A good friend—a college roommate with whom you've stayed close over the years—comes down with cancer. Because that friend is single and quit his job after a midlife crisis, he doesn't have health insurance, so he waits too long to seek treatment for his ambiguous early symptoms. By the time he finally seeks medical help, the cancer has metastasized into his bones and his diagnosis is terminal. He cannot afford the treatment required. You:
a) Express sympathy.
b) Express sympathy and offer to help with his medical bills.
c) Decide to pay all of his medical bills so he can have the best care possible during the final months of his life.
Most people, I imagine, could find a choice on this list that they are comfortable with, even if it is likely to be a). That's why I didn't include
d) Savagely tell him that he has brought his suffering on himself and mock him during his final days.
So when Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote a column last week about his former roommate from Harvard, to whom the unspeakable events described above had actually happened, I figured he was making the strongest case possible for why we need nationalized health care, or at least a makeshift system like "Obamacare" that is designed to bring more people into the ranks of the insured.
That's why I was taken aback yesterday when Kristof published a followup column expressing shock at the number of readers who had been "savagely unsympathetic." It doesn't take much effort, after all, to say "your friend has my sympathy; sorry for your loss." (Kristof's friend did in fact die on Monday morning.) Instead, readers lambasted him for making a foolish decision—whether it was the one to quit his job or the one not to seek help earlier isn't clear. It appears that all Kristof's column accomplished was to fortify the battle lines between those who support the Affordable Care Act—which is what I will insist on calling it from this point on—and those who are desperate to repeal it.
I am writing this because I still want to believe that most of those people, if it were their friend whose life was at stake, would at least choose option a) above. Sympathy is famously inexpensive, but at least it is a human and moral response. Mockery of the dying is not. So when Kristof is deluged with messages from people who are "not sure why I'm to feel guilty about your friend's problem," I'm not sure what I'm supposed to think, but I do know what I feel. I feel something akin to the disgust at humanity found in the satire of Jonathan Swift.
To me and many others, the Affordable Care Act, for all its imperfections, is quite simply the best thing that has happened to this country since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It is an expression of the very best in our nature: the mutual sympathy with our fellow beings that binds us together as a society. It shows we understand that when we extend a helping hand to others, we are sewing the fabric of civilization together, so that we know it will be there when we or someone we care about needs it. It shows we know perfectly well that we are not savages living in relentless competition with the clans of our neighbors, but an advanced society in which all are interconnected.
That's why this presidential election matters so much to me. If Romney and Ryan win, and if they succeed in repealing the Affordable Care Act, I will be forced to conclude that America's best days are over. I will be forced to conclude that I do in fact live in a country controlled by people for whom sympathy is not an option and shared responsibility is not a concept. I will be forced to conclude that the majority of my fellow citizens would choose "none of the above" as the best answer to the question that I posed at the beginning of this blog. As someone for whom not caring is simply not an option, and who understands grace as all-encompassing and all-forgiving, I will despair.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
More on Romney
Every once in a while I post something to this blog that takes off in a way I don't foresee. I've never had a post go "viral," if that means page views in the millions, but I occasionally have one that gets way more hits than usual. Such a post was last week's "Romney the bully," which, at 589 page views, is now at four times my average. Since that average includes some other posts that have been read even more widely, the reality is that "Romney the bully" has been read by about six times as many people as normally read one of my posts.
The reason is clear: It was shared repeatedly by friends who agreed with it, many of whose friends shared it in turn. Many, but not all, of those friends were women. Some clearly thought I had articulated something particularly important, and said so in their forwarding messages. I can thus confirm what I said in that post: I am far from the only person who found Mitt Romney's behavior at last week's debate to be personally abusive. Many others read what I wrote and said: "Yes; that's exactly what I thought." We may be a small group or we may represent a broadly shared opinion - it's too early to tell - but the fact that we shared the same experience means that that experience was real.
A few comments on the blog shares were also revealing. One person said that personally, she considered Barack Obama to be one of the biggest bullies she has ever encountered, and that by contrast she finds Mitt Romney to be a compassionate leader. Another said that my reactions, and those of others, were clearly dictated by emotion. The implication was that all of our reactions were somehow not valid, while those of more rational thinkers are.
I want to take this occasion to clarify that I know my reaction to Romney's performance was based on emotion. THAT WAS THE POINT. Watching Mitt Romney in action set off emotional responses that harked back to the years of bullying I endured in school, while it reminded others of abusive partners. All of us realized that, for personal reasons that have nothing to do with his policy positions, we profoundly do not want to have this man as our president.
Since I have never seen Barack Obama bully anybody in person, I suspect that those who see him as a bully are reacting to his policies and the way he has enacted them. Yes, asking religious employers to include birth control in the health insurance they offer employees can be seen as abusive if you are so inclined. Passing the Affordable Care Act without a single Republican vote can be seen as an abuse of power by those who opposed its passage.
