What, Me Worry?

I admit that I admire General Michael V. Hayden. He is surely the most brilliant person I have ever met. (Don’t get too excited. I doubt the General remembers me from our short encounter over five years ago. Even so, I could tell then that he was one sharp guy.) I watched his press conference on C-SPAN last week and then read the transcript of his briefing on the internet later. If you’re interested, you can read about all the details of this stuff somewhere else.

But I must be awfully dumb since as smart as he is, he still left me wondering.

In his brief before the National Press Club on Jan 23rd, the brilliant General tried to convince us all that the President’s eavesdropping decrees were legal and constitutionally reasonable. He said clearly that this was a focused attempt to catch the bad guys. He assured us that our privacy is not in danger. Based solely on the General’s pedigree and credibility, we should believe him when he says that. Nobody knows what’s going on better than he does.

Besides being brilliant, the General is a true modern military man. He does what he’s legally ordered to do. That “legally” word is important. The General has been following and giving orders for over 30 years. He knows that there’s no excuse for executing unlawful orders. We all know today that both the leader and the follower share the responsibility for knowing what to do in these cases.

In fact, according to a common understanding of Articles 90, 91, and 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), military members have the duty to disobey orders from their superiors if those orders do not comply with the U.S. Constitution or the UCMJ itself.

Smart men like the General are very familiar with things like that. They’ve heard of Nuremberg and My Lai. They know when their ass is on the line in these cases. They simply can not follow on order to commit a crime and beg forgiveness or claim ignorance later.

But in this particular case, I found it remarkable that the General informed us that he went to great lengths to ensure this particular order was in fact lawful. Before acting, he said he asked and received the counsel of three different experts on the legality of such affairs. All three gave him the thumbs up.

Like I said, he’s a sharp fellow. I have no doubt that he would have resisted if the lawyers had told him something different. And I think he is so fortunate to be in a position where he has the time to consider all the implications behind such an order, to even ask for some help in making sense of it. Most military folks don’t have that kind of time or the guts to really think about things before they must act.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed that kind of extraordinary premeditated behavior from smart guys like the General. He said that when the events of 9-11 unfolded, he even took the time to call his wife and check on his children before getting back to work. That’s exactly the kind of cool-headed thing that smart guys do. While everyone else is scrambling around and looking silly, smart guys always make the time to check on their own before saddling up and setting off on the chase.

The General is intimately familiar with the people who follow his orders. He says the folks who follow this unique order even work under a banner which reminds them who they are working for on a daily basis. He says they have a bible, of sorts, concerning precisely these kinds of concerns called USSID 18 and it is constantly on everyone’s mind.

While some of us may think this order sure sounds like the old “Shoot first, ask questions later” kind of thing, he assures us that is not the case. The General is comfortable with the fact that the people who are doing this for him are like him and are very aware of their legal limitations.

The General has done his homework, he knows his people and he knows his stuff. He even argued confidently with one of the reporters at the briefing about the exact words written in our Constitution.

The General knows he can’t violate our 4th Amendment right against “unreasonable search and seizure”. He believes what he is doing is reasonable and therefore not a crime. Admittedly, he refused to tackle the “probable cause” requirement for warrants contained in that same amendment but clearly he checked all this out, the answer was good enough for him and it should be good enough for us. He even clearly stated, “Don’t worry!”

So what am I worried about?

The mere fact that a smart man like General Hayden admits that he worried about the legality of this order at first makes me worry about it, too.

MEB

What the Lord Made

One of the most intriguing aspects of Superman is that he lives a double life. During most of the day, he is the mild mannered Clark Kent. When there’s trouble, he transforms into a superhuman crime stopper.

For any normal person, carrying the burden of ego and selfishness as we do, we wonder how anyone can humbly go back to being Clark Kent at the end of the day.

In the movie, What the Lord Made, we have a Superman in the form of Vivian Thomas. Yet, there is a bitter twist to his Clark Kent experience. He is not allowed to transform himself completely in the light of day. During his time, he couldn’t just find any old phone booth and change his appearance. Even when handed his superman uniform, in the form of a doctor’s coat, people don’t see him for what he really is so he toils in obscurity and humiliation.

They don’t see him because his double life exists in two very different worlds. His original world is a dark, uninviting world where expectations are kept low, where the men humble themselves just to walk down the street, and where brothers must argue for simple justice. The other world, the world which Vivian Thomas solves all problems in superhuman fashion, is a clean, white world where rich men attend loud parties, catered by lower beings of Vivian’s color, and who congratulate each other for being on top of the heap. Unlike Superman, who only retreats in his private world, Vivian’s burden is to go unnoticed as Clark Kent in both of his worlds constantly.

And, unlike Superman, in spite of the great work he performs, the stark invisibility of his double-life constantly gnaws away at the goodness in Vivian Thomas’ very human soul.

It is hard to concentrate on the understated story line when watching What the Lord Made. The long battle to advance medical procedures we now take for granted is mesmerizing. During some of the more technical scenes, I had to remind myself that this was not just about medical miracles but, in a more personal way, maybe even more importantly about how the best and the brightest in our society dealt with the collision of these two different worlds.

And, although it’s an old story, I think few others have told it quite as well.

It is always a joy to watch a film with actors giving superior performances. Alan Rickman becomes the powerful Alfred Blalock, a driven and relentless surgeon who is aware that his ambitions have taken over all other personal considerations. Before this movie, I did not know of Mos Def, the actor who played Vivian Thomas. I was instantly attracted to the modest strength of his character. While Blalock’s voice was pompous and degrading, Thomas perfectly spoke in memorably soft, comforting tones.

In the end, I found this movie to be not unlike another one of my favorites, To Kill a Mockingbird. It has an accurate air of the past and a similar theme about the fight against social injustice. And it teaches us something about men who we hope will overcome ignorance to do the right thing.

