Years ago - much before the trend of getting a college education solely for how much money it would get you - I decided to get a degree that improved my ability to live well, enjoy the world and people, and - well - grant me an education. I wanted a liberal arts degree, and took one in history at my nearby state university. I got a good education. I had good professors and learned a great deal from living in the dorms with my fellow students, and worked in the library, and had a long time girlfriend (much to my own surprise, frankly) - who is still a friend, and joined a fraternity, and drank lots of beer, and ate pizza with friends, suffered over exams. I liked it and it has stood me in good stead.
But today, after reading Judith Warner's piece in the New York Times about suddenly finding ourselves outstripped financially by the business jocks who have made millions bankrupting the country, I wonder how many people still believe that all a college education is supposed to do is train you to make money somewhere?
I did not know what I wanted to do, but I wanted to know what I was doing and what it meant in the world when I did it. I am an idealist who has taken over 30 years to get to a PhD, and still am not sure what it is suppose to do for me. I know what I have had to do for it. I have had to study. I have had to engage my teaching profession and the world with different eyes every time a shift of perspective took hold. I have had to explore and reflect and make connections and comprehend, and remain baffled, and argue my points, and take criticism, and evaluate new situations, and accept premises from others I could not deny. I haven't made a boat load of money, although I am pleased with my current salary. I enjoy the company of my students (all adults) and revel in helping them find new ways of living and earning a better living, and discovering the benefits of reading and math. All that stuff. Good stuff.
And contrary to many and my daughter's advice, I haven't been diligent about saving for the future, or investing in the stock market to make my money work for me. Ms. Warner states it, and I understand what happened in the 1970's. Homelessness began to appear, and the idea that one income could support a family began to be a joke, not the reality of American economic life. Wall Street began upping the cost of living, and international markets drove companies out of the US, and unions out of companies. But, I am not that competitive about money. I believe that if you do what you love, the money will follow, but searching for money as an end in itself is really an empty victory. The financial institutions have tanked in the past few weeks, and those who placed their faith in their brokers have lost what they invested including the trust they placed in financial markets and the men who run them. I'll forgive myself for not getting in on the Market, because I take heed in what a person told me a few years ago. She had worked for 20+ years for a major corporation that had guaranteed her a good retirement. Not so. Everything she earned, saved, and expected was lost in a take over, or bankruptcy or merger or something. Over the years I have heard lots of stories like this. They serve as cautionary tales.
I prefer to work on being able to work each day the rest of my life because I know that I cannot expect anyone else to place as much value on what I do as I do myself. I'll start saving some money, yes, but I will also look and work at exploring what else I can do to enjoy my life and what I do without having to keep one eye on my portfolio.
It is true that money will get you a lot of things, but it isn't everything. It helps, but I prefer to be flexible and intellectually alert and use my ideas to enhance my life. Money's ok, but you can't eat it, and it won't keep you warm at night. It is a means. Not an end.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Justice Delayed
I read today that O.J. Simpson is finally going to jail. I believe that is a good thing although I felt he was being punished by living his life on the outside, among people who could look at him and declare (if they chose to) " I know you killed Ron and Nicole." I watched the trial; nearly all of it from beginning to end for eight months. I believed the man who was walking his dog and saw the white Bronco speed through the alleyways. I believed Kato Kalin who said he heard someone scramble behind his guest house where they fund the glove. I believed them because they didn't have anything to hide. They were just there and told what they knew.
But there were flaws in the case that the defense made good use of. I may be one of the few that thinks the prosecution did a good job, but they were undermined by shoddy police work. And the critical point is that the detectives who traced O.J.'s vehicle to his house jumped the fence without getting a warrant. Right there, at that point in time, the case was doomed. All kinds of evidenced gleaned from the car and the blood stains gathered from the car were ruled inadmissible evidence. The prosecution could not convince anyone on the jury that it was O.J. who had done the deed.
If you don't believe in the power of the 4th amendment of the U.S.Constitution, look what it did for O.J. Simpson.
