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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?

Serving the Battle-God

Dusty Leave a comment

There’s a poem that I have taught for years, a piece by the American author, journalist, and poet Stephen Crane. I’m reminded of it every time Memorial Day or Veterans’ Day rolls around; every time my Facebook feed is filled with “God Bless the Military” statements and sentiments. Here it is.

“Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind”

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom—
A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Swift, blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

I love this poem. Not only has it helped to clarify my own feelings about the military, but it has served as an incredibly useful teaching tool over the years. It’s become one of my favorite lessons, the one I look forward to and plan around. Even though it is probably the saddest thing I teach, both for subject matter, and because, no matter how well I teach it, whether my students understand it as I do or not — it doesn’t change the U.S. military. I can’t kill the Battle-God.

I lead my students through this first as though it were sincere: we skip the second and fourth stanzas, and I gloss over the specifics of the imagery; we focus on the apparent speaker, and who that person might be. It seems, based on the speaker’s attempts to comfort the surviving relatives — first sweetheart, then child, then mother — of soldiers killed in battle, that the speaker would be a military spokesman, the guy who writes the letter home or delivers the telegram that says “We regret to inform you . . .” I get my students to make a list of the kinds of things this familiar figure would say: Your loved one was very brave. He was a patriot, he was a hero. He died for a greater good, fighting for his country. He didn’t suffer. On the surface, it all seems to fit, and they get it quickly.

Then we go back and look more carefully at the images. In the first stanza, the lover throws wild hands toward the sky, and the affrighted steed runs on alone. So the man was shot while riding a horse into battle. But for me, the steed running on is a telling detail: I would think the horse, terrified by the sights and sounds and smells of the battle, and by the sudden violent loss of his rider, would run away from the fighting. But if the steed runs on — that implies it was already going that way. So perhaps this man was shot in the back while fleeing, perhaps even by his own side, killed as a deserter. I ask the students: doesn’t it seem strange that a military man would describe this scene so specifically to that dead man’s sweetheart — and then afterwards tell her not to cry, because war, which killed her terrified (and cowardly) lover, is kind?

Maybe I’m reading too much into that one. But look at the third stanza. Look at the details in the description of the father dying — see how painful and pathetic it is? And realize that this is, apparently, being described to that dead man’s child. His young child, because it is a “babe.” (I often think of the scene with Christopher Walken and the gold watch in Pulp Fiction, one of the most horrifyingly amusing scenes I know of in any movie.) I mime this for my students: I crouch down with my hands on my knees, and bounce as I say, in that cheerful sing-song we use to ask little kids if they want to see Santa Claus or ride the pony: “Okay, little boy, let me tell you about your daddy: he was shot in the chest, fell on his face in the mud, and died choking on his own blood!” Then I stand up and say, in an aggressively sarcastic tone, “Oh — and don’t cry. Because war is kind.” It’s effective.

After I take them through the fifth stanza, which I think of as ironically juxtaposing the humble, unimportant mother (whose heart is but a button) with the bright, splendid shroud of the son (I like connecting this to the American flag we drape over soldiers’ coffins, though Crane probably just meant the actual white winding sheet. There’s another one, too: the yellow trenches the dying man chokes in in the third stanza really should be a reference to the use of mustard gas in World War I — but Stephen Crane died in 1900, so, nope. Possibly a reference to yellow fever, since he did cover the Spanish-American War, where more soldiers died of disease than from bullets and bombs.) — a pair of images that lionizes the dead man and devalues the living, sorrowing mother — I have them look at the second and fourth stanzas, where the speaker changes and the tone changes. These stanzas, with their references to drums and glory and swift, blazing regimental flags, seem much more like the words of a pro-military warmonger, at first. I point out for them the irony in the comparison between the little souls, pointless (“The unexplained glory flies above them,” either the American flag, or the idea of gloriously dying in war, or both), valueless (“These men were born to drill and die,” and nothing else), and the line “Great is the Battle-God.” I ask them who the Battle-God is; though I have to get them past the idea that it is Ares — there is always at least one who is very proud to know this fact — since that is more symbolic than I need it to be. I ask them who is made great by battle — and who, in truth, is made greater when the losses in that battle are greater. Who rules over a kingdom of a thousand corpses? The answer I want is: the generals. The presidents. The ones who send the little souls to die, and are made famous by their ability to order men killed. I ask them how on Earth it can be said that slaughter is virtuous and killing excellent — and I help them recognize that there is really only one place in our world where it is possible to be an excellent killer, and it is a virtue to wipe out swaths of people as if they were lambs being slaughtered; that one place is, of course, war.

