Category Archives: Random Blogging

   Every year, I think the campaign ads can’t get any worse—and every year, the inventive souls who churn them out surprise me.

  

It’s bad enough that every vote is twisted to prove that the person who cast it is a deviant intent upon destroying America, and complex issues are portrayed as choices between good and evil so that they can be shoehorned into 30-second sound bites. Even worse—if that’s possible—is the choice of issues to highlight.

  

When the New Jersey Supreme Court, consisting of four Republicans and three Democrats, held unanimously that “denying commited same-sex couples the financial and social benefits given their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate government purpose,” the joy and relief was palpable. Republicans were ecstatic. (Gays were generally pleased, too.) Nationally and locally, GOP candidates fell all over themselves proclaiming the centrality of the issue, and the mortal danger posed to the republic should we fail to amend the constitution to ensure that same sex couples will never, ever be able to file joint tax returns.

  

Presumably, voters will now recognize the triviality of such issues as the fiasco in Iraq, where nearly 3000 young Americans and perhaps 600,000 Iraqis have died. We will ignore the re-emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. We will ignore the fact that we sent our troops into danger without proper equipment and without a viable military strategy or exit plan. (Okay, apparently without any strategy or exit plan.)

   Vo

ters will stop worrying about billions of dollars ripped off by Halliburton and other cronies of the Administration who received juicy no-bid contracts, both in Iraq and Louisiana. And we certainly will stop carping about the incompetence of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. That was over a year ago, after all—the New Jersey threat is fresh and new, and voters have short memories.

  

Surely, voters will understand intuitively that the threat posed by committed gay couples is far greater than the threat posed by refusing to implement the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission, or by the warrantless wiretapping and data mining of American citizens by our own government. How many times has the average citizen really needed the right of habeas corpus? What is worse, after all—letting the President decide who is an enemy combatant, and what constitutes torture, or the prospect that Adam and Steve might actually move into the house next door?

 

Maybe it will work one more time. Maybe those who are terrified of the social change

represented by acceptance of our gay neighbors will once again elevate the issue of gay marriage over and above all other considerations, and energize the Republican base. But maybe not. A recent Ipsos Public Affairs Survey commissioned by the AP asked likely voters who they trusted most to handle a series of issues. On same-sex marriage, 46% trusted Democrats; 36% trusted Republicans.

 

As the President says, “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again."

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Here’s a short quiz.

 

    Who is the better parent, the dad who lovingly but firmly corrects his child when he believes the youngster has done something wrong and needs to learn a lesson, or the dad who reflexively defends Junior, no matter what—the one who goes to school and argues when the teacher disciplines his child?

    

Most of us would choose the parent who cares enough to teach his child to distinguish between right and wrong, between unacceptable behavior and behavior that is true to the child’s best nature. Most of us also recognize that the parent who constantly shields his children from the consequences of their bad choices is not living up to the responsibilities of parenthood.

    

Would we accuse the first parent of not loving his child? Or would we say his willingness to do the unpleasant work—the willingness to suffer through the tantrums of the two-year-old told no, the pouting of the preteen denied a pair of too-expensive jeans, and the complaints of a grounded teenager—makes him the better, more loving parent? One is  mature love; the other is a self-centered  "he’s my kid, so he’s automatically right" attitude that is anything but.

     

Think about this example the next time someone in the Bush Administration suggests that any criticism of the Iraq war or American foreign policy is “siding with the terrorists.” Think about it when shrill pundits accuse those who disagree with Administration policies of “hating America” or being “covert enemies” who secretly want the United States to fail.

    

Midterm elections are fast approaching, and the nasty rhetoric on all sides is ratcheting up accordingly. That’s a shame—because if there is anything America needs right now, it is an adult conversation about our policy priorities, and about the qualifications of those we elect to set those priorities and implement them. That conversation won’t occur if necessary participants in the debate take the position that disagreement equals hatred and shouldn’t be tolerated. 

