weren’t considered full human beings. Some time later people began to arrive from Asia, Mexico and Central America, but the Euro-centrics were the huge majority of the population and continued to be the powerful, the culture controllers.

The Euro-centrics were something else. too: they were mostly Protestant. The Founders and most of the immigrants and most of their descendants where Protestant, so that has been the dominant religious orientation from the start. That the Founders inscribed freedom of religion into the Constitution (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof: . . . “) had no impact on that, so white, European Protestants have been the dominant force in America.

In the early 1960’s I overheard a conversation between two men. One was saying with obvious concern, perhaps anger, that Ernie Banks, the Chicago Cubs star, had purchased a house a couple of blocks from where he – the speaker – was living. This was in Chicago, a starkly divided city of neighborhoods where Poles, Italians, blacks, Jews and others pretty much stayed in their own area. It was birds of a feather flocking together for safety. And here was good ol’ Ernie, a black man, purchasing a house in a white area. So, I asked what seemed to me to be an obvious question: “Are you going to picket his house with your neighbors, or ask for an autograph?”

My question wasn’t received well, as you might imagine, as my irreverent attempt at humor was a poke in the eye to this fellow’s quite serious, “He’s not like us and I don’t like him and don’t want him living down the street from my children” attitude. His ignorance led to fear, which led to hate. He was not alone in his behavior, nor has that ever been unusual.

Seema Jilani wrote a stunning and deeply disturbing piece for the Huffington Post about American racism today. Read this piece with the knowledge that your sense of right and wrong, fairness and even simple courtesy are at risk of feeling violated. And know that hers is similar to the day-to-day experience of millions of non-white or non-Protestant Americans. If you’re feeling really courageous, do a gut check on your own prejudices. Unless you’re somehow immune to the messages that bombard you daily to fear what is different from you, stoked continuously by political manipulators, you may find something there.

We humans do reasonably well with what is known to us and typically fear what is not known. It’s a survival instinct and it worked well when our ancestors were living in caves and every day brought existential threat.

Almost on our doorstep is something that is not known – what American life will be like when white Protestants are a diminishing minority, incrementally losing power and control. Just imagine all that racism reversed – shoe on the other foot, so to speak – and having to endure the slicing and bleeding of discrimination a hundred times a day just to function in every day life.

Did you say that you just want to be tolerated by those who are different from you? No, you did not say that. Nobody wants to be tolerated. Other than Dick Cheney, we all want acceptance. Toleration, by definition, suggests that others are willing to hold their noses in your presence, as though that is somehow better than beating you up.

So I’ll tell you what: I won’t tolerate you and you can stop trying to tolerate me. Let’s instead pull a Rodney King: “Can we all just get along?” King didn’t live long enough to see that happen. We haven’t yet either, but perhaps we can do something about it now.

Special Ice Cream Edition

May 10

Whatever your issue, budget, debt, global warming, immigration, guns, healthcare, civil rights or any other topic, the reason things aren’t getting better is because of something that controls your issue: Money. Big money. Big money that influences elections, politicians and distorts the will of the people into the will of the very few enormously wealthy people. For more on that, take a look at Larry Lessig’s TED talk.

Should you doubt that big money influence is preventing the will of the people (that’s you) from being done, just recall the recent vote on background checks prior to gun ownership. Have you ever seen an issue in the United States where 90% of the people were in agreement? That’s highly unusual and one would expect those who represent us to get the message and vote accordingly. Didn’t happen that way. Enough of our politicians flagrantly voted against our wishes because of big money influence and they caused the wrong result.

The Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream guys have something to say about that. You can read about it here on the CNN Opinion blog. They explain it better than I do.

Just because those gun money politicians defeated the sensible gun ownership background check that you wanted doesn’t mean that they can defeat everything that we want. We Americans are united in opposition to big money buying our elections and our country. So, get off your Barcalounger, get a stamp here and get the message out so that next year we will elect candidates who will begin to make things right.

Is this issue important to you? Comment below and then email this to 3 friends.

Making Sense

Oct 14

So much is ethically wrong and even economically nonsensical. I fight every day to keep my thinking out of the weeds, hoping to see the bigger picture and very occasionally I succeed. There are so many battles in this seemingly disappearing experiment in democracy and so many people are suffering with little relief in sight, even for the lofty ideals to which we say we aspire. Here are some examples of that.