Of course, IMO, there was a fatal flaw in jury selection as well. O.J.'s peers were not the African Americans from Alameda, or Compton as was asserted since he was a black man; they were the people of Bel Air and his social circle where he, as a million dollar sports hero lived his life. A jury of his peers did not decide his guilt or innocence, but a jury of individuals who had their own tales of injustice before the bar. The verdict of acquittal was the jury's response to other injustices that reverberated throughout the trial - that of color, and class, and privilege, and marrying across color lines, and all that. All the evidence, including the DNA evidence presented couldn't make a dent in the pre-conceived desire to let him go free despite anything he may have done.
The glove over the latex glove was a travesty. "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
The prosecution was outmaneuvered.
I was teaching a class at a high school in the San Diego area at that time - the day the verdict came in - I was covering a history class for a teacher who was going to be a week late. With a television in the room and a national trial filling the airwaves every day for nearly a year, I had to let them watch the verdict come in. There were a large number of African American students in the room. They cheered. They were unmistakably glad that he had beat the rap.
I shut off the television and redirected the class's energy the best I could, but I knew justice had not been served. It made me wonder just how many people actually understood that fair trials and solid evidence could also protect them in a court of law, and that it was important to maintain the integrity of police procedures, constitutional protections, and the chain of evidence. But we were not dealing with objectivity here, only an emotional response that one of their own had been set free, even though he may have committed murder. How many blacks over the past centuries in the US had been condemned to death unfairly in just such a proceeding? Thousands, I would guess. This victory was a symbolic one.
As a fatalist of sorts and a believer in poetic justice, I had to content myself with the civil trial and his public flogging in the press and public. It comes as no surprise to me that he tripped up. Perhaps it was a subconscious set-up whereby, failing to heed his own internal survival instincts, he let himself be governed by his feelings of being wronged again take over. Who knows?
This time, there was no midnight flight to Chicago to dump the bloody evidence. No melting ice cream to tell the time. This time no long drawn out slow freeway chase. Just a charge of armed robbery he could not escape.
The grist mill of the gods grinds slowly but it grinds very fine.
But there were flaws in the case that the defense made good use of. I may be one of the few that thinks the prosecution did a good job, but they were undermined by shoddy police work. And the critical point is that the detectives who traced O.J.'s vehicle to his house jumped the fence without getting a warrant. Right there, at that point in time, the case was doomed. All kinds of evidenced gleaned from the car and the blood stains gathered from the car were ruled inadmissible evidence. The prosecution could not convince anyone on the jury that it was O.J. who had done the deed.
If you don't believe in the power of the 4th amendment of the U.S.Constitution, look what it did for O.J. Simpson.
Of course, IMO, there was a fatal flaw in jury selection as well. O.J.'s peers were not the African Americans from Alameda, or Compton as was asserted since he was a black man; they were the people of Bel Air and his social circle where he, as a million dollar sports hero lived his life. A jury of his peers did not decide his guilt or innocence, but a jury of individuals who had their own tales of injustice before the bar. The verdict of acquittal was the jury's response to other injustices that reverberated throughout the trial - that of color, and class, and privilege, and marrying across color lines, and all that. All the evidence, including the DNA evidence presented couldn't make a dent in the pre-conceived desire to let him go free despite anything he may have done.
The glove over the latex glove was a travesty. "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
The prosecution was outmaneuvered.
I was teaching a class at a high school in the San Diego area at that time - the day the verdict came in - I was covering a history class for a teacher who was going to be a week late. With a television in the room and a national trial filling the airwaves every day for nearly a year, I had to let them watch the verdict come in. There were a large number of African American students in the room. They cheered. They were unmistakably glad that he had beat the rap.
I shut off the television and redirected the class's energy the best I could, but I knew justice had not been served. It made me wonder just how many people actually understood that fair trials and solid evidence could also protect them in a court of law, and that it was important to maintain the integrity of police procedures, constitutional protections, and the chain of evidence. But we were not dealing with objectivity here, only an emotional response that one of their own had been set free, even though he may have committed murder. How many blacks over the past centuries in the US had been condemned to death unfairly in just such a proceeding? Thousands, I would guess. This victory was a symbolic one.
As a fatalist of sorts and a believer in poetic justice, I had to content myself with the civil trial and his public flogging in the press and public. It comes as no surprise to me that he tripped up. Perhaps it was a subconscious set-up whereby, failing to heed his own internal survival instincts, he let himself be governed by his feelings of being wronged again take over. Who knows?
