Category: Current Events (Page 6 of 9)

I’m seriously annoyed with the press coverage devoted to the oil gusher.  BP is bad, bad, bad.  Evil they are.  No wait, they are incompetent, lazy, greedy corporate bastards at best, evil fish killing, baby seal clubbing, agents of the apocalypse at worst.  It’s stuck in my craw, I tells ya, this BP bashing.  It’s so convenient to sit on our asses and bash bash bashidy bash.

Where does our complicity in this spill start for the average global citizen?  How do we, as a society, divorce ourselves from the problems that arise when we are addicted in a gluttonous fashion to free flowing black crude?  We need cheap food, because we demand value.  Farmers must consolidate their production farther and farther from the centers of consumption.  They must use fertilizers fabricated from petroleum, transport it long distances using petroleum, to supermarkets lit with electricity derived from petroleum, purchased by consumers driving their little metal bubbles powered by petroleum.  It’s in our plastics, toys, cars, winter warmth, food, and freedom.

Oil is in our freedom?!  Quick get a skimmer to get that shit out of there.  You can’t, and you know it.  It has flowed into America’s freedom wetlands, soaked into the sand of liberty, and been choked down the gullets of our winged agents of change.  Its slimy mess has turned to a thick oozing muck and seeped in so deep, extraction is impossible.

BP is evil though, we muse, and we continue to sit and wring our hands about how bad Big Oil is and how good we are because we care about the fishies, and the birdies, and the little shimpies, and those poor shrimping families that can’t feed themselves now.  Oh boo hoo; let’s go to Wal-Mart and buy a bigger TV so we can watch bluray.

Forget the news coverage.  Forget BP.  This tragedy makes two things clear:

1. We are addicted to oil, and it is our collective fault, not only BP’s.
2. We should not be doing deep water drilling at all if we can’t manage a worst case scenario.  To paraphrase Ralph Nader,  oil drilling currently seems to be unsafe at any depth.

when the Brit is the tannest guy in the room.

With all the wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning health care reform, I don’t know why we just don’t start with something simple.  It is simple, people.  Fix what’s broken.  We do not have to over-complicate this.  Proponents of reform have been testifying mightily about the insurance industry’s agent provocateurs at town hall meetings, their paid ads denouncing choice, and their furious lobbying to crush health care reform.

I have a solution, though, something they would hate, and something they would not be able to combat. The public would love it, because in it, everyone could see themselves.  Everyone could see that there but for the grace of God, go I.

All it would take to start would be one law – one little stinking law.  And there is precedent for this type of law, the kind of law that says, if you want access to this market you can’t discriminate.

Have a store on Mainstreet?  You can’t refuse business to someone because of the color of their skin.  It’s my store, you say.  I can do what I damn well please.  If I don’t want to serve a certain type of person, it is my right.  It’s my store.

A-ha, I say, it’s not exactly your store.  You paid money for it, yes, a pecuniary outlay to build your establishment, but there are other costs too, costs paid by this town.  The town maintains the road that goes in front of your store, the cables that bring electricity, communications, the water treatment plant and distribution system that brings it to your faucet.  We the people have to look at your establishment in our society, in our town, on our Mainstreet, and we have to ask ourselves:  Are we better off for allowing this space to be used by you?  If you don’t let black people in your store, then we will revoke your right to do business here.

We won’t shoulder the cost of your discrimination.  It is too high.

Ownership is a lie.  Operating a business is an implied social contract with certain responsibilities, duties, and burdens.

So, here’s what I propose:  Pass a law making it illegal to deny coverage or raise rates based on a pre-existing condition.

The commons, this commons that we call the US, is the platform upon which business operates.  We the people own the platform, and given some basic rules, we allow people to operate businesses upon that infrastructure.

It has been said that people do not have a “right” to health care.  I counter that corporations and businesses do not have a right to yield infinite profits at the expense of the margins.  If you do business in this fair land of ours, there are certain liabilities, responsibilities that you must shoulder.  There are going to be very sick people among us.  Those very sick people deserve the protection of a just society.  They deserve to be subsidized by those that never get a runny nose.  They deserve to be subsidized by the stock holders of the insurance companies, and the great mass of caring and decent people within our borders.

“It sucks to be you.” Is not an acceptable response to the unfortunate circumstances of a cronic, debilitating, or otherwise serious and incurable medical condition.

