Tannishblog

A poor black man in a rented van, during an extensive police chase, crashed into a car filled with affluent, white suburban teens in Wheeling, IL., killing one. the driver of the van is now indicted for murder along with several other charges. His trail and sentencing is likely to be swift, partly because of the details of the incident and partly because he is black.

I know. It’s just not politic to point this out. We cannot acknowledge our latent racism, or our history of slavery and segregation outside the sterile confines of the classroom. We must remain in denial about how our concepts of race factor into all of our interactions between blacks and whites in America. But, as is sung in the Broadway musical Avenue Q, "Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist".

As I see it, the harm from racism comes from our denial of it. I hurts everyone. White are forever shadowed by a specter of the Master Race ethos. Blacks, in turn, suffer from the stigmata of oppression with its attendant  - and also unacknowledged - low cultural self-esteem. This poor cultural image gives rise to urban black’s insistence on creating a unique mark on American culture, thereby giving themselves credibility they don’t feel they already have.

This feeling is as unfortunate as it is false. Already, many black men and women have made substantial positive impacts on American society, without which we wouldn’t be the nation we are today. Many more will emerge. Too slowly perhaps are curricula changing to celebrate the vast legacy of black Americans, but it is happening.

Whites, meanwhile, still cling to the illusion of lordship. This too still plays out in our education system. While immigration continues in our "melting pot" of a nation, bringing people from non-European countries, white Americans - especially those who have chosen to distance themselves from diverse neighborhoods - are becoming edgy. They feel encroached upon. As my work friend and red-stater said yesterday, "Mexico is invading." He worries needlessly about the state of the union. I see it as making America stronger, and perhaps more importantly, more representative of the global community. Such a melange of cultural viewpoints may temper our latent racism by forcing people to learn to live with differences instead of arming themselves against them. That would really be the spreading of Democracy.

Meanwhile if impoverished inner-city blacks continue to cause havoc, stereotypes will prevail in media and in the justice department. The Wheeling tragedy is sad, all the more so because it was avoidable. Not by the police, perhaps (who are being sued by the family of the victim in what I see as a shameless ploy to profit from their tragedy by trading the life of their son for possible financial gain), but by common sense among communities and an outreach between cultures. Fist, however, we must admit our racial biases before any progress is made.

Even as the Iranian government cracks down on bloggers, its President starts one of his own. There’s nothing like using the tools of the enemy against him. To revile the Great Satan through a new channel of communication created by the evil one himself. Ironic, that. I won’t mention the double standard, that’s an ingrained aspect of Muslim life, it seems. Slick interface, but reading the English version right-justified is different.

I’m confounded that a people, so openly in-your-face religious, are so militant. Isn’t that an oxymoron? It’s not just Muslims, either. modern American Christians are just as apt to arm themselves for an ideal. That’s why we’re in Iraq, isn’t it? Spreading Democracy? …don’t get me started.

Perhaps we’ve earned the moniker Iranians have been throwing at us for decades. Sometimes, as strategy of "tough love" can backfire. We haven’t been - to my limited knowledge, at least - easy on Middle-eastern nations during the past century. I won’t talk about this one. Perhaps they feel themselves recipients of unbalanced policies, ill-conceived or disingenuous attempts at allowing them to fight our battles by promising economic benefits that never materialize.

I’m also amazed that reports of fighting throughout the region often refer to armaments made in America, Russia, and France in the hands of fractious brothers of faith. How can these nations sit back and feign astonishment at a long-standing resentment and hatred toward them, when for the sake of economic growth (read: greed) weapons are sold instead of plowshares?

In this light, I tend to think the "Great Satan," is bigger than one nation, although America is indeed the point man, is instead the lingering vestages of Western colonialism, religious intolerance (not a strictly Muslim issue), and a lopsided reliance on unchecked capitalism.