Nicholas Kristof has a compelling piece in the New York Times about health and health care and the decisions we make. Economically, it makes little sense to pay over a half a million dollars to treat disease instead of just the few dollars that are required for routine screenings. Ethically, it makes no sense to let our citizens suffer and die because of economically driven poor choices (no medical insurance) or because of a profound lack of resources that prohibits routine health care. The system that makes that necessary is entirely about the greed of those whose hands are on the rudder

The second half of the 1960’s was an era of radical change and it was played out in part in drug experimentation. That flamboyant display of anti-establishment nose-thumbing resulted in draconian laws and mandatory sentencing like the “three strikes” rule that sent our young to prison for having a joint. The establishment surely showed its muscle by trashing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans for their youthful dalliances. It also cost billions of dollars to prosecute and incarcerate the offenders, forcing our legal establishment to divert limited resources away from nabbing the really bad guys. What do you think about the ethics and economics of that?

On November 6 voters in Washington, Colorado and Oregon will vote on whether to legalize recreational marijuana. That is far less odd, given the historical record, than that today’s establishment folks are in favor of legalization. And even that is less odd than that the illegal suppliers of pot are against legalization because it will slash their profits. Timothy Egan’s piece details this, and at root it’s all about simple human greed.

It is said that money is the root of all evil, but I don’t think that’s quite right. It is simply the tool we use for our human instincts to focus first and foremost on ourselves, to do what we see as in our own best interests. Frequently, human interpretations of that self-interest are quite short-sighted. No, it’s actually nearly always short-sighted, and it leads us down a path of self-destruction. Even the super-educated, self-protected wealthy 1% aren’t immune and they and we are sowing the seeds of our own demise because of our shortsightedness. Chrystia Freeland has written a compelling article about this and Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s book Why Nations Fail gives even greater clarity.

Self-destruction is ethically absurd and economically nonsensical, yet our leaders – at least the people we so often promote and elect – seem welded to taking us down that path. They lie to us by telling us that a voucher system isn’t a voucher system, that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, that (baby boomers will get this) we have to stop the scourge of Communism right there in Viet Nam so that we don’t have to fight them in Kansas, that we were winning that war, that Romney will cut taxes 20% but that his scheme won’t be a $5 trillion deficit, that the rich people are the job creators and the list goes on and on. To understand why they say such things, obey Deep Throat’s dictum: “Follow the money.” Yet so many of us believe the lies (or, at least, we don’t challenge them), largely because we are focused on our own concerns, just trying to make life work. But that is short-sighted and ultimately does ethical and economic damage to ourselves.

We’re not going to change human nature; each of us will continue to do what we perceive to be in our own best interests. What we can do is to look up now and then, get out of the weeds and recognized that tomorrow will come. And when it does, we will live in the consequences of today’s decisions.

What are the ethics and economics you want? Look up. See that tomorrow is on its way and that we do not have to continue on a path of craziness. Then speak up. If you don’t make your voice heard, people who want a very different America from the America you want will be heard, because they will be the only ones talking.

Murray-isms

Aug 16

My friend Pat Murray is one of the clearest thinkers I know in the areas of group and individual behavior and I have learned some valuable lessons from him. See if this pairing of one statement plus two questions from Pat’s work stimulates your motivation innards.

YOU GET WHAT YOU TOLERATE – Children teach us this every day. A major part of their job is to push the envelope to find out where the edges of acceptability are. Those edges are often defined by some sort of pain, like physical pain as a result of attempting to defy the laws of physics while riding a bicycle or from adult displeasure over an inappropriate childhood behavior.

So it is with politics. Our politicians will push the envelope and keep on pushing until we tell them they’ve gone too far by punishing them with our phone calls, letters and emails of displeasure and, eventually, with election defeat. The key point is that if you tolerate their behavior, they will not only continue it but they will keep on pushing that envelope to an extreme until you actively refuse to tolerate what they are doing. Passivity and apathy on your part will result in ever more outrageous behavior on their part. You get what you tolerate.

WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR? – Are you clear about what you stand for, what you believe in down to your bedrock, the absolutely most-not-be-violated ideals you will never compromise? Tagging on to that question, motivational speaker Les Brown likes to say that you have to know what you stand for or you’ll fall for anything.