However, the Atticus Finch in this case is not such a great man who stands out among his peers. He is perfectly downplayed as a more normal man of his times.

Rather than a leader in the struggle, the character of Doctor Blalock is as a duplicitous benefactor dressed in white. Although Blalock admits his own self-righteousness, when he is not encouraging Vivian, he is berating him while taking magazine-cover credit for Vivian’s superhuman skill. And, unless pushed, he never takes the opportunity to do the right thing.

In one crucial scene, Blalock is hosting a party of important doctors at his home. While humbly serving the guests, Vivian quietly intrudes upon the casual discussion of cardiac surgery, crossing the societal line of black silence among white people. It is so bold and surprising that Doctor Taussig, the white female lead of pediatrics whose own suffering of bias is only mildly broached in the same scene, turns to desperately ask Vivian, “Who in God’s world are you?”

This is the critical point where one might expect the modern benefactor to finally stand up for his protégé, to describe his importance to the work of medical research. This is where Clark Kent is forced to tell his secret. This is where Atticus would explain to Jem and Scout the true role of the mockingbird.

Sadly, this odd scene fades with that question left unanswered.

In what many will observe as the most riveting scene, Blalock imposes his will over the standard rules, defies the ignorance of his colleagues and orders Vivian to assist him in the operating room. But, we learn, even Blalock’s reluctant acceptance of Vivian’s role is self-serving and fails to fully answer the question.

Soon, that unanswered question becomes too much of a burden for the very human Vivian. Then, incredulously, Blalock has the gall to demand Vivian’s gratitude for even giving him a chance to work invisibly on such noteworthy projects. This leads to Vivian’s further retreat back into his dark world.

It is this bold demand for gratitude which cuts the bare flesh down to Vivian Thomas’ bones. As a somewhat belated post script to To Kill a Mockingbird, this story reminds us there was a time in our society when the majority could not understand why they did not earn the endless gratitude of the minority. The reason is, as Vivian and his brother explained, their grandfather had told them too many times that “freedom which isn’t really freedom” is unworthy of anyone’s gratitude.

With the help of his family, leaning on the strong shoulders of his wife, Vivian realizes his work was too important to leave in spite of such an ultimatum. He returns to Blalock with his hat in hand. “It’s not about you,” Vivian explains his desire to return, “it’s about the work.” Vivian thus rejects Blalock’s demands and accepts suffering humility in order to finish what he started, a story which we can all identify with and which has surely repeated itself over and over during our lifetimes.

After many years, we learn Vivian Thomas gets the recognition which he desired and which he earned. Some would say it all came a bit late but it came nonetheless. In the movie, it is sublimely suggested that the almost begrudging respect for Vivian was simply a sign of more modern times, a front door entrance bequeathed by a more enlightened government, that it all came to be with stunning speed and without much input from Vivian himself. The soft suggestion that the result is delivered by a woman, the same Doctor Taussig who earned her recognition a few decades earlier, is not lost in the translation.

But the director left enough evidence in the movie to recall that Vivian’s dark struggle with gratitude and recognition was a long and personal ordeal. When Vivian stands at the podium like the man he really is, visible in front of people of both worlds, he says thank you for finally seeing me as I am.

And it is the life-long blindness to Vivian’s contributions that even Blalock learns to regret, as do we all.

The Superman character is a favorite because it taps into one of our most secret desires. Deep down inside we want to do great things and earn the adulation of the public, then retreat and live normal lives when the day is done. Everyone wants to be the hero who no one suspects is living just next door. We like to remind ourselves when things are really low that someday, baby, someday justice will be served and people will recognize how good we really are.

Unlike the story of Superman, What the Lord Made is not a tale of overcoming that struggle with fancy or miraculous changes. It better defines the ups and downs of reality, dealing directly with the setbacks of bias by men who work against us, of a Lord who seems to sometimes forget us. It shows how we struggle on, making mistakes both in private and social encounters, suffering our injustices and the routine accusations of having either straw or shit for brains. It shows how it takes a mighty effort to stay focused throughout such a life with hope that our society will somehow wise up.

We might have a classic movie in What the Lord Made, a classic more about the realities found in To Kill a Mockingbird than Superman, a story that reminds us to not give up on the hope that even normal men can eventually bring balance to the world and do the right things.

MEB

The Preface & Priority

It seems rather silly to suggest that I must warn you that you may find some of the following monologue to be offensive. Without a doubt, those who have suffered the most wicked and cruel of human crimes will read some of the passage which follows and be instantly outraged by a flood of horrible memories and fear. And, honestly, even if you have been lucky in your life, if you do not find the hint of the implication here somewhat disturbing then perhaps you should check yourself.

Even with that stated warning, it is important to note that I do not apologize for what follows. I’m just reminding the reader that these words represent thoughts and dreams and I can’t offer any regret for these kinds of things. Thoughts and dreams are not mistakes and have no inherent power to be dishonest. Thoughts and dreams can’t be bought and they are always true even when foolish.

My thoughts and dreams are connected but I consider them very different from each other.

Conscious thoughts are dangerous. I am aware that thoughts can be the ultimate weapons. While not inherently dishonest, as I’ve said, thoughts can be fashioned by man into dishonest and unreasonable behavior. It comes to my mind that when thoughts inevitably turn to “What’s in it for me?”, focusing as they do on the selfish interests of man, that they inspire the most dishonest of action.

A man, left to his own thoughts, incapable of or refusing to reign in his thoughts, will naturally turn inward away from the family of mankind and will do the most horrible of things.

After centuries of trial and error in the study of human behavior, we may have learned that laws are necessary to bring order from the chaos. The danger of one man’s thoughts is possibly why our society encourages self-discipline.