Such actions, though, are not bullying. Bullying is something that happens at a personal level between individuals, and it is a matter of style, not substance. Mitt Romney could have spent the entire hour and a half talking about chewing gum and toothpaste and his behavior - if he had pushed the other two participants around in the same way - would still have struck me as abusive. This is a man who apparently terrorized one of his classmates at school and who, when reminded of that behavior earlier this year, said: “There’s no question that I did some stupid things in high school, and obviously, if I hurt anyone by virtue of that, I would be very sorry for it and apologize for it.” This is a lame, conditional statement with no substance. It shows no contrition, no awareness of wrongdoing beyond the usual run of youthful indiscretions, and notably, contains no apology.
It's not surprising, therefore, that the bullying persona is still very much in evidence. An unrepentant bully has no business being president.
The reason is clear: It was shared repeatedly by friends who agreed with it, many of whose friends shared it in turn. Many, but not all, of those friends were women. Some clearly thought I had articulated something particularly important, and said so in their forwarding messages. I can thus confirm what I said in that post: I am far from the only person who found Mitt Romney's behavior at last week's debate to be personally abusive. Many others read what I wrote and said: "Yes; that's exactly what I thought." We may be a small group or we may represent a broadly shared opinion - it's too early to tell - but the fact that we shared the same experience means that that experience was real.
A few comments on the blog shares were also revealing. One person said that personally, she considered Barack Obama to be one of the biggest bullies she has ever encountered, and that by contrast she finds Mitt Romney to be a compassionate leader. Another said that my reactions, and those of others, were clearly dictated by emotion. The implication was that all of our reactions were somehow not valid, while those of more rational thinkers are.
I want to take this occasion to clarify that I know my reaction to Romney's performance was based on emotion. THAT WAS THE POINT. Watching Mitt Romney in action set off emotional responses that harked back to the years of bullying I endured in school, while it reminded others of abusive partners. All of us realized that, for personal reasons that have nothing to do with his policy positions, we profoundly do not want to have this man as our president.
Since I have never seen Barack Obama bully anybody in person, I suspect that those who see him as a bully are reacting to his policies and the way he has enacted them. Yes, asking religious employers to include birth control in the health insurance they offer employees can be seen as abusive if you are so inclined. Passing the Affordable Care Act without a single Republican vote can be seen as an abuse of power by those who opposed its passage.
Such actions, though, are not bullying. Bullying is something that happens at a personal level between individuals, and it is a matter of style, not substance. Mitt Romney could have spent the entire hour and a half talking about chewing gum and toothpaste and his behavior - if he had pushed the other two participants around in the same way - would still have struck me as abusive. This is a man who apparently terrorized one of his classmates at school and who, when reminded of that behavior earlier this year, said: “There’s no question that I did some stupid things in high school, and obviously, if I hurt anyone by virtue of that, I would be very sorry for it and apologize for it.” This is a lame, conditional statement with no substance. It shows no contrition, no awareness of wrongdoing beyond the usual run of youthful indiscretions, and notably, contains no apology.
It's not surprising, therefore, that the bullying persona is still very much in evidence. An unrepentant bully has no business being president.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Romney the bully
What's worse than getting a bad grade because you "don't play well with the other children," when it's the other children who refuse to play with you? Seeing the biggest bully of all elected class president would probably come close.
As I watched the presidential debate last night, I thought to myself several times: "Mitt Romney is being a bully." I didn't say anything, though, because I was afraid I would be accused of overreacting to a performance that was simply long on assertiveness. Today, though, I have seen numerous women say that Romney's performance reminded them of abusive former husbands and boyfriends. So I now believe I'm in good company when I say that by effectively walking over the debate moderator and the President of the United States and running the debate entirely on his own terms, Romney was exhibiting classic bully behavior. What passed as effective debating in the dysfunctional world of the Republican primaries, where audiences cheered the idea of letting someone without health insurance die in the gutter, is now revealed more clearly for what it is.
I'll try not to comment on what was said in the debate, since the fact-checkers have been busy and may actually have some impact on the spin this time around. I want to single out, though, Romney's repeated statement that President Obama refused to work with the Republicans in Congress while, as governor, Romney willingly (i. e. out of dire necessity) worked with a legislature that was 87% Democratic. As anyone who has been paying the slightest bit of attention for the past few years knows, it is the Republican Congress that has refused to work with the president. It was the leaders of the Republican Congress who proclaimed, publicly, that their primary objective was to deny Obama a second term. It was the rank and file members of that Congress—including, I'm embarrassed to say, my own newly elected Congressman—who strapped on suicide vests last summer and threatened to blow up the country if they didn't get everything they wanted. (I borrow the metaphor from the NYTimes's Joe Nocera, who was later bullied into retracting it.) For Romney to try now to score a debating point by blaming Obama for not playing well with that kind of children is beyond shameful. It is the tactic of a bully.
