Hallway to Nowhere

  • Hitler Comes To North Carolina

    First the state has the notorious HB2 bill that causes it to lose business and engenders bad press, rightly so. It then elects a new Democratic governor but he has almost no power to do anything. Then the HB2 bill is rescinded, sorta, kinda, in a compromise that is designed to bring business back but not to REALLY give legal protection to NC’c LGBTQ population. And now there is a bill being proposed again to ban gay marriage, something that has been settled as the law of the land by the Obergefell decision in the U. S. Supreme Court. Just to add insult to injury, the representative who is sponsoring it, compares Lincoln to HITLER. He is Representative Larry Pittman, and he did this publically on Facebook.

    I want to discuss this. The Hitler reference, coming as it did after Sean Spicer’s egregious Hitler reference, shows boneheaded stupidity. Spicer had ALREADY made an ass of himself by an inaccurate statement about Hitler DURING PESACH and his clumsy apology compounded it. For another lawmaker to go and then use Hitler as a referent still during Pesach is astoundingly idiodic. Had he not read the national news? There are many many reasons that Hitler and Lincoln are not equivalent, such that I believe them self-evident if you are a rational human being and not a Southern Republican North Carolinian. I won’t enumerate them here. But just for reasons of common sense,  THINK! It’s PASSOVER!!! You don’t go making HITLER references during a MAJOR JEWISH HOLIDAY!!! Get a clue!!! This is offensive!!! And I know that you have Jewish consituents! We do live in NC, too! And WE VOTE!  (For all you reading out, I’m Jewish, btw. Atheist, yes. But Jewish, nonetheless. Just not observant.) So for all the Sean Spicers and the Larry Pittmans out there, stop with the Hitler stuff! Oy gevalt iz mir!

    Hitler Comes To North Carolina

  • The Kindness Of Strangers

    I’m struggling with a herniated disc right now. I was at our local representative Evil Empire (AKA Walmart) to pick up some Dream Bones and Community Coffee, those being the only two items that I can’t get anywhere else in town. I come out of the store to see the bus leaving the lot. I must have looked visibly distressed, b/c this man passing by stopped and asked what was wrong. Now, after traipsing from one end of Wally-world to the other, I was already in pain and the prospect of waiting for another to catch the bus was daunting. But I didn’t tell him anything other than I had missed the bus, darn it. He sympathized and walked to his truck. Then he came in a few minutes and inquired where I lived. When I told him, he offered me a ride home.

    Now, I’m not normally in the habit of acepting rides from strangers, especially at Walmart. I covertly checked his groceries-no beer was evident, just food-and checked my internal warning system, admittedly not the best thing, but gut instinct will at least say, “hey, don’t go there”. Everything seemed normal. I said, “Thanks, that is very kind of you.” and followed him to his truck. He put my groceries in his truck and we proceeded to drive off.

    On the way he told me about his daughter who was around my age who had just finished going back to school to get her degree in education. I told him about my newly discovered back woes and some stories from the library. We both agreed that Abingdon is a fine place to live. He said  that if I’ve been in Appalachia since my 30s, I should just go ahead and now start saying that I’m from here. When we finally got to my place, he said it had been nice to meet me, I thanked him for the ride, and we parted most amicably. No creepy Deliverance music ever made an appearance.

    The Kindness Of Strangers

  • The Kindness Of Strangers

    I’m struggling with a herniated disc right now. I was at our local representative Evil Empire (AKA Walmart) to pick up some Dream Bones and Community Coffee, those being the only two items that I can’t get anywhere else in town. I come out of the store to see the bus leaving the lot. I must have looked visibly distressed, b/c this man passing by stopped and asked what was wrong. Now, after traipsing from one end of Wally-world to the other, I was already in pain and the prospect of waiting for another to catch the bus was daunting. But I didn’t tell him anything other than I had missed the bus, darn it. He sympathized and walked to his truck. Then he came in a few minutes and inquired where I lived. When I told him, he offered me a ride home.

