Author Dusty

Yup. I read it.

Dusty Leave a comment

Go Set a Watchman

by Harper Lee. Duh.

The answers to your questions: it is not as good as To Kill a Mockingbird. You don’t have to read it. That is not to say you shouldn’t, or you won’t enjoy it – I did – but you don’t HAVE to read it.

It is precisely what it is purported to be: the story of Scout Finch, all – or almost all – grown up. It is also a rough draft of sorts of Mockingbird; there are passages that were taken straight from this book and put into that one, some descriptions of Aunt Alexandra, the history of Maycomb’s founding, that sort of thing. It is not the same book, retold at a different time; it is also not the sequel, as there are several small details that do not mesh with Mockingbird — Cousin Francis is Alexandra’s son, not her grandson; the Radley family is missing entirely, but there is a reference to another boogeyman who sneaks out at night and eats cats.

For someone who has never read To Kill a Mockingbird, this would likely be a good, but probably not a great book. This is me theorizing, of course, because I’m a high school English teacher, and I’ve taught Harper Lee’s masterpiece (It gave me a laugh to look inside the front cover and see “Also by Harper Lee:”) and read it a dozen times. I think the reality, the tangible, concrete weight of the characters and their personalities was already in me from Mockingbird, and I’m not sure it would be present for someone who didn’t read that book. This book’s central conflict climaxes with more speechifying, as if Atticus’s closing argument were moved to the final chapters and combined with the conversations about Boo Radley and Jem: more slow buildup and a longer period of talking through it. But the writing is still Harper Lee, and it is still wonderful: there is the same elegant prose, the same remarkable ability to switch from formal to casual, the same ironic humor, the same incisive understanding of the people and history of the South, and it’s still a joy to read. So I would recommend it.

For those who, like me, have read Mockingbird and loved it, you should think carefully. This book is good, but it is not a masterpiece. The wonder of Mockingbird hinges on the choice to make Scout a child. That simplified the story, and enabled Lee to treat race and hate and human nature with innocence and simplicity – through a child’s eyes. The adult Scout – now Jean Louise, an emblematic change – doesn’t have it so easy. She is much more reflective, thinking about what people say and whether they actually meant it or not; trying to decide whether their words and their character are a match to what she remembers of them from the past; trying to decide for herself where she belongs, and what she loves and what she can’t stand. The characters that were simple are now not, particularly – and most tryingly – Atticus. In Mockingbird, Atticus is the perfect father-hero. But now, Scout is older, and in this book, she finishes growing up. And it hurts to see Atticus the way she is forced to see him. It made this book hard to read. And, to tell the truth, so did Lee’s erudite references to Victorian authors and 1950’s historical and cultural icons, several of which I did not understand.

I would absolutely recommend this book as an exercise in the writer’s craft to those who teach Mockingbird, and to those who write themselves and know Lee’s classic. It is fascinating to see the changes between this earlier book and the later one, to see the author’s choices that made that book great, and this one less so.

For those who love Mockingbird for its own sake? If you think you can handle it, I would highly recommend this book to you, too. Because just like Scout, I think we need to grow up, and see our heroes in a more human light. And even though this book is more complex, more troubling, it is the difference between idyllic, idealized childhood and murky, gray-shaded adulthood; and this is still Scout. It’s still Atticus. It’s still Maycomb. It’s still Harper Lee. It was wonderful to go back and see it all again.

The Wordy Shipmates

Dusty Leave a comment

I was hoping this book would be a revelation. It wasn’t.

That’s not to say I was disappointed with it. Okay, I was, but that was no fault of the book’s: it’s a good book, well-written, interesting, informative. It’s just that I wanted my jaw to drop, wanted my impressions of the Puritans — built through a childhood spent in Massachusetts, going to Plymouth Plantation  on a school field trip every year between third grade and eighth–  to undergo a startling transformation. It’s happened to me before, when I first seriously taught Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, about the Salem Witch Trials; because in the play’s text are extensive passages of background about the Puritans of 1692 Massachusetts, and one of the companion pieces I taught with it was On Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony. That was the first time I saw the Puritans as courageous, traveling thousands of miles into an unknown, landing in the wrong place, losing half of their number in the first winter — and then staying there anyway, and fighting for survival in a harsh and hostile environment. Miller talks about how this circumstance forced the Puritans to live in each other’s pockets, because they either worked together and protected each other, or they all would die; it was just this sort of all-in collective life, surrounded by a danger that the Puritans personified as Satan (who lived in the woods and had wild animals and the Native American “savages” as minions) that led to the Witch Trials as Miller depicted them in his play.

I was hoping this book would change my mind again, and give me yet another perspective on the Puritans beyond “Religious fanatics whose draconian morality caused half of our country’s hypocritical opinions regarding sin and pleasure, and work ethic and such,” or “Those Thanksgiving guys (who actually betrayed and slaughtered the Native Americans who helped them out).” And it sort of did, because Vowell shows that the Puritans were extraordinarily literate — hence the “wordy” in the title —  and valued learning and reading and writing and thought, all of which  I appreciate. She shows how their remarkable idealism was what really pushed them to become the trailblazers they were, and allowed them to survive in the conditions they met on that trail. She shows most clearly how that idealism both informs our modern view of America, and how it has been corrupted by cynical politics, when she speaks of the co-opting of “the City on a Hill,” which came from a Puritan minister’s sermon, and was then used by both John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, among others.

But while I hadn’t known how literate the Puritans were, I don’t know how interesting that is. Which is how I felt about the book. Maybe I was already too aware of the Puritans and their history; maybe I am not aware enough of the history of literacy and the valuing of education; but the book was good when I wanted it to be great.

 

I hope someone else can find it great.

Good Movie? Pssh. Let’s Watch Sharknado!

Dusty Leave a comment

You’ve seen Jaws, right? We’ve all seen Jaws. Jaws is a brilliant movie. It is a classic of cinematic art. Jaws has built lasting artifacts in our psyches: the theme song (duh-dun . . . duh-dun . . . Unfortunately impossible to render phonetically and keep the air of menace. Just picture a shark circling around your ankles. And not that nice Bruce from Finding Nemo.), the idea that great white sharks are a terrible danger to humans (There were 106 great white shark attacks between 1916 and 2011, only 13 of them ending in fatality. In 1996, 11,000 people were injured by buckets.), the movie’s most famous lines — “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” and “Smile, you son of a bitch!” and “This was no boating accident.” Jaws has done what art should do: it has made an impact. Thrown into the pond of our collective consciousness, there have been ripples that have spread across the entire surface, and they are still echoing.

You know what else Jaws created? Sharknado.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of bad movies. I enjoy them: I used to have video tapes of Chopping Mall and Return to Horror High; Summer School with Mark Harmon and The Principal with Jim Belushi. I’ve seen eight action movies starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, and all of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comedies, including Red Sonja. I’ve sat through six Police Academy movies, four Hellraiser movies, and nine Friday the 13th movies. I’ve seen Superman IV, Highlander II, and Leonard Part 6. Howard the Duck. Showgirls. Battlefield Earth. Thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000, I’ve seen Manos: The Hands of Fate and The Robot Versus The Aztec Mummy and Gorgo. I’ve seen Roadhouse. Several times. Red Dawn, too.

I like to play Six Degrees of Separation not to Kevin Bacon, but to Red Dawn. It’s not hard: the movie starred Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey, Harry Dean Stanton, and Powers Boothe, and was directed by John Milius, who wrote Apocalypse Now. The horror. So Jaws starred Richard Dreyfuss, who was in Stakeout with Emilio Estevez, who is Charlie Sheen’s brother and has been in several movies with him, including Men At Work, Young Guns, and The Outsiders. Charlie Sheen played Matt Eckert in Red Dawn. Three degrees.

So my point is, I didn’t just watch Sharknado. I loved it. I haven’t laughed that much since Big Trouble in Little China.

Sharknado is everything a bad movie should be. The writer, the impossibly named Thunder Levin (Who also wrote Mutant Vampire Zombies from the ‘Hood, which starred C. Thomas Howell — who was also in Red Dawn.), knew it, and that’s why the tag line of the movie is “Enough said.” He knew he had something brilliant, something timeless. Something that should be cherished.

Because this might be the worst movie ever made.

The premise is: global warming (clearly identified as the villain during the expository TV Newscast scenes explaining the strange events happening in LA) has caused an unprecedented number of sharks to come closer than ever before to the LA coastline, followed immediately by the first hurricane to strike California (Fun fact: this is marginally plausible! The reason no hurricane has struck California full-bore is the cold water along the coast, so if climate change increases the surface temperature of the water . . . watch out for flying sharks.). The storm causes waterspouts, which lift up uncountable sharks and then move over land, flinging airborne sharks all over the place. Whenever the sharks fly by or land on someone, they bite, tearing off limbs, heads, faces, you name it.

