I've been chatting with an old friend lately, catching up on 40 years as if it were just a brief hiatus. Lots of stuff has happened to each of us during that "middle" chapter, a big chunk of life lived completely oblivious to what the other was doing.
It's kind of like falling asleep during a movie. They say the devil is in the details for some things, but for me, in a dark theatre, the details are the devil; the middle is when I doze. I can fill in the minutiae on my own, as long as I know how it all begins and how it ends.
So, here we are. Not the end, I hope, but as we approach 60, far closer than we were when. When. When we thought we knew who we were and where we'd be going and nobody clued us in that we really had no idea. Each of us, in the mind of the other, is still forever young. Grainy Facebook pictures don't change that.
Life has thrown my old friend some curves lately, curves that make my own struggles seem, well, like a hill of beans. Years ago, I had a good friend who was dying. Not dying in the sense that we are all dying with each tick of the clock, but in the real way that most of us cannot fathom, when you know your days are seriously numbered. She used to call me to entertain her with stories of my petty problems, though she never so much as insinuated they were petty. She liked when I took her out of her head, even for a moment, to let her forget about all that she was destined to miss. I wish, all these years later, I could fill her in on the details, on the stuff that seems as inconsequential as the middle of a movie while it's happening, the stuff that somehow led me from there to here. It would be nice to pick up where we left off.
It's been easy, somehow, to pick up with my old friend where we left off, despite the 40 year gap. He thinks I'm taking him out of his head, for a moment here and there, but the truth is he's doing the same for me. There's something about the ones who knew you before you were fully formed, especially when you have the sense, all of sudden, that you are. If I am, indeed, fully formed, it seems just a little less frightening when I talk to somebody who knew me, or at least thought he did, when.
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Monday, February 11, 2019
Zero Tolerance = False Equivalencies
A few premises:
1. Racism is bad.
2. Sexual Assault is bad.
3. A lifetime of unabashed corruption is bad.
A few other premises:
1. Dressing up in black face 35 years ago does not, in and of itself, make one a racist; nor does it make one incapable of governance; the possibility that one was in a picture of somebody in black face standing with somebody dressed as a Klansman, and the fact that he could tell his constituents two diametrically opposed stories, makes the issue a bit more thorny.
2. An allegation of unwanted sex, 15 or 20 years after the alleged occurrence, first brought to light only when the alleged perpetrator can be pushed to a precipitous fall that might, coincidentally, be politically expedient for somebody else, does not make that accused person a sexual predator; nor does it make him incapable of governance.
3. A lifetime of unabashed corruption is always bad.
One more premise:
We flit, and flitting is bad.
I don't know whether Virginia's governor should resign. I don't know whether Virginia's lieutenant governor should resign. I don't know whether Virginia's attorney general should resign. I do know that each situation is unique, and that a rush to judgment in any direction for any of these men is a bad precedent to set.
I do know that we need conversations rather than knee-jerk reactions. About race, and about gender. As to corruption, the kind of corruption that affects us as a nation, that threatens to chip away irrevocably at our common good, the kind of corruption that plainly and overtly pervades our current administration (and I include, here, those who hold their noses and look the other way), we have already begun the conversation at the ballot box, and we will, I hope, continue the conversation when the next election rolls around. For that, as an electorate, we should have zero tolerance.
As to the rest, there are nuances. I have known not only of powerful men, but of young men in college, who can be and have been taken down by uncorroborated allegations of sexual assault or harassment. Is that where we want to be? And, unless Mother Theresa comes back to life, we will be hard pressed to find somebody who has not been guilty, in his or her past, in word or in deed, of some form of intolerance or apparent ignorance. We are all, last time I checked, human, inherently flawed. We should not be so eager to cast stones.
The most any of us can do is acknowledge our errors and try to do better. And keep the conversation going, and allow for redemption, when it is possible.