    Now, I’m not normally in the habit of acepting rides from strangers, especially at Walmart. I covertly checked his groceries-no beer was evident, just food-and checked my internal warning system, admittedly not the best thing, but gut instinct will at least say, “hey, don’t go there”. Everything seemed normal. I said, “Thanks, that is very kind of you.” and followed him to his truck. He put my groceries in his truck and we proceeded to drive off.

    On the way he told me about his daughter who was around my age who had just finished going back to school to get her degree in education. I told him about my newly discovered back woes and some stories from the library. We both agreed that Abingdon is a fine place to live. He said  that if I’ve been in Appalachia since my 30s, I should just go ahead and now start saying that I’m from here. When we finally got to my place, he said it had been nice to meet me, I thanked him for the ride, and we parted most amicably. No creepy Deliverance music ever made an appearance.

    The Kindness Of Strangers

  • “Not MY Problem!”-Saith The Right

    I’m thinking I should start a new blog entitled “Bus Stories”. That seems to be where some of my best material comes from these days. So, I was on transit last week and listening to three men converse. They were all older white men and were discussing the Rockville incident. The topic turned to immigration and DACHA, though they did not use those terms. They were uniformly against giving Dreamers ANY sort of help, be it schooling, healthcare, or housing. They agreed that anyone here who is an “illegal” should be sent back to where they came from, period. When I spoke up in defense of DACHA, they turned to me and said, “I don’t care how they got here, they’re illegal. What part of “illegal” don’t you understand? So they were brought here as children? NOT MY PROBLEM!”

    Several things stuck me about this exchange. The first was the the absolute lack of any glimmer of compassion in their voices. And these men all would probaby describe themselves as good Christians. I knew one of them outside of the conversation and had always found him to be very friendly towards every rider of the bus. That was before this election legitimized showing bigotry, though, and I’ve noticed an increase in racist remarks from people I’ve never heard make them before Trump got elected. The second thing I noticed was their uniformity of tone. There was no real back and forth in this conversation. Even the phrases they used were identical. It sounded more like they were trading slogans than really talking. I felt odd, like I was eavesdropping on a secret club-house meeting. Maybe a steady diet of Fox news does that to you….Even when my progressive friends and I get together, we do argue.

    I want to say to these men that YES, IT IS YOUR PROBLEM! And it is my problem, too. And it is is OUR problem because we live here and immigrants live here and how we deal with them says volumes about who we are and what our actual values are. Are you going to live according to those “good Christian values” you presume to uphold, or do they only apply to your white neighbors? This country was founded BY IMMIGRANTS. WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS! Just because YOUR ancestors got here a little earlier than some of the others and had whiter skin does NOT make you better! And YOUR brand of religion is not any better than that of the “illegals” you purport to despise or of the Muslims you want to ban or even any better than the unbelief of the atheists like myself. We are all in this together. You can say it is “not my problem” and try to stick your head in the sand but you live here. The draconian laws over immigration will ultimately trickle down to affect someone you know. The taxes that get imposed to build more private prisons to hold those that Trump (#notmypresident) and Co. want rounded up will affect YOU. We’d better start thinking about this.

    “Not MY Problem!”-Saith The Right

  • Guns For The Mentally Ill-AWESOME IDEA!

    Among the many regulations that the Trump (#notmypresident) administration is busy rolling back is one that effectively banned persons with MAJOR MENTAL ILLNESSES from BUYING GUNS. Apparently this is thought to be a good idea by the NRA (no surprise there), the ACLU (and I am a card-carrying member), NAMI, and, of course, Republicans everywhere. I respectfully and wholeheartedly disagree. First of all let me reiterate my position that I do not think that ANYONE outside of the military or perhaps some few members of the police force should have access to guns, period. But even should you disagree with with that, and most do, what reason would you give for making weapons available to people suffering from mental illnesses that make them irrational, delusional, enraged, depressed, and/or suicidal? We’re not talking about people who need a few bouts of counseling because of a bad break-up or who have a bit of grief after their favorite cat died. No, this are people who have mental illnesses that are debilitating and severe: schizophenia; bi-polar disorder; severe depression; post-traumatic stress disorder; multiple personality disorder, among others. These types of illness can cause changes in mood and can cause the sufferer to completely lose touch with the objective world. With proper medication, therapy, and support, however, they can be managed…as long as the person STAYS WITH THE PROGRAM (takes the meds, sees the therapist, does whatever he/she/whatever needs to do to maintain). That “staying with the program” is key. I’ve known some wonderful people who had major mental illnesses. A few are still my friends and doing well….because they stay with their respective programs. A few aren’t my friends anymore, either because they are dead, or because they have trashed their lives so thoroughly I wouldn’t remain in the hit-zone. Would I give these people guns? Either group? HELL NO!!! I’ve seen the demons with which they struggle, heard them talk to the voices, seen the pictures they’ve painted of the world they see. I do not want to give any of them a weapon to use. I know how hard they struggle daily just to survive. Life is dangerous enough without handing them a loaded gun.

