Who Knew Meema Was a Hottie and Such an Exhibitionist, Too?

An Apology to Generations Yet Unborn:

     Let me say for my entire generation that I'm really, really, really so very, very, very sorry for all those millions of selfies we took. I know, we could have spent our time so much more wisely.

      In all the time we wasted doing selfies at every new restaurant we went to and with every new friend we met -- not to mention, documenting every somewhat-significant moment of our lives, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner for decades on end -- we could have been learning Sanskrit, Mandarin, how to fix our dysfunctional government, and still had time to watch dozens of cute cat videos.

      And ohmyGod, how stupid did we look? Am I right? Yes, yes, I know our hairstyles were weird, and our clothes were way weirder. And yes, we showed a lot more skin than we should've.

      Way too much information, I know, tell me about it. Who knew meema was such a hottie and such an exhibitionist, too?

      You see, selfies just sort of got out of hand with your grandmothers, grandfathers, great uncles, great aunts, cousins twice removed, and, with even, Presidents and megastars getting in on it.

      I don't know what it was exactly. Maybe it was the combination of a cellphone and a camera. You see, we had never seen that before. As you probably already guessed, our lives were really very boring, and we were, to be honest, kinda stupid. And I admit, we sorta overdid it. But I hope you can see your way to forgive us.

      Of course, maybe you shouldn't be too hard on us. Selfies were just something we all did in the second decade of the twentieth-first century, like earlier generations' fads – swallowing goldfish, packing into phone booths, tripping out on acid for a couple of decades.

      Remember, you are fortunate enough to live in the future where you have 20-20 hindsight. I do hope you can forgive us what must seem to you as our abysmal ignorance and mind-boggling stupidity.

      But, remember, the truth is that all of us, including you, future people, are prisoners of our own stupid eras and their fashions that inevitably look so unfashionable only a few short years later.

      Sorry for that, too. And, by the way, I'm sorry for all the weird, quickly becoming wrinkly body art on your grandparents, unless you like that sort of thing and then you should thank us. Really.

Using the Dead

      In his Sunday op-ed (http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/11/08/6271087/the-republic-is-safe-for-a-while.html), Richard Greene, taking a victory lap for the GOP, conjured up the long-dead. The slightly-fevered ex-mayor of Arlington imagined Benjamin Franklin, the libertine Deist who had multiple mistresses, smiling beneficently from on high or (one can only guess) somewhere warmer on 21^st century Republicans, fueled by dark money from the energy and financial services sectors, giving the Democrats a well-deserved ass-kicking.

      And while I wouldn't normally want to rain on the Grand Old Party's end zone celebration, I have to say that Greene making Ben Franklin of all people to be his Disneyfied version of our framers is as despicable and ultimately disrespectful as phony George Washingtons in white wigs and tricorne hats in commercials peddling more stuff-we-don't-need for annual President's Day sales.

      Who knows if Benjamin Franklin, a thorough-going 18^th century man of Reason, would be for either the 2014-version of the Democrats or the Republicans? Since he was a man of science, one could presume that he would look more than askance at Republican's denial of science on a range of issues from climate change to evolution to Ebola. But since he is obviously no longer alive there is no real way to know, is there? So both parties should avoid the temptation to put words in the mouths of the dead, especially those dead we rightfully honor as framers of our Constitution.

      But what lies behind Greene's fantasy is the Republican's spurious notion that theirs is the party of the Constitution. Nonsense. For example, most Republicans, as do overwhelmingly most Americans, believe in a standing army. And the vast majority of Republicans have supported every undeclared war since World War II. However, our framers emphatically did not believe in a standing army; thus, the 2nd amendment. And they strongly believed that only Congress had the power to declare war.

      Or take the 2^nd amendment. Pleease, I say in my Henny Youngman voice. Republicans, by and large, now view the 2nd amendment as giving a private citizen the almost unlimited right to possess a firearm, but a simple reading of the actual text and 200 years of jurisprudence prove that's not what the framers believed.

      The 2nd Amendment clearly has to do with "a well regulated Militia," not individual ownership of guns. It's there in black and white on the page, and neither the Federalist Society nor the NRA will ever be able to change that always-salient fact. 

     As former Chief Justice Warren Burger said in 1991, the 2^nd amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interests groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

      I could go on and on, but the truth is both parties, with a nudge and a wink, decide to ignore certain parts of the Constitution at different times, especially war-making powers.

