Snatching Health From the Jaws of Illness

 

For so many, 2012 was a year to leave behind.  The brightest spot for us was my daughter’s wedding!  Yeah!  But, the rest of 2012 was not all that easy in our world.  This seems to be a common experience.

So, what do we do?  So often, it seems that we look at difficulty as a survival of the fittest situation, that motivation for better comes from seeking to defeat someone else.  Competition is good, right?  Unfortunately, it all too often devolves into destruction of the other for the betterment of yourself.

Perhaps a better focus, a better motivation is not on victory and defeat, but rather on health!  Health is a cooperative venture and, as opposed to most competition, the betterment of your neighbor, not his destruction, contributes to the betterment of yourself.  Good health begets more good health.  Suddenly, killing the patient to discredit the doctor seems less palatable than competitive leadership at the top and undercutting at the bottom.

So, let me give you all this New Year’s wish:

I WISH YOU A HEALTHY NEW YEAR!

The Difference Between Protest and Governing

There are two main groups of protestors that I'd like to focus on in America, for both serve similar purposes and balance my illustration.  The first group is the Tea Party and the second group is the Occupy Movement.

On the surface, some may see them as quite different.  They aren't.  Both have accomplished precisely what a protest is designed to do, put an idea in the public square, create a seed around which a crystal can form, a crystal that recasts the social spectrum.  In the process, each is trying to move something called the Overton Window, a concept I'll address in just a second.

The Tea Party properly got the nation to address our spend thrift and don't worry about tomorrow ways.  They also forced us to consider taxation and what those taxes go for.

The Occupy Movement on the other hand put the concept of the 98% vs. the 2% into common usage.  They helped us address the idea that the wealthy were destroying the country through their greed and by rigging the system.  They caused us to address the idea of whether the playing field was level at all.

So, what is this Overton Window I mentioned earlier?  It is the window on what we consider to be the balanced center.  In other words, the Tea Party moved it to the right, causing the country to view more conservative views as the center.  The Occupy Movement pushed back to the left toward a more liberal center.  Many historians know that Obama's domestic positions are actually slightly to the right of Richard Nixon's and the illusion that he is extreme left is an effect of the Overton Window position.

Past that point, many people misjudge protest purposes and their value, both from within these movements and from the outside.  The problem is that they expect these movements to translate directly into governance.  And therein lies the rub, the reason that we can no longer govern in any effective manner.

The art of governance is part public theater to emphasize positions.  At that point, it seems very similar to the protests mentioned above.  That better be the last similarity, or effective governance will not happen, for effective governance is actually done in the back room.  

Properly understood, we elect our legislators to start from our positions and our preferences and then go to the back room and negotiate solutions with members from across the aisle.  True, we prefer they don't compromise more of our positions than is necessary, but we want them to work it out in a timely manner, keep the economy and the railroads running, to further the cause of all Americans.

Instead, one of the protest groups elected members to continue with their protest.  The Tea Party began electing members that were not going to compromise anything in the back room.  They were going to state their protest position in the theater and then stick absolutely by it come hell or high water.

This drew similar response from the left and push back came.  But, not a lot of back room negotiations and compromise.  No, for people on the left were angry and just couldn't see the sense in it any longer.  What neither side can even consider, lest they not be reelected, is that sometimes an excellent legislative body can enter private chambers with two opposing positions and come up with a solution better than either alone entered with!

It has led us to the Fiscal Cliff.  Some are viewing through one Overton Window and some through the other.  Never the twain shall meet!  It's a shame to throw ourselves under our own bus out of this spite on both sides.

Quit protesting and start governing, dammit!

Merry Christmas to All!!

The Death of a Dear Friend, Lila Paslay

I am deeply saddened to tell you about yet another death near us, the death of Lila Paslay, the mother of two of my dearest friends in the world.  She was a terrific secondary teacher, then counselor at the high school and later Executive Director of the Topeka Association for Retarded Citizens.  As with all good people, as impressive as the list may become, the litany of accomplishment is never the full story of their humanity.