During the debate last night, Romney repeatedly refused to be silenced either by Jim Lehrer or by the president. He made it clear that he considered himself the one in charge, and unfortunately Obama played along, smiling sheepishly every time he was humiliated. A lot of people have asked, in effect: "What happened to the president last night?" As someone who was bullied to within an inch of my life as a teenager, I know the answer. It's the same thing that happened to Jim Lehrer. They were both bullied into silence. They are both strong, experienced men who know better, but bullying works because it is so effective. Ask Rush Limbaugh. Ask Glenn Beck. Ask Mitt Romney.
And please, don't vote for a bully for president. You might be startled to know just how many of us you would be condemning to four years of PTSD.
As I watched the presidential debate last night, I thought to myself several times: "Mitt Romney is being a bully." I didn't say anything, though, because I was afraid I would be accused of overreacting to a performance that was simply long on assertiveness. Today, though, I have seen numerous women say that Romney's performance reminded them of abusive former husbands and boyfriends. So I now believe I'm in good company when I say that by effectively walking over the debate moderator and the President of the United States and running the debate entirely on his own terms, Romney was exhibiting classic bully behavior. What passed as effective debating in the dysfunctional world of the Republican primaries, where audiences cheered the idea of letting someone without health insurance die in the gutter, is now revealed more clearly for what it is.
I'll try not to comment on what was said in the debate, since the fact-checkers have been busy and may actually have some impact on the spin this time around. I want to single out, though, Romney's repeated statement that President Obama refused to work with the Republicans in Congress while, as governor, Romney willingly (i. e. out of dire necessity) worked with a legislature that was 87% Democratic. As anyone who has been paying the slightest bit of attention for the past few years knows, it is the Republican Congress that has refused to work with the president. It was the leaders of the Republican Congress who proclaimed, publicly, that their primary objective was to deny Obama a second term. It was the rank and file members of that Congress—including, I'm embarrassed to say, my own newly elected Congressman—who strapped on suicide vests last summer and threatened to blow up the country if they didn't get everything they wanted. (I borrow the metaphor from the NYTimes's Joe Nocera, who was later bullied into retracting it.) For Romney to try now to score a debating point by blaming Obama for not playing well with that kind of children is beyond shameful. It is the tactic of a bully.
During the debate last night, Romney repeatedly refused to be silenced either by Jim Lehrer or by the president. He made it clear that he considered himself the one in charge, and unfortunately Obama played along, smiling sheepishly every time he was humiliated. A lot of people have asked, in effect: "What happened to the president last night?" As someone who was bullied to within an inch of my life as a teenager, I know the answer. It's the same thing that happened to Jim Lehrer. They were both bullied into silence. They are both strong, experienced men who know better, but bullying works because it is so effective. Ask Rush Limbaugh. Ask Glenn Beck. Ask Mitt Romney.
And please, don't vote for a bully for president. You might be startled to know just how many of us you would be condemning to four years of PTSD.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Nine months
Today is nine months since my 56th birthday, which means it is also
nine months since my life fell apart. I set in my living room tonight
listening to Obrecht and watching Barbara's and my Marriage Encounter
candle flicker and burn for the fourth time since the visitation last
December, when I awakened it from its long slumber. On the way home
today I stopped by the cemetery and wept. A grief observed takes many
forms. Today I want to recount some other significant dates in our all
too brief history together.
May 17, 1988—I have my first date with Barbara Elaine Hutter Sellers. I take her to a nice restaurant, even though I'm not sure I can afford it. We eat rack of lamb and share a bottle of Chenin Blanc. Afterward she tells me about the brain tumor diagnosed on her 23rd birthday that she barely survived and the first husband she lost in a tragic accident. I tell her about my history with depression and my ongoing struggles to find a job. We instantly bond, and so begins the love of my life. We are both 32.
Jan. 14 1989—We are married in the same small Lutheran church in Pomona, California in which she had been baptized nearly 33 years earlier. I am unemployed, but she has just received a large financial settlement over her first husband's death. This allows us a memorable honeymoon, even though it is plagued by uncertainty about my future.
Dec. 1 1991—After a series of medical interventions for infertility, we complete a successful pregnancy and our first child, Jennifer, is born. For most of the next two years I will be her custodial parent while Barbara supports us through her work as a home health nurse.
Feb. 24 1994—After further interventions, our second child, Jeremy, is born. I am still under-employed, although I now have an adjunct teaching position that provides enough income for Barbara to take an extended maternity leave.
May 1994—Ten years after receiving my PhD, I am finally offered a tenure-track teaching job at Converse College in South Carolina. Our family, launched amid uncertainty and conceived on faith, will move cross-country that summer to a new home and a bright future. We are both 38.