Yup. War is kind.

This poem, all in all, strikes me as a criticism of the military: not the soldiers, though they are certainly seen as fools or children who die for no good reason; and not the officers who would bring the sad news home to the survivors, if they are sincere in their desire to comfort — that’s the point of the list of common statements these people would use: there is no way that anyone would actually talk to a family member the way the speaker in this poem does, as he says quite the opposite of what we would expect: your lover is a coward; your father died in incredible pain; your son only matters because he died, and you don’t matter at all. But if those people, those officers, are knowingly lying about the experiences of those who died in war, there can only be one reason: they want that child, that babe, to grow up and — follow in his father’s footsteps. They want the family members to believe that those who die in war were heroes, every one of them, even though the officer telling them of this heroism knows the truth: these soldiers died for nothing, in great pain and fear, because the only thing that matters is that they die: their corpses make the Battle-God great. Those liars serve the Battle-Gods, and they make a new generation of little souls thirst for fight; they ensure that their destiny, which could otherwise be grand and great, as any human’s could be, is — to drill and die. This poem criticizes two groups: those who profit from the deaths of soldiers — the Battle-Gods — and those who lie to people in order to get men to agree to be soldiers, and to die for the aggrandizement of the Battle-Gods. The recruiters.

And that’s why I think of it every Memorial Day. Because that’s exactly how I feel about the military.

Those men and women who volunteer to fight because they want to protect innocent lives, because they believe in the cause, or in their country, I have great respect for, in some ways. There is no question to me that the willingness to die for the safety and well-being of another person is one of the most honorable qualities a person can have. I think it less honorable, but still virtuous, to be willing to fight and kill for the same cause — for the sake of other people. This is why I have great respect, too, for police and firefighters and other people who put themselves into harm’s way in order to protect the rest of us. They are brave, they are strong, they are noble and good.

That’s the good stuff. Now here’s the bad.

Our military is not always used to serve the greater good. It is sometimes, because the Army Corps of Engineers builds things, and because the military has been used for rescue missions, for relief missions, and, sometimes, for peacekeeping; I think the National Guard has been used more frequently and reasonably in this way, simply because it is the National Guard, and the U.S. hasn’t been invaded in two hundred years. The National Guard, and the Coast Guard, then become large bodies of well-equipped, well-trained people serving to keep people safe and happy. This is what the military should do, and the only branches that should still exist, in my opinion. Yes, some wars — World War II and the American Civil War, from the Union’s perspective — are actually fought for the greater good; but even those wars do not require a standing military like the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. We could send our National Guard to fight, if necessity required it; even better, maybe we could offer some genuine support, troops and materiel, to the United Nations. Imagine what they could do with the military might of the U.S. Then ask yourself why the U.N. doesn’t have that already.

Because our military is, and has always been, used to do harm. They are sent to foreign lands to kill and destroy, not to help people, but to serve the “national interest.” Not to keep us safe, but to achieve policy goals. Not to die so that others may live — but to make the Battle-God great with their corpses. And this is a crime, and a tragedy, without exception. I refuse to accept, for instance, that the millions who died in Vietnam served any greater purpose, for the United States. For the Vietnamese, one could argue that they died protecting their country from a terrible foe, a foreign aggressor who dropped millions of tons of high explosives, incendiaries, and poison on their country; perhaps that was worth all the murder, all the destruction, all the death. But for us? For the U.S.? What was that war but evil? The same for the war in Iraq, and the extended war in Afghanistan. Perhaps you could argue that Osama bin Laden needed to die for 9/11, but the argument is troubled by the fact that we made bin Laden, training him to fight the Soviets in the ’80’s, and by the fact that we invaded and destroyed Afghanistan but retain strong ties with Saudi Arabia, and with Israel, and with Turkey, and with dozens of other countries with histories of terrible human rights abuses.