Yeah, that’s right. Waterspouts moving over land and not dissipating (until they are blown up by the heroes!). Flying sharks, tumbling through air (and therefore strangling), and they still bite anything human they come into contact with. At one point a shark bites through the roof of a car. How did it open its jaws wide enough to sink its teeth into a flat metal surface in a perfect ellipse of pointy doom? Why did it tear out the section of roof, spit it to the side and then try to eat the humans inside, when it should have been busily dying of oxygen deprivation? BECAUSE SHARKNADO!

The movie has one of the weirdest opening sequences I know. You know in Godzilla, and Jurassic Park, they show the monster wreaking some havoc and some innocent person on a beach or a fishing boat getting stomped and eaten? Right: in this one it’s a fishing boat harvesting shark fins. Just to make us wonder if maybe we deserve what’s about to happen. The seedy criminal captain is bargaining with an Asian man who wants to buy the cargo of shark fins — but he doesn’t want to pay full price! There is a bizarre confrontation involving guns on both sides and a storm the ship sails into; it ends when flying sharks tear off the captain’s face, one piece at a time.

This is Sharknado.

We move ashore, where we meet our hero, Fin Shepard, a divorced father of two (Forgive that — errr — spoiler, but I didn’t want anyone who hasn’t seen the film yet to be as blindsided by Fin’s status as a middle-aged divorced father as was his shotgun-toting, worst-fake-scar-outside-of-a-six-year-old’s-Frankenstein-Halloween-costume-having, exploitative-bikini-wearing barmaid Nova Clarke. Her reaction to the news that her boss and vague awkward crush has an ex-wife and two kids, “WHAT?!?! You have a SON, TOO?!?” was more extreme than her reaction to the flying people-biting sharks, the which she tends to just kill without any reaction, emotion, or facial expression, finishing with her own patented quip: “I REALLY hate sharks!”). Fin surfs, and so is in the water when the still ocean-bound sharks attack innocent civilians at the beginning of the movie; he rescues his Aussie buddy Baz by using his surfboard to vigorously poke the shark that nearly bit Baz’s leg off, an injury that disappears almost as soon as it happens (Because, y’know, he got it bandaged. Hey, if Rambo can seal a gunshot wound through his kidney with gunpowder and a burning twig [Rambo III? Yeah, I’ve seen that. Oh: and Sylvester Stallone was in Demolition Man with Wesley Snipes, who was in Major League with Charlie Sheen.] and then slaughter an entire camp full of Commies, then Baz can handle the Sharknado even with a game leg.), even though everyone else who gets even sideswiped by a shark loses whole limbs in mere instants. Fin also owns a crappy bar right at the end of a pier, the which is first invaded by sharks (Not to worry — Nova doesn’t even blink before she kills the first shark to crash through the window and land on the floor snapping at passersby. She stabs it with a pool cue.) and then washed away by the hurricane. He then drives his friends up into the hills to rescue his ex-wife and children (BAZ: “They’re like a thousand miles inland!” FIN: “They’re 6.6 miles inland, and it’s not far enough. Not for this storm.”), stopping along the way to rescue drivers standing zombie-like on an on-ramp, a school bus full of children, and then finally all of the students at his son’s flight school, before helping to end the Sharknado. What a dad. What a hero.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ian Ziering. From Beverly Hills, 90210 straight to Sharknado, with a brief stop at Melrose Place in between (And not a whole lot else.). The funny thing is, he was the best actor in the movie, and I’m including John Heard, a genuinely good actor who made me very sad by playing George, the lovable lush with the barstool, whose alcoholism and creeping on the ingenue are redeemed when he dies to save a trapped dog from the tidal wave of sharks, by smashing the car’s window with his padded barstool (He killed a shark with the barstool earlier.). Dog’s a golden retriever, of course, because Hollywood’s racist — pit bulls only get to play servants and villains. Though I need to know how the dog’s owner, one of the people who senselessly park and get out of their cars on an LA freeway on-ramp during a hurricane, managed to lock both her dog and her keys in her car, necessitating George’s barstool-rescue.

I can’t tell you how bad the acting is. And the script. And the continuity. The sharks are either really bad CGI or stock footage, as is the weather; the best part is that since the film was made in LA, there is no bad weather when the camera is on the heroes; then we look behind them, and the world-ending global-warming-produced hurricane is chucking sharks at them in between thunderclaps. Then back to Ian/Fin, who is dry and standing in sunlight. Remarkable. The weather pauses whenever they have need of a pensive moment — to mourn the loss of George, for instance, or to wonder, as the characters do on several occasions, about the absurdity of their own situation (“Man. Unbelievable!” Ian/Fin mutters as he drives away from the shark-infested on-ramp. All you can do is nod.) — and then returns when it’s time to get sharky again. Floods dry up instantly; when Ian/Fin rappels from a bridge down to the roof of the school bus to save all those kids — even though all he does is hand them the rope, whereupon Baz, the unsung hero with the nearly-severed leg, hauls them all the way up to the bridge with the help of a single block-and-tackle attached to the bumper of Ian/Fin’s SUV — the bus is nearly inundated by water, with sharks swimming all around it; except the water recedes as soon as Ian hits the bus, falls off the roof and swings around like a doofus for a moment before he opens the emergency door on the back.

When we visit the palatial home of Fin/Ian’s ex-wife — played by the hard-plastic-shelled Tara Reid, and I refer both to her post-operative body composition and to her acting — the sharks invade on a wave of water through the windows, flooding the house to a depth of three or four feet, enabling both the shark-ingestion of Tara’s shmuck of a boyfriend (Clearing the way for our heroes’ reconciliation — I can’t wait to see if they’ll get back together!) and a knock-down drag-out brawl with a shark whom Fin/Ian and Baz fight off with a bookcase. But then they escape through the front door — and the front yard is dry. I don’t mean mostly dry, it’s dry. “How can the house be flooded?” we ask; and then the house bursts in an explosion of water and sharks, giving us the answer — clearly it was built atop a shark geyser (Covering a massive lake of burning hot death-juice, known at Old Faithful as magma, and in Sharknado as the script.). This must explain the completely absurd observation by Nova, who looks out at the flooded LA cityscape and says, “It’s like Old Faithful!” Which, though I have never been there in person, I cannot think in any way resembles a hurricane-flooded major metropolis, with or without flying sharks. My assumption is that she is clairvoyant, and while she may be staring at LA in that moment, in her all-seeing mind’s eye, she is gazing on the collapsing house that flooded in a dry field. Like Old Faithful. With sharks.

There are several shooting scenes — including when Baz puts a scuba tank into a shark’s mouth and Fin shoots it, blowing the shark into smithereens (But he never says “Smile, you son of a bitch,” so clearly, this wasn’t stolen from Jaws. Yeah. And Vanilla Ice wrote the tune for “Ice, Ice, Baby.”). Nova — played by a woman who clearly has never even handled a shotgun, let alone done any actual acting — blasts a shark five times in the head, opening funnel-like holes in its skin, kind of like when the super-terminator in Terminator 2, played by Robert Patrick (Who was also in Striptease with Demi Moore, who was in Ghost with Patrick Swayze — who played Jed Eckert in Red Dawn) gets shot by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator (Also in the first Terminator? Michael Biehn. He was in Navy Seals with Charlie Sheen. Three degrees.) and yet keeps running; this shark dies, flooding the entire pool-sized living room with enough blood to turn the water a murky deep red color (Baz makes a menstruation joke! “Looks like it’s that time of the month!” Pure hilarity!). When the shark bites through the roof of the SUV, Nova shoots that one in the face, and one shot is enough to launch the shark off the car’s roof, flipping it in the air before it crashes to the ground with half of its face torn off. She must have used the big shells that time. My favorite, though, was when Ian/Fin is protecting his son, Matt, while Matt and Nova fly a helicopter into the storm so they can blow up the sharknado; there are half a dozen sharks flying at the helicopter, and Ian/Fin draws his pistol, closes one steely eye, and fires off exactly one shot per shark, each of them falling out of the sky instantly with each pull of the trigger. If a cartoon dog popped up with the sharks in his paws, it would have been Duck Hunt.

