A friend of mine posted this on Facebook today:

“In the US so far this year there have been at least 198 mass shootings in which four or more people were killed or wounded, according to the Gun Violence Archive.”

Sometimes I am sad, sometimes I am infuriated, sometimes I am just frustrated that we have a country that stands for this. Only in our country – the grand old USA – do we tolerate this. Is it our system? Do politics make it so difficult to change laws, change practices, prevent these tragedies? Is this a cultural issue, that so many people feel so strongly about owning guns and being able to do what they want with them?

The individuals stories are horrible, like Uvalde, and the man who shot a teenager who knocked on his door and the man who shot and killed a young girl who turned around in his driveway. What are these people so afraid of?

All this, and the statistics are as powerful as the stories. Yet…our lawmakers cannot find it in themselves to address the problem with anything stronger than thoughts and prayers.

sigh.

I can’t stand what I know about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. His wife is a shrill shill for the far right, he took expensive vacations with a far right billionaire and his rulings stink of politics. He dissents anything that doesn’t sound ultra-conservative an espouses anything that does. He clearly led the decision on Roe v Wade being overturned. He is a danger to our democracy and to our country.

And yet…

Today in the NY Times I read an article about a judge in Germany, named Andreas Muller. He is not the equivalent of a Supreme Court judge in the US but he’s a highly influential jurist. He unapologetically lobbies for the repeal of laws that ban cannabis. He lets off people who are found in possession of marijuana, using legalities to do so. The article discusses an 18-year-old found with 7.5oz in his parents’ home. I find this quite sympathetic, but of course and forced to realized that I happen to agree with Judge Muller’s politics. “It makes me so mad to see so many young people locked up and criminalized just because they use cannabis and not alcohol,” he said.

I feel a little embarassed, that I can rationalize how I feel about Judge Muller (and any equivalent in my country) but can despise Judge Thomas or others. So…it has made me a little introspective about it….but only a little. I can’t bring myself to be more sympathetic toward Judge Thomas; perhaps just a little more sympathetic to my righty friends who might be uncomfortable with the Judge Muller’s of the world.

The more I read and the more I listen (and the older I get) the more I tend to oversimplify. Today I am simplifying the difference between how people try to inspire and motivate us using either fear or hope. Politics is a great place to start, so let’s start there.

Is Donald Trump the new Joseph McCarthy? Is Trumpism the same as McCarthyism? In many ways it sure it. Those two (not so) gentlemen tried to prey on our fears. Many people fear the loss of their way of life in some way. Communists in the 1950s were supposedly going to threaten everything that is true blue American. What Joe McCarthy was doing was simply using these fears to promote himself. It’s not even clear that he believed most of the bullshit he was peddling – there were plenty of side conversations that revealed this. Trump is similar – he preys on (some) people’s fears of things foreign as well – immigration, people of color, LGBTQ types. He invented “deep state” to be afraid of and inspired many to protest and violence to “keep America great.”

Our greatest leaders inspired hope. Abraham Lincoln and FDR are a couple of examples. Their speeches were about hope and inspiration, not about fear. In fact, it was FDR who said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself!

I take heart in the history that set Joe McCarthy aside (he was censured by the US Senate and died not long after) and hope (yes, hope) that Donald Trump will be relegated to the same dust bin. They both did damage to the reputation of the very America that they professed to be protecting. They were really simply promoting themselves.

Who among us will inspire hope next?

Caveat – my leanings are leftward. I do believe in a liberal society. I do think we should have better gun control, legal abortions, combat racism and national health care. Okay, now that’s out of the way….

What the fuck are people thinking about when voting for idiots like Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Matt Gaetz, Bobert, and this joker Santos? People voted for them!!

MTG says the most outrageously idiotic things, and then yells out “liar,” when Biden is giving a speech to the nation.Gaetz has molested underage women. Santos hasn’t told the truth in a very long time. Has Donald Trump simply made lying ‘okay?’ I grew up thinking that lying was a bad thing. Now it seems that either it doesn’t matter, or perhaps it’s a means to the end of getting elected.

And this guy McCarthy is now 3rd in line to the Presidency. He doesn’t seem to have any strong feelings about policy or doing what’s right the American people, even for his own constituents. He simply prioritizing being in power. He was willing to compromise almost everything in order to become Speaker of the House. So many more principled people would have said “no thanks” to such demands. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney. I may not agree with many of their (conservative) positions, but at least they have integrity and represent themselves honestly.