    Guns For The Mentally Ill-AWESOME IDEA!

  • Trump’s Continuing Attack On The Free Press

    Friday Trump (#notmypresident) escalated his attack on the free press to new levels. After first excoriating what he called “fake news” at CPAC and then later on Twitter, the White House then barred reporters from certain news organizations (The NYT, BuzzFeed News, CNN, The Los Angeles Times, Politico, BBC, and HuffPost) from a press briefing. Conservative-leaning organizations such as  Fox News, The Washington Times, The One America News and the mainstream outlets ABC, NBC, CBS were allowed, as was that purveyor of racism, homophobia, and general bigotry, Breitbart News. The Washington Post chose not to send a reporter. I’m sure their reporter, too, would have been barred. This action contradicts what Trump’s press secretary claimed in December. Trump has said that he doesn’t mind criticism, yet this shows with glaring clarity that he cannot stand to told again and again that he and his administration are having problems. He is attempting to use the power of of the White House and the Presidency to stifle dissent: directly by shutting the press out and indirectly by making people distrust the press. He asks that we trust HIM, the prince of lies! If you’ve been fact-checking, you know that Trump cannot make a speech or indeed have a simple conversation without uttering lies. (I’m not going to make nice and use pretty language. He flat-out lies.) He makes claims such as “The administration is running like a fine-tuned machine” and “We’ve spent 6 trillion dollars in the Middle East.” Does he not know or care that not just reporters but ordinary citizens (like me) are, one, watching the chaotic mess that is his administration and, two, fact-checking what he says? Oh, wait, I forgot…this is the administration that deals in “alternative facts” with an “alt-right” chief strategist at the White House and a favored “alt-right” news outlet. This is NOT normal behavior, even for a paranoid president! Nixon didn’t do this, and he had his truly bizarre moments. Clinton didn’t do this, even during the whole Monica Lewinsky thing. But Trump is barely into his Presidency and already he has designated the press “an enemy of the people”. Not of HIM, mind you. We, the citizens of the the United States, are now supposed to be on our guard against not ISIS but the NYT, the Washington Post, Politico, and other liberal media. I don’t know about you, but my fears are directed towards the White House and its current occupants, as well as his Republican minions. To use that famous quote from The Fly, “Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.”

    Trump’s Continuing Attack On The Free Press

  • White Christian Male: “I Feel Oppressed!”