All right, let’s get to the climax. So the sharknados (Sharknadoes? What’s the plural here?) — are swirling around downtown LA. Ian/Fin has rescued his ventriloquist dummy of a wife, and the pouty angsty ball of helplessness that is his daughter, and they have arrived at the flight school where his son Matt is a student. They decide they can’t just run and leave LA to the mercy of the flying sharks (And the devastating tornados and the hurricane, I guess — but really, the scary part is the sharks, am I right?); they have to do something. So they have an idea: there’s a helicopter there, and since the instructor was sucked up when the sharknado passed over the flight school, the only one who can possibly fly it is Matt. So they go to a nearby warehouse filled with various tools and hardware implements (I had A-Team flashbacks at this point) and get strapped up: Fin/Ian gets himself a chainsaw — and hands to his wife a hedge trimmer. An electric hedge trimmer. Baz, Matt, and Nova make bombs out of propane canisters. The plan is for Matt and Nova — who have a moment of just sublimely bad acting while they are building bombs and Matt asks about Nova’s weird fake scar, which is on the side of her thigh and looks kind of like she was clawed by a tiger with the shakes, four or five parallel ridges that could not ever have been made by a shark’s teeth; Nova explains how her grandfather took her fishing and they went overboard and everyone but her got eaten by sharks (She actually echoes Quinn’s WWII shark story from Jaws, saying, “Six men went into the water that day. I was the only one who came out.” I really wanted her to break into “Farewell and adieu, ye sweet Spanish ladies.” And maybe grow a scraggly beard.), and then she ends with a heartfelt, “That’s why I hate sharks.” Matt responds, “I think I hate sharks now, too!” — Matt and Nova will fly over the sharknados and drop their propane bombs into them. Because a tornado is the result of warm air crashing against cold air, Matt tells us (with all the sophistication of someone who saw it on Weather Wiz Kids one Saturday morning), and if an explosion could change the balance, the tornado might dissipate!

I don’t mean to lose my willing suspension of disbelief here, but — a flight student. Is going to fly a helicopter. Into a hurricane. Above a tornado. And drop a bomb made of a can of propane, a smoke alarm, and a roadside flare all duct-taped together, which can’t weigh more than five pounds, total. And this thing is going to explode, and — blow up the tornado, essentially.

Sure, okay.

They do it, and they kill two of the sharknados. But there are three sharknados, and they run out of bombs. And then the sharks from the third sharknado hit them, and one grabs onto the skid. And in trying to dislodge it, Nova falls out of the helicopter, and is grabbed, in midair — not by that shark, but by another one flying by at just the opportune moment. How sad! There was a romance brewing there! (A word about that: the woman starts off as the love interest for Ian/Fin, but she gets scraped off on his son before the ending, once the ex-wife has finished her bitchy sniping at the younger, hotter woman, so that Fin/Ian can reconcile with his ex-wife, proving that absence and flying sharks both make the heart grow fonder. And that Stephenie Meyer is not the only writer to use “Well you can date my child instead of me!” as the deus ex machina to end a love triangle. People are so frigging creepy.) Sharks crash into the helicopter, which comes down to a crash landing nearby where Fin/Ian and wife and daughter are hiding in a retirement community (Because he already saved kids and dogs; now he just needs to rescue old people. Which he does. From a shark that lands in their swimming pool. Why were they swimming during a sharknado-producing hurricane, you ask? Because the weather is just fine where they are. Apparently the stock footage of the storm hadn’t caught up to them yet.). They lost Baz to sharks at the flight school/warehouse, so now it is up to Fin to drive the oversized Hummer they picked up after their SUV was eaten, and which Baz has filled with explosives, in a re-creation of the climactic scene of Twister: he drives the Hummer straight at the last remaining Sharknado, lights the fuse on the bomb, and then leaps out of the truck (which appears to be going about 80 mph, so he has to roll an extra time in order to come to a stop unharmed) and lets it jump off of a ramp (At the end of a highway switchback that appears to lead absolutely nowhere. In downtown LA. Or maybe we’re in the hills outside of LA. It’s not really clear.) into the Sharknado, where it explodes and saves the day.

But that’s not the end.

Because the sharks that were airborne, are now falling from the sky. It’s raining sharks. Ian/Fin jumps up from the concrete, and — without even an attempt at continuity — he is suddenly running down an alley towards his family, his daughter yelling “Daddy!” as she runs toward him while he’s waving her away, yelling, “Get outta there!” Because she doesn’t see the shark falling behind her: coming right at her. And in a series of jump-cuts worthy of Army of Darkness, Ian/Fin shoves his daughter out of the way of the flying shark, starts up his chainsaw, runs forward with the Gritted Teeth of Fury, and leaps up into the shark’s mouth.

The shark falls. Our hero is dead, giving his life to save his daughter.

But wait — the shark’s belly moves. A sound is heard. And then — a miracle! The end of the chainsaw bursts out of the shark! The blade comes down, a large slit is made, and from out of that beast’s belly (Sliced-open shark belly really looks a lot like foam rubber. Who knew?) is born our hero, blood soaked and screaming incoherently.

Then he reaches back into the shark, and pulls out Nova.

That’s right. Matt performs CPR, she spits out water — water? I guess she was drowning inside the shark’s stomach. Or maybe she got a mouthful from the storm when she was screaming, “WHY WON’T YOU DIE?!?” at the shark on the helicopter skid. Anyhoo — and they embrace. And, in one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of an actress who cannot bear to do what the sript calls for, Tara Reid wipes the blood off of Ian/Fin’s mouth and they have a kiss, after which her look of disgust is impossible to miss.

And appropriate, considering the movie that preceded it.

 

Why have I told you all of this? Why dedicate this much time and this many words to a movie that was all the ironic rage two years ago (and which has spawned two sequels, the upcoming installment entitled Sharknado Oh Hell No) but is now just something really awful that the Scify Channel made once?

Because this is what movies are supposed to be. It was fun to watch. I was entertained. Sure, I wasn’t entertained in the way they wanted me to be; the filmmakers weren’t clever enough to make this thing truly ironic in the tradition of the Evil Dead franchise; they wanted me to relate to the characters and sympathize with them, and to imagine how terrible it would be if there were sharks raining down on my family, and all I had was a chainsaw and gritted teeth. And I couldn’t do that, because I was too busy laughing. So it didn’t do what the filmmakers intended it to — but it did live up to its purpose. At a workshop I attended last week, on teaching AP Literature, there was a moment when the instructor declared unequivocally that “No novel has a message. The purpose of literature is to entertain. Great novels give insight into the human condition — but the author’s goal is entertainment.”

Jaws is a great movie. It gives insight into the human condition; I can relate both to Sheriff Brody, who is swamped in bureaucracy and ignored by his superiors despite being right, and to Hooper, the scientist with a passion that everyone else thinks is crazy. And who is invited in as the expert, and then they don’t listen to him either, and his angry sarcastic rants at the idiots who won’t listen could just as easily have come out of my mouth. The movie asks about the dangers we face when the natural world, which we don’t understand, is ignored in favor of capitalism and profits and maintaining appearances; I consider that a very real issue, one that we should spend more time thinking about. And at the same time, Jaws is entirely entertaining: from the first swimmer getting pulled down, to that eminently satisfying concluding explosion, Jaws is fun to watch.

So is Sharknado.

And only one of those movies has a scene with a chainsaw.

 

Oh: and John Heard, who plays George of the Barstool? He was in My Fellow Americans. With Richard Dreyfuss. Jaws to Sharknado in just two degrees. The circle of life is complete.

Here. Have a chainsaw.

Gun Is God

Dusty Leave a comment

I saw this on Facebook today. And my immediate reaction was to attack: Well but that isn’t the same thing at all — people have an inherent right to freedom of religion, which is codified in (though not granted by) the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights. And religion isn’t used to kill people. And pssh — Iowa. Come on. Like anything intelligent ever came out of Iowa.

Then I immediately thought: but the right to bear arms is also in the Bill of Rights. Even if I think it shouldn’t be. The Second Amendment does represent a natural right, the right of self-defense. Even if I think there are better ways to go about defending one’s self.

And as for religion: seriously, Dusty? It isn’t used to kill people? Even apart from the indisputable facts that have led to the prejudice represented here (more on the prejudice later), namely the sheer number of Islamic terrorists and war-mongers of the last — what, sixty years? — religion is behind most of the wars of human history, or has at least been used as the justification for them, as well as countless atrocities — the Inquisition, the witch-burnings, the Holocaust, the pogroms, chattel slavery, colonialism — Jesus, do I need to go on?

Absurd of me even to take up this argument, if this is all I have.

