OY! como va (Not sure Santayana said that either)

 

Irish statesman Edmund Burke is often misquoted as having said, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Spanish philosopher George Santayana is credited with the aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” while British statesman Winston Churchill wrote, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

But doesn't that presume all history is bad? Seems to me there is some history we do need to repeat, like a return to democracy, honoring the Constitution, stronger workers' rights, a strong middle class, and a return to an emphasis on peace, love and understanding. 

And maybe even a return to just two choices of toothpaste.

 (Ed. Note: I actually wrote this on January 19th and didn't post it until after Joe Biden's inauguration yesterday where it was so refreshing to see that Joe seems to have the same concerns and priorities regarding Democracy, the Constitution, etc. 

No references in his speech to toothpaste however. Perhaps in his second term.)

Colorful opinions

My sister Sherry sent me an article last summer on race relations and after thanking her for the article, which I wish I could link to here because it would give the thoughts below better context but which I have long since tossed, I wrote her this, well, much of it anyway. I've added a few thoughts, acknowledging that any time someone talks about racism, the first thing that needs to be done is to define our terms:

1 - Pretty much all of us of any color/race/background are racists. 

2 - That doesn't mean that all of us discriminate or treat people worse based on their race.

3 - But it does mean we treat them, or at least see them, differently.

4 - There is no such thing as reverse racism. There's only racism.

5 - Doesn't matter who is or isn't racist, or who does or doesn't discriminate, as long as the system is racist, which it clearly is.

6 - The single best way to address racism is improved educational opportunity for minority students...or better - equal educational opportunity for all students. 

7 - The most overlooked aspect of racism is that there is also a strong class component to it. Low income neighborhoods of any color will generally stay that way until their education opportunity (read: funding and infrastructure) improves. 

8 - That is the form that reparations should take - making sure people living in school districts with the least funding receive more than the schools currently receiving the most, until grades and SAT scores and the metrics even out, and then they should all be equalized.

Some provocative thoughts that might upset folks, but I would so love to talk with anyone of color who disagrees. I have so much more I need to learn about this.

Evolution by Elimination

In my radical view of the future, or the normal view in current day Jamie World, two evolutions will take place - the elimination of Identity Politics and of US military bases or military involvement in any country outside of ours.

I cringe when I hear my left-wing friends say, or when I read political views that say the Dems need to work harder to get the ______ (Insert identity here: Black, Latino, Gay, Native American, Southern, Gay, Transgender) vote. 

How about policies that just help everyone who has been denied equal opportunity? Discrimination against any of us should be an affront to all of us. And policies to address such inequities should be sweeping. For too long, policies that help the privileged/highest earners have been excused by saying "a rising tide lifts all boats." Well, instead of adding water to help the yachts, how about we focus on the dinghies and rowboats, especially if they need to be bailed out to begin with?

That said, I have no problem giving priority to appointing/hiring people from the disadvantaged classes where all else is relatively equal ahead of those of us in the more privileged classes, even though that approach has negatively impacted me personally in the past.

As far as the military is concerned, I used to have a friend Mike - the producer of Flyers' telecasts - who would say when talk would turn to our foreign military entanglements, "Let me know when they land on the Jersey Shore." And more and more, that is my feeling too. I hope is that someday, there is a major Presidential candidate who espouses the view that all our troops should come home to defend our country from here and return most of them to civilian status. Far right conservatives would have a knee-jerk group head explosion, but the way to appease/convince them would be to point out that it would balance the budget in about a year and a half. And I think many of them who already have a libertarian streak would approve regardless.

Now, would that make us weaker? No, the military would then take on a role in addition to protecting our shorelines. When world crises hit, we would be there to help. Famine, earthquakes, tsunamis, plagues - at the invitation of any foreign government, we would make available whatever resources in funds and personnel to do our best to help them. Not by giving them monies, which might fall in the wrong hands. Well, actually, we do know it would - to the pockets of the powerful. So we would bring our people in to work with them, even paying their workers directly, to rebuild or provide and distribute aid also directly, on our conditions.

If you had a neighbor who was doing things to help neighbors of yours who were impacting you negatively, wouldn't you resent that neighbor as much or more than the one they were helping? And wouldn't one be far more likely to try to exact revenge on them in some way? But if your only approach was to be helpful to everyone in your neighborhood, do you think people would treat you better or worse? Sure, there are still bad people in the world, and likely in your neighborhood. But we're talking about odds here. Are people more likely to attack the USA if all we do is help people or if we get militarily involved to help other countries' enemies?

I know how naïve it sounds, and at times it would be. But it couldn't be any worse than the current policies that have cost us tens of thousands of lives and trillions and trillions of dollars, with no end in sight.

Who will be the first to have the courage to embrace such a concept? And how many decades from now?