This time, there was no midnight flight to Chicago to dump the bloody evidence. No melting ice cream to tell the time. This time no long drawn out slow freeway chase. Just a charge of armed robbery he could not escape.
The grist mill of the gods grinds slowly but it grinds very fine.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Volunteering for War
A friend of mine recently sent me a photo of a large number of troops re-enlisting in Iraq claiming it was a piece of news that has been overlooked in the press. It has, I suppose, but claiming a re-enlistment as a vistory for the average soldier in these times ignores the problems in fighting a war started by men who dodged the draft (repeatedly)after 1965 in order to escape going to Vietnam.
Thre is no argument from this quarter about supporting the troops. I supportthe troops. But this issue is not about the troops. Soldiers do what they are ordered to because they have taken on that duty. No problem with that at all. My position is that they have been placed in a no-win situation by the very people we elected to handle our nation's business, and instead decided - ahead of time and on their own- to place the nation at risk for their own person gain. This war in Iraq was designed to create a client state to supply us with oil. And the damage by the Bush administration did is beyond calculation - and all of them - Cheney, Wolfowitz, Fife, et al. dodged the draft in the Vietnam War. How strange that we, a nation that claims honorable service in wartime as a qualification for high political office would elect these chickenhawks, these cowards, to send their children and husbands off to war as if a bed of roses awaited them as they emerged from their dusty tanks.
So I do not see a massive re-enlistment ceremony as a plus for our troops. It prolongs the agony, and increases the individual damage and the family damage at home. For a party that claims it fosters family values, this is a strange way to do it. Sent home these mentally and physically incapacitated men and women have been left at the mercy of market forces and contracted hospital care. Outsourced veterans care. What? So now we will have another generation of abandoned vets. Thankfully many people like my friend (and others of course) care enough to make a difference in the way they are treated as opposed to the way the Vietnam Vets were. But we learned from our recent Walter reed Medical Center scandal that market forces are a poor mandate for taking care of our wounded.
But remember also: We slip our dead home in the dead of night so no one can see the damaged cargo. We then ship them off to their families for private grieving and a few nice words and a flag from the DoD. We do not honor them as the British do theirs, and publicly notice their sacrifice. In this way the administration can avoid the public outcry and leave the crying to the private lives of families and friends. By operating in this way there is little opposition to any one individual's death. After release from the military, the individual is left to his or her own devices on how to cope.
I also take strong opposition about turning the National Guard into a branch of the US Army. It is for national defense, and not for overseas combat. To reverse the historical mission further aggravates the situation at home and abroad since these men and women wee essentially conscripted and are now subject to stop-loss programs and financial incentives to stay in the combat zone.
The administration needs photo opportunities like the one my friend sent me to show there is a consensus among the military about staying, but the suicide rate, the divorce rate, the angry life at home, the fatherless children, and the lost income from veteran joblessness and hopelessness and psychological problems goes unsaid. This administration knows full well that if they let the press actually report what is happening, there would be a larger public outcry against the war. Therefore only what they want reported gets reported, and the main stream press is complicit since they have had their balls cut off by the restrictions on access.
Furthermore we have hired a separate private army of mercenaries at great expense that runs parallel to he US military and acts as if they are on a Rambo mission over there, essentially destroying the work of a proper military operation by operating outside the law. For their large salaries the government gets cowboys and war profiteers who would like nothing more than to continue their lucrative contract heedless of individual damage. It is another form of war profiteering, and the boots on the ground in real US military uniforms are the ones who bear he brunt of the war at lower pay.
However, at this point they are volunteers and not patriotic citizens doing the necessary work of the government. They are paid to volunteer and held in place by promises of more pay should they survive. This is a mercenary army, in it for financial benefits. I do not feel sorry for anyone in Iraq voluntarily because they are adults and have chosen that situation to work in. It is sad, nonetheless, that we have so outsourced patriotism that we have to bribe people to serve. That should be enough of a red flag for us to know we are on the wrong track.