But that third one — that’s kind of right. Tom Arnold is from Iowa. So is Michele Bachmann. And Steve King, of course  (The moronic Congressman, not the author.). Ashton Kutcher. Charles Osborne, the guy with the world record for the longest lasting case of hiccups. Sure, there are a couple of scientists and mathematicians on the list of Iowans, several astronauts, and a few authors I like — Bill Bryson, especially — but you don’t get away from Michele Bachmann that easily. Not even with the Ringling Brothers.

So what does this mean? I’ve been arguing against guns for years and years now, and here I find myself stymied. Does it mean I should be changing my stance on gun control? Have I been unfairly critical of gun owners? Has this meme changed my argument? DID IOWA JUST WIN THE GUN FIGHT?!?

Well, no. It didn’t. The problem with this argument is that it equates religion and gun ownership, claiming that a prejudice against one is as morally and intellectually bankrupt as a prejudice against the other. This much is true: prejudice is always morally and intellectually bankrupt. It is also always instinctive for humans because we evolved to be hunter-gatherers and our minds are evolved to discover patterns, so we see them everywhere, and frequently use them as a basis for action and reaction; when we eat  the red berries and they are tasty, then the next time we see red berries, we assume they’ll be tasty. And sometimes they are tasty, and the prejudice is therefore efficient; and sometimes they are toxic and we die, and the prejudice is inefficient. Evolution argues that it is more frequently efficient than inefficient when used as a survival strategy — but that has no bearing whatsoever on the value of prejudice in society. There, the value is almost always outweighed by the costs.

But that doesn’t mean either that gun ownership is equivalent to religion, nor that the argument against gun ownership is equivalent to the argument against Muslims.

First: religion and gun ownership. Sure, both are personal rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Both are defended fanatically on the Fox network. Both are, theoretically, under attack by liberals with an agenda — and neither actually are. And yes, both often catch the blame for atrocities carried out by terrorists.

But religion, however it may have been used in the past, whatever people may think of it, is not a weapon intended to do harm. The goal of religion is truth, and subsequent salvation. The question of relative harm as it is created by religious tenets, as in, “If I allow you to die unshriven, you will burn in Hell forever; therefore I should torture you until you confess your heresy and renounce your beliefs– and then you’ll go to Heaven!” is certainly a troubling one, as religion here grants people a moral justification for doing harm; but that is an application of a specific religious principle, carried out by the person — it is not the intention of the religion as an entity.  Christianity was not founded in order to justify torture or slavery or war. I won’t say that those things are a misuse, as that implies that the actual intended purpose is a correct and proper usage of the religion, and as an atheist I don’t accept that; but I think there can be no argument that religion was not and never has been created intentionally to do harm.

Firearms, on the other hand, were invented, produced, and evolved over time intentionally and specifically to harm others. They exist for that reason. The possession of firearms is considered a right, both a natural right and a right in the Constitution, because of that reason; people may own firearms simply for amusement, but that is not why they feel a right to own them — if so, we’d all have the right to a Playstation 4, and I would currently be suing Sony. We have the right to bear arms because arms are the most effective way to harm others so that those others cannot harm us: the ability of firearms to do harm A)rapidly to multiple targets, B) from a distance that keeps the bearer safe from retaliation, and C) without physical strength, dexterity, or training, is unmatched in the world of weapons. This is why people use the Second Amendment to protect guns, rather than, say, swords and spears and personally owned stealth bombers. It is a disingenuous argument to claim that any weapon could be used to kill another person — and therefore the government can’t take away my gun. There is a reason why guns are the focus of the argument: because they are the most effective and efficient killing machine on the planet. The millions — billions? — who have been shot since the invention of firearms show this.

So we should not make analogies between religion and firearms, not even in criticizing anti-religious prejudice with anti-firearm prejudice. And let me just add: why would you want to do that? When I used to debate online against guns, I was frequently dismissed as a hoplophobe, one who suffers from a morbid and irrational fear of guns; the classic, er, “argument” that goes “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is based on the same objective understanding of firearms as inanimate objects, incapable of independent action, and therefore the incorrect focus for the fear felt by those who promote gun control. But this emotionless, objective, apparently logical stance is lost if one makes the comparison between gun owners and devotees of a religion; now those who own firearms are — true believers. Members of the faith. Followers of their prophet/messiahs, Smith and Wesson and Remington and Colt. This is not an opening which gun rights advocates want to give us hoplophobes.

But the real problem with this meme? It’s a meme.  The concept of the meme was created by Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary biologist; Dawkins described the meme as the modern version of genes, now that mankind survives through social adaptation to environmental pressure, rather than biological adaptation. That is, rather than better genes propagating more than worse genes through reproduction and natural selection, we make adjustments for “bad” genes through our society: we take care of people who can’t survive on their own; we use medicine to give those with “bad” genes a full life; we create niches for those with differing strengths, so both the man with the strong back and the man with the strong mind can survive and thrive. The ideas that create those situations, the belief that family members should take care of those who cannot take care of themselves, for instance, are spread through our culture, and help that culture survive, along with the people who spread it. Our modern human culture is our survival strategy: we live and reproduce because our culture protects us far more than our bodies do.  Because of that, although we are continuously evolving as a species, today, our genes do not change very much; rather, our memes do.

The purpose of a meme, like the purpose of a gene, is not to create the perfect being, or the perfect argument: it is to reproduce. That means it has the qualities that will make it most likely to spread and multiply, not necessarily the best qualities. Blonde hair and blue eyes do not make someone a better human being — but if they make that person more likely to reproduce and spread those genes, then those genes will survive and thrive. Watch Idiocracy: there’s a meme, a reproducible bit of culture, that shows why neither genes nor memes need to be the best to be the most successful. It shows, in fact, how memes are become more powerful than genes in human evolution: successful memes actually make people’s genes worse, and the people themselves less biologically adapted to survive.

So this:

is not the best thought, not the best argument, but it is likely to be reproduced and propagated; therefore, it is a successful meme.

What internet memes do — what the meme that started this blog did — is oversimplify, because on the internet, simplicity is king. That’s why so many memes are crude line drawings, or this sort of simple joke. They use the same photos again and again, and the same font, and the same sentence structures and joke patterns because those things have been selected, have proven successful in the past, have been propagated and reproduced.

And all of that’s fine. Memes are jokes, and plenty of them are funny — this one cracks me up:

And this one is not only funny but true:

But none of the things that make these successful memes make them good thoughts or good arguments. Just — good at grabbing people’s attention so they click “Share.”

So for that, this meme

is successful, because it has an interesting enough idea, formulated in an eye-catching way — with a picture that is both relatable and idealized, because that guy looks ordinary and also badass; and using the all-caps font with red for a highlight; short words, simple sentences, rhetorical question — and so it was shared. And it is also successful in that it provokes thought: it took me some time to work my way through the meme’s rhetorical question and come to my answer. Time spent thinking is always good.

The answer is: no. It is not time the 80 million gun owners in America get the same treatment. First because gun ownership is not a religion, and the analogy doesn’t work. Second because although there is a right to self-defense, it should not be realized through firearms, which are unnecessarily deadly even when used to protect one’s self. The Second Amendment is wrong: arms should be regulated, for the safety of all, because private gun ownership creates as much danger as it eliminates, and generally more; the presence of weapons creates a feeling of safety far more often than it creates actual safety, and yet those weapons are most often used to do more harm than could be done without them. We could certainly get into a debate about personal liberty versus safety — so long as nobody quotes the Benjamin Franklin meme. Which oversimplifies and relies entirely on the persuasive power of the author’s name.

Lastly, the answer is No because, simply put, gun owners have never been treated the way that Muslims have. Yes, massacres that have been carried out with firearms have led to calls for gun control — but thanks to the Second Amendment, they have never led to even the beginning of a discussion of banning guns. Armed police and military are expected and appreciated. The only gun law that was passed using a mass shooting as impetus, the Brady Bill’s ban on assault weapons, was allowed to expire, because gun owners and manufacturers made it pointless. We can still buy extended clips like Jared Lee Loughner used in Tucson when he shot Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others — without reloading — and we can still buy weapons online as James Holmes did before he shot 82 people in Aurora. People speak out against guns, as they do against Muslims (And let me note the prejudice inherent within the meme itself, when it claims that every terrorist attack is related to Islam — only days after Dylann Roof killed nine people in a church in South Carolina. With a gun given to him for a birthday present, and therefore requiring no background check. He could also have done what Adam Lanza did, and used his parents’ guns.), but no laws ever pass, no action is ever taken. No innocent gun owners are beaten in the streets as happened after 9/11; no gun owners are unfairly targeted in airport searches; nothing has been done that is analogous to the Bible Belt states’ bans on Sharia law. No Baptist preachers are burning Guns & Ammo.