 

    Mature people who genuinely love this country will worry when they believe it is going astray. They will do the hard work of citizenship: they will inform themselves of the facts and make an effort to help correct perceived missteps. They won’t always be right, any more than a parent is always right—but therein lies the difference between patriotism and jingoism.

    

Let’s set some ground rules. Let’s acknowledge that people can love their country deeply, and yet have very different ideas about what is in the national best interest. We can respect the good will of those with whom we disagree, and listen to their arguments, rather than applying labels in order to dismiss them. We may leave the conversation without reaching agreement—indeed, such a result is highly likely, given human nature and the different worldviews we bring to the discussion—but actually listening to each other can be a very enlightening experience.

 

     Good parents don’t condone name-calling when their children do it.  Good citizens don’t resort to it either.

 

 

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I think I just took a poll.

 

It wasn’t scientific—in fact, it could more aptly be characterized as a series of anecdotes. But interesting, for what it may be worth, and what it may suggest about changing political passions in these polarized times.

 

As most of my friends and acquaintences know, I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads simply “Ex Republican.” It is the only message on my car, and something of a departure from my usual disinclination to use my transportation as a billboard for my politics, my religion or my philosophy. I put it there three years ago, and I tend to forget it’s there, but the last couple of weeks have provided me with pretty constant reminders.

 

For one week every summer for a number of years, my husband and I have taken assorted kids—and more recently, grandkids—to a beach in South Carolina. This year, he and I took an extra week and drove down the

Blue Ridge Parkway

. (For those who have never done so, I commend the experience; the National Park Service has done a magnificent job maintaining this spectacular route through the mountains. It would be nice if more of our federal budget went to such endeavors, and less to blowing people up in Iraq—but I digress.)

 

On a country road in Virginia, a woman driving a pickup truck honked at us and motioned for my husband to roll down his window. Mystified, he did so. She gave us a “thumbs up,” and when we still looked puzzled, yelled “I love your bumper sticker! Me too!”

 

When we stopped at a hotel, the bellman smiled broadly and told us he loved our bumper sticker. When we pulled over at one of the scenic overlooks along the

Blue Ridge Parkway

, a man driving out of the same overlook in a car with a faded Bush/Cheney sticker leaned out his window and told us he sure did agree with our bumper sticker. The most enthusiastic response came from the owner of an Inn in Blowing Rock, North Carolina; he took one look, started to laugh, and said “That bumper sticker just earned you a discount on your room!” He was as good as his word—we got 30% off the listed rate!

 

I must admit to being floored by these and a number of similar reactions. We were driving through the south, after all—through very red states. And we undoubtedly passed plenty of people who muttered uncomplimentary things under their breath, or at least disagreed with the sentiment plastered on our car. But I also don’t think these reactions were meaningless, or that they should be discounted. I think they reflect a growing national mood, made up of equal parts disgust with Congressional corruption, and the belated realization that a President who understands the importance of national parks and global realities (among other things) might be a better choice than one we’d like to have a beer with.

 

 

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It’s easy to get discouraged about what is happening to America, easy to forget how many really wonderful people are working in every community to make a positive difference and fulfill America’s promise.

 

I have been working on a small research project. Most recently, that research has involved interviewing the directors of community and human development organizations. These people head up all kinds of projects, from all parts of the country—there’s a Mission on an Arizona reservation, several neighborhood organizers in Chicago and Indianapolis, a youth leadership program in Witchita, and many others.

 

These were very different people, with very different organizational missions. But all were dedicated, street-smart, and utterly without self-importance. Their offices were often difficult to find (admittedly, I’m direction-impaired), and always what real estate types would classify as “Type C” or worse. They had computers, but no gee-whiz technologies. No self-respecting CEO would work an hour for what they were being paid.

 

What they did have were compelling stories: of this refugee helped to create a new life, of that worker still able to get to his job thanks to a campaign that kept the neighborhood’s bus service, of the garbage collector given the encouragement (and tutoring) that allowed him to address a state senate committee and ultimately change public policy, of the middle manager who had been a welfare mother the organization taught to read while providing child care.