      While I won't pretend to conjure up the long-dead, I doubt anyone, the framers of the Constitution or actual living Americans, should be ecstatic that in this past election millions of dollars from corporations were spent on by-and-large negative ads that so poisoned the airwaves it might not be a bad idea if all of us hired an exorcist or two to cleanse our televisions.

      If you follow the campaign money, the ultimate product of this conservative takeover that Greene imagines the framers would smile on is more likely to be less environmental regulation which will only leave us with dirtier air and water and a return to a more unbridled financial services sector, which could ultimately lead to the same kind of financial sector collapse we saw in 2008.

      No, constitutional government did not win in this past election. Pretty much all of us, in our new Gilded Age, have come up losers.

Voting: What is it Good For?

     Yesterday when I was block-walking for the Democrats in north Fort Worth, I came to a house that exemplifies one of the central problems we now face. An elderly woman stood at the door, scratching the open sores on her arm. This poor woman told me in a most agitated and even heart-rending way that she didn't want to vote at all. That now she was so mad at the government and all the things it was doing or perhaps, not doing.

      She didn't go into details, but I imagine the cornucopia of pseudo-hysterical news coverage we've faced these past months had something to do with her decision. No doubt Ebola, IS, and god-only-knows-what-else were dancing in her head.

      As I was taught to be around the sometimes-agitated elderly, I was respectful and told her I understood completely (in retrospect, maybe a little too completely). Then I let her alone, but now, the next day, I wish I had had the courage to tell her that her attitude is exactly what the Republicans want. They want her and people of modest means like her to be so disgusted with government that they end up not even voting.

      But if anything is central to keeping the U.S. from its continuing slide toward plutocracy, voting is. My own belief is we should do what the Australians do. If you don't vote, you get a ticket. Voting is as much a civic duty as serving on a jury or paying our taxes. Since we already pay a fine if we shirk jury duty or dodge paying taxes, why shouldn't we pay a penalty for not voting?

      We can also make it much easier for everyone to vote. Other countries automatically register voters and declare election day a national holiday. We can do the same. Other reforms that encourage more voter participation like instant run-off and proportional representation are well worth considering.

      But we must do something. The U.S.'s low ranking in voter participation, 120^th, is inexcusable. It is a national outrage. There can be no true consent of the governed if so very few bother to vote. And, of course, by increasing the pool of voters, the rich will not so effectively be able to manipulate elections, as they are certainly and successfully doing now.

     

Stop the Pseudo-hysterics! Now!

      What has happened to us? Our forebears faced down real problems like the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism with more aplomb and true grit than we are now able to muster with hyperventilating cable news and the Internet besieging us with one pseudo-hysteria after another.

      Ebola? The annual flu season will kill many more of us than Ebola will. IS operatives sneaking across the Rio Grande endangering our very way of life? Your time would be much better spent worrying about real dangers to our way of life embodied in various privatization schemes and lack of public investment in infrastructure and education.

      Wake up, America, we're being played! The constant harping about Ebola in a country of almost 320 million when we have had a handful of cases – what is up with that?    
     And, let me say this, I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for people who play on others' fears. Many Republicans and most of Fox News, with the notable exception of Shep Smith, are guilty as charged. You want to be against everything Obama and the Democrats do? Fair enough. But this has to do with public health, and the constant politicizing and over-hyping do not help.

      The truth is we're living in an incredible time: the deficit is down, unemployment is dropping, and given the non-issue that gay marriage has become, we are more accepting and open-minded than people a generation ago would've dreamed possible.

      My advice: take an extended holiday from cable news bloviators and doomsayers. Maybe, the truly daring will even get out and have an actual, not digital, conversation with a fellow human being. One can only hope.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being White

True story from my college daze:
http://www.fwweekly.com/2014/09/03/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-white/

I Wish I Were

In the Red River Review:

http://www.redriverreview.net/A55656/rrr.nsf/7684f5ba6525b72485257d1b001adadf/f531d01015c48c3385257d1b001ac056?OpenDocument

Where to Begin My Memoir?

In Red River Review:

http://www.redriverreview.net/A55656/rrr.nsf/7684f5ba6525b72485257d1b001adadf/1b76e8902f782e9685257d1b001ac053?OpenDocument