We have not yet invaded Austria to eliminate the Glock company.

 

In summation, all I have to say to this meme is this:

The Gouging Is Not Enough

Dusty 5 Comments

Someone needs to explain this country to me. I don’t understand it.

I don’t understand how we can love freedom, and yet work like mules to take it away from others, from the jailed, from the people of other nations, from our own workers, our soldiers, our students. We so love leisure and relaxation that it seems this is the only time we work this hard: when we betray our own professed morals and ideals.

I don’t understand how we can love the beauty of nature, and yet build drilling rigs atop it and rip down the centuries-old trees like grass, strip mountains down to pits of poison. How can we spend weekends watering and mowing and fertilizing our lawns and yet never go for a walk in the woods, a swim in the river? How can we pollute our own countryside?

I don’t understand why we don’t love art. We coo over talent and beauty in our celebrities — even when it isn’t actually present — and we can’t throw our money at them fast enough; but we wouldn’t pay a dime for a painting instead of a poster, nor anything for a song so long as we can download for free; and people with vast talent, who spend years striving to create true, immortal beauty, are only given one commission: get a real job. We love memes and clever witticisms, revere the turn of phrase, the surprising insight, the genuine outpouring of passion in confessions and rants and the cri de coeur — so long as it does not last more than a paragraph. And God forbid the novel.

I don’t understand why we go to war. Why we fight to protect both life, and our right to own guns. Why we eat ourselves to death, drink ourselves to oblivion, and jail those who use marijuana. Why we mock people who shop at Wal-Mart, spit on those who hold a hand out for charity, and then fight tooth and nail to keep wages low, unions useless, and education ineffective. Why we profess to love our children more than anything else — will gather by the thousands to light a candle and pray for the safe return of a single missing child — but allow thousands of children to go hungry on the streets. Why we believe the government is corrupt, even antagonistic in its self-serving greed, but trust the profit motive to build honest and effective businesses; nor why we fear the amoral inhuman corporation, but trust the government to work itself out of its shady dealings with those same corporations and their bottomless pockets without a revolution.

I don’t understand why we have not had a revolution.

But today, I’m not thinking about any of those things. Today, there is only one thing I don’t understand, and it is this: why we pay for health care. Why insurance companies are allowed to exist, and to do business the way they do. Why people work for them, even knowing what that job costs, what it entails, in exchange for a paycheck that I can’t think is more than meager.

I wonder: do the employees of health insurance companies have better coverage? Do their claims get denied? If so, do they fight? Or is the answer to this the answer to my previous question — they work for the insurance company because it is better (in this allegedly Christian nation) to inflict on others exactly what you protect yourself from?

I’m thinking about this today because of my wife. (I confess: I think about most of these things because of my wife, who is an artist, who loves nature and animals, who actually loves freedom and desires it for all as much as for herself, who doesn’t understand the same things I don’t understand, no matter how much we talk about them and try to figure them out.) My wife Toni has glaucoma. Glaucoma is a condition of the eye: the liquid inside the eyeball doesn’t drain properly, but its production continues, and so the pressure inside the eye increases steadily, causing severe headaches and damaging the optic nerve, leading to vision loss and eventual blindness if not treated. It generally occurs in the elderly, but Toni inherited it, so now she gets to be the youngest person in the opthamologist’s waiting room every few months. And though it is appallingly ironic for an artist to face a disease that could blind her, glaucoma is eminently treatable: she puts drops in her eyes every night which reduces the pressure in her eyes, and even should the condition worsen, she would not be without options — there are other medications, there are surgical options, there is marijuana. (Actually, marijuana is not a wonder treatment for glaucoma; while THC does indeed lower intraocular pressure, this effect only lasts for three or four hours per dose, and it may cause other complications that would outweigh even that benefit. But personally, I love the idea that she could be prescribed marijuana, and I could get fired for using it — even if I was prescribed it. Well — “love” as in “don’t understand and actually really hate.”) And along with the glaucoma, Toni inherited thick corneas — about twice as thick as most people’s, and so even though her intraocular pressure is much higher than most people’s, her eyes can withstand it. As her doctor told her (I swear this isn’t my analogy, but oh, how I wish it was), where most people have balloon eyes, she has basketball eyes, and the thicker walls mean they can hold much greater pressure without, y’know, popping.

So while this is bad, it could be much, much worse. She could be dying. Glaucoma threatens her vision, but not her life. Even the worst case is decades off, rather than a few years, or even a few months.

But of course, there is one thing that makes this situation much worse than it has to be, more dangerous, more frustrating, more costly: Toni is an American. We live in this country, rather than in one of the civilized nations on this Earth: the nations that pay for health care. Instead, we have to deal with an insurance company. Which is why I’m thinking about this today, why this is what I don’t understand right now.

The Affordable Care Act is four years old, now, and it has helped: millions of people are insured that weren’t insured before; the costs of health insurance and health care, while still growing, are growing slower than they have in years. And people can no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions or lifetime maximum allowances. But the ACA — Obamacare — didn’t go far enough, and now Toni has to slog through the quagmire that is left, which is deep and dangerous, even if smaller than it has been in the past.

You see, while you can’t be refused coverage because of a pre-existing condition, insurance companies can refuse to cover health costs associated with a pre-existing condition for up to a year after the initial diagnosis. Toni has been aware of her high-pressure basketball eyes for quite some time, but the official diagnosis of glaucoma, and the accompanying need for more frequent tests and for daily eyedrops, only came last May. And then in June, we moved from Oregon to Arizona, and I took a new job.

And got new health insurance.

With that came the letter informing us that the company would not cover any costs associated with Toni’s pre-existing condition until ten months after her coverage began, which deadline will be June 30 of this year. For the intervening year, in which Toni would need to find a new opthamologist and undergo new diagnostic tests to monitor the progress of the disease, and of course take medication every day, the insurance company would not pay for any of it.

So here’s my first question. Why not? Why wouldn’t a company that exists to cover medical costs actually cover those medical costs? Is it because they are protecting themselves from fraud, from the danger that her previous physician, who was outside of this company’s circle of approved doctors, might have lied, so that Toni could bilk the company of the costs of treatment? First, why would that require anything more than a confirming diagnosis from a physician they trust? And second, why would anyone try that scam with glaucoma? The tests cost money, as does the medication, but we’re talking about hundreds of dollars over the course of a year, not hundreds of thousands, as can be true in other cases.

My assumption is that the company is merely taking the opportunity not to pay out money. Simple as that. They don’t even have an excuse that has any humanity or business logic to it: they just refuse to pay money. In the past, insurance companies have refused to pay any money for any pre-existing condition; now they can only do it for a year — so they’re doing it for the year. If the law allowed them to refuse payment for three years, they’d do it for three years.

That is madness. Absolute madness. An insurance company exists to pay money for claims. They profit by collecting more in fees than they pay out in claims, which they do by insuring a greater pool; the more healthy people they insure, and collect monthly fees from, the more they have to pay out in claims, and the more money they have for profits. So the way to increase their profits should be to get more members — preferably healthy members — and to raise fees. And they do both of these things, of course — but they also fail to provide the service they exist to provide to some of their members? While still collecting fees? It’s like a mechanic taking your car into the garage, charging you $300 for a repair, and then saying, “My profits will be lower if I actually spend time and money fixing your car. Instead I’m going to inspect three other cars that are in perfect working order and send your malfunctioning car back out on the street. Will that be cash or charge?” And then you give him the money.

Exactly what business are these companies in? What does their business model look like? And is there any way to see this as anything other than extortion? We need health insurance, thanks to the obscene costs of health care in this country and the fact that our health is the one thing we can’t go without — if the car in my analogy breaks down, you can carpool or walk or take public transportation; but you can’t borrow a new pair of eyeballs, you can’t leave your body in the garage and take the public body instead — and because we have to have the service they offer, they can cheat us, openly and repeatedly, and we just have to accept it.

The most important question of all is: why do we put up with it? Why was Obamacare fought as hard as it was, and why was the single payer option — the path to the only system of health care that actually makes sense, nationalized socialized medicine — removed from the law? Why do Americans choose to live like this? All of our voices, all of our influence, all of our votes and our money: all of it is serving literally no one but insurance companies, who extort and cheat and bilk us, while refusing us medical help. Why? I remember whistle blowers publicizing the fact that insurance companies had policies in place designed to delay the payment of claims until after the person died. They let people die for the sake of profit. And yet these companies still exist? And the Republican congress tries to repeal Obamacare? If the corporations were actually people, we would charge them with murder, and we’d probably execute them; but no, we pay them more, and fight to deregulate them.

Why?