    Recently I was talking to a friend of mine. He is a 50-ish Caucasian male, Christian, employed, and heterosexual/married. He informed me that he feels oppressed. My jaw dropped in amazement. After a moment of silence on my part, while I processed this, he went on to tell me WHY: he thinks that he and his kind are now persecuted and ridiculed by the media, that everyone else has governmental protections for their rights-he cited those protecting minorities and equal rights for women, and that Christians are daily being harassed. Now, mind you, this is in a smallish town in the mostly white white white Appalachian foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where there is nothing BUT Christians around! I can hit four churches with a rock from my apartment…and those are just the ones from the MAJOR denominations. This place is still tribal and patriarchal. I could not stay quiet in the face of this errant nonsense.  I understand that if you watch a steady diet of right-wing news, you will get fed this erroneous view.  I find it on Fox and Breitbart and Infowars, sites that I visit regularly. I do so in order to find out just what people like my friend are viewing. (Trust me, this is not something I enjoy.) I challenged him to give me some concrete examples of HOW he was oppressed: Had he ever been arrested for “driving while white” or had the local police view him with suspicion b/c of his skin color? Had he or his ancestors ever been forced to leave a region or country b/c of their race or religion? Had he ever been denied a job or promotion b/c of his gender or sexual orientation? Had he ever been denied the right to vote b/c of his race, religion, gender or sexual orientation? Had he ever been denied the right to run for office b/c of his religion? Had he ever threatened with death b/c of his race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation? He was quite taken aback by these questions. He wanted to know why I was asking them. I told him that unless he could answer YES to any one of these questions, he had no right to say he was oppressed, that oppression had not to do with a “feeling” or “discomfort” but with real consequences in the world and to THINK ABOUT THAT the next time he heard a white Christian man talking about his oppressed status. I told him about my relatives who never made it out of the German death camps b/c they were the wrong religion (Jews). Then I told him about friends who were fired from jobs for being queer. Women are STILL paid only 79 percent of men’s hourly wages. And 7 states currently have laws even now prohibiting atheists from running for public office. So…HE wants to talk about feeling oppressed??? Smh. And the internet trolls all whine about liberals being crybabies!

    White Christian Male: “I Feel Oppressed!”

  • White Christian Male: “I Feel Oppressed!”

    Recently I was talking to a friend of mine. He is a 50-ish Caucasian male, Christian, employed, and heterosexual/married. He informed me that he feels oppressed. My jaw dropped in amazement. After a moment of silence on my part, while I processed this, he went on to tell me WHY: he thinks that he and his kind are now persecuted and ridiculed by the media, that everyone else has governmental protections for their rights-he cited those protecting minorities and equal rights for women, and that Christians are daily being harassed. Now, mind you, this is in a smallish town in the mostly white white white Appalachian foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where there is nothing BUT Christians around! I can hit four churches with a rock from my apartment…and those are just the ones from the MAJOR denominations. This place is still tribal and patriarchal. I could not stay quiet in the face of this errant nonsense.  I understand that if you watch a steady diet of right-wing news, you will get fed this erroneous view.  I find it on Fox and Breitbart and Infowars, sites that I visit regularly. I do so in order to find out just what people like my friend are viewing. (Trust me, this is not something I enjoy.) I challenged him to give me some concrete examples of HOW he was oppressed: Had he ever been arrested for “driving while white” or had the local police view him with suspicion b/c of his skin color? Had he or his ancestors ever been forced to leave a region or country b/c of their race or religion? Had he ever been denied a job or promotion b/c of his gender or sexual orientation? Had he ever been denied the right to vote b/c of his race, religion, gender or sexual orientation? Had he ever been denied the right to run for office b/c of his religion? Had he ever threatened with death b/c of his race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation? He was quite taken aback by these questions. He wanted to know why I was asking them. I told him that unless he could answer YES to any one of these questions, he had no right to say he was oppressed, that oppression had not to do with a “feeling” or “discomfort” but with real consequences in the world and to THINK ABOUT THAT the next time he heard a white Christian man talking about his oppressed status. I told him about my relatives who never made it out of the German death camps b/c they were the wrong religion (Jews). Then I told him about friends who were fired from jobs for being queer. Women are STILL paid only 79 percent of men’s hourly wages. And 7 states currently have laws even now prohibiting atheists from running for public office. So…HE wants to talk about feeling oppressed??? Smh. And the internet trolls all whine about liberals being crybabies!

    White Christian Male: “I Feel Oppressed!”