I am still a humanitarian and I feel aggrieved that we destroyed Iraq in order to try and make it our own. It was a highly literate society. Islamic issues were secular and women had rights and opportunities. It was orderly even though the despot who ran the country, Saddam Hussein, was a regional troublemaker who was not even chastised by his neighbors. Diplomacy continued and strengthened through serious negotiation would have correctedthe situation. But by going in with guns blazing we have done all this work so the Saudis and Syrians, and Jordanians, etc. wouldn't have to get their hands dirty. Couple this with the fact that all the 9/11 activists were Saudi Arabian and the Iraqis never did us a bit of harm, we decided to create mayhem in their country rather than face the cold hard fact that our own foreign policies keep repressive governments in power in order to insure a supply of oil to the US. And they hate us,the people do, not for our freedoms, but for the way we pander to governments who are repressive to their own people, hate foreigners, and live lavish lifestyles while the populace is poor. And the leaders hate us too, for our foolishness in killing ourselves off while countries like Dubai build lavish seaside resorts on oil profits gathered from, who else? US!
I believe we have been had, and the 53 percent of the US population that keeps this engine running is refusing to see that our troubles have multiplied becasue they have stemmed from our electing a man on a dry drunk, a man who cannot utter a coherent English sentence (fetal alcohol syndrome, I believe), who left his post during war time in 1972 (That's called AWOL) and disappeared from public view for twenty years,bankrupted four oil companies over that time, and then as president hired on 17 draft dodgers to fabricate a war. At the same time he has bankrupted the country.
This has been done by American businessmen who claimed they knew what they were doing. But all we have to show for it is a continual begging bowl to get the taxpayer to foot the bills for their mistakes, mistakes that have taken the savings and livelihood of millions of ordinary citizens, and not even acknowledging they have done anything wrong. And we let them get away with it - and that is the saddest part - we hold no one accountable, only the little guy.
And the use of torture to extract information? - the use of torture by this government is an abomination and such a black mark on this nation's honor, that we have sunk so low. Everyone involved should be charged with crimes against humanity.
As a nation we have become so innured to holding people accountable fortheir actions that we only go after the weak and disenfranchised. Big wigs like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Fife, and Dick Cheney will never be punished because we have become a nation that no longer knows that getting at the truth through judicial investigation is not smearing the perpertrator's reputation. We do ourselves a great disservice by not charging government officials with crimes they do in our name but without our permission. We seem to have no trouble going after people like Slobodan Milosovic or Pinochet, but when the same actions are committed by our own, we get cold feet. In my estimation, then, when good men and women fail to speak out, and we allow those who would expose the truth be silenced in order to keep the peace, we, all of us, are cowards.
Thre is no argument from this quarter about supporting the troops. I supportthe troops. But this issue is not about the troops. Soldiers do what they are ordered to because they have taken on that duty. No problem with that at all. My position is that they have been placed in a no-win situation by the very people we elected to handle our nation's business, and instead decided - ahead of time and on their own- to place the nation at risk for their own person gain. This war in Iraq was designed to create a client state to supply us with oil. And the damage by the Bush administration did is beyond calculation - and all of them - Cheney, Wolfowitz, Fife, et al. dodged the draft in the Vietnam War. How strange that we, a nation that claims honorable service in wartime as a qualification for high political office would elect these chickenhawks, these cowards, to send their children and husbands off to war as if a bed of roses awaited them as they emerged from their dusty tanks.
So I do not see a massive re-enlistment ceremony as a plus for our troops. It prolongs the agony, and increases the individual damage and the family damage at home. For a party that claims it fosters family values, this is a strange way to do it. Sent home these mentally and physically incapacitated men and women have been left at the mercy of market forces and contracted hospital care. Outsourced veterans care. What? So now we will have another generation of abandoned vets. Thankfully many people like my friend (and others of course) care enough to make a difference in the way they are treated as opposed to the way the Vietnam Vets were. But we learned from our recent Walter reed Medical Center scandal that market forces are a poor mandate for taking care of our wounded.
But remember also: We slip our dead home in the dead of night so no one can see the damaged cargo. We then ship them off to their families for private grieving and a few nice words and a flag from the DoD. We do not honor them as the British do theirs, and publicly notice their sacrifice. In this way the administration can avoid the public outcry and leave the crying to the private lives of families and friends. By operating in this way there is little opposition to any one individual's death. After release from the military, the individual is left to his or her own devices on how to cope.
