Sympathy to the Congress

I wrote this in April 2011 concerning the difficulty of getting anything done as a broadly diverse Congress; we went and saw 'Lincoln' last night and that Congress of 1865 puts to shame the difficulties that we face today.  Here's hoping that Congress (and the President, as both are equally obstinate in my opinion) can figure this out one of these days, despite the Grover Norquists and Nancy Pelosis of this world.  Somehow, it almost always gets done...

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Imagine, just for a moment, that you have a project for work or for school that is a group process.  Not just any project, though, but one that millions upon millions depend upon.  But doing the project is going to be hard, because not only are you working on it in all your brilliance, but 535 other people are working on this same project as well.  And not only those 535 people, but their staffs of dozens of people.  Yep, this ain't gonna be easy.

So you begin this project, and you soon find out that the other 535 people working on this project (and their staffs) all have differing viewpoints about what exactly you ought to do.  Sure, a few people have similar viewpoints to you, but even your friends each have different things they want to put into this project, even points that have nothing to do with the overall purpose of the project.  You ask them why, and they say "Because the people I answer to want this point to be made!  And if I can't get my emphases put in here, two bad things will happen.  First, they won't let me come back to do this project next year, and second, I won't let YOU put YOUR 'most important emphasis' in here, either."  So soon enough, you agree to their demands, and they yours.  

Then there's the people who are watching you do your project, all having an opinion on what you are doing, but never actually helping out.  They scream and bellyache and tell about how you (or your friends) are surely doing everything absolutely wrong, all the while belittling your character.  Not only that, but even beyond them there are hundreds of news trucks pulled up outside of your office (or classroom) reporting every word you say, demanding even more sound bites, and reporting rumor as if it was fact.  Everybody in the world is watching what you are doing on this project and has an opinion, never constructive.  

But still you carry on, only to find that outside of your close-knit group of comrades, who have mostly the same views that you do, are hundreds of others that disagree enitrely with your take on this project.  What is white to you is black; what to you is absolutely important to them is meaningless, and must be replaced by something you find to be equally wasteful.  You can't disagree on anything, but a deadline is coming, and so soon enough the project must get done.  

You labor on, all the time worried that you have to raise millions of dollars in order to keep you in school or in your job, because if you don't, there are many others who are out there wanting to take your place and willing to spend even more money to be where you are.  Still, you continue to fight for what you right, against all odds.  Even while you are doing your job, though, you are faced with the dangers of people walking up to you in supermarkets and shooting you, because they don't like the job you are doing.  Your project is getting dangerous to your very existence.  

Still, you continue, and if you are lucky (or maybe not!) you get to come back to school or work to continue working on this project, and the tensions between all your comrades is getting even worse.  The deadline keeps getting extended remarkably, but you fear it will never get done.  You give a little bit here others give a little bit there, and finally, amazingly, six months late, the project is finished.  

And of course, everybody hates it.  

Don't worry, though, because next year's project will be due soon.

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This is why I am not a congressman.  They may often be bad at what they do...but most of us can't even imagine the garbage they have to endure every single day.  Pray for them.

Santa's pipe

Last night my son asked me to read him 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' in all its picture-book glory.  About halfway through his eyes lit up:  "Santa's smoking a pipe?"  There is was, the next three pages in all its glory...'ol Saint Nick puffing away.  It doesn't matter if it's tobacco, marijuana, peyote...Santa Claus smokes.  And through the entire story, this was the only thing that Jacob made comment about, except for another picture of the reindeer flying away that he really liked.

Of course it's an old book, an old story.  But this got me to thinking about how we have somehow expunged dear old Santa's nasty lung-destroying habit of smoking in the years since this book was published.  Yes, Santa still has issues with his weight (i.e., he's fat), and the fact that he wears a red suit and loves the little children is something that causes us today to pause.  But smoking?  No way...we surely don't want to expose our children to that.  And so we've re-written history to smooth over some of the rough edges about the old man.

Revisionist history happens all over the place.  Albert Spalding spent much of his life perpetuating the myth that baseball (which had nothing to do with cricket, rounders, or any other fay 'English' game, he championed) was invented by a future Civil War general in the village of Cooperstown, NY to the point that this is now where the game's hall of fame is located.  James Loewen has written several powerful books about history has been distorted time and again in the name of ideological purity: we teach our children history that is designed to make them good patriots rather than informed citizens, and former confederates put up Civil War monuments all over the south (and some of the north, too) to glorify the Cause.

Sometimes it happens in not-so-ancient history.  That Barack Obama admitted that some of the foreign policy of his predecessors was wrong and needed to be repudiated was turned into the historical fiction of an 'apology tour' by his critics who were more interested in setting a future agenda than they were recognizing the mistakes of the past.  History is not just written by the winners, but also the whiners.

And so this leads us to today, December 21, 2012.  Supposedly this was the day that the world was going to end, according to the Mayan calendar.  Or at least this is what we've been told again and again and again. Still have about thirteen hours left here in the central standard time zone, but I'm not holding my breath.