That said, thoughts and dreams should be protected, in my opinion. If I were king for a day, the thoughts and dreams of every person would be a constitutional right. I would defend thoughts and dreams with a passion only witnessed in the fiercest of NRA members. Yes, you can only pry my thoughts and dreams from my cold, dead body.

Whether and how I act on those thoughts and dreams are different matters entirely.

As opposed to thoughts that must be constantly checked, my dreams are a particularly unfettered joy of life, a much better experience than going to the movies. My dreams are vivid, full of color, eerily beautiful music, new languages and the oddest of people doing the weirdest things. My dreams match the best efforts of Fellini and Disney combined.

My dreams do not threaten anyone else but can be quite internally painful. Often, my dreams wrench me from a dark and unreal slumber that warns of near and plausible peril, racing me back into the screaming sunlight and a blunt uneven awareness where all fears, however possible, suddenly, thankfully, seem a bit more distant than they did the day before.

You see, most importantly, my dreams are helpful to me. My thoughts may be a series of endless, open-ended questions, never reaching conclusion or answer. But even my most disturbing and offensive dreams have an unrestrained calming effect, smoothing over my internal hard edges, bringing some needed balance into my world that I simply can’t get any other way.

My dreams force me to question my thoughts in a mode that I can’t recreate when awake.

I recently suffered through the dream-story which follows:

MY friends call me “Buck” but my Lieutenant calls me Corporal. Understanding the natural order in the Army, I am not upset with the way the Lieutenant maintains his distance from his men. We do what we’re told and he’s the one that has to tell us. He can’t be our buddy, calling us by our first name and all, if he’s got to do that all the time.

That makes sense to me.

And I do what I’m told and I’m pretty darn good at that. I think the Lieutenant likes it when I go running off in any direction he orders at any given time to do whatever little chore he may have thought necessary without any complaining from me. And I like telling him that whatever he wanted done is done.

I think sometimes he’s even a bit surprised by how we all do that so easily. Maybe in his world or the world of some other higher ups, folks wouldn’t act like we do. Maybe others would question it all a bit more. But me and the guys know our role in life and will laugh in the quiet times, recalling the concerned look on his face when he gives those crazy orders, after we all yell “Yes, sir!” and then run off into the woods like wild men.

I think part of the fact that we laugh so much is because we know we are completely safe. We aren’t a part of one of those companies where the commanding officer really knows how to start some shit. Our good old Lieutenant is as thick as they come regarding maneuvers and we are sure he will keep us out of trouble. We are extremely pleased to go running off in the wrong direction any time he suggests it. In fact, as is often noted by the guys around the campfire at night, we’ll probably serve the entire campaign without ever seeing any real fighting thanks to him.

Being just a corporal serving with the National Army, working for a thick-headed lieutenant, I think it’s odd that my duties are constant. It’s odd to me because, honestly, I spend a whole bunch of time not doing squat while I’m so busy. I can’t really put my finger on it but at some point that fact started rubbing me sort of raw. It was during one of the quiet times, a definite lull in the action, when I decided to take advantage of the respite, put my poor brain to some use and started reading a good book.

This book, I don’t know or can’t remember where I got it, but it was written by an old fellow who was there when this whole mess started. He knew a lot of the other old guys at the time, had met the folks who made the speeches and who signed the papers and what not, and was not afraid for some reason to tell the story as he saw it.

I thought it was significant that he didn’t rely on a lot of hard dates or tales of what happened after it all went down. Those things always seem so pointless to me, anyway. I guess he expected we, the readers, must already know when it all moved along. The whole theme of his story was what happened before, how things came to be, what was going through everyone’s mind before it became real and I found all of that incredibly interesting.

I read that there was a point in time when it seemed on the outside like everyone was unsure of what to do. They really didn’t know how it would all turn out. And in this story there were folks who, well, they really didn’t care. Some of these guys just wanted to do something and others didn’t want to do anything and it was all very confusing. But, stuck somewhere in the middle of this pack or maybe on the edge, depending on how you look at it, I suppose, there were these really pissed off guys who definitely wanted to start some shit and they knew how to go about it.

Oh, and then there were these long debates, lots and lots of argument about it all. As it was told, these old guys were apparently prone to complaining about everything and would definitely not make good soldiers, in my opinion. If our company put up with that kind of endless squabble, there would be hell to pay, no doubt.

But soon enough, the story went, these loud pissed off fellows got everybody in line and suddenly declarations came together and everybody was signing their name to it all. The old guy who wrote the story sort of made fun of why this guy or that guy actually committed to the program but it was amazing to me how these leader guys, sometimes by hook or crook, pushed all that confusion away. And, I have to admit, I laughed to myself thinking that it was a damn good thing our old Lieutenant wasn’t there at that time since we’d probably still be running around in circles wondering what to do if he had been.

But, let me tell you, it was right at that time that I was jolted back to reality without warning. It was then that I heard a gunshot as I was sitting there behind a little mound of dirt reading that book and laughing to myself. It was then that our unit came face to face with the enemy for the first time.

I remember I hastily dropped my book and instinctively strapped my helmet to my head. Curiosity overcame my fear as I crawled slowly up the side of my little mound of dirt to look in the direction of the echoing gunshot. Peering over the mound, to my surprise I saw a small gaggle of the enemy emerge loudly from the trees into a grassy clearing a few hundred feet in front of me. A group of three men and two women, clearly not members of the National Army as they were all dressed shabbily, stopped running to catch their breath and it seemed like they were urgently looking for shelter or a quick way out of their troubles. I could see they were all armed so I slid as quietly as I could back down my dirt mound to retrieve my rifle.

Breaking the delicate silence which I suddenly yearned for, I heard the Lieutenant call out in a high voice from a distance somewhere behind my position. “Corporal Jack to the left! Corporal Downs to the right! Corporal Buck to the center!”