There are people in all areas of our lives who want to sell us something, who want to bend us to their way in order to help them to create a world that serves them. Some of these people are quite comfortable lying to us, misleading us with flagrant, fatuous falsehoods (my alliteration for today) and many of them have very loud megaphones. They feed us a spoonful of verifiable fact to gain our trust and then go off into their stream of dishonesty. Unless you know what you stand for, you can be manipulated easily by these people and become a pawn to serve them while they do harm to you and everyone else in the process. What do you stand for?

KNOW YOUR INTOLERABLES – Yes, I know that “intolerables” isn’t a word you can find in the dictionary, but you understood its meaning immediately. What is on your list of things that you will not put up with? What are the absolutely no-go items? Lying, cheating, stealing, dishonoring the sacred, cruelty, abandoning the helpless, disloyalty? When you make your list, be sure to do a gut check so that you don’t write hollow platitudes, because that doesn’t serve you. Rather, write what is actually true for you.

For example, you may find abridging the rights of fellow citizens to be intolerable, but do you believe in it so strongly that you’ll fight anyone who tries to silence those with whom you passionately disagree? Do you believe in the rights of citizenship with such passion that you’ll stand up publicly for those whose voting rights are being stolen right now? Do you believe in civil rights so strongly that you’ll speak out against the anti-Muslim fever that is both marginalizing and killing some Americans? Speaking of killing, it may be an intolerable for you, but do you make an exception for those who kill abortion doctors? Know your intolerables.

It is true that those are under-the-skin questions likely to provoke. Are you agitated enough to take action? A good starting place is to make two lists: HERE IS WHAT I STAND FOR and THESE ARE MY INTOLERABLES. Your lists probably won’t be very long, but they will have great power for you. And when you’re done, you’ll stop falling for anything and instead will be prepared to stop tolerating all that envelope pushing that violates what you believe in. You might even exercise your citizenship by speaking out to make things better.

Mitt Romney Can’t and Neither Can Bob Dold

Jul 15

Yes, of course Mitt Romney is smart. He’s cunning and he’s been enormously successful. He’s persistent and focused and undaunted by challenge.

Yet Mitt Romney can’t seem to say anything that is true. He can’t seem to say anything that doesn’t contradict his own words and actions. And he can’t seem to say anything that has detailed substance. He simply can’t.

We just had a family reunion, with its predictable mix of political views, but the most significant ones came from family members who are sick of hearing stupid political fantasy displace fact, sick of leaders who don’t lead and sick of our eunuch government. Mostly, they are sick of politicians sounding like ten-year-olds on a playground calling others ugly names, vying to see who can say the meanest thing and, thus, become the biggest jerk on the playground.

Mitt Romney is now the most visible contestant in that game to be the biggest jerk. He makes up so much fantasy-as-politics and the outpouring of his lies is so voluminous that many Americans, like some of my family members, more than anything just want him to go away and have pledged to refuse to vote in November. Such is the effect of the screeching drone of political dumbspeak that floods our news. That is dangerous, because it serves the radical dumbspeak droners so well and abandons all the rest of America.

We in the Illinois Tenth Congressional District have elected moderates for some time. For a dozen years Mark Kirk was our representative. The good people of Illinois then elected him to the senate and he was replaced in the House by Stepford wife, Bob Dold. Each is soft spoken. Each appears to be compassionate.

Except neither of them is a moderate. Each of them votes in near-lockstep with the Republican fringe crazies. They support the big money ruling class and mask their bigotry with their moderate demeanor.

By November 6 Dold will have asked for your vote dozens of times. He will have attempted to justify that by telling you that he is fighting to save your Medicare, but he will somehow forget to tell you that he has twice voted for Paul Ryan’s Medicare Ruination Plan. He will tell you that he’s all about jobs, jobs, jobs, but he won’t remind you that he voted against every job creating bill except the one for veterans and that he had to be shamed into voting for that.

All of that is to say that Bob Dold is no moderate. He’s a right wing crazy in a pleasant looking package, just like Mitt Romney. Don’t be fooled by appearances. Judge him by what he has done and you’ll want him to disappear. That would be best because neither one of them can do anything you want them to do.

The point is that anyone dropping out of the process only serves to keep the radical playground jerks in place and assure that they continue flooding your news with lies and salacious innuendo. You can stop that by getting past your disgust over the political dumbspeak and showing up to vote in November.

Previous 1 … 39 40 41 42 Next Scroll to top

JaxPolitix

Disambiguation from the political and social musings of Jack Altschuler