February 1999—After four and a half years of professional fulfillment and administrative purgatory, I am awarded tenure. At 43, I have finally achieved my professional and personal goals. I have a secure job that I love, two children that I adore, and a devoted wife who means the world to me.
March 2000—While I am attending a regional meeting as President of the Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society, Barbara suffers a stroke: the first sign of complications from the massive dose of radiation that saved her life exactly 21 years earlier. For a few months her vision is seriously impaired, and she retains a lingering visual aphasia that will baffle and frustrate her for the rest of her life.
July 2000—Barbara wakes up and is unable to hear out of her right ear. She gets out of bed and falls flat on her face. The hearing never returns, and the balance only returns gradually and with great effort. The diagnosis is six months in coming, but it is grim. She has suffered another stroke, this one in the small capillary that feeds the inner ear. All of the blood vessels in her brain were damaged by the radiation, we are now told. In order to postpone or minimize future complications, she is put on Plavix, a blood thinner. She will take it for the rest of her life.
June 2003—On the very day that we plan to travel to Texas and look for a house in Waco, where I have just gotten a senior appointment at Baylor, Barbara suddenly loses the hearing in her left ear. With no warning, she has gone completely deaf. This is a devastating experience that completely dwarfs everything either of us has been through previously, and it casts a pall over what should have been one of the happiest episodes in our life together. Two weeks later, we dutifully go through the motions of the house search while barely able to communicate.
Nov. 2003—Barbara receives a cochlear implant in her left ear. A month later, on my 48th birthday, it is activated. The results are disappointing, and a long period of retraining now begins in which she will struggle to learn to hear again.
Dec. 2004—Barbara receives an implant in the other ear, and it too is activated a month later. We now know not to expect too much, but we are tentatively encouraged by the improvement in her hearing. We are confronted, though, by the stark realities of advanced hearing loss. Among the things we will never be able to do successfully: hear a concert, attend a movie, attend a public talk of any kind, participate in a group discussion, talk on the phone without struggle, carry on a family conversation. At the dinner table, the kids talk to me and largely ignore Barbara. In the car she can't hear them even when they do talk to her. We make furtive lunch dates simply to find a quiet place where we can talk to each other. We continue to hold out hope that her hearing will improve, but it never really does.
Sometime in 2007 (the dates seem to be getting less clear as they grow closer to the present)—After several dental procedures and a tooth extraction, the increasing pain that Barbara has been experiencing in her right jaw is diagnosed as trigeminal neuralgia, an inflammation of the main facial nerve that is known to cause the most excruciating pain that a human being can experience. (The condition's nickname: the suicide disease.) The only effective treatment for this debilitating condition, also likely caused by the radiation, consists of large doses of anti-epileptic drugs, which make Barbara's balance problems much worse. She now begins to walk with a cane, and the rest of her life will be a trade-off between her compromised ability to walk and the attempt to attain a respite from the unbearable pain. Repeated surgical procedures bring only temporary relief.
Dec. 19 2011—As we are preparing to go out to dinner to celebrate my 56th birthday, Barbara suffers a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Because she is taking Plavix, nothing can be done to stop the bleeding, which pools around the base of her brain and chokes off not only her consciousness, but her ability ever to regain it. A little over three days later, in the wee hours of Dec. 23, she dies.
We were together for a little over twenty-three and a half years. For thirteen months we had it all: a secure job for me, children, health, prosperity. The rest of it was lived under the shadow of financial insecurity, career frustration, infertility and, finally, declining health and dire suffering. Every minute was precious—and, I now see quite clearly, snatched forcefully from inexorable fate. We loved, and we gave of each other in ways that are hard to describe and precious to remember. I have now completed a gestational cycle of grief and mourning, and I know that it is from the hard times that the most lasting memories were forged. So much joy, so much love. Life so fragile that there is none of it to waste. Tears that sting and memories that burn in my heart. Every moment is ours, Barbara's and mine. Every moment we love, and the loss follows as does the fall that will now turn to winter. It was in the spring that we met, and in the winter that we were parted. The winter will now come again, followed by the spring, and it is only love that continues unabated through it all.
May 17, 1988—I have my first date with Barbara Elaine Hutter Sellers. I take her to a nice restaurant, even though I'm not sure I can afford it. We eat rack of lamb and share a bottle of Chenin Blanc. Afterward she tells me about the brain tumor diagnosed on her 23rd birthday that she barely survived and the first husband she lost in a tragic accident. I tell her about my history with depression and my ongoing struggles to find a job. We instantly bond, and so begins the love of my life. We are both 32.
Jan. 14 1989—We are married in the same small Lutheran church in Pomona, California in which she had been baptized nearly 33 years earlier. I am unemployed, but she has just received a large financial settlement over her first husband's death. This allows us a memorable honeymoon, even though it is plagued by uncertainty about my future.