Christ! I clenched my teeth and shook my head in disbelief as I inched my way back up the dirt mound. That fool Lieutenant wanted me in the center and for once I couldn’t tell him that, by God, I was already there.

Once I was back up the mound, I could see a determined Downsie in the right spot and Jacks gave me a good thumbs-up to the left. That was such a sight! Through all my travels, Jacks and Downsie had always been there for me and this day was no different in that respect. I could always count on those two buddies, I thought. And, gee whiz, in spite of the fact that my own squad was nowhere to be seen, by some lucky coincidence we had the enemy effectively surrounded. I couldn’t have drawn it up any better if I’d tried. Luck was with me that day, indeed.

Just when I thought this was surely a lucky event, I turned and saw the black eyes of one of the enemy men in the grassy field and he looked straight back at me with explosive surprise and fear. Time froze for a split second as blood and nerves surged in anticipation while everyone realized what kind of dark situation we had all fallen into and then, just as quick, all hell broke loose.

I raised my rifle and fired as quickly as I could, not seeing an inch beyond the smoke and flame that shot out of it. According to what I heard, Downsie and Jacks did the same. I couldn’t see anything but apparently one or several had hit the mark as our firing field went quickly silent.

When the smoke had cleared, we cautiously closed in on the field to find out what we had done. By the time Jacks, Downsie and I converged, the enemy men had scampered away, presumably fleeing into the woods where we never would find them. One of the enemy ladies lay dead and still bleeding on a large rock, at least one bullet having rudely pierced her skull. The other enemy gal was on the ground, unharmed but curled up with her arms around her knees, sobbing uncontrollably without making a sound as if the air had completely escaped her lungs.

Jacks, Downsie and I calmly compared notes for a moment, wondering which of us had actually made the shot on the dead enemy girl but we couldn’t say for sure. We agreed it had all happened too fast for our recollection. We accepted that we would each take a third of the credit for the kill.

Well, eventually the other boys showed up to inspect the damage and the live enemy girl was dragged up and taken as prisoner. Once satisfied there was nothing left to be accomplished at that spot, we all then retreated to camp where, as the evening sun began to set, the hard news was relayed to our anxious Lieutenant.

Nobody could say what would be done with this enemy girl and that unnerved everyone a little bit. One boy said he tried to give her some water but she refused it. She just laid there by the campfire, tied up and curled up and silently crying.

I settled down and relaxed for a moment. In my mind, I was sure the news was at that time getting back to headquarters where a rational decision would be made. I was sure all the bigwigs would figure out what to do. I hated to just wait like that, not knowing what order to hope for and I could tell that lots of things were going through everybody’s mind as they tried to determine what it was they should or could do to make the situation better. I then realized that in the confusion of the moment I had left my book back behind the dirt mound. But, more importantly, I had the one gnawing fear that haunts all military men that if too much time elapsed during this determination process then the chance of a poor decision was highly likely.

Then I gladly noticed a few of the boys had gathered around the Lieutenant and I expected the word had come down quicker than I thought. So, hoping for the best, I meandered over next to them to listen to the result.

When I closed in with the meeting, I saw that the Lieutenant’s face had that peculiar quality we had all laughed about on previous lighter occasions. Here, I thought, was a guy about to tell us something stupid and he knew it.

At first, he tried to cover with the suggestion that we should immediately go prancing off into the night woods in search of the fleeing enemy men. I say again, he tried this at first but he did not really try to convince us. For once, I presume, he actually observed the astonishment on our faces when he suggested this particularly stupid idea and immediately concluded that such action would be better put off until the light of day.

Waving that foolishness off quickly, he jumped right into the real matter that faced us regarding the enemy girl. He said something fast and unintelligible to my ears but something that everyone else around me seemed to hear and register. I quietly asked the boy standing next to me what was said but I caught a glimpse of the Lieutenant’s face again and realized that whatever was said was not to be repeated and I suddenly feared that I didn’t really want to know.

I could feel that the group now standing around the Lieutenant was growing in a common ugly purpose, lighted by a campfire that now burned brighter than before, feeding off his dreamlike orders and preparing for something far more wicked than running madly off into an illusory woods.

Then I heard him say, clearly and without hesitation, presumably to answer my question, “There will be no prisoners taken.”

In somewhat of a shock at such an icy realization, I pushed through the crowd around the Lieutenant and faced him.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Exactly what I said,” he replied slowly.

“You can’t be serious!” I said excitedly.

“Corporal Buck,” he stated firmly, “do not question my orders.”

I could not see the boys standing behind me but I witnessed the Lieutenant’s beady little eyes dancing around the group and I could tell nobody was willing to defend my insubordination. I concluded they were all in lock-step with him.

Wondering how I might change the mood, I smiled slyly and approached him carefully from a different angle.

“Lieutenant, have you read this book, called The Preface and Priority of such and such and such?” the words of my inquiry trailing off into a terrible, mumbling nothingness.

“Yes, of course” he replied. He corrected me by adding, “The actual title of that book is The Preface and Priority of such and such and such, and I’ve read it many times.”

Confounding me for a second, I shook my head clear as even his description of the title of this work was blurred by the blood and fear now pumping loudly in my ears.

I spoke as clearly as I could muster, “Well, don’t you think that maybe if some of us have an objection to your order that we should voice that objection, sir? Or, do you think, the lessons in our history suggest we should just keep our opinions to ourselves?”

He grimly stated again, “My order stands, Corporal Buck, and if you recall, it is your duty to obey my order.”

“Yes, sir,” I responded, my head spinning with confusion. “But, sir, isn’t our duty to free ourselves from the threat posed by our enemy? And isn’t this enemy girl eliminated as any further threat to our group? What purpose would we serve now by killing her?”

Agitated and angry, he shouted at me, “We do not take prisoners, Corporal Buck!”