Toni got sick this past spring. Nothing terrible, just a sinus infection, but it was an extremely nasty one: she’s always had allergies, she’s always had sinus trouble, but this time the pressure was so severe that she had constant debilitating headaches, a constantly blocked airway, and a fever; she felt awful. She went to the doctor, who quickly diagnosed her with acute sinusitis and prescribed an antibiotic. Toni took the antibiotic — no treat, that, as it had unfortunate side effects that made her feel even worse than the sinus infection had — and the sinusitis cleared up. Huzzah!

Then we got the bill from the doctor’s office, for the remainder of their fee after the co-payment (That’s another one, by the way. Co-payments? We pay them to provide a service, and then we pay for part of that same service? I’ve heard of passing costs on to the customer, but this is ridiculous.). Why were we charged? Because the insurance company had rejected the claim.

So Toni called them to ask why. She waited through a long time on hold, listening to one jazzy Muzac song on a loop (Toni: “I thought I was going to have to stick a poker in my eye.”), until she got to speak to a claims rep, and she asked her question. “It was automatically rejected,” the rep said, “Because of your pre-existing condition.”

Toni asked her what her glaucoma had to do with the sinus infection. The rep agreed that that didn’t make much sense, and said she would look into it, and call back by the end of the week.

She didn’t call back.

So Toni called again. Same wait time — same damn song, threatening the same eye-poking (which would, I suppose, make the whole thing irrelevant; maybe that’s the insurance company’s ultimate goal) — and the same question. And the same response: “No, you’re right, that doesn’t make any sense. Of course the inability of your eyes to drain properly had nothing to do with the bacterial infection that got into your sinuses, almost certainly because you moved to a radically different climate and Tucson had a comparatively wet winter, which gave bacteria a perfect environment to grow and get into your system. Let me fix that and send you a check.” Well, actually, it was, “I will look into that and get back to you.”

She didn’t call back, either.

In the intervening time (Each of these Calls-and-waits-for-response is about a week’s time), we got another bill from the doctor’s office. Toni will be attending the University of Arizona in the fall, working towards her Master’s in Visual Communication. Before she was allowed to register for classes, she had to present proof that she has been immunized against measles. There’s a whole story here which I’m going to leave out, but suffice to say, she went to the doctor’s office to get her sixth lifetime measles inoculation. And then the insurance company denied the claim.

So Toni called again, this time with two questions about two denied claims. (I should note that Toni can be rather tenacious, when she thinks something is unfair. And she has worked for banks, with all of their labyrinthine procedures, and also in Accounts Receivable, where she would call the company’s clients and try to cajole them into actually paying their bills; she has said that her job was to be on hold. The insurance company holds no fear for her. But frustration — oh yeah.) This time, the rep was neither conciliatory nor helpful; after several cycles of eye-poke-inducing Muzac, the woman said that the claim was automatically rejected because of her pre-existing condition. (On a Kafkaesque note: at no time did any of the insurance company employees state what that pre-existing condition is, nor does any of the billing paperwork or our account information. Toni wondered at one point if the pre-existing condition was in fact “She is human.”) Toni asked how glaucoma could be related to sinusitis. The woman interrupted, raising her voice to talk over Toni, repeating the same statement in effect: the claim was automatically rejected (She emphasized this as though it gave her argument weight: the computer said no. You can’t argue with the computer.) because of her pre-existing condition. Toni then calmly asked why the measles vaccination had been rejected, in what way that was related to her glaucoma. There was some fumbling, but then she received the final explanation of the denial of both claims: “It was rejected because of the way the visit was coded.” In other words, the doctor had made some mistake in recording the two visits, or in their invoice to the insurance company (And just imagine how Byzantine and maddening that process must be), and that’s why the claims were rejected.

So Toni, with a furious gleam in her eye — and yet a perfectly polished and polite phone manner, nonetheless; it was like watching James Bond call Blofeld and make an appointment to strangle him before popping out to the tennis court for a quick match with his beautiful secretary — called the doctor’s office, to confirm that they had not, in fact, coded the two visits as “Glaucoma treatment (sinus infection)” and “Glaucoma treatment (measles inoculation).” They had not. So once more, she called the insurance company. This time, the rep was polite, but was also clear: the claim had been denied. Toni asked about the appeals process, and the woman directed her to the online form and explained that either Toni would have to complete it or her doctor could file it.

Then she said, “But they’ll probably deny it anyway.”

Toni wrote to the NP who had diagnosed her sinusitis to ask, just in case the company has a point, if there could be any connection between her glaucoma and the infection, if the medication lowered her resistance or something similar; he responded that there was absolutely no relevance, as we suspected. We did get a phone call the next morning, from the second woman of the four Toni talked to; she left a message informing us that the matter had gone for medical review and they were working on it constantly, without pause for breath or sleep or food (Words to that effect) to resolve the matter. She said she would call us back.

We are considering the appeal, though we expect the company would deny it, to force us to hire a lawyer and take them to court; it is my assumption that the criteria for denial of this claim was, “Could our highly paid attorneys confuse the matter sufficiently to make a jury think that there could be a connection between glaucoma and the infection?” And the answer, based on proximity of the sinuses to the basketball eyes, and the similarity of symptoms, i.e., headache in both cases, is, I presume, yes. We are also generally against frivolous lawsuits, which this instance definitely would be, considering the amounts in question. So even if we appeal, we won’t take it to court; I think the value of appealing is to reverse what I believe is in fact their policy in these matters: I think they want to make the claims process as difficult, slow, and annoying as possible, in hopes that the customer will throw up her hands and simply pay the doctor, lest she be sent to Collections by her physician’s office, with all that entails regarding credit rating and reputation. The failure to call back, with repeated promises to do so, the long hold time, the need for further review despite the obvious absurdity of their argument — and the long and complex fine print attached to the Appeal form — all fit my theory. But the most interesting thing about the appeals process? The company reserves the right to deny any claim made while your appeal is being considered. What a wonderful and terrible implied threat that is: sure, you can appeal our decision — hope you don’t get sick while that’s going on. Maybe you should reconsider, hmmm?

Why do we put up with this? Who could possibly think that the government, no matter how inefficient they may be in some ways, would provide worse service than this? I know the fear with socialized medicine is that the government functionaries would deny people health care; what would you call this? Toni had a sinus infection. One doctor visit, one simple prescription — payment denied. How would the government handle this more callously, more indefensibly, than the company? And could you imagine that the government program would cost anything even approaching what our insurance company charges us — so that they can provide us with, quite literally, nothing of any value whatsoever? We have, in essence, no insurance; certainly no peace of mind.

Why do we allow this? Why do we accept this? I know the feeling of futility that the process brings to people; I feel the same thing. But it isn’t futile: Obamacare was passed. The situation was changed. We can take this further.

We must.

That’s why I’m writing this. Not for our sake; as I said, Toni’s infection is long gone, and the measles inoculation was successful — she is still measle-free, and now registered for her classes for the fall. Her glaucoma is being treated. All told, after they deny our appeals, we will be out just over $200, which we can afford. Her time with a pre-existing condition is almost up. We can handle our situation as it stands now.

But what if?

What if we decide to appeal, and Toni gets into an accident, and they deny her claim because she is in the middle of appealing a ruling?

What if that was the claim they had denied because of her glaucoma, and we were out thousands?

What if the pre-existing condition was life-threatening and expensive?

All of these things are true, for thousands if not millions of Americans.

Insurance companies are letting us die so that they can make money. They are not making our lives better, they are not improving either our medical care system nor our health outcomes.

It is time to stop allowing our government to help them make money from our suffering. It is time we stopped this nonsense, and did what we all know is the right thing.

Please: support candidates who support single-payer government-sponsored tax-funded health care. Write to your representatives. Join campaigns to push for single-payer health care. If you have your own story, tell your own story, in the comments below or on your own blog and then send me the link; otherwise, share ours, or share another that you know with the people you can reach. Let people know that this has to stop, and we have to stop it.

I want to understand my country again. I want my country to start making sense.

And Toni doesn’t want to listen to that song any more.

Rich Book, Poor World

Dusty Leave a comment

Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell

I was happy with this find: first because I came across it in a lovely bookstore, the kind of shop I want to own someday, a little storefront with ten-foot-high shelves, with only enough space between for one person to pass, and yet a bright and sunny atmosphere, warm and welcoming — the proprietor had read both books I bought, and praised them both, so I felt both accompanied and intelligent; second because it is an old copy, with genuine cover art (The image above) and a 35-cent price printed at the top (Yeah, that’s right — mine was even cheaper than this image!), and a sweet, soft smell to the pages; third because everything I read by George Orwell makes me admire the man more, and fills me with the desire both to read and to write.