When I would go to her house in Topeka while sharing a house with her son, Randy, she would light up and throw together a magnificent meal as though there was nothing to it.  We would eat and talk and share.  She was highly intelligent, full of social grace while being totally genuine.

Last week, she was the picture of health.  Last weekend, she fell and broke her hip.  Then, yesterday, she had an aneurism and died.

Lila, you will be truly missed.

The End of the World

The World has meant the world to me.  Today is its last day.  Goodbye, World.

But, before I go with the big W, I have to ask these questions:

• Will “when you go” depend upon which side of the dateline you live on?  I mean will New Zealand exit before India which will exit before Ireland which will exit before New York which will exit before California which will exit before Hawaii? 
• If that is the case, can I just go to the North Pole and start hopping over the dateline continuously going into the past the same way I retrieved the Ring of Power for Ramana and Ursula’s nuptials? 
• Is there a danger in doing this of falling off the other side of the Mayan Calendar and developing a pre-existing condition, the condition of not being yet?

Touched

This Friday topic was brought to us by LBC member Will Knott.  It could not be more timely ...

This past week, I am hardly alone in being touched deeply by the tragic events in New England.  How can you not be?  The senseless, violent death of so much innocence.

However, it brings to mind a very different picture.  Let me take a step back to the 1968, to the Tet Offensive in Viet Nam.  Until that time, the Viet Nam war was not a full presence in American living rooms, but it was from that point forward.  Night after night after night, the carnage would be shown on American television screens.  It mobilized many people, but it also did something else.  The war violence, the body count, became so commonplace, that seeing it on TV in the evening eventually didn't raise an eyebrow.  It just was a part of life, like breakfast and basketball.

This has happened to us again and the response to this tragedy makes it stand out in sharp relief.  Every night, those of us who live near urban environs see the body count.  This time, it is isn't in Viet Nam or Iraq or Afghanistan, it is on our own streets.  It is the death of mothers' children, the termination of futures never given a real chance to take hold.  And, as with Viet Nam, we simply look to see what else is on the news.  It is just more gang violence, after all.

The mothers hurt no less.  The families and friends are no less bereft.  It is no less tragic.

We need to find a way to be outraged at the loss as we should be.  We need to allow ourselves to be touched.  Maybe it will motivate us to help things change.  We eventually rejected the Viet Nam war.  We need to reject the street war.  We need to feel again.

Death and Fear in America

The above is a Bushmaster .223 Assault Rifle.

One of my most respected sources of wisdom is from right here in our LBC, Padmini Natarajan.  To take one snippet from an article she referenced on Facebook that is very relevant to the American tragedy in our New England school this week:

“We need to address how we as a society are implicated in producing such appalling levels of violence …”

As much as I would love to see guns like the above off the street, many guns with the capacity to kill – albeit perhaps kill in smaller numbers – are available in many other nations, like Canada, that do not share our problem.  What is it in the American psyche that is leading to over 10,000 lives lost per year to gun violence?  In that sense and that sense only do I agree with the gun lobbies that it is not the guns we should focus on, but the people.

Here is the problem with the argument that “it is not guns that kill people, it is people that kill people”: those who push that argument do not want to pursue what the problem with a society and its people who commit so much violence really is.  They are really wanting to just not have guns restricted.

I have many questions in this regard, but very few answers.  What I am in favor of right now is constructive, intelligent dialogue backed by reason and facts about why we have this problem and what we can do about it.  It is my feeling that we have never actually had that discussion nationally and I am concerned that it will devolve into an emotionally charged mess of charge and counter charge leading nowhere.

Why?  I think it is because both sides of the issue are compensating for fear.  This will take honesty and courage and understanding across the great divide this issue presents.  One side finds only safety and comfort in the idea of no guns, especially guns of this type.  The other side finds only safety and comfort in the idea of superior fire power in the belief that human nature is human nature and that you must be more powerful than the next guy to be safe.  There are people in the middle who are quite responsible, but they tend to not carry the argument, because their position carries much less emotional charge than the extremes.  Hopefully, the power of the Presidency can provide the charge to reason that is going to be required.

Unless we can realize where the other side’s fear comes from, we can never develop understanding.  If we don’t develop understanding, then there will never be a solution.