  • I Blame Religion

    With increasing evidence that many individuals are either unable or unwilling to employ the critical reasoning skills necessary to discern between what is factual and what is not and thereby conflating fake and actual news, I’ve been considering the possible reasons for this alarming lack of judicial faculties. There is much I COULD say on the topic, as in a former life I have taught Formal Logic and Critical Reasoning courses. But over the course of many years, after teaching students, listening to other profs talk about their students, reading, and observing patrons at the libraries where I’ve worked, I place the blame for this squarely on the back of relgion, particularly the American brand of Prostestant Christianity. It places BELIEF, a uniquely personal and private belief that you have been saved  (which of course cannot be objectively verified), above anything else.  As long as you testify positively to this, everything (and I do mean everything) else falls by the wayside. Some might point to the Bible, saying that it is factual. That merely illustrates my point and highlights the believer’s maleable relationship with reality. At any given time, no two sects of Christians will likely believe the same set of facts from the Bible; in fact, one might be hard-pressed to find two individual Christians who each believe the same set of facts from the Bible. (N.B.-I’m using the term “facts” here ironically. I highly doubt that most anything found in the so-called New Testament has any basis in history and is largely myth. The Tanakh MIGHT record some events that happened in ancient times (but only a few) but it is also mostly mythological.) But Christians cherry-pick. What displeases them, for whatever reason, they discard. REMEMBER THIS-IT’S IMPORTANT! God says keep kosher, observe the sabbath, and, later on, the more incendiary whatsoever you do to the least of these, you did for me. Let’s not do any of this, too inconvenient, not modern, been superseded, etc. etc. It’s not what we believe. ….It’s not what we believe. That’s it in a nutshell.  If your view of reality is that what is true is determined by what you FEEL and what you BELIEVE, rather than by factual evidence, then of course you will fall for fake news. You will believe preposterous claims like the ones made about Hillary Clinton being involved in child sex scandals or the ones claiming that Sandy Hook was a hoax. You will believe, despite actual hard evidence that shows otherwise, that Donald Trump won the popular vote. You will believe that that China or some guy in a basement somewhere, not the Russians, hacked the DNC, despsite what U.S. intelligence agencies have to say.

    What can be done? In a perfect world, stop indoctrinating children with pernicious religious doctrines. Should they wish to become relgious as adults, fine. That would be a decision made with a more informed consent. START TEACHING CRITICAL REASONING SKILLS AT AN EARLY AGE! FORMAL AND INFORMAL LOGIC COURSES AS REQUIRED COURSES IN HIGH SCHOOL (IF NOT BEFORE)! Have parents expose children and teens to actual (as opposed to fake and “faux”) news media-show them the diiference between real researched articles by journalists with credentials and false, often conspiratorial, news articles or shows that are often little more than alarmist headlines by persons who have little to no trustworthiness. I am not a parent (nor do I play one on TV). But I am a human being and a citizen so interested in the continuation of the species, one, and of the fate of our country, two. So, teaching kids to reason is not optional. IT IS VITAL.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    I Blame Religion

  • Trump’s Continuing Attack On the First Amendment

    With his tweet stating that those burning the American flag should have their citizenship revoked and/or face a year’s imprisonment, Trump again went to war against the First Amendment. Let’s have a look at it, just in case anyone needs a reminder:

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for redress of their grievances.

    I have pondered the question of whether or not he actually knows what it says. If yes, then he is more machiavellian than I care to contemplate and is very deliberately setting about challenging it. If no, which is what I suspect, then he needs a refresher course in basic American civics. Despite what he may think, even the POTUS is not above the law. He is reportedly considering a registry for Muslims and during his campaign ran on the promise to ban all Muslims from entering the country; he has threatened repeatedly to open up libel laws, sue various news media, thrown journalists out of his rallies, ridiculed a disabled jounalist, and made insulting remarks about news media that published articles he found less than flattering. Since the election, he has held few press conferences, abandoned having a press corps, and instead communicates by tweets. He has shown his usual hostility to coverage that does not cater to his ego (CNN-how dare they report factually!) and  then went on further to show his contempt for the FA with his flag burning tweet.

    This is all part and parcel of a disturbing pattern. Trump does NOT LIKE anyone having the power to disagree with him or show him in any light that is less than wonderful. That would be fine, were he just a businessman. But he will be POTUS. He lashes out immediately via twitter to vent his ire. Will he be able to translate his consuming ego and its march upon the First Amendment into real action? Will the the press (and even perhaps blogs like this one) lose their voice to dissent? Much depends upon his Supreme Court appointee(s).  He doesn’t have the power as POTUS that he might wish; there ARE checks and balances. Yes, he does wield executive order, but that only carries for certain things. The next four years will be interesting. (I’m reminded of the Chinese curse-“may you live in intersting times!”

     

    Trump’s Continuing Attack On the First Amendment