It was an excellent read. Orwell has a journalist’s eye and a journalist’s pen; the prose is clear and straightforward, the detail precise and thorough and fascinating. He creates characters among his acquaintances mostly through simple description of their appearance and actions and words; within the first ten pages you meet one of the more appalling people Orwell knew in Paris, and you know why, based merely on the drunken speech Orwell relates from the man. He makes himself a character, as well, though he creates his own character similarly, through speech and action and description; there is never any explanation given for how he ended up in Paris, so close to destitute, but he quickly joins the ranks of the poorest, being forced to sell his clothing in order to buy food, and spending days at a time starving before he finds employment again.

Orwell also creates a graphic picture of the two great cities at the time, in the 1930’s, between the World Wars when the greatest threat to Western society was socialism; there is a constant theme of intolerance running through his interactions with authorities, and though he is frequently harassed for his poverty and the corresponding assumption of lawlessness, he comments that it would be much worse were he suspected of being a Socialist — which, of course, he was, though not a politically active one at the time. He tells of the slums of Paris and the workhouses of London, and creates an expose of Paris restaurants and hotels worthy of Upton Sinclair.

There are some moments I would change: Orwell reveals his own prejudices, against some races and nationalities and particularly against Jews; there is a presumption that the reader knows French, which I do not; and in this edition, at least, the curse words were blanked out — which wasn’t a problem when Orwell wrote things like “Shut yer ______ mouth and get on with yer bath!” because even if I don’t know what he meant (almost certainly “damn”), I can fill it in with my own imagination and be no worse off for it. But then there was a passage when Orwell was expounding on why curse words become curse words, and how they lose their original meaning as soon as they reach common use; and it read like “But ________ is no worse than _______, which was once used less often than _________.” Which was obnoxious.

It was also quite disgusting at times, and quite sad; but then, so is the subject. It’s a short and largely simple read, and Orwell’s insights, offered at the end, are sharp and precise, and leave one with some very interesting thoughts.

Highly recommended.

Dark Elf Fantasy

Dusty Leave a comment

(Probably not what you were thinking.)

Homeland (Book One of the Dark Elf Trilogy in the Forgotten Realms world of AD&D)
by R.A. Salvatore

I’ve never read these books before, though every gaming nerd I’ve taught English to in the last fifteen years has read and loved and recommended them. Drizzt Do’Urden is one of the most prominent and well-known characters to rise out of the D&D universe, which has run the gamut from role-playing games to countless novels to bad TV shows and worse movies. Drizzt is a Drow, a dark elf, one of the evil races of the D&D universe, like orcs and goblins and the like, and this book takes on the interesting task of making the Drow seem vile and cruel and merciless, while also making Drizzt himself sympathetic.

It’s a tough challenge, but Salvatore did it fairly well. I have read better books with a similar concept — the Elric of Melnibone series by Michael Moorcock are probably the best at this, along with Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar books — but this one was well done. Drizzt is born into a noble House of the underground kingdom of dark elves called Menzobarranzan; as the third son (the kingdom is both matriarchal and theocratic, with the dark elf women serving as priestesses of an evil goddess named Lloth) he would have been sacrificed at birth, except that one of his elder brothers assassinates the other the same night when Drizzt is born, opening a slot for Drizzt to remain alive. He does, and grows into a hero, the greatest swordsman of the realm, and, most unusual for a Drow, a man with a sense of honor and a conscience.

The world is very well built, internally logical and consistent and in keeping with the larger D&D world; the Drow read like what they are, a universally evil race who worship a spider-demon and loathe kindness and mercy and love and anything else virtuous or good. It was interesting to see the ways Salvatore used elements of fascism in the Drow world: the children are very clearly indoctrinated, taught to hate an external enemy and blame that enemy for all of their own suffering, though that suffering is clearly inherent in their way of life; at the same time, they must obey the dictates of their own unquestioned supreme leader, constantly trying to curry her favor and savagely turning on those who displease her, even though they do not know why she is angry or why she is happy with any particular Drow. I imagine this is much what it was like to live in Hitler’s Germany, which I’m sure was Salvatore’s intent, or at least his inspiration.

I was a bit less pleased with Drizzt himself. Partly that is because I hadn’t read his previous adventures; these books are an origin story for a beloved character from another series, and so there were moments that were supposed to be meaningful for me that weren’t — for instance, the Drizzt character is well known for his companion, a magical black panther named Guenhwyvar; when she was introduced, I should have thought, “Hooray!” but it didn’t register at all other than :”Hey look, a magical black panther.” More problematic was the author’s attempt to make Drizzt a better man than his family: because there was no particular reason why he should have been more decent or honorable or merciful than every other Drow — he just was. Some of it came from his (not-quite-as) honorable mentor, who trained him; but why was the mentor more honorable then? Well, he just was, too. And sure, that’s how it works in D&D, but I think characters in a novel should make more sense.

The action was good, the world was great, the characters were fine. I’ll be reading the sequel.

If you liked this book, I would recommend:
Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock (And the rest of the series)
The Fahfrd and Grey Mouser series by Fritz Leiber (Swords and Deviltry, Swords Against Death, Swords in the Mist, etc.)
The Conan books — I’d recommend the two Roberts, E. Howard who created the character and Jordan who wrote it better than anyone else since.

Mama!

Dusty Leave a comment

(This was a Facebook quiz that caught my attention. It was a little tough explaining all of the questions to our children, but this is what they came up with.)

WITHOUT ANY prompting, ask your child these questions and write down EXACTLY what they say. It is a great way to find out what they really think. When you re-post put your Child’s age.
These are the answers for all of my kids:

Dunkie the Cockatiel (5),Duncan VS Origami Whale

 

Neo the Tortoise (2),

Neo

and Sammy the Dog (1.5)

Sammy 3

(That’s his Wubba there, in his paws.)

 

1. What is something mom always says to you?
Dunkie: Stop that!
Neo: Where are you?
Sammy: I love you.

2. What makes mom happy?
D: Dunkie! And drawing lines on paper. WHICH SHE WON’T LET ME CHEW UP!
N: Peace and harmony.
S: Cuddles and when I kiss her nose.

3. What makes mom sad?
D: Dunkie. And when she can’t draw lines on paper. Or when I chew them up.
N: The suffering in the world.
S: I don’t know, but when she’s sad I bring her my Wubba-toy and we play and she laughs and then she’s not sad any more.

4. How does your mom make you laugh?
D: She snorts when she laughs.
N: She smiles when she sees me, and I smile with her.
S: When she plays with me and Wubba.

5. What was your mom like as a child?
D: Dunkie-less. So, sad.
N: The child is echoed in the adult. She is kind, and she is beautiful. She is present in the moment.
S: Mama was a child?

6. How old is your mom?
D: She has gray headfeathers.
N: Old enough to be wise.
S: Mama-old.

7. How tall is your mom?
D: Tall enough to perch on and be really high!
N: She fills the sky.
S: Mama-tall.

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
D: Whistle with Dunkie!
N: Be at peace with her family.
S: Cuddle. And play Wubba.

9. What does your mom do when you’re not around?
D: Draw lines on paper.
N: If a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
S: Oh, I’m always around.

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
D: Dunkie! Or drawing lines on paper.
N: She is loved. It is enough.
S: Best Mama ever.

11. What is your mom really good at?
D: Skritching under my headfeathers like I like.
N: Worrying.
S: Tum rubs. And she makes Daddy laugh a lot.

12. What is your mom not very good at?
D: DOING WHAT I WANT, WHEN I WANT HER TO DO IT! Goddamnit . . .
N: Not worrying.
S: Mama’s good at everything.

13. What does your mom do for a job?
D: Draws lines on paper.
N: Takes care of others.
S: What’s a job?

14.What is your mom’s favorite food?
D: Bread. And green stuff. She doesn’t like my nibbles.
N: What she grows.
S: The stuff she shares with me. Usually cheese.

15.What makes you proud of your mom?
D: WHEN SHE DOES WHAT I WANT, WHEN I WANT IT!
N: That she has a kind soul.
S: She’s Mama.

16. If your mom were a character, who would she be?
D: A beautiful bird. LIKE DUNKIE!
N: If you imagine how another imagines you, who is then created?
S: Ummm . . . Mama.

17. What do you and your mom do together?
D: Whistle!
N: Enjoy the world around us.
S: Wubba.

18. How are you and your mom the same?
D: We both snort when we laugh.
N: We are living souls. We are more alike than we are different.
S: We love to nap and play Wubba. And eat cheese. And go walkies.