More and more I find myself understanding the appeal of Donald Trump primarily to those who feel most powerless in this country. If I might generalize, I believe The Powerless have lost all faith in the politicians we keep electing and re-electing. It isn't just a matter of Throw the Bums Out. If the proposed solutions involve politicians, they just won't believe it’s possible. "They're all crooks." Blanket dismissal without any need to consider their victim. And no one is really going to help them feel any sense of power in their lives unless it is someone they see as willing and able to redefine what it is to be a politician, and first and foremost that means a candidate that talks like them. Not like what you hear 24/7 from politicians invited to blather with the cable provocateurs of your...and their choice. The policies aren’t even important. It’s the messenger. Not the message but the way the message is conveyed.

I’ve said for 20 years that the most successful politician will be the one who talks like a human – my examples were always John McCain, Ed Rendell and Joe Biden. Sadly, John McCain stopped doing that when he ran for President the first time and, as he admitted later, didn’t have the courage to call for the removal of the confederate flag over South Carolina’s Capitol Building. He had thus jumped off his Straight Talk Express and try as he might to jump back on, the best he could do was to bring on Sarah Palin to play the role for him. And to occasionally tweak President Trump up to his final days.

Even more sadly, like his pal Ed Rendell who now has Parkinson’s, Joe Biden has lost the ability to talk like a human for a different reason. To be blunt, he’s practically lost the ability to speak at all, God love him (as he likes to say.)

So who are we left with to talk like us…and by us, I sure don’t mean like anyone I would want to hang out with…but Donald J. Trump. For all he does so so wrong, he gets it. He knows he can say anything he wants, the more outrageous the better. Hell, he can call dead war veterans suckers and losers. It’s oh-so appealing to his Powerless People. It doesn’t matter what his policies are – people don’t even know what he stands for besides being against abortion, for guns and apparently for Bibles best displayed, so appropriately and symbolically, upside down.

And other than what a truly awful human being he is, the worst American I’ve ever known of, what bothers me most? That we Dems didn’t bring forth the same kind of person. Not the person who personally bankrupts blue collar workers with his shady business practices. Not the person who makes fun of the disabled or who separates kids from their parents and puts them in cages.

No, my fantasy Dem candidate is kind to small animals and works and plays well with others. S/He’s not snooty and highbrow like Barack and Hillary. S/He’s an intellectual but you would never know it by the way s/he converses with us.

And he or she is the kind of person who gets blue collar voters to think that he is one of them. And actually is.  

Of my good friends Freud, Sir Paul, Monica and Cheryl

I have often thought of Freud when sitting in Meeting for Worship on Sunday mornings. He, or maybe it was one of his cohorts, I should know given that this was the subject of my 60+/- page senior thesis at Earlham, had a theory that subconsciously, our life goal is to return to the happiest place we ever knew - our mother's womb. 

I know. Kinda creepy. But so was Freud sometimes.

And Meeting feels like that to me sometimes. It feels like a warm, welcoming, loving, enclosed place, walled off from, but not oblivious to, the noise all around us. 

And it can especially feel that way when it gets particularly loud outside. This past Sunday for instance, there was a lot of noise coming off route 30 - sirens, motorcycles, etc. At times it almost seemed like a parade out there, but a very fast moving one.

At one point I realized that the more the noise outside is amplified, the more it amplifies the silence in our little Meetinghouse.

And that leads to one of the greatest challenges for me as a Quaker. As the outside noises get louder in my life - the national anger, hate, divisions, vitriol - so I am challenged to amplify the love, acceptance and tolerance inside me to tune all that out, or counter it in the best way possible.

The other night, driving home, Paul McCartney's Let It Be came on the radio, and I listened to it more carefully than the first couple hundred times I've heard it:

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Yeah, there will be an answer, let it be

And I wondered if those words would take on a new meaning for me in the upcoming days, while hoping I would be wrong. But I wasn't.

I came to know in the past few days that someone has been attacking me behind my back to some friends. It upset me at first, even though virtually all his accusations were based on untruths. But thanks to the wise counsel of Cheryl, my long time friend Monica and my even longer-time friend (even though he doesn't know it) Paul McC, I decided to just Let It Be, and use it as a chance to amplify my love and acceptance of a differing point of view. And it was another example of something I've tried to teach the kids when someone is speaking poorly of someone else: it reflects more poorly on the one saying it than it does the target of the comments.

UPDATE: During Meeting yesterday, I thought (prayed?) about the person who had been sharing his thoughts about me and reviewed the three choices I had considered in response to his hurtful email: 

- Email him, telling him what I'd heard and countering his arguments. 

- Confront him similarly. 

- Ignore it, as I'd decided above. 

But in the end, I chose a fourth option. After Meeting, I sought him out and went over and gave him a big hug and said simply, "Hang in there, dude." 