 

Not earth-shattering victories, to be sure. But the people I interviewed were nothing if not realists. They relished their victories, small as those might seem to our political pontificators. Every single one used the phrase “one on one” to describe their work with clients and volunteers. Every single one cited “patience” as a necessary quality for the changes they were trying to effect. Every single one stressed the importance of listening—to their volunteers, to their clients, and to their communities. There wasn’t an ideologue among them.  

 

Coincidentally, I’d just gotten home from a round of these interviews when I picked up the Indianapolis Star and saw that Karl Schneider had died. Karl was vice-Principal at Arsenal Tech when I first moved downtown with three teenage boys still in school. I’d heard about how “dangerous” Tech was, and that was the image I took to my first conversation with Karl. He looked at me over his glasses, and asked “have your sons had fights at their other schools?” When I said no, he said “Then they probably won’t here. If kids want to find trouble, they can find it at Tech; if they don’t, they won’t.”

 

He was right. My kids had a fabulous experience at Tech. Karl was one of Tech’s many dedicated, gifted teachers who believed in young people, and in the power of education.

 

On this 4^th of July, I celebrated the Americans like Karl Schneider and the people I had interviewed. Their unsung, unrelenting, and often unrewarded efforts to achieve America’s promise of “equality and justice for all,” may save us yet.  

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It’s primary election time. Soon, the 2006 political season will descend on us—and with it, the inevitable assortment of exaggerated claims, pious moral pronouncements and impractical, unconstitutional and ludicrous policy proposals. Since hiding in a cave somewhere until it’s all over is generally not an option, when Congressional candidate A unveils his “Major Initiative to Solve the Boll Weevil Problem,” I am offering the following four easy questions to help you evaluate the candidates and their proposals:

 Question One: Is there general agreement that Boll Weevils are a problem?

Many of our fellow citizens believe that “dirty” books, gay parenting or retailers who substitute “Seasons Greetings” for “Merry Christmas” are among our most pressing social problems. Many of the rest of us don’t—in fact, some of us think our biggest problem is the jerks who insist on screaming about these “threats to morality and American culture.” Maybe some farmers welcome Boll Weevils.

 Question Two: Is there agreement on how to solve that problem?

Assuming that there is some level of agreement that a particular element of our common lives presents us with challenges—immigration and the outsourcing of American jobs come to mind; there are many others—is there any consensus on how that particular problem should be solved? (If Tom Friedman is right and the world is really “flat,” the measures we employ to deal with outsourcing probably ought to take its inevitability into account.) What does the evidence tell us about the Boll Weevils?

 Question Three: Is this a problem only government can solve?

Just because Uncle Beauregard was injured when he fell out of his golf cart, does it really make sense to pass a law requiring all golf cart manufacturers to install seat belts? Aren’t some problems best left to individuals, parents, or nonprofit organizations? Or—in the case of Boll Weevils—to farmers?

Question Four: Does the proposed solution pass the ‘smell test’?

 Does our earnest candidate demonstrate knowledge of available evidence on this issue? There are, for example, numerous studies showing that children raised by gay parents do just as well as those raised by straight ones—is Moral Paragon Candidate X aware of that research?  Is Fearless Candidate Y using “wedge issues” to appeal to a particular constituency—say the Wingnut Right—at the expense of other citizens? Is she simplifying complex issues? Substituting slogans for proposals, and labels for analysis? Is willingness to get serious about Boll Weevils really an indicator of her opponent’s fidelity to American Values?

 Can we really solve the nation’s problems with bumper sticker policies? Can we reduce criminal justice to Officer Friendly, Dirty Harry and Smoky the Bear? Or save American values by censoring Hollywood, outlawing abortion and disenfranchising gays?    

Or will 2006 be the year America comes to its senses?

 

 

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