19. How are you and your mom different?
D: She doesn’t do what I want, and I don’t do what she — oh wait. That’s the same.
N: I have a shell. She needs a shell.
S: She likes baths.

20. How do you know your mom loves you?
D: WHEN SHE DOES WHAT I WANT! And when she whistles my song. And skritches under my headfeathers like I like.
N: She loves all things. It is her burden and her gift.
S: She brought me home from dog-jail, and she doesn’t make me live on the street like my last person did. She takes care of me.

21. What does your mom like most about your dad?
D: He does what she wants.
N: He is her other half.
S: He’s Daddy! He plays Wubba good. And he likes cheese. And naps. And cuddles.

22. Where is your mom’s favorite place to go?
D: I don’t know. Somewhere I CAN’T SEE HER!
N: Out into the world, and then back into herself.
S: Walkies!

23. How old was your Mom when you were born?
D: I DON’T CARE! GIVE ME SKRITCHY! AND NIBBLES! DO IT NOW!
N: What did your face look like before your grandparents were born?
S: I don’t know. Was Mama around then? I didn’t see her until she came to the dog-jail to get me. OH I KNOW! She was Mama-old minus me. Right, Daddy?

The Right Opinion

Dusty Leave a comment

There’s something I’m tired of hearing.

I get it all the time. Mostly because my interactions with other human beings take place almost exclusively in the classroom, where I talk to teenagers, or on the internet, where I talk to people on the internet. And as we all know, these are, far and away, the two most annoying groups of people on the planet. (Yes, I’m aware the second group includes me. Seeing as I’ve spent my entire life after the age of two in schools, in one way or another, I think I’m an honorary member of the first group, too. Of course I know I’m annoying. That’s beside the point.) And this is one of the most annoying things that people say. It’s annoying because it is an attempt to end discussion and debate, to validate the worst garbage that comes out of people’s brains: the thoughtlessness, the prejudice, the spite, the hate, the idiocy, the vapidity and superficiality — all of it. And I’m tired of it. So, by the power vested in me by my love of both thought and communication, and the energy and time vested by me in both of these aspects of human existence; by the authority I have gained through fifteen years of teaching, by the resentment and impatience that has built in me all that time and which has granted me the sheer gall to presume to say something like this, I hereby declare and assert:

Nobody has the right to an opinion.

That’s what people say that I’m tired of hearing. They say it in several different ways: Everyone has the right to their own opinion. That’s just what I think. We just have a difference of opinions, and we’ll have to agree to disagree. I’m entitled to my opinion.

That last one is the worst. That last one is the one that got me thinking about this subject for this blog. Because it says it all, doesn’t it? Entitled. I’m entitled to my opinion. Apart from the political baggage that has been strapped onto that word through the labeling of certain parts of the social safety net as “entitlements,” which apparently require “entitlement reform,” the word “entitled” contradicts itself. It means that you inherently deserve something, that it is yours by natural right; but when we call someone entitled, what we mean is that they don’t at all deserve the thing they claim, that they have it through underhanded means, or without justification — often because it was given to them without effort. That they didn’t earn what they feel “entitled” to.

And I’m thinking now that people aren’t entitled to have the opinions they claim to have.

I think you have to earn the right to have an opinion.

Not to voice it; once you have it, you have the freedom of speech and of the press, and you can shout your opinions from the rooftops — even if those opinions are offensive or unpatriotic or even inflammatory. You can post it on Facebook and you can whisper it to yourself in a movie theater and you can march around the streets wearing it on a sandwich board and you can even hold a parade declaring that you hold this opinion. Have at it, feel free; I would never stop you. In fact, I will applaud you.

But first you have to earn that opinion.

People need to earn their opinions because, first, people hold a lot of really stupid opinions. They think climate change is not real; they think the universe was created in six days about 6,000 years ago; they think that white people are better than all other people. They think that Will Ferrell is funny, they think that Jon Stewart is not, they think that Taylor Swift shouldn’t be forcibly removed from popular culture and never allowed to return. They think that 9/11 was an inside job and that Barack Obama is coming for their guns and that the worst thing the government has done in the last ten years is Benghazi. All of these opinions (Okay, forget about the middle three, there; those are examples of what we really mean when we say “That’s just my opinion,” which is personal preferences. But seriously: removed entirely from popular culture. I don’t mind her existing, but I don’t ever want to hear from her or see her again.) are not only held contrary to fact, but are held contrary to facts or despite facts that are patently obvious and really beyond contestation. And the excuse we allow people is the belief that everyone has the right to their own opinion. This is the justification for absurdities like insisting that schools teach Creationism alongside Darwinian evolution: because, we say, some people believe one thing and some people believe another thing, and both people have the right to their opinions, and we have to respect both opinions.

I can’t believe that people are too dumb to understand the evidence. I can’t believe that the truth is so hard to understand, or so hard to accept, that people are incapable of understanding and accepting it. Because some people do, and there’s nothing that makes those people inherently better than the people who do not. They are capable of accepting the truth: they just don’t. And the reason, I think, is that people don’t think about their opinions. They don’t look for evidence, and they don’t consider all sides of the issue. Why? Because they don’t have to. Because they already have their opinion, and they have the right to their opinion. And that’s why they believe stupid things. I don’t think that people are actually incapable of thought, even though they — oh, who am I kidding? Not “they.” We. — even though we act like it a lot of the time; but we don’t think when we believe we don’t have to, just as we don’t work when we don’t have to, and we don’t wear pants when we don’t have to. The idea that we have the right to our opinion simply because it is our opinion, the belief that everyone has this inherent, unalienable, natural right, and that it is sacrosanct — this is why these opinions still exist and why they are allowed to plague and annoy, and even to harm us.

No more. From now on, everyone, everywhere, has to earn their opinions.

And here’s how you do that: you have to think about your opinions. You have to consider all of the available evidence you have access to (On a sliding scale: the stronger the opinion, and the more important, the more evidence you must consider. We can hold tentative opinions when we don’t have all the facts yet, or when the subject isn’t all that important. Like whether cheesecake is a pie or a cake. Or if Star Trek was socially progressive for having the first interracial kiss on TV, or regressive for — every other kiss involving Captain Kirk. But those opinions must be tentative: held lightly, offered only with reservations.), and you have to listen to the opinions of those who think differently, and you have to think about whether those people might, in fact, be right. And when they are right, you have to adjust your opinion accordingly. You don’t have to change your opinion entirely; it is your opinion — but you have to include an exception, or a caveat, or an alternative. In other words, your opinion must be rational, and it must be open to change. You have to work on your opinions, and make them the very best opinions you could possibly have. Then — and only then –can you take pride in holding those opinions.

The other reason why people should earn their opinions is because the idea that we don’t, the idea that my opinion is as good as your opinion simply because it is my opinion, is used ever and always to end debate and discussion. I believe that discussion is necessary: discussion, communication, is how we gain — everything good, really. Collaboration and cooperation are necessary for society, and society is necessary to maintain both the species and the culture we have created. Communication creates empathy and understanding, which allows for acceptance and peace and harmony. Speaking your mind allows you to shape and solidify what you think; I often start these essays with little more than a single idea, and the rest only appears as I write it (I know: you can tell. Sorry about that.). Communication makes us better people, and happier people, and safer people — and therefore, I would argue, we should have some right to communicate, both the right to speak and the right to hear others speak to us.

Yes, I would argue. I argue a lot; that’s the way that I am annoying, both in the classroom and on the internet. People often don’t want to argue with me, and I can accept that; not everyone likes to struggle and fight. No problem. But even if we aren’t going to argue, we should at least discuss: we should share our ideas, our evidence, our thought process. This is how we learn and grow, this is how we gain respect for each other, and for our opinions: through communication, through conversation. I don’t have to argue, I don’t need to be right, to win or lose — but I do want to understand, and I do want to be understood. I need that. Yet too many of my discussions end the same way: the other person says, “Well, that’s just my opinion, and I’m entitled to that opinion. You’re entitled to yours.”

This sounds like a validation, but it isn’t. It’s the opposite: it’s a put-down. This is telling me that you don’t want to talk to me, you don’t want to share your thought with me: that I’m not worth the effort. This is blocking communication, and therefore also blocking understanding. This is imposing silence on me, not only depriving me of understanding your position, but also stopping me from making my position understood. You don’t have the right to do that, and if the way you do that is the statement, “That’s just my opinion, and I’m entitled to my opinion,” then you don’t have the right to that opinion. In fact, you’re not entitled to any opinion.

You have to earn your opinions.

That’s my opinion. Anyone care to discuss?