Are so many people in the USA simply stupid? Or are they committed to their positions on particular social issues (pick one – abortion? banning CRT? ) so deeply that they would vote for a candidate who professed(?) to advocate such positions, regardless of their integrity. For chrissakes, many people in Georgia voted for Herschel Walker. They all (mostly?) knew that he’s an idiot amongst other failings. They voted for him simply because he was the Republican candidate and they wanted the seat.

Wow. People who grow up with values are more considerate when choosing their representatives. We might vote for a candidate because we believe he/she represents what we want in office – honesty, integrity, hard work, and policies that we agree with…not just because he/she is a democrat or a republican or a socialist or a green party, or other.

I find the state of the “system” in the United States today to be awfully frustrating. I’m not quite sure if it’s because it’s worse then ever, or because I’m older and more curmudgeonly than ever. I read recently (read Jon Meacham’s new book; it’s excellent) that when Abraham Lincoln was elected, a group of people stormed the capital to prevent his election, even threatening the vice president, hoping he would not certify the electoral college vote. It was in March rather than on January 6th, but still…

I guess some amount of divisiveness is inherent in the system. Politics is messy by design. It is also the case in running a company. Making strategy decisions is messy by design, and better decisions come from diversity of opinion and vigorous debate. Decisions are made and people move on, rarely going to lengths to sabotage the decisions made. We need more people with integrity in office. I think Joe Biden is an honest guy. He’s too old to run for President again, but at least he’s trying hard to do what’s right and he doesn’t seem to be lying to us. For me, that’s a win.

Enough for now.

I remember when I was young that some people spoke about wisdom that is acquired only with experience. This sounded like you had to get old before you knew things, or knew enough to be successful (whatever that may mean to any one of us).

In my periods of introspection, now that I appear to be retired, the title of this item is what occurs to me, and I need to relay it to my kids.

I grew up in a reasonably privileged household. We were white, middle-classed (as they said back then) and reasonably comfortable. Dad had a job most of the time, and we always had food on the table. I went to high school and was a good student as well as a decent athlete. I went to a large high school (graduating class was over 1,000 students!) and I became captain of the soccer team. I was even named Scholar-Athlete of the Year by the Philadelphia Bulletin. In other words, it seemed I could do little wrong, moving from success to success. I got into Dartmouth College, one of the finest institutions in the world.

All is well, yeah? Yes, but I never really had to extend myself. I worked hard on my studies, made friends, was a decent soccer player, etc. I got to Dartmouth and discovered that everyone who was fortunate enough to get in was talented in some or several ways. One of my searing memories was when the coach of the team (i made the junior varsity as a freshman) ran ‘category’ sprints and in succeeding sprints told everyone to “go if you were captain of your high school team, ” or “go if you were all-conference,” or “go if you were a Nationl Merit semifinalist,” or, or or. The point of course was to see that everyone was a hot shit, and the bar was now a lot higher. It was wise of him 🙂

As a sophomore, I showed up at training and the coach told me I had to improve on my right foot – my left was probably the most powerful on the team, but I was weak on my right side. He was right of course. When it came time to make decisions, he told me I was not to be promoted to the varsity squad and he wanted me to play JV some more and improve. I was furious. Everyone knew he was a jerk, and I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t use me on varsity for my strengths. I quit.

One of the other fabulous opportunities at Dartmouth back in the late 1970s was an innovative new program called Language Study Abroad (LSA). These days, every school has such a program, but it was a pretty cool new opportunity at Dartmouth back then. You could satisfy your language requirement by either taking a series of classes, i.e. French 1, French 2 and French 3, or you could go to France for a term, living with a french family and studying while there. This terrified me, and I took the easy route – I took the required classes and did well enough to satisfy my requirement. Many of my friends went on LSA and came back with wonderful stories, and even a command of the language.

These are two of my biggest regrets from my college career. Don’t get me wrong, I did well at school, made friends for life and went on to have a good career. I even made up for my missed opportunity to go overseas by taking a series of job that afforded me the chance to both live and work in other countries. I have worked in over 40 countries and lived in Australia and England. I played soccer until I was 50 years old and retired after finally injuring my knees too many times.

The point, however, is that I was a pussy back then. I took the easy route rather than take a risk. I could have been brave and gone overseas, even though it scared me. I could have kept playing soccer, even if it was on the JV, knowing that I was good enough to make it to Varsity at some point. Yet I didn’t. I took what I thought was the easy route, made the low risk choices and still regret it, dammit.

I recognize that these are “first world problems,” and that I never had to fight for my life and face decisions that were truly risky. Nonetheless, the principle applies to all of us, at whatever level we operate. Take risks, especially when young – go somewhere new, take a job that stretches you, do something risky (not irresponsible, but..).

Next time around, I am going on the LSA trip and I am going to keep playing soccer, even if the coach is a jerk.