Not to mention our own record in that area. How any nation that manned Abu Ghraib, that STILL maintains Guantanamo Bay, can claim to be protecting people or freedom or human rights, is beyond me.

Now it becomes a question of, not the greater good, but the greater evil. It is bad enough to attack a sovereign nation for your own political purposes, bad enough to kill for your ideals; but to use good people as your weapons to do that? Because those people who join the military for noble reasons, the ones who are willing to die for others, are the best of people, those who are willing to send those good people to their deaths, must be the worst of people. They are even more vile when they do it for selfish reasons, which is why Dick Cheney (Who knowingly lied us into war) is a worse man than George W. Bush (Who, for the most part, stupidly believed what he was told, and was otherwise knowingly selfish and arrogant), who is a worse man than Barack Obama. But all of them sent good people to die unnecessarily, and thus are they all villains.

But are even those people the worst?

I think it — let’s say naive — to join the U.S. military for honorable and noble reasons, in the modern era. Perhaps it made sense in the nation’s first century, though I personally consider the American Revolution a political war, not a war for the greater good (Yeah, we won our freedom from the British. So did Canada. How many people died for that one?), and the Mexican-American War and the Indian Wars were nothing but bad. But today, a thinking person cannot believe that joining the military will be all noble or all good. Because in this country, which does still have free speech and a free press, I think it impossible to believe the military only does good things, unless one possesses great skill in the most Orwellian of doublethink, or the deepest ethnocentric prejudices (“Everything we do is good, because ‘Merica!”).

Unless, of course, one is actively, aggressively, and successfully lied to, exactly when one is most vulnerable.

That’s why the worst people in the world, in relation to the U.S. military — if it is not the Battle-Gods themselves, that is — are recruiters.

That’s who Stephen Crane was criticizing in his poem: those who would lie to the family members, who would try to make war seem glorious and good when it is nothing but evil and suffering; those who knowingly manipulate and deceive, in order to bring fresh meat to the grinder, in order to aggrandize the Battle-Gods, to make their kingdoms — not a thousand corpses, but tens of thousands, a million. More.

The people who show up at high schools, particularly high schools with low graduation rates, with terrible college attendance rates, where the local community is economically depressed (Because I never once saw a recruiter in my own upper-class public high school, and I have not seen a single recruiter in the school where I teach now, which has a near-100% college attendance rate — but they were there every damn week in St. Helens, Oregon, which is everything I just described.), and stand there in clean, well-pressed uniforms, challenging children to perform feats of strength — as though it matters in the military how many goddamn pull-ups you can do, over how many people you can kill or how slowly you can die — and handing out prizes to those who “win,” and telling children who don’t know any better that: the U.S. Military is honorable, and glorious, and good; that it protects our freedoms and it makes the world safe for democracy; that joining up will make them better people, give them a better future, and offer them adventure and a wonderful life.

I would excuse those people if I believed that they actually thought what they said was true. And inasmuch as the military uses new recruits to bring in other recruits — which they do, in one of the more callous and appalling pyramid schemes I know of, as they actually offer promotions to those who can lure in larger numbers of fellow victims — I don’t blame the actual people who try to tell their friend that they should join up, too. They are naive children, who have been manipulated and lied to themselves. But that isn’t who mans the recruiting offices, or the tables at high school lunchtimes. Those are the older soldiers. The ones who know better, and who do it anyway. They are the ones who make the military seem good, so that good people will join, so that they can then be used, by evil men, to do evil.