Dec. 1 1991—After a series of medical interventions for infertility, we complete a successful pregnancy and our first child, Jennifer, is born. For most of the next two years I will be her custodial parent while Barbara supports us through her work as a home health nurse.
Feb. 24 1994—After further interventions, our second child, Jeremy, is born. I am still under-employed, although I now have an adjunct teaching position that provides enough income for Barbara to take an extended maternity leave.
May 1994—Ten years after receiving my PhD, I am finally offered a tenure-track teaching job at Converse College in South Carolina. Our family, launched amid uncertainty and conceived on faith, will move cross-country that summer to a new home and a bright future. We are both 38.
February 1999—After four and a half years of professional fulfillment and administrative purgatory, I am awarded tenure. At 43, I have finally achieved my professional and personal goals. I have a secure job that I love, two children that I adore, and a devoted wife who means the world to me.
March 2000—While I am attending a regional meeting as President of the Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society, Barbara suffers a stroke: the first sign of complications from the massive dose of radiation that saved her life exactly 21 years earlier. For a few months her vision is seriously impaired, and she retains a lingering visual aphasia that will baffle and frustrate her for the rest of her life.
July 2000—Barbara wakes up and is unable to hear out of her right ear. She gets out of bed and falls flat on her face. The hearing never returns, and the balance only returns gradually and with great effort. The diagnosis is six months in coming, but it is grim. She has suffered another stroke, this one in the small capillary that feeds the inner ear. All of the blood vessels in her brain were damaged by the radiation, we are now told. In order to postpone or minimize future complications, she is put on Plavix, a blood thinner. She will take it for the rest of her life.
June 2003—On the very day that we plan to travel to Texas and look for a house in Waco, where I have just gotten a senior appointment at Baylor, Barbara suddenly loses the hearing in her left ear. With no warning, she has gone completely deaf. This is a devastating experience that completely dwarfs everything either of us has been through previously, and it casts a pall over what should have been one of the happiest episodes in our life together. Two weeks later, we dutifully go through the motions of the house search while barely able to communicate.
Nov. 2003—Barbara receives a cochlear implant in her left ear. A month later, on my 48th birthday, it is activated. The results are disappointing, and a long period of retraining now begins in which she will struggle to learn to hear again.
Dec. 2004—Barbara receives an implant in the other ear, and it too is activated a month later. We now know not to expect too much, but we are tentatively encouraged by the improvement in her hearing. We are confronted, though, by the stark realities of advanced hearing loss. Among the things we will never be able to do successfully: hear a concert, attend a movie, attend a public talk of any kind, participate in a group discussion, talk on the phone without struggle, carry on a family conversation. At the dinner table, the kids talk to me and largely ignore Barbara. In the car she can't hear them even when they do talk to her. We make furtive lunch dates simply to find a quiet place where we can talk to each other. We continue to hold out hope that her hearing will improve, but it never really does.
Sometime in 2007 (the dates seem to be getting less clear as they grow closer to the present)—After several dental procedures and a tooth extraction, the increasing pain that Barbara has been experiencing in her right jaw is diagnosed as trigeminal neuralgia, an inflammation of the main facial nerve that is known to cause the most excruciating pain that a human being can experience. (The condition's nickname: the suicide disease.) The only effective treatment for this debilitating condition, also likely caused by the radiation, consists of large doses of anti-epileptic drugs, which make Barbara's balance problems much worse. She now begins to walk with a cane, and the rest of her life will be a trade-off between her compromised ability to walk and the attempt to attain a respite from the unbearable pain. Repeated surgical procedures bring only temporary relief.
Dec. 19 2011—As we are preparing to go out to dinner to celebrate my 56th birthday, Barbara suffers a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Because she is taking Plavix, nothing can be done to stop the bleeding, which pools around the base of her brain and chokes off not only her consciousness, but her ability ever to regain it. A little over three days later, in the wee hours of Dec. 23, she dies.
We were together for a little over twenty-three and a half years. For thirteen months we had it all: a secure job for me, children, health, prosperity. The rest of it was lived under the shadow of financial insecurity, career frustration, infertility and, finally, declining health and dire suffering. Every minute was precious—and, I now see quite clearly, snatched forcefully from inexorable fate. We loved, and we gave of each other in ways that are hard to describe and precious to remember. I have now completed a gestational cycle of grief and mourning, and I know that it is from the hard times that the most lasting memories were forged. So much joy, so much love. Life so fragile that there is none of it to waste. Tears that sting and memories that burn in my heart. Every moment is ours, Barbara's and mine. Every moment we love, and the loss follows as does the fall that will now turn to winter. It was in the spring that we met, and in the winter that we were parted. The winter will now come again, followed by the spring, and it is only love that continues unabated through it all.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
The cartoon liberal
Every day, it seems, somebody posts a statement affirming that hard work and success are honorable things, and greatly preferable to depending on handouts. The message, whether stated directly or not, is that there are people who disagree. It is also clear who those people are supposed to be, and who they are not. They are liberals: the people who allegedly denigrate success and think that everybody should depend on government handouts. They are not conservatives: the right-thinking people who know better.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Nobody I know in either political party, whether liberal or conservative, thinks that hard work and success are not good things. Nobody I know of either persuasion thinks that it is desirable to make people dependent on government handouts. Nobody. That position doesn't exist. It just keeps getting attacked in a classic straw-man argument. It's easy to score points for your cause, apparently, by demolishing what you think your opponents believe, especially if others are predisposed to see it that way as well. It's easy to attack a cartoon liberal. I'm a real liberal, though, and I'm not going to take it lying down, so let me once again explain, briefly, what I do believe.