As much as I would like the Muslims to lay down their Western-made arms, I can’t help wondering if what the world is currently going through is a cleansing period - not for the Middle-east, but for the West - wherein we all learn the fallacy of our policies, and the fragility of civilization. It would be sad if the end game of America’s twentieth century foreign policies is global thermonuclear war. Isn’t that what we’ve been trying to avoid?

My household is experiencing an Internet brownout today. Fully two-thirds of pages we try to load result in a DNS error or, as Firefox translates: "Server not found. Firefox can’t find the server at www…"

Any blogspot address is nil, but Google works. Many advertising banners are void, diminishing the silent shouts of "lookee here!" characteristic of online blurbs (that’s actually nice…). Sometimes I can get to my Earthlink start page, sometimes not - but my games still work. PHEW!

I bet Al Qaida is behind this. No one on the planet has the sophistication, the will, the mastery to pull of such a stunt. I can see them now, sneaking into manholes with power tools to cut through fiber optic lines in geographical coordination, severing the information backbone of our fragile nation.

And what is the Department of Homeboy Scrutiny doing? Nothing. Wait - it just looks like they’re doing nothing because they’re doing it in secret. Yeah, that’s right. Secret. No doubt they’re honing in on the manholes, awaiting just outside with big wooden mallets to bop those evil Al Qaida on the heads as they emerge from their nefarious deeds, like some life-sized gopher game. SHHH! Don’t tell anyone.

It must be working, because I have finally loaded a Blogger page. Could be an anomaly, though.

Have you ever noticed how our media attends to war coverage in disproportion to other news? War and Terrorism, it’s all the same thing.

It’s only some wars. If Israel or America is involved, sometimes the UK, the news is unavoidable. News outlets squeeze the story for all its worth. But in the rest of the world all we hear is the sound of crickets. Wars happen everywhere, all the time. IN Sri Lanka a civil war has been going on for two generations. In Africa, war is endemic. American news outlets care little.

Have you ever noticed how the way wars and terrorism is covered resembles the style used for sports coverage? The late Howard Cosell would be proud; every grunt and curse is broadcast in the news equivalent of high-definition, propagated through news wire services in cyclic regurgitation.

It must help to feed the Money God. Newspapers and television stations are businesses, and businesses have only one purpose - to make money. They wouldn’t be the way they are if it didn’t sell. That brings up the question of who is responsible for the outlandish sensationalism in today’s media. The answer seems obvious - the consumers are. If we didn’t continue to buy it, watch it, read it or listen to it, these same businesses would have to find another way to turn a profit. If we weren’t so perverse as to suck up all the bad news in lieu of the good, things would be different.

Kind of gives a new spin to the phrase "You get what you pay for."

There's some kind of social commentary inherent in finding one's darkest Apocalyptic beliefs reinforced through a link from an email newsletter intended for frivolity. Yet such are the times we live in. The link, intended for "brainiacs," got me out of my post-workday-slouch. Bill Bonner writes about The Five Major Trends Reshaping the World Economy. They are:

• The Rising Cost of Energy
• The Experimental Monetary System
• Where Are We in the Economic Cycle?
• The Exodus of Money From West to East
• The Decline of the American Empire

This is just one of the many angles pointing toward imminent upheaval in our society. Call it Armageddon, Apocalypse, whatever, the inevitability of catastrophic change is finally dawning on a wider sampling of thinkers. Not one single thing will get us, but all of them in concert.

The images provoke echoes Lewis Carroll. This rabbit hole is large enough for the whole world to fall into.

I’ve been silent about Israel’s new war. Considering my quick condemnation of the Iraqi conflict, this silence is perhaps conspicuous. I’ve failed to speak up because I’m conflicted.

I hate war. Systemized aggression is the providence of the weak. The Path of Peace is one of resolve and courage, thus so few tread there. It’s too hard. But destruction is ridiculously easy; that’s why conflict is so commonplace.