Oh, what a lucky man

I wrote this a few weeks ago but didn't want to post it until I let some time go by so I could think about it some more and to see if my feelings would change. Spoiler alert - they didn't:

21 years ago almost to the day, in August of 1998, Cheryl moved in to my house in Thorndale with her two awesome daughters, Elissa, age 12 and Evelyn, age 5.  And on that day, my life would change forever. My bachelorhood ended and my life as I always imagined and fervently hoped it would become, began.

Two years later, Trevor was born, and at some point, I remember telling Cheryl that coming home from work each day, and opening the door to that house, felt like Dorothy opening her door to Munchkinland, not because of the size of the inhabitants, and not because of the gingham dress and sparkly ruby slippers I was usually wearing, but because I was moving from my very satisfying, if often uneventful, dare I say dull, life of black and white, into a world of color, imagination, surprises, entertainment...and unconditional love, given and received.

Eventually that crazy world grew to include Alex and Ammar and even for 5 years, my mom, accompanied by her sticky dementia and her even stronger unconditional love for all of us.

This morning and continuing to next Monday, when we drop Alex off to board at Westtown, ended the best 21 years of my life, certainly so far. Not because it won't still be amazing in an entirely new way, as I get to know Cheryl better than I ever have, as we have both been so looking forward to this time for, well, 21 years, but because my favorite word in the entire English language is...Dad.

It was so rough when Liss was the first to go, shortly after Ammar came into our lives. Then a year later Mom passed away. Then Evie left a few years after that and that was hard too, missing her energy, humor and joy. So it's been an ongoing adjustment, missing those lives I so loved being a part of each day. But now, with the house soon to be totally empty of kids, it feels like the drop-off to Penn State and Westtown is more like our drop-off into a crevice.

The house will feel emptier. The memories and the love will bounce and echo off the walls, and I will make a point of remembering to absorb all of it for all my days to come.

...and loving it.

Now...on to enjoy Cheryl like I never have before. It's not a comparison of a house full versus just the two of us. It's two truly amazing life experiences. We have so many things we feel like we can do together now that we haven't been able to fully before. We even have a list.

Who is the luckiest guy ever? That's right. This guy.

Indeed - and much thanks to my readers to such an extent and for their convene as well!

I find myself often torn (Have you ever found yourself? Other maybe than when you was lost? Have you ever been torn? Gosh I hope not.) between wanting more people to see my posts (validation, after all!) and wishing I didn't know if anyone read them, or who read them, so I could write ever more freely about my often wacky and revealing (oh - the intrigue!) thoughts.

Other than from devoted reader Becca, I rarely get any comments on here, and since there is no "like" function, it's entirely possible that the handful of people who have signed up to see my posts the day they are written via auto-email actually are horrified by what they read and go by the dictum (Dictum?! Hell, I damn near killed him!) that if you can't say anything nice, you should keep your damn mouth shut/keep your fingers off the keyboard.

But there are some incredibly supportive comments that I have heretofore (And just how far is it from heretofore?!) not posted, surely completely out of sheer modesty.

Some examples:

"Great and very informative information it is. Thanks for sharing"

"Awesome article, Great, Informative..Wonderful article you wrote." 

"Your site is realy cool and this is an awesome motivating article. Much thanks to you to such an extent. more hints leather horse saddles on" 

"Awesome article, Great, Informative..Wonderful article you wrote." 

"Interesting and important information. It is really beneficial for us. Thanks"

"Interesting blog. It would be great if you can provide more details about it. Thanks you. This post is very useful and helpful. I like your posts. I always follow your Posts. I hope, in the future, you will present us with such important posts." (Such a fan!)

"great article. I always visit your site. thanks "

"I really like your post. Thanks so lot for your convene. I’m very fired up to show it to anyone. Thanks so much with this fantastic this post."

"I really like your post. Thanks so lot for your convene. I’m very fired up to show it to anyone. Thanks so much with this fantastic this post."

"Hello,Great post! Very nicely witten article, I love your blog.I just have a blog so need more information about Tutorial Blog.You always right very useful and informative articles, keep writing.Thanks for sharing." (No no - thank YOU, dear reader!)

"Thanks You Very Much Dear For Post Great Article, I forwarded to My all friends to read It."

"Interesting and important information. It is really beneficial for us."

"Very nice post"

"Very attractive theme of your blog and i have have learn your blog"  (I'm not entirely sure Becca didn't write that comment too.)

And my favorite: When Incitatus faced south, his north end had no choice. Cankles has a choice"!  (oh, please - Don't leave us hanging here - what end did Cankles choose?!)

But seriously folks - thanks for reading. I have fun here, even though my posts have slacked off over the past year or so. I have a number of them lined up for the next week or two, so I hope you find them beneficial, informative, interesting, important and very attractive.