As a liberal, I believe in freedom: the maximum amount of freedom compatible with a just and decent society. I also believe that freedom is threatened in a variety of ways, most of which do not come from government as commonly perceived.
The common perception of government, though, is part of the problem that liberals seek to address. The fact, as Howard Zinn and others have convincingly established, is that the United States has always had big government and always will. It could hardly be otherwise, given that we are a bafflingly large and diverse society. Such a society cannot run by itself.
We do, however, have a rational choice to make. We can choose to be governed by largely open and transparent institutions whose avowed purpose is government, and which are answerable to the people, or we can choose to be governed by shadowy corporations and people of great wealth whose operations are opaque and who are accountable to no-one.
As a liberal, I believe that our precious freedoms are slipping away at an alarming rate and are being replaced by the power of the moneyed corporate behemoth. As just one example among many, that behemoth, operating in the supposedly free market, has devised a strikingly inefficient way of administering health care that maximizes profits and disempowers individuals. Until the passage of the Affordable Care Act, somebody who has had a serious and chronic illness - somebody like my late wife - could have his or her freedom taken away by the need to appease the arcane, self-serving requirements of corporate health care. The Affordable Care Act, by empowering people with "pre-existing conditions," has made all of us more free.
I have lost another significant personal freedom over the last few months. I can no longer go to a public place and relax without at least thinking about the possibility that a madman armed with military assault weapons will open fire and kill me and those I am with. As a society, we seem incapable of doing anything about this loss of freedom, since we are in the thrall of arms manufacturers, the NRA, and other representatives of corporate power. As a liberal, I think this is a horrible state of affairs, and we would be much freer if the government transparently regulated who can own such weapons and under what circumstances.
Notice that I haven't said anything about giving handouts. The fact is, I do give them. I recently gave a significant amount of money, for example, to Lutheran Ministries and Social Services of Waco to help fund its Legal Assistance Project, which provides low-cost paralegal services for those in the community who cannot afford them. This is a handout, and like all such handouts, it is intended to get those people back on their feet so they can gain a modicum of self-respect. When I sat on the Board of Directors of LMSS, it included both liberals and conservatives and we all agreed about this without question.
So please, let's stop attacking the cartoon liberal. That success-despising, handout-loving, anti-American figure of so many conservative imaginations simply doesn't exist in real life. It is a lie. Therefore, any argument directed against it is inherently dishonest in substance, if not necessarily in intent. For the record, I don't care what time Paul Ryan says he ran the marathon in. He may have been mistaken or her may have been lying, but it doesn't really matter because the issue is a trivial one. I do very much care if Ryan or anybody else attacks the cartoon liberal, because such an attack is dishonest at the core, and it matters deeply.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Nobody I know in either political party, whether liberal or conservative, thinks that hard work and success are not good things. Nobody I know of either persuasion thinks that it is desirable to make people dependent on government handouts. Nobody. That position doesn't exist. It just keeps getting attacked in a classic straw-man argument. It's easy to score points for your cause, apparently, by demolishing what you think your opponents believe, especially if others are predisposed to see it that way as well. It's easy to attack a cartoon liberal. I'm a real liberal, though, and I'm not going to take it lying down, so let me once again explain, briefly, what I do believe.
As a liberal, I believe in freedom: the maximum amount of freedom compatible with a just and decent society. I also believe that freedom is threatened in a variety of ways, most of which do not come from government as commonly perceived.
The common perception of government, though, is part of the problem that liberals seek to address. The fact, as Howard Zinn and others have convincingly established, is that the United States has always had big government and always will. It could hardly be otherwise, given that we are a bafflingly large and diverse society. Such a society cannot run by itself.
We do, however, have a rational choice to make. We can choose to be governed by largely open and transparent institutions whose avowed purpose is government, and which are answerable to the people, or we can choose to be governed by shadowy corporations and people of great wealth whose operations are opaque and who are accountable to no-one.