On the other hand, how can one deal with the pathological collective neurosis that characterizes the Arab-Jew divide? As the saying goes: One cannot reason with a sick mind. If any militant group decides to lob missiles into any sovereign nation, how should the afflicted government react? Such actions represent mental illness either of individuals or of a group. The situation worsens when the aggressors compound their villainy by using the backyards of innocents to fire their munitions. Reason cannot prevail. Diplomacy likewise is insufficient.

Obviously, I side with the Israelis. Too, I’m being inconsistent with my core beliefs. All war is wrong, even this one, but I cannot help agreeing with Israel’s right to defend against such reckless cowardice. What they know that the Western media often forgets is that Hezbollah or Hamas cannot be dealt with any other way.

There’s something unsettling about a culture that values sand over blood. This applies to all Middle-eastern groups. Land has more value there than life. In that regard, both sides in the conflict are wrong. Yet I feel for the Israelis partly because of what I’ve seen them do to help the desert bloom, mostly because they don’t want to fight. Israel hates fighting. They begrudge being forever on guard, so when they do fight, they fight to win. In the hearts of the average Israeli, they pray this war will be the last. They’ve been praying for this a long time.

Knowing this, having seen and heard how such intolerance without can damage a nation and its people within, I nod my head sadly and watch the unforgivable take place. Both sides are wrong, but only one side has a choice in the matter. That’s why I side with Israel despite my hatred of war - because they don’t want to fight. And that makes them more right than the other guys.

The NY Times has a long article about Men Not Working, and Not Wanting Just Any Job. There's a silent trend happening that escapes the data gnomes of Bureau of Labor Statistics, namely the growing number of dropouts from the work force.

Millions of men… in the prime of their lives, between 30 and 55 — have dropped out of regular work. They are turning down jobs they think beneath them or are unable to find work for which they are qualified, even as an expanding economy offers opportunities to work.

Wait. I'm in the prime of my life? Nevermind…

I'm not sure I like news that some men my age are taking the easy way out of their career misfortunes by retiring early. The two mentions of mortgaging homes in order to fund their laxity are abrading my sensibilities. Isn't that abusing the system? No wonder my insurance costs are higher every year.

And no mention is made in the article about how these men afford things for their children. I smell a Baby Boomer bugaboo here, in the selfishness of kicking back just because your future didn't pan out the way it "should have."

“These are men forced to compete to get back into the work force, and even then they cannot easily reconstruct what many lost in a former job,” said Thomas A. Kochan, a labor and management expert at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “So they stop trying.”

It's one thing if you've either made enough money to justify the move, or if you've sufficiently downsized your lifestyle to accommodate a shrinking income. Increasingly, though, these Deadbeat Dudes are riding the welfare train besides over mortgaging themselves in order to pay for the privilege of kicking back.

Instead, [one man] supports himself by borrowing against the rising value of his Los Angeles home. Other men fall back on wives or family members.

But the fastest growing source of help is a patchwork system of government support, the main one being federal disability insurance, which is financed by Social Security payroll taxes. The disability stipends range up to $1,000 a month and, after the first two years, Medicare kicks in, giving access to health insurance that for many missing men no longer comes with the low-wage jobs available to them.

No federal entitlement program is growing as quickly, with more than 6.5 million men and women now receiving monthly disability payments, up from 3 million in 1990. About 25 percent of the missing men are collecting this insurance.

That just ain't right.

Dang! I sound like a Republican I know. I think I'll shower.

Excuse me while I ponder this aloud. I’m trying to follow the logic. First pass a sweeping education reform bill with a friendly-sounding name ( lets call it No Child Left Behind) with the aim of holding teachers and school districts accountable for student achievement. OK, Sounds good.

Next, we rearrange government spending to funnel funds to our war efforts by cutting from - among other places - education budgets. Then we wait three years and hold the states responsible for failing to meat the new guidelines without adequate funding.

