The Song

Is there some song in your life that is intimately connected with an excruciatingly painful part of your personal history? Have you ever been just existing when it appears out of nowhere and you find yourself unprepared and unable to brace yourself against the impact and the next thing you know you are sitting there with your chest open and your bloody heart in front of you? Were you lucky enough to be alone or did you have to scramble and try to get your entrails all packed back inside before anyone noticed?

American Democracy 2.0 (It's Time For an Upgrade)

Have I got a deal for you.

I have a brand new Model T Ford from 1917 that you can have to drive to work in the winter in rush hour on the freeway. Not so sure?

OK. Fine. How about this?

I will replace all your appliances with new ones from 1967. Worried about getting replacement parts when they break down? Worried about the massive increase in your electric bill?

Boy are you picky! Then perhaps something else...

I will offer your kids a complete college education where the entire curriculum is from 1992. Sure it’s only three years into the Internet revolution and they will miss out on a few important scientific and historical advances, but it is free after all.

I’m willing to bet that most Americans wouldn’t be thrilled with any of these offers, much less be happy if they were forced upon them.

No-one wants auto technology that is 100 years old, household technology that is 50 years old, or an education that is 25 years old, and yet we wake up every day, secure in the knowledge that we are governed by "community technology" that is 241 years old. This shouldn’t comfort you, it should scare the bejesus out of you.

If you want to know why we have the political problems we have: gridlock, division, and an entire populace feeling unhappy about it all, maybe you should ask yourself why we allow ourselves to be governed by a system that hasn’t changed in almost 250 years. There is no other facet of American life that has changed so little and no other where there is more dissatisfaction. I don’t believe this is merely correlative but causational.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we dump democracy. I’m not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater and I do agree with Churchill. However, the “technology” by which we implement our government has got to go. One simple example would be to eliminate First Pass The Post elections with Single Transferable Vote. This would virtually guarantee that a larger number of people would have a representative that shares their views. People would start to feel confidence in their government again, would start to feel like they actually do have a voice beyond checking a box for someone they really don’t feel all that good about checking it for. And this is just one small idea; I have no doubt there are others.

It’s time we start innovating in the country again, and we should start with our government.

[Please look at this excellent video describing Single Transferable Vote]

A Christmas Carol

Well, I did it.

I directed an abridged version of the Dickens classic and it went very well. It was a hectic time as I also moved as well as prepared for Christmas and wrapped up the job at which I am currently employed.

Which brings us to the next act in my life. I start a new job at the beginning of the year (2017) and, as always, I hope for great things and a final landing place.

I also hope that in 2017 I can get my podcast and YouTube channel off the ground and start producing creative work. If only I can find a way to create order out of the chaos in my life, I think these things will come to fruition.

Stay tuned...

Why? (Or: On the Rise of the Fourth Reich)

[Author's Note: As context for readers from the future, this was written in response to the election of Donald Trump as Commander in Chief of the United States of America.]

I've been reading quite a few posts online in which someone attempts to explain to Trump supporters why they are afraid to live in a country ruled by Trump and ask his supporters why and how they could support him.

After much reflection, I believe these posts miss the core of the issue. You might as well ask the wind why it blows or explain to a tornado why you are afraid of what your life will be like after it passes. What Trump has tapped into is elemental and cannot be reasoned with.

Sure, Trump supporters provide what they feel are rational reasons for their vote and why any fear is misplaced. But the reality is that no-one can rationally support Trump. His supporters do so for reasons that are beyond reason. I don't mean this as a generalization but I state it categorically and believe it applies to everyone who voted for him down to the last.

But Why?

Dickens sums it up well in “A Christmas Carol” when the Ghost of Christmas Present warns Scrooge, “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it. Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.”

But even Dickens is only responding to the symptom. FDR stated the cause: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Because that is the elemental force; the name and sign of the beat: Fear.

But Fear of What?

In a country that is safer and wealthier than any in history, which is the most powerful both economically and physically, and in which the citizens have an unprecedented amount of freedom and choice, what exactly could its citizens fear? Unfortunately, as civilized as we have become, I believe the fear at play here is as old as humanity itself. It is Xenophobia.

Although the simple definition is the “fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners” what we care about is the full definition which, according to Merriam-Webster, is the “fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.” We need the full definition because we have a perfect storm at this moment of people and things both strange and foreign.

Surely there are those who fit the traditional definition and are worried about immigrants taking their jobs or terrified of terrorists blowing up their children and, to add fuel to that fire, there are frequent reports about how soon our population will no longer be majority European. But we also have a rise in the visibility and acceptance of the LGBT community and concerns over the robot (or more correctly the AI) apocalypse both of which are feared by different subsets of the people.