As a liberal, I believe that our precious freedoms are slipping away at an alarming rate and are being replaced by the power of the moneyed corporate behemoth. As just one example among many, that behemoth, operating in the supposedly free market, has devised a strikingly inefficient way of administering health care that maximizes profits and disempowers individuals. Until the passage of the Affordable Care Act, somebody who has had a serious and chronic illness - somebody like my late wife - could have his or her freedom taken away by the need to appease the arcane, self-serving requirements of corporate health care. The Affordable Care Act, by empowering people with "pre-existing conditions," has made all of us more free.
I have lost another significant personal freedom over the last few months. I can no longer go to a public place and relax without at least thinking about the possibility that a madman armed with military assault weapons will open fire and kill me and those I am with. As a society, we seem incapable of doing anything about this loss of freedom, since we are in the thrall of arms manufacturers, the NRA, and other representatives of corporate power. As a liberal, I think this is a horrible state of affairs, and we would be much freer if the government transparently regulated who can own such weapons and under what circumstances.
Notice that I haven't said anything about giving handouts. The fact is, I do give them. I recently gave a significant amount of money, for example, to Lutheran Ministries and Social Services of Waco to help fund its Legal Assistance Project, which provides low-cost paralegal services for those in the community who cannot afford them. This is a handout, and like all such handouts, it is intended to get those people back on their feet so they can gain a modicum of self-respect. When I sat on the Board of Directors of LMSS, it included both liberals and conservatives and we all agreed about this without question.
So please, let's stop attacking the cartoon liberal. That success-despising, handout-loving, anti-American figure of so many conservative imaginations simply doesn't exist in real life. It is a lie. Therefore, any argument directed against it is inherently dishonest in substance, if not necessarily in intent. For the record, I don't care what time Paul Ryan says he ran the marathon in. He may have been mistaken or her may have been lying, but it doesn't really matter because the issue is a trivial one. I do very much care if Ryan or anybody else attacks the cartoon liberal, because such an attack is dishonest at the core, and it matters deeply.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Hard truths
I’m writing this because the time has come to make some hard
choices. I know the readers of this blog expect me to level with them, and the
time has come to stop ducking the choices and instead spell out what we need to
do. It is not enough, after all, to just keep talking about it. We’ve been
doing that for a long time—and I’ve done as much talking as anybody. The time
for talk is gone. It’s time to make it clear what we need to do.
So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to stop talking
and start making some tough choices. I’m going to be very clear about this,
because making tough choices isn’t easy, and spelling them out is even harder.
It’s much easier to just avoid them, and that’s what we must not do at all
costs. We can’t avoid the hard choices. We have to make them, and make them
clearly.
I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. You live with the
results of choices every day. Those choices have been made for you or by you or
despite you, but they have unquestionably been made. That is hard. It is much
easier to duck making choices and to talk about them instead, until people
begin to believe you’ve actually done something, or have a plan to do
something, or know what you’re talking about. So I’m here to tell you that I’m
not going to duck any of those choices. I know you expect me to level with you
about this, so here’s the truth: Hard choices need to be made. Hard truths need
to be heard. That’s the truth. It’s hard. But it’s also true. That’s the thing
about truth. How hard is that?
You all know people who don’t level with you. I know you do.
When things are going well, that might be OK, but things are not going well, so
you need people to level with you. You need them to stop talking and tell you
the truth. That’s the truth. Then you need them to make choices. Hard choices.
You need them not to duck those choices, but to make them, even though they’re
hard.
That’s what you can count on me for. I’ll never duck those
choices, and you’ll always know I’m not ducking them because I’ll tell you
about them. Just like I’m doing now.
Trust me.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Barbara's Gift, Part 2
It poured cats and dogs yesterday, and today was that rare August day in Texas when the sun shone bright and the temperature never rose above the high 80s. Classes start tomorrow, and since one child is away at college and the other is at work, I took a 5-mile hike by myself this afternoon in Waco's Cameron Park, in the shade along the Brazos and Bosque rivers. I felt truly good and in possession of my life—more so than I can remember at any time since Barbara's stroke tore my world apart exactly eight months ago today.
Our trip to Hawaii last month was definitely a watershed. We packed as much of life and renewal as we could into the seven and a half days we were there, and that was surely an important thing to do. There was something else going on, though, and I will try to write about it impartially, even though it is the most personal subject of all.
Barbara and I went to Maui for our honeymoon in January of 1989. Her lawsuit over the death of her first husband had just been settled out of court and she received a payment of nearly a quarter of a million dollars a few weeks before we were married. We had money to burn, and we also packed as much as we could into that week, including a day-long private plane tour that took us to all four major Hawaiian islands. I watched in astonishment as we flew directly over the active volcanoes on the south end of the Big Island, then savored lunch on Kauai, at a restaurant with covered outdoor seating around a central courtyard. We enjoyed mahi-mahi burgers at Kimo's in Lahaina, then ate dinner at Chez Paul, the five-star French restaurant down the road. We snorkeled and swam and savored a relaxed dinner cruise on calm seas.