1. Racism is bad.
2. Sexual Assault is bad.
3. A lifetime of unabashed corruption is bad.
A few other premises:
1. Dressing up in black face 35 years ago does not, in and of itself, make one a racist; nor does it make one incapable of governance; the possibility that one was in a picture of somebody in black face standing with somebody dressed as a Klansman, and the fact that he could tell his constituents two diametrically opposed stories, makes the issue a bit more thorny.
2. An allegation of unwanted sex, 15 or 20 years after the alleged occurrence, first brought to light only when the alleged perpetrator can be pushed to a precipitous fall that might, coincidentally, be politically expedient for somebody else, does not make that accused person a sexual predator; nor does it make him incapable of governance.
3. A lifetime of unabashed corruption is always bad.
One more premise:
We flit, and flitting is bad.
I don't know whether Virginia's governor should resign. I don't know whether Virginia's lieutenant governor should resign. I don't know whether Virginia's attorney general should resign. I do know that each situation is unique, and that a rush to judgment in any direction for any of these men is a bad precedent to set.
I do know that we need conversations rather than knee-jerk reactions. About race, and about gender. As to corruption, the kind of corruption that affects us as a nation, that threatens to chip away irrevocably at our common good, the kind of corruption that plainly and overtly pervades our current administration (and I include, here, those who hold their noses and look the other way), we have already begun the conversation at the ballot box, and we will, I hope, continue the conversation when the next election rolls around. For that, as an electorate, we should have zero tolerance.
As to the rest, there are nuances. I have known not only of powerful men, but of young men in college, who can be and have been taken down by uncorroborated allegations of sexual assault or harassment. Is that where we want to be? And, unless Mother Theresa comes back to life, we will be hard pressed to find somebody who has not been guilty, in his or her past, in word or in deed, of some form of intolerance or apparent ignorance. We are all, last time I checked, human, inherently flawed. We should not be so eager to cast stones.
The most any of us can do is acknowledge our errors and try to do better. And keep the conversation going, and allow for redemption, when it is possible.
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Distractions and Smears
Can you believe liberals think the governor of Virginia should not resign? Well, no, I cannot believe anyone believes he should not resign. Not because he may have put shoe polish on his face once or twice, but because he cannot say with 100 per cent certainty that he never posed for a picture, in either costume, as a Klansman with a black man. And because his wife had to tell him, at a press conference that no doubt already had her wondering how she could ever show her face at canasta again, that it was inappropriate to demonstrate his moonwalk at that time.
How about the new New York abortion bill, that allows women having a sudden change of heart to kill their babies at birth. I've heard of women wanting to kill their husbands during labor (okay, kill is a strong word, but I do remember uttering a few profanities), but most of us who have made it to the doctor's office under our own power in the ninth month have grown pretty attached to the person within, despite the excruciating pain.
Of course New York's law does not endorse whimsical infanticide, but my friend gets his news from Fox, so I asked Google. I watched Sean Hannity shut a woman up when she tried to explain the -- gasp -- facts, ultimately cutting her off by announcing that she was the "villain of the week." This, as she politely asked that Fox viewers refrain from issuing their customary death threats. I cannot help but wonder how heart wrenching it must be for a family to choose between a woman's life and the life of an unborn child, and I hope nobody I know ever has to face that choice.
How did we get to this place, where our country, and everything it was founded upon, has been hijacked by hypocritical morality and false equivalencies? How did we come to allow the insertion of extreme religious viewpoints into politics and painfully personal decisions while we allow our collective freedoms and security to be whittled away? How did we get to the point where we are going to debate, in the same breath, whether a sexual encounter, years ago, between two adults in a hotel room should ruin a person's career, and whether a man should cling to his governorship when his medical school yearbook page contains a supposedly funny picture of a Klansman standing with a black man.
For some things, like racism or any kind of hate (particularly when there is a healthy history of violence and killing to go along with it) there is no gray area. But I fear for my gender, in this age of the "Me Too" movement. Can the endless and very serious fight for the life and dignity and safety of women survive when we give automatic credence to every woman who comes out of the woodwork with an allegation of sexual assault against a powerful or wealthy or influential man?
Truly, have we lost our minds, or, worse still, our souls?
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