If it’s illegal to deny coverage or raise rates based on pre-existing conditions, I think it goes a long way to delivering justice to those burdened unfairly by a simple and cruel twist of fate.  Let’s look after our sick, shall we?  Let’s ease their suffering and we can start with a very simple and easy to understand piece of legislation.

SAN FRANCISCO – An American linguistics student traveling in northern Iraq didn’t go on an ill-fated hiking trip because he had a cold — a twist of fate that prevented him from mistakenly wandering into Iran where his three friends were reportedly detained.

“Dude, we’re going to hike into the northern territory today – see if we can fuck with the border guards.”

“Um, I’m not feeling so well.  You guys go ahead without me.”

“Whatever – It’s gonna be a blast, pussy.  You can be lame if you want.  Cya.  Let’s roll.”

I think what he was really suffering from was an acute case of Not-Stupid.

I shall forever honor the tip of the sword, for how could I but honor such a perfect edge. It is as clean and sharp and brilliant as anything has ever been. No, my rancor is held for the dirty paw that wields it with such vulgarity and dishonor.

I am frequently asked if I would spit on the blade for its acts, its dealing of death, its bloodshed, or its willingness to do violence. What sort of fool asks such a thing? It does what it was designed to do: slice and slay.

Ah, but to throw hot spittle unto the beady-eyed twit that waves it around like a bright red banner, a beautiful sash to adorn his craven soul. If I could but spit in his eye, I would.

For the generation of swords whose surfaces are pitted with rust, dripping wet with the saliva of the masses, I spit on this troll for you.

Since I started as a chaplain in the juvenile prison system in Puerto Rico, about 5-6 years ago, there have only been a couple of kids that sent chills through me. There was a deadness in their eyes, something that made me immediately think, "God, I hope I don’t ever find myself face to face with this kid and on the wrong end of a gun." My mind flashed to the cold feeling of a pistol barrel thrust to the back of my head as I am carjacked. I took too long, I looked at him wrong, or he just wanted me out of the way. In any case, he pulled the trigger looking through me with those dead eyes. He didn’t care if I lived or died, didn’t really matter at all. I was not a person, just a thing, a plaything and in his way.  I was between him and what was now HIS car. Look at that, bullet holes. This thing got blood all over me. The holes look cool though. Let me dump it by the side of the road, wipe myself off.

Those were the thoughts that went through my mind on two occasions. Sometimes I meet with kids who are sullen, withdrawn, unresponsive, but there’s still something there, fear, trepidation, low self image. When I asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, they would say, "I dunno." When asked what their talents were, they would say none. Friends? Dunno. People you admire? None.

There was still something though.  It’s hard to try to pry something positive out of the experience, but I never felt like I wasn’t talking to a person, a real living breathing, but hurting and damaged person.

These other two that I met, though, I don’t know what they were, but I only remember never wanting to see them again.  They seemed to be soulless zombies, walking dead, animated bodies with nothing inside, no flickering light.

I am reminded of this after the Virginia Tech shooting and all the information about the shooter, Cho Seung Hui by all accounts, a sullen loner.

We all know people who keep to themselves, who aren’t sociable, friendly, or engaging. It’s not often, however, that we say to ourselves, I’m afraid of this person. I’m afraid he will do something horrible as was the case of the VT shooter. He had creeped out his teachers, his classmates. There was something not just sad about him but deadly.

I read the "plays" he had written, supposedly violent and disturbing. I didn’t find the violence disturbing. They were not actually very violent, in fact.

The plays were disturbing to me for their lack of natural dialog and oddness of language. The interaction between the characters was just wrong, weird, not natural. The anger wasn’t natural. It seemed stilted, like written by a small child with no understanding of conflict, someone stunted developmentally. His plays sounded to me like they had been written by someone from another culture, an alien with no comprehension of how a domestic dispute might go down and what might be said. So, while the plays had violent themes, what was disturbing was how far they missed their marks connecting that rage and emotion.

Cho Seung Hui couldn’t emote or understand emotion or have any empathy.  Maybe he sensed it.  Maybe he knew he couldn’t connect and it drove him mad.

Like those scary kids that I met, my only conclusion is that some people do not have the ability to see other’s pain, emotion, or feel a connection of any kind with the world around them. Are they born that way as psychopaths or shaped as sociopaths by abuse or violence and then become cold, disconnected, and inhuman?