I decided to go to Kauai this time because I had been there for only two hours and had few memories to distract me. Nevertheless, I puzzled the whole time we were there over the location of the outdoor dining site I remembered. On the final day, I was craving one more dinner at a fine restaurant with the kind of food you just can't get in Waco, and Jennifer located one using a mobile app that sounded perfect. We phoned in reservations and showed up at 5:30, our rental car vacuumed and ready to return as we tried to prepare for the red-eye flight to Los Angeles and the two connections that would land us back in Texas the next afternoon.
It was **the place,** and it seemed for all the world as though Barbara had led us there as a final blessing on our week of catharsis. I returned with a deep inner peace that has never entirely left in the three weeks I've been back.
I don't want to claim too much here. Barbara told me that a few weeks after her first husband died, she distinctly heard his voice saying "It's OK; I'm happy." Knowing how much that meant to her, it is easy for me to suggest that she led us back to this place so I could have a similar moment of preternatural closeness with my departed spouse. Skeptics will scoff, of course, and I don't blame them. After all, we crave such revelations, and are all too eager to read purpose and meaning into chance events.
Still, I will say this: I have kept with me a strong sense of Barbara's inner peace, which allowed her to trust and slough off the burdens of stress and uncertainty through circumstances that would have brought most people to their knees. Her deafness and her profound difficulties with balance, both of which I have written about on this blog, were the ongoing symptoms of the radiation damage that ultimately led to her death. How does one maintain trust and faith when visited with such perverse afflictions? How does one find the strength to continue through the daily round of petty challenges and victories that makes up the better part of most human lives?
I don't know the answer, but I do know that in the wake of Barbara's death I have internalized that strength in a way that I had never been able to do before. In the face of bereavement, I have treated myself to spiritual calm, and have let the stresses and worries fall away from me as that source of unknown strength, latent within my inner being but too rarely tapped, has slipped from her shoulders onto mine.
Our trip to Hawaii last month was definitely a watershed. We packed as much of life and renewal as we could into the seven and a half days we were there, and that was surely an important thing to do. There was something else going on, though, and I will try to write about it impartially, even though it is the most personal subject of all.
Barbara and I went to Maui for our honeymoon in January of 1989. Her lawsuit over the death of her first husband had just been settled out of court and she received a payment of nearly a quarter of a million dollars a few weeks before we were married. We had money to burn, and we also packed as much as we could into that week, including a day-long private plane tour that took us to all four major Hawaiian islands. I watched in astonishment as we flew directly over the active volcanoes on the south end of the Big Island, then savored lunch on Kauai, at a restaurant with covered outdoor seating around a central courtyard. We enjoyed mahi-mahi burgers at Kimo's in Lahaina, then ate dinner at Chez Paul, the five-star French restaurant down the road. We snorkeled and swam and savored a relaxed dinner cruise on calm seas.
I decided to go to Kauai this time because I had been there for only two hours and had few memories to distract me. Nevertheless, I puzzled the whole time we were there over the location of the outdoor dining site I remembered. On the final day, I was craving one more dinner at a fine restaurant with the kind of food you just can't get in Waco, and Jennifer located one using a mobile app that sounded perfect. We phoned in reservations and showed up at 5:30, our rental car vacuumed and ready to return as we tried to prepare for the red-eye flight to Los Angeles and the two connections that would land us back in Texas the next afternoon.
It was **the place,** and it seemed for all the world as though Barbara had led us there as a final blessing on our week of catharsis. I returned with a deep inner peace that has never entirely left in the three weeks I've been back.
I don't want to claim too much here. Barbara told me that a few weeks after her first husband died, she distinctly heard his voice saying "It's OK; I'm happy." Knowing how much that meant to her, it is easy for me to suggest that she led us back to this place so I could have a similar moment of preternatural closeness with my departed spouse. Skeptics will scoff, of course, and I don't blame them. After all, we crave such revelations, and are all too eager to read purpose and meaning into chance events.
Still, I will say this: I have kept with me a strong sense of Barbara's inner peace, which allowed her to trust and slough off the burdens of stress and uncertainty through circumstances that would have brought most people to their knees. Her deafness and her profound difficulties with balance, both of which I have written about on this blog, were the ongoing symptoms of the radiation damage that ultimately led to her death. How does one maintain trust and faith when visited with such perverse afflictions? How does one find the strength to continue through the daily round of petty challenges and victories that makes up the better part of most human lives?
I don't know the answer, but I do know that in the wake of Barbara's death I have internalized that strength in a way that I had never been able to do before. In the face of bereavement, I have treated myself to spiritual calm, and have let the stresses and worries fall away from me as that source of unknown strength, latent within my inner being but too rarely tapped, has slipped from her shoulders onto mine.
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