Why is it that so many people are freaking out about this (about 10% of people worldwide, so I've heard)?  Because they are historically naive, and they can't tell the difference between truth and agenda.  Whether it's media seeking to sell newspapers (or, more likely, attract eyeballs on the internet) by irresponsible reporting, or the diminishing John Cusack seeking to sell a movie by a convoluted idea, some people will believe just about anything, no matter how foolish, no matter how stupid.  They believe this because they don't dig into the thorny issues of history.  They'd rather believe a linear history with a good moral principle than try to juggle the ambiguity that most history presents.  And so they believe that the world will end today, that baseball was invented by Doubleday, or that the Civil War was about everything else besides slavery.

It's not just that those who don't learn the lessons from history are doomed to repeat it...it's that people too lazy to go and look past the hijacking of history will continue to believe myths in the future.

Controlled by guns

I'm learning in this life that there are some topics that people cannot discuss rationally.  Not everybody has the same taboo, of course...but there are some issues that just make people lose their ever lovin' minds.  The tea party.  Homosexuality.  Particulars of religious faith.

But these days the issue that makes most people insane is the issue of gun control.  One reason I've basically dumped facebook is that I just can't stand the insane 'sharing' of pictures, and in the last five days, since the tragic shootings of 26 people in Connecticut, almost everybody has a picture they think they need to share with me about gun control, be they a variation on the theme of 'guns don't kill people, people kill people', 'we gotta keep our guns or the government will destroy us all' or 'let's all get rid of guns and then we can live in happy rainbow land'.  It's not just this issue, of course...facebook is becoming an ideological cesspool on so many issues...but this is the one that has sent me over the edge.  We need more words, better words about this and so many other topics.

In all honesty I don't have all the answers, but the extremes on both sides are just mind-boggling stupid.  Yes, I said it...stupid.  A word I try to make sure my kids don't say, like 'poopyhead' and 'butt'.  Etymologically, I think 'stupid' and 'poopyhead' must be related, for most of the comments and/or facebook pictures I've seen and heard about this are either a)pulled straight from some special-interest website or b)the butt.  Same thing, really.

30,000 dead from gun violence, 100,000 injured from gun violence a year in this country.  Just this weekend two more cops in Topeka were killed by guns.  Some think that all this will go away completely if we just eliminate guns.  Truth is, people will still kill people if so inclined.  Cain didn't need a handgun; Jack the Ripper did fine without a semi-automatic.  There are so many guns out there now, so much ammunition readily available, that banning guns now would be like saying that no more Twinkies will be made...it's going to take years, decades even to whittle down the stockpile we have now.  And even so, the Little Debbies of the world will soon jump in and fill a void and the black market on these guns will make prohibition look like a John 2 party.

But let's be rational, please?  Are we honestly saying that we can't look for better gun laws?  That we can't tighten some of the huge loopholes that people keep blasting their way through?  The insanity of the discussion from the NRA-loving crowd is that any change of gun laws to make it more restrictive is a fundamental challenge to the second amendment.  But a little bit of common sense makes us see that the right to 'bear arms' is not an absolute right...do we allow private citizens to own shoulder-launched air-to-ground missiles?  How about the newest fighter jets?  Heck, by the reasoning of the gun lobby we all ought to have nuclear missiles at our disposal...that will sure make the government back off our property, right?  

There is no sane reason why anybody in this country outside of law enforcement needs the kind of weaponry that seems to always be at the center of most of this trouble.  Thinking that an automatic weapon that can shoot a hundred rounds in ten seconds is as much like my dad's shotgun as a tank is like my bicycle.  Why can't we sanely tell the difference?

We can't (and won't) ever have the courage to get rid of all guns.  But we can surely eliminate the very worst of them, can't we?  A sane, civilized place like here (I give America in 2012 way too much credit, but still...) can certainly figure out that the most dangerous of the offending weapons be made illegal.

Epilogue: here are some miscellaneous simple steps that have been going through my head.  Not really related to what I've said before, but this gets them out of my head:
1)All guns should be registered and, if the technology is possible, their signature ought to be saved.  Or has CSI been wrong about how much they can track weapons?  If so, forget this...but surely, we should stop this idea that guns should be anonymous...we ought to be able to track whose weapon does what.
2)Related to this, everybody who owns a gun ought to have liability insurance on it.  Low-danger weapons have low insurance...but if you think you have to own a handgun in a high-crime area or an automatic military-grade assault weapon, you'll pay for it, as they could track what weapons get fired at who.  I have to pay liability insurance for every car I own, why not guns?
3)My favorite thought in all this: all guns are illegal, but ammunition cannot be manufactured or sold en masse.  You have to make your own ammunition, just as they did back in the days of the constitution's writing.  Then we'll really get back to 'original intent' when it comes to the constitution...I don't think James Madison had armor-piercing shells in mind when he wrote those blessed words.