Before I could utter another word, I felt Downsie grab me by the shoulder and pull me back.

“No more worries, Lieutenant” said Downsie. “She’ll be dead by morning.”

“And,” added Jacks with a menacing grumble, “we’ll not be finished with her until then.”

I turned and looked at the faces of my crew, Jacks and Downsie and all the other boys. I realized there was no turning them back. They were determined and they were sure of what they were about to do.

They all quickly faded into the dark and I felt as lost as I’ve ever felt. I realized I was stranded in a surreal wilderness with men who outwardly seemed somewhat normal and dependable, only willing to do what they were told up until now, but who had quickly taken the liberty to cook up the most evil thoughts all afternoon and then jump at the first chance to act on them.

Suddenly, with no other recourse, I shamefully pondered how they would actually go about it. I wondered how they would position her. Would they bend her over a rock or some structure or would they tie her up, arms and legs flailed out? Would they really enjoy sharing another person’s ravaged body among themselves, unthinkingly culminating their most violent desires? Would they force everyone, even me, to join in? God forbid, if I did, would I find some dreadful enjoyment in it myself?

The thought disgusted me, intrigued me and made me ill all at the same time.

As the evening descended and the light of the burning campfire pin-wheeled into even further darkness, I walked slowly out of those woods and wondered if this is what all men are made of. I could convince myself that all men are not rapists or murderers. Clearly and thankfully, that’s just not the case. There are brave men, cautious men and really pissed off men but not all of them act in such a despicable way. But maybe, I feared, there’s a bit of rapist and murderer hiding in all men just waiting for the order to release.

Then I screamed and screamed and screamed.

And then, I woke up.

MEB

On The Trail of Happiness

The question first came to me when I graduated from High School. In my High School yearbook, one of the stupid little questions asked of every senior was, “What do you want to be in the future?” or some such words of the same general line of inquiry which I can’t recall exactly. By my count, the most often used response to this question from the seniors that year was the simple phrase, “I just want to be happy.”

Not really wanting anything that specific from my future at the time, I considered this vague response by over half of the normal people I knew to be very intriguing and I wondered what they specifically meant by “happy”. I wondered what their definition of happiness was or what string of events would bring them joy. I wondered if they could even understand true happiness at such a young age. I wondered how they were going to go about bringing this quality to their life. I wondered if small presents of happiness would suffice or if a constant chain of happiness was their goal. Most importantly, I suppose, I wondered if I had been left out of a critical discussion during my senior year or perhaps overslept and missed a class that actually would have explained all this to me.

As a result of my confusion over my peers’ odd attitude, for many moons now I have had an insatiable obsession with the definition of happiness.

I just deleted (which should make you happy) a very long passage describing how I danced around this subject when I was younger. Instead of detailing that here, I will just jump to the point. When I was young, I would ask people about or make a note of their definition of happiness in very subtle ways. I never came out with the question verbatim but always seemed to get an interesting response in return from people who were very pleased to explain things to me in a general way. Anyone who knew me then can probably see that in me now so I won’t go any further into it.

In the last 5 or 6 years, however, I’ve become rather bold with my inquiry. Maybe that’s because I’m getting older and worry that I don’t have the time to play games anymore, I don’t know. I do know as a result of my more recent direct technique that asking a person what makes him happy or asking him to define happiness in his own words point blank is often uncomfortable for that person.

The point is that although a person may quickly respond that, yes, happiness is a worthy goal, that same person may have incredible difficulty describing what happiness really is.

Maybe that’s because people don’t think about it so much as time goes on or maybe they just never sit down and try to come up with their own definition. I also understand that for some people, happiness is not the goal of life. For them, effectively dealing with the many unhappy events in life seems to be the trick. For some, happiness is not dependable while unhappiness clearly is.

Yet, I fear that sometimes painting a strict definition of any such attitude or emotion may cause some people to negatively review or rationalize their behavior towards obtaining their version of happiness. It’s easier, sort of a stock self-preservation measure in casual conversations I suppose, to leave the definition as cloudy as possible.

Either way, it seems there’s no news here, the anecdotal evidence I’ve collected over the years points to the same conclusions drawn by the most recent scientific surveys that I’ve read on this subject. You can read about all that somewhere else, if you like.

Generally speaking, people often define true happiness with a trendy explanation of “the zone” one enters when happily occupied with a pleasant and challenging task of some sort. The task in this sense is loosely defined as anything from fishing to bricklaying. When absorbed in this manner, people say, an odd thing happens. It seems as though time flies. And people are never happier than when time zips right along.

It now seems to me that this strange effect on time, or actually our perception of time, is a key to unraveling all my clues to the definition of happiness.

I understand what people are saying here. I know that I must truly enjoy writing because while I’m doing it I lose all my normal concepts or standard recognition of time. (Just ask my wife, numerous mundane tasks are left ignored while I’m occupado in the office.)

Yet, I also understand the relativity issue regarding time. Time doesn’t really move faster or slower but this appreciation is relative to any person at any pole on the earth.

I am aware that while I’ve been happily pecking away at the keyboard, there are those people in this world who have at the same time suffered a dreadfully painful few minutes which seemed to last a lifetime to them. While I may be cheerfully busy, there are prisoners counting the bricks in their cells, ditch diggers bending down for two or three more shovels of dirt, school children anxiously awaiting recess, and harried office workers eagerly anticipating every millisecond they get closer to happy hour.

And, oh, well, I have suffered the opposite of happiness as well. I know there are times when I’ve hung on every second, stuck in a miserable time trap, while others finished off the back nine or happily engaged themselves with brain surgery.

As a weak example, I flew for many years and enjoyed most of it. Yet, I do recall that as events repeated themselves over and over I began to find myself in that lonely spot of time during those precious few moments just before landing. For some reason, about 5 to 10 minutes before final touchdown, my internal clock would wind up and begin an agonizingly slow count down.