And that is all you need to know. I, along with many others, underestimated the degree to which someone like Trump could harness Xenophobia to his will. It is clear he has read “Mein Kampf” and used it as his playbook. He read the same tea leaves in America that Hitler read in Germany and had the political skill to achieve the same ends.

What remains to be seen is whether his lust for power is sated or not. Unfortunately, if history tells us anything, that is rarely the case.

A New Undertaking

I am directing a play. Strictly speaking, that is not a new undertaking since it is something I have done a few times in the past. But, since this is one I also wrote, I guess it does go in that category. Although, I didn't exactly write it so much as adapt something someone else wrote. To be exact, I have adapted "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens for the stage. I know, I know. A bold undertaking that surely no-one else has attempted. My main impetus in this was to see if it could be adapted word for word without changing any of the dialog as many screenwriters are want to do. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was no big deal. Unfortunately, I was asked to create an abridged version for this production but I don't think the overall work has suffered much in the effort. Any other attempts at adding creativity to my life have been slow going as evidenced by the infrequent blog posts. 

Welcome To The Machine, Part 1

There are travesties of justice happening every day in court rooms across this country; rather, I should say, what is happening is not justice at all; not for the accused and certainly not for the society that pays for the system.

I heard recently that any system is perfectly designed to generate whatever outcome it produces. What does that say about our legal system when we have some of the highest rates of both incarceration and recidivism in the industrialized world? When young people, whom science tells us do not have the cognitive ability to fully understand the consequences of their actions, find themselves ensnared in our courts, they are not treated with understand, empathy, dignity, or forgiveness. Even if they are moving in the right direction in nearly every other aspect of their lives, our system doesn't attempt to reinforce those behaviors. Instead it strips them bare of what little they have that could keep them on a path toward being productive members of society and increases the chances they will become a part of those shameful statistics.

To answer the question of what is wrong we should not look at the accused but instead look at the other side of the bench. It is those individuals, be they in suits, uniforms, or gowns, who are guilty: guilty of lacking discretion, guilty of lacking wisdom, guilty of lacking judgement; in short, guilty of lacking humanity. And lacking humanity leaves them incapable of recognizing the humanity that stands before them: humanity that is flawed, humanity that is frail, humanity that is redeemable.

Thirty Years On

I recently heard an interview with a black comedian in which he described a situation in which he, in 2015, was asked to leave a coffee shop.

In 1985, as a freshman in college, I boarded a Greyhound in Terre Haute, Indiana. Stepping in just behind me was a young, nicely dressed, and attractive black lady. I looked the long length of the bus and saw only two empty seats: one was in the front row next to an older, grey-haired woman, and the other, about three-quarters of the way back, was next to a middle-aged black gentleman in a suit. I was torn but I don't know if I should credit my parents or my classmates that the race of my soon-to-be seat-mate was not part of the equation. My parents never uttered a bad word about other races; although, to be honest, because of where we lived, I didn't hear any words at all. On the other hand, owing to my bad experiences with growing up a runt riding school buses, I didn't feel like I wanted to make that walk and I didn't like the idea of riding in so conspicuous a place as the front. Little did I know, the decision was not mine to make. It became a decision made by my elders.

Barely had I begun to consider the situation when the black lady moved to sit in the front seat. The older woman stood up and confidently asserted that she should not sit there and that this nice young man (indicating me) would sit next to her while she (indicating the black lady) could sit near the rear. This prompted the black gentleman to rise and counter that, no, I would sit next to him and the black lady could sit where she liked. 

I paused...wavered...and then I sat next to the black gentleman. I knew that he was right and I like to think that was part of the reason I made that choice. But it would be self-serving to say that I fancied myself a "reverse Rosa Parks." I was a deer in the headlights. In reality, I was too young and self-conscious to make any decision at all. The black gentleman was more forceful and assertive in his claim to my companionship and so I did as I was told.

I've thought a lot about this experience over the years. Although it happened very fast, it has not been lost on me that it happened at all and that no-one other than the two people already listed as wanting the company of my derriere made any move to weigh in. Was everyone else on the bus as caught off guard as I was? I doubt it. Surely some were surprised by the older woman being so brazen as to show her pre-civil-rights-era sensibilities in so public a way. Others were probably too embarrassed to speak up and since someone else was already handling it... But it is just as likely that many people agreed with the older woman yet knew better than to say anything and had I made the other choice would have inwardly believed that I had made the righteous one.

And so when I heard this black comedian tell his story about being asked to leave a coffee shop, not because he was black, but because he was assumed to be a panhandler, I had to wonder, thirty years on, "How far have we come?"