And how does the federal government plan to sanction the recalcitrant states? By withholding money! The states have no money to implement the new law because funding for the necessary transition period was cut, so failure to conform to NCLB was inevitable. Because they failed, the feds are threatening to not pay the states.

… I’m still not getting it… How does this benefit the children? They only get one chance to go through school, they have no means to make up for the effects of undercutting education costs. Most families who have children enrolled in public schools do not have money enough to pull them out and send them to private teaching institutions.

Corporations are pressuring the federal government to revamp our public education system lest our nation loses a competitive edge. Civil liberty organizations are bemoaning the educational divide between white and minorities. They all are asking the wrong people. Our education system cannot be mandated from Washington. But if the same parties donated the money they spend on lobbyists to education groups within the state they operate, perhaps the problem of plummeting test scores would miraculously correct itself. If Washington would sanction such efforts by providing (gasp!) tax-relief to corporate and private benefactors, perhaps something good would happen.

Just a thought. ("I don’t suppose I’m right," said Pooh…)

It occurred to me that the US government cannot hold back the tide of research on stem cells. If we don’t advance the science, other nations will. We can be assured of two things: American scientific leadership slipping another notch, and a grabbing of market share of any resulting viable product by foreign corporations unencumbered in their research, ensuring the US to play "catch up" in what promises to be a lucrative marketplace.

Our new-found squeamishness will cost Americans money in the long run. It guarantees a widening of the income/entitlement gap because only the richest Americans will be ale to afford to travel to France, say, for state of the art hospital care. You can bet the squeamish, religious ones will gladly pay for any beneficial care for their loved ones regardless of how the technology was obtained. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

The heat wave finally broke and, in typical Chicago fashion, the humidity coalesced into rainfall. Such is the environment I drive through this morning. My car could use washing. It's covered by particulate matter from airline exhaust (the parking lot at work is situated at the edge of O'Hare Airport). As I ponder this, my mind is brought back to last Saturday's viewing of Al Gore's movie - again.

Another thought interferes - another recurring theme here. How disconnected society is from spirituality. In a brief time, geologically, mankind has gone from stealing burning sticks after lightning sparks wildfires to nanotechnology and microchips. Quite impressive. Our spiritual maturity remains stunted, however. As evidenced by our President's latest photo-op surrounded by test tube babies, the ensuing First Veto (coming halfway through a second term presidency) reminds me how backward we still are in our spiritual beliefs. On many levels we hold to same myths, first formulated during our fire-gathering days, of inhuman deities and divine wrath, initially created to keep the fear of the unknown at bay. Through all our development as a species, we still believe in the boogeyman.

There's more at work here. I'm reminded of an article I found some years back entitled Economics Without Ethics: the Crisis of Spirituality, by Bishan Singh. Many salient points to be found there. My favorite quote is this:

…Spirituality is the enemy of the capital-centered economy. Where materialism has advanced, spirituality has declined. And where spirituality is high the capital-centered economy has had difficulty gaining a foothold.

By working to convert all values into monetary values, economists make money the be-all and end-all of human enterprises and endeavor. Materialism becomes the living culture, money-making the religion, money the god, banks the temples, and economists the oracles.

Any God before this god, any Religion before this religion, any Culture before this culture, and any Spirit before this spirit is the enemy. Spirituality is anathema to materialism…

Mr. Singh is spot on in his analysis. The dissimilitude of our development as a sentient species bears witness. We stress childbirth over population controls even as we strip the planet of resources. We speak about the sanctity of life while military proliferation grows exponentially. Our very history is a catalogue of warfare. We elevate greed over charity, wealth above compassion. While paying lip service to age-old values of decency, we train our future business people to manipulate the government for financial gain. Corporations have more power than the people who make them work. In fact, we give much of our liberty to advance corporate welfare, at eh expense of human welfare.

It's sad, really. Perhaps a few people will survive our folly. Then maybe they'll have the benefit of gleaning wisdom from what is rapidly becoming the World's Most Documented Extinction.