Anxiety, laced with the fear of unknown future, seems to make time drag and results in a commonly accepted form of unhappiness.

So, after review, it seems I have wasted a lot of time searching for the definition of happiness. I admit that the years flew by rather pleasurably during this journey but I should have been looking for a better definition of time all along.

Cheers,
Mb

The Modern Constitutional

I spent most of the final week of 2005 thinking about the implications of changes to the 14th Amendment.

Thanks so much to everyone for that mind storm but hopefully I didn’t run through too many stoplights while driving around town with my head spinning over all this. (I haven’t read about any mysterious hit and runs in the local papers the last few days so I may be safe.)

As a side, I still feel it’s wonderful to be able to find a wealth of information regarding such curious things right here at my fingertips. We are living in a wonderful age.

The more I read, followed the crooked trail of clues and pondered this whole mess, the more often I came upon the name F. James Sensenbrenner and folks like Tancredo as mere toadies of the same. These are the same guys that are using Homeland Security and emergency hurricane funding bills as riders to pay for enhancements to the national bureaucracy, tattoo removal programs and federal screwworm studies. (The blind bums in my state decided to spend their national pork on attacking the evil Goth culture that is so prevalent among the kiddies today ... gee whiz.)

These guys are the money men. They got their mind on their money and their money on their mind. If nothing else, I come away with the sense that guys like this man F. James, grandson of the man who invented Kotex, have far too much influence in the halls of power.

Upon review, it seems all these toadies do have a few traits in common. They are mostly white, rich, well connected, and earned every deferment known to man in order to stay out of any dangerous or credible military service to their country during Vietnam. They all have the likeness of John Fogarty’s Fortunate Son. They are also mostly Republican, which means they are members of the majority, they feel they own the federal government, they share the unenviable burden of leading our nation’s peasants by the nose into a better future, and they feel they have carte blanche to do whatever they want with our laws while expecting little outright retribution from the general public.

Oh, yeah, the theme seems to be if you argue or debate their agenda, you will be labeled an opportunist, dishonest or reprehensible, or simply unpatriotic, and the meeting will be gaveled abruptly to an end.

Holding on to this Sensenbrenner guy for just a moment, according to what I read he is not really the big meanie that I make him to be. He is not in essence a bad man. But the way he goes about things is not to my liking. Mostly, I think, that’s just because he’s a fat cat politician and I’m not. (I also wonder about all our constitutional liberties that his toadies seem intent on trampling or altering, in the name of national security, the same liberties which their very own ancestors surely took great advantage of.)

But I did find it interesting to learn that the third highest financial contributor to The Honorable man from Wisconsin was his old pal Bud Selig in his post as the Commissioner of MLB.

Now, this fact is significant to all of us fans of baseball. I can understand now why, when asked about steroids in MLB, the Judiciary Chairman regularly pooh-poohs his response with sayings like, “Well, it’s a problem everywhere, with football, soccer, badminton and ping pong, etc, etc.” And considering the charge to protect MLB’s legal standing, I can see why it might be important for the Commish to have a few friends in Washington just like this slimy dude. But, man, I thought, how and where does the Commish get the money to contribute to politicians like Sensenbrenner?

Then I remembered, oh, yeah, idiots like me give it to him.

Now, back to the 14th.

My first concern is that it really is open to some interpretation. Reading the history of the 14th, it seems to me it was written some 150 years ago for a very good reason. Primarily, I read that it was to refute Dred Scott, thus eliminate any legal argument that Negroes or Redskins could not be American citizens. As amendments typically go, the words in it were somewhat of a compromise among the different factions of the day. The historical references indicate that at first it may have been as simple as a declaration of fact, “If you are born on American soil, then you are an American.” But, along the way, it seems things like the problem with foreign ambassadors popped up and the words “under the jurisdiction of” were included.

You know, my first reaction is the same as yours: shut this door quickly. Play your games with Iraq and Afghanistan, toy with No Child Left Behind, we’ll clean up the mess later, but keep your damn fingers out of the Constitution. No, seriously, keep your damn fingers out of the Constitution!

Clearly, though, I believe one could argue that the culture and environment of immigration during the 1860’s under which this amendment was framed was significantly different and far more simple than the modern issues we enjoy with millions of illegal aliens, porous borders, need for security while considering complex international cooperation, etc.

I don’t believe history versus modernity should in itself set some grand precedent for changing the Constitution. If it does, we’d all be in trouble. I am no legal scholar but even I’d be unwilling to thrust that argument before the big wigs. Still, based on a completely different scenario of 2006 versus 1866, I can see how a precarious legal argument could transpire for a modern modification to the 14th. (Not the vague one the Tancredo Toads have chosen, however.)

In the meantime, I’ve tried to consider the question of why even bother with this amendment? Setting aside what is apparently the main point of Sensenbrenner’s Toadies, that being the danger of terrorist infiltration along the Mexican border, which makes no sense whatsoever regarding the bureaucracy of birth certificates, what possible motivation do they have or real (ie, money) problem could they fix by altering the constitutional definition of a citizen’s birthright?

(BTW, I am stuck with the idea here that anyone who truly thinks that changes to the Constitution or issuance of computer chip encoded id cards will prevent future terrorist attacks just doesn’t get the whole idea behind sleeper cells.)

According to what I’ve read, hidden in the language of bills like HR 698, the change they’re looking for would be to say that at least one of the newborn’s parents must be a US citizen for automatic citizenship to be granted…on the face of it, not an unusual demand, I don’t think, and certainly not unprecedented around the world. In fact, after conducting a very casual survey among my fellow Turkey Hunters at the Town Tavern, I found no objections to this idea at all.