Perhaps the most insidious and harmful part of this process now is the tendency of the military, since World War II and the G.I. Bill, to glorify the military as something other than a military: they make the military sound like a job, rather than an institution that creates death. With this, you have people signing up to serve in the military who don’t have noble reasons, nor evil ones; they just don’t know what else to do with themselves. This is perhaps the worst, because it is the easiest: for these people, you don’t even have to lie that much. The GI Bill is a real thing; the military does offer benefits to veterans; you can indeed learn skills that will serve you later in life. All those things are true. To talk about this, as a recruiter, you just have to ignore two things: one, the vast majority of soldiers do not do skilled work, and so will gain nothing of practical use — particularly not those who may after service have access to money for college, but have not one of the academic skills necessary to succeed in college, possibly because they blew off high school knowing they would just be going into the military at 18 — and two, you have to ignore that the reason the military exists is to kill, and the first job of any soldier is to die. If you can ignore those things as a recruiter, you can make the military sound just fabulous; if you can ignore those things as a recruit, you can look forward to your service. You can also see the military as a way to cure your ills, your laziness, your juvenile delinquency, your chemical addictions, your weight problem; all of these are put forward as valid reasons to sign up, and all of them have brought in new corpses for the kingdom. Hell: we even see military service as a way to get laid, because you get in shape and get a cool uniform and you get to be a badass — and women loooooove a badass in uniform with six-pack abs. Just watch Top Gun. That’ll prove it.

So that’s what I think about, when I see memes honoring soldiers. I think: Did you really sign up to protect freedoms? Or was it just that you couldn’t get a job? If you did sign up to protect freedom, did you think of fighting the Taliban in the hills of Afghanistan, quite literally on the other side of the world, and so removed from anything even remotely good for America that nobody even tries to justify the war any more beyond “You broke it, you bought it?” If you believed fighting in Afghanistan would be noble, who lied to you? And how hard did they have to work to convince you?

It all makes it very hard to look at a serviceman and say “Thank you.” I know it’s not their fault, and I know that many of them do have genuinely noble intentions in joining the military; some of them have noble intentions despite going into it with eyes wide open; and to those people, for their intent, I am indeed grateful, and I will salute them, and I will thank them. The same for those veterans who fought in the past, and those who died, for actual noble causes.

But most of the time, I just feel sorry for them, these little souls who thirst for fight, these men who were born to drill and die — or at least that is what they are told, by the Battle-Gods and their vile minions. All they are is more corpses for the kingdom.
Let me close with another poem, this one by a soldier who died, for his country, soon after writing this.

Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

This Is The Voice

Dusty Leave a comment

Another season has come and gone; another winner has been named (Once again, it was the wrong one; but this time, like the last, there wasn’t a right one: hence this blog.). This time the final result was spoiled for me, because the internet is a pain in the ass: a world of instant information, and hardly ever the right information at the right time, which makes it the next thing to useless. And not to tangent too much, but this is why books are better: because they are passive. They allow themselves to be collected and categorized and clearly controlled, and thus, with access to a library with a good card catalog, or a volume with a good index, you can quickly find exactly what you need, exactly when you need it, without wasting a ton of time looking at the wrong things: this is what the internet cannot do. Mostly, I assume, because it’s too young to know better. Just like the winner who was just named this week (BOOM! Back on subject, baby! That was no tangent — it was a parabola!), whose victory, once I knew about it, made me want to watch the show a little bit less: the same effect the last season’s final result had; and at the same time that my interest ebbs, a tide of irritation and contempt, caused by the parts of the show that bug me, rises and swells and threatens to wash me away.

Damn The Voice, anyway.

I was excited when it began. Toni and I are fans of contest shows, especially those involving art and talent; cooking shows like MasterChef and Hell’s Kitchen and Chopped; the tattoo contest Inkmasters and the movie makeup show Face Off; Design Star and Project Runway. And, of course, American Idol. We watched the first season of that, and despite Ryan Seacrest and Paula Abdul, despite the show’s need to create mock-celebrities like William Hung or that “Pants on the Ground” guy, we still watched it, most seasons. But we were getting tired of it. They spent too much time bashing on Simon Cowell, who, regardless of what he may be as a person, is and always has been a hell of a talent scout and a top-notch critic, and the main reason the show ever worked. It seemed like every word out of the guy’s mouth required an irritated (and irritating) rebuttal from Paula Abdul or What’s-her-name, Kara DioGuardi, and this was becoming the primary focus of the show. Meanwhile, on stage the talent was getting less impressive, substance swallowed up in style; the bickering between judges, with snark from Seacrest, was the order of the day, and we were getting sick of it.

But here came The Voice. It wasn’t about appearances: you wouldn’t have