I also take strong opposition about turning the National Guard into a branch of the US Army. It is for national defense, and not for overseas combat. To reverse the historical mission further aggravates the situation at home and abroad since these men and women wee essentially conscripted and are now subject to stop-loss programs and financial incentives to stay in the combat zone.
The administration needs photo opportunities like the one my friend sent me to show there is a consensus among the military about staying, but the suicide rate, the divorce rate, the angry life at home, the fatherless children, and the lost income from veteran joblessness and hopelessness and psychological problems goes unsaid. This administration knows full well that if they let the press actually report what is happening, there would be a larger public outcry against the war. Therefore only what they want reported gets reported, and the main stream press is complicit since they have had their balls cut off by the restrictions on access.
Furthermore we have hired a separate private army of mercenaries at great expense that runs parallel to he US military and acts as if they are on a Rambo mission over there, essentially destroying the work of a proper military operation by operating outside the law. For their large salaries the government gets cowboys and war profiteers who would like nothing more than to continue their lucrative contract heedless of individual damage. It is another form of war profiteering, and the boots on the ground in real US military uniforms are the ones who bear he brunt of the war at lower pay.
However, at this point they are volunteers and not patriotic citizens doing the necessary work of the government. They are paid to volunteer and held in place by promises of more pay should they survive. This is a mercenary army, in it for financial benefits. I do not feel sorry for anyone in Iraq voluntarily because they are adults and have chosen that situation to work in. It is sad, nonetheless, that we have so outsourced patriotism that we have to bribe people to serve. That should be enough of a red flag for us to know we are on the wrong track.
I am still a humanitarian and I feel aggrieved that we destroyed Iraq in order to try and make it our own. It was a highly literate society. Islamic issues were secular and women had rights and opportunities. It was orderly even though the despot who ran the country, Saddam Hussein, was a regional troublemaker who was not even chastised by his neighbors. Diplomacy continued and strengthened through serious negotiation would have correctedthe situation. But by going in with guns blazing we have done all this work so the Saudis and Syrians, and Jordanians, etc. wouldn't have to get their hands dirty. Couple this with the fact that all the 9/11 activists were Saudi Arabian and the Iraqis never did us a bit of harm, we decided to create mayhem in their country rather than face the cold hard fact that our own foreign policies keep repressive governments in power in order to insure a supply of oil to the US. And they hate us,the people do, not for our freedoms, but for the way we pander to governments who are repressive to their own people, hate foreigners, and live lavish lifestyles while the populace is poor. And the leaders hate us too, for our foolishness in killing ourselves off while countries like Dubai build lavish seaside resorts on oil profits gathered from, who else? US!
I believe we have been had, and the 53 percent of the US population that keeps this engine running is refusing to see that our troubles have multiplied becasue they have stemmed from our electing a man on a dry drunk, a man who cannot utter a coherent English sentence (fetal alcohol syndrome, I believe), who left his post during war time in 1972 (That's called AWOL) and disappeared from public view for twenty years,bankrupted four oil companies over that time, and then as president hired on 17 draft dodgers to fabricate a war. At the same time he has bankrupted the country.
This has been done by American businessmen who claimed they knew what they were doing. But all we have to show for it is a continual begging bowl to get the taxpayer to foot the bills for their mistakes, mistakes that have taken the savings and livelihood of millions of ordinary citizens, and not even acknowledging they have done anything wrong. And we let them get away with it - and that is the saddest part - we hold no one accountable, only the little guy.
And the use of torture to extract information? - the use of torture by this government is an abomination and such a black mark on this nation's honor, that we have sunk so low. Everyone involved should be charged with crimes against humanity.
As a nation we have become so innured to holding people accountable fortheir actions that we only go after the weak and disenfranchised. Big wigs like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Fife, and Dick Cheney will never be punished because we have become a nation that no longer knows that getting at the truth through judicial investigation is not smearing the perpertrator's reputation. We do ourselves a great disservice by not charging government officials with crimes they do in our name but without our permission. We seem to have no trouble going after people like Slobodan Milosovic or Pinochet, but when the same actions are committed by our own, we get cold feet. In my estimation, then, when good men and women fail to speak out, and we allow those who would expose the truth be silenced in order to keep the peace, we, all of us, are cowards.
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