(Admittedly, one has to be very cautious when presenting matters of Constitutional concern before the august patrons of the Town Tavern. In fact, I left out the whole part about what the 14th Amendment really says when I loosely remarked about this problem at the bar. Further, I was offered some very interesting alternative suggestions as standard criteria for determining citizenship…I’ll offer that up in a separate message some day. But the bottom line is, I didn’t hear anyone arguing for immigrant rights when the subject was broached. Something tells me that perhaps my Turkey Hunter pals are not as PC as our representatives in the Beltway.)

Bowing to that PC concern, perhaps, I don’t think Sensenbrenner, Tancredo or the other toadies have spelled out “the agenda” very clearly at all. You have to tie it in with their arguments on “Guest Worker” rules, RealID national id cards, etc, a wide far-reaching web of limitations, restrictions and corrections to the old rules that they want enacted.

I think the overall goal is not to stop illegals or even prevent infiltration but to stem the financial giveaways.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has openly advanced the idea that immigrant workers are important to the future of our economy. What is being bandied about on both sides of the aisle is how to make them more manageable and taxable. The in-crowd knows they can’t stop people from coming across the border and they don’t really want to. (Well, they can stop it, but they won’t as long as US businesses depend on it. Now, I’m not saying it’s just the PC crowd keeping this at bay. There are plenty of PR firms in the Beltway that could conjure up ways to sell border control to the public. Instead of just building a wall along outer edge of Arizona, they could construct a “National Protection Barrier” or call it a “Freedom Fence” and probably get away with it.)

Anyway, if they can’t really make us safe then they’ve go to do the next best thing and get a handle on the hidden cost of 99 cent eggplants. That means they have to make it harder for illegals to ride the backs of their kids while sucking healthcare and education dollars paid by legal citizens. It means they have to get back some of that lost tax revenue that illegals aren’t paying. Why? Because it costs lots and lots of money to take care of Mexican kids and it really pisses off average citizens who can’t afford to have their own teeth fixed. So, the answer is to remove that complaint by establishing a different process to “naturalize” immigrant workers. And the first step on that winding road is to more clearly define who is a citizen and who ain’t.

So, after a week of deep consideration, I agree with you. Although I think it’s quite possible we could see a change or even a brilliant argument in favor of it, altering the 14th won’t stop illegal immigration or “people smuggling” as it is most recently termed by the Toadies. Such change won’t protect the price of strawberries or even make life easier or better or safer for the average bum out there. But it probably will eventually create a few extra tax dollars for more important things like international war, improved federal tattoo removal programs and more modern screwworm studies.

On with 2006.

Paradise in the Light

Most Coasties think of Midwesterners as friendly, conservative and thrifty. There is normally some truth in that but let me tell ya all such concerns are tossed out the window during Christmas.

In fact, this is the time of year that the Midwesterner’s tendency to rudely push through the crowd and overindulge is allowed to take its natural course, prodded by the modern Advertiser and much to the satisfaction of the Wall Street Trader, I’m sure.

It’s during this time of year that a road trip to bustling Broadway which was deemed overly expensive and absolutely careless back in the dog days of July suddenly seems like a damned good idea.

And why the hell not? Everything suggests “Go For It” this time of year. The staid and elegant Plaza annually takes this opportunity transform into a garish, multicolored Christmas Dream Land and everyone flocks to see it.

It doesn’t end in the city as there’s one guy up in Paradise, MO, who lights up his town square every year too. I think the last count was something on the order of 40,000 bulbs on this one display.

I swear you can see the glow of Paradise off the clouds from about three miles away.

Not to be outdone by their neighbors, out here in the sticks simple people trot out every form of wooden, plastic and aluminum ornament to festoon their yards. Not satisfied with ordinary snowmen or even the standard waving Santa and mechanized head-bobbing deer, fantastic patriotic displays are also now in fashion.

US Flags glimmer in the night, Support Our Troops banners flash, and then there’s the guy out on I-29 who set aside a large part of his corn field to outline the bright ghostly images of a fighter plane, a Sherman tank and even a practically life-sized submarine which urges all who speed by to “Remember Those Who Serve”.

I think this patriotic strain, again, is very natural but fed by this same self-serving holiday indulgence. And it’s important to recognize that these kinds of “holiday patriot” displays in the Midwest are mostly home-made jobs. They aren’t sold at Target, they aren’t mass produced by corporate dolts who see an angle to increase company profit. It is, after all, the sons and daughters of these simple people who are walking the line. It is in their best interest to make us remember that.

Of course, I recently noticed the one guy around the corner who has also seen fit to take this chaotic opportunity of excessive display to raise his tattered Rebel flag. Anywhere else on the coast and there would probably be some hell to pay for that, I suppose. Well, during the holidays, give us Midwesterners an inch and someone will surely take a mile.

Thankfully the ambiguity of “Happy Holidays” never really took hold among the indulgence here, by the way, or at least it never had the same corporate boardroom meaning, anyway. Remember this is the home of Hallmark Cards and around here that phrase is used to neatly encompass the time from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. It is a simple, frugal way to cover all the bases. It may save some ink and surely saves a bit of bitter breath on cold day. Now we are instructed that it’s too PC or even considered “offensive” to the Christian right, the very ones who tried to sell us the holidays in the first place.

Well, no news here, boardroom decisions are generally stupid to begin with and rarely do they play well in “Peoria” as you’ve noted. “Peoria” is “Paradise” governed by an ugly reality which only dresses up once a year. While the lights may be seen shining off the low clouds at a distance, the boardroom and the proud members of the Christian right are apparently about as far from it as you can get.

But I am different than my fellow neighbor, as usual. I am a statistical oddity, I don’t buy mechanical reindeer, refuse to follow the trend and I, for one, am stunned into silence by the influence of these Christians. I see them really taking over all discussion, politic and personal, in a profound and an oppressive way.

And I’m pissed that I have no choice of representation among this tyranny other than the Christians or Wall Street. There is no other voice. There is no good voice.

And I’m really not wishing for a return to the good old days when Christmas was forced upon us, brought to us by the makers of Cabbage Patch dolls, Tonka and Norelco. I know too well what kind of madness we get from all of that.

But for crying out loud ... now I am offended by all Conservatives, West and East, when they claim to be offended by anything. Hypocritical Christians give me no place to turn and no relief from all the foolishness. They are clearly just as self-indulgent, looking for any angle to increase union membership. And I think it’s too late for them to reclaim Christmas, anyway. The holidays are just not only for conservatives anymore and I don’t think they were ever meant to be that way anyway.

It’s really sad. The last good Christmas apparently came and went and I didn’t even know it. It’s enough to make me want to run away and hide. I don’t even want to cook turkey and giblets this year, forget the figgy pudding, I just want it and so many other things to just pass along, get on with it quickly so we can return to our routine course with universal disaster and calamity. (This plays into my passive-aggressive nature, obviously.)

I tell you what, I can’t buy into the greed of Wall Street at all but I will compromise with the Christians on this if they’ll bend a little bit. I might even consider buying some season tickets (however unlikely) if they’d do just this one thing.

I will allow “LOVE” and “HOPE” to remain on Hallmark cards and the Christian team’s emblem. Those are pretty nice things and really necessary objectives everyone should be proud to salute. I think those things make sense, shouldn’t offend anyone and will still please Wall Street insiders. But they gotta erase all references to “PEACE ON EARTH, GOODWILL TOWARD MEN” because that ain’t real and that idea ain’t playing in Peoria these days, man, no matter how they light it up to hide the ugly truth.

That’s my final offer.

Happy End of the World

I know people who don't understand holiday celebrations, especially the one called Kwanzaa.

Really, Kwanzaa isn’t about any one religion or any one God but rather about race and origin. I think of Kwanzaa as similar to Irish or Polish holiday traditions, reaching back for ancestral pedigrees which are all good. Strange how this Kwanzaa thing makes some people uncomfortable, though. It’s not un-American to celebrate your Irish roots but for some reason to celebrate your “Africaness” is considered off-key.

(I think it perfectly understandable and correct for you, say, to celebrate your heritage. Unfortunately for me, I would quickly get lost among all the national flags in my background.)

Kwanzaa is not really a new practice, is focused on end of year reminiscing and its symbology is easily traced. But back to Happy Holidays, if you do some checking up on modern Christmas traditions, you find that many of these “Birth of Christ” symbols predate Christ and originally had nothing to do with Christ at all. In the end, anyone who defiantly claims that the phrase “Merry Christmas” is really what we should say or what this time of year is all about is in many ways only buying into the Charlie Brown version. There are and have been many other versions out there.

The Christians that I meet get very animated about this made-up debate. I overheard one of my long-haired turkey hunter pals at the Tavern the other night say, “Hey, man, it’s ‘Merry Christmas!’ to me, goddammit, I don’t buy that ‘Happy Holidays’ bullshit!” He said it like he was looking for a fight, demanding that somebody tell him differently, which nobody was willing to do. The heated atmosphere was akin to an ancient Roman saying that Ceasar is divine or a Nazi brazenly playing the Master Race card, begging nonbelievers to stand up and take their punishment. But, if nothing else, I thought my pal to very trendy, and felt he must at least read the paper now and then between drunken binges.

I am more curious as to this “defiant” manner that Christians are now taking in this country, their demand to be heard and their insistence that we toe the line they have drawn, as if they haven’t had a voice in things or have been somehow suppressed over the last century. I see no evidence of their oppression but do feel the burn of their tyranny.

The Jehovah Witness ladies who come visit me all the time don’t celebrate Christmas and don’t seem to have that same kind of “in your face” attitude but they are truly convinced the world is about to end besides being driven by their own guidelines to get the word out on that. Instead of browbeating me with their beliefs, they sort of pity me for my ignorance, which seems appropriate, I suppose. In fact, I don’t know if they realize this, I haven’t openly accused them of it, but they sometimes seem to intimate that they believe our USA is the great evil that will bring the world down. (I think they vaguely want the great evil to be China, that would be easier for them to accept, but their descriptions don’t back it up, in my view). Certainly, though, they see the course of our country playing a role in the eventual global destruction that is coming and, in their view, coming soon. I wonder if secretly they don’t fear it is the traditional Christian that will lead/is leading us to that. And I wonder how far the traditional Christian is driven by a similar fear.

(As a side note, when I told the ladies most recently that I accepted the fact that the world was going to end they urged me to describe how I knew this. I explained that it had nothing to do with the follies of mankind, that our sun only has so much energy and will someday, a few million years from now, dry up and implode making life on this earth impossible. This I accept as fact. They then mildly suggested that perhaps God would miraculously intervene if we just played our cards right. Now, I know I am occasionally prone to injecting fancy where the facts may fail me, but I ain’t that desperate.)

Thus, I wonder if the antics of all modern people of faith aren’t driven by some unreasonable fear or their dogmatic inability to come to grips with the things people naturally face all the time. The fact that Christians in particular have been battling for the last quarter century to “take back” political power in this country, engaging in heavy handed social control which in my view is diametrically opposed to their own “meek will inherit” teachings, indicating that there are not satisfied just leaving it to God’s Will anymore, suggests to me that their most basic accepted beliefs are once again incongruent with reality or somehow making them incapable of adapting to modern life. Like the Pope or the King of England, one would think that this new Religious Empire we are watching emerge will eventually force a new “reformation” somewhere down the line.

It’s all very curious.

Meanwhile, my own views on what a God is or isn’t have changed dramatically over the last few years of observation and contemplation. Thus, when it comes to celebration, I celebrate different things in different ways.

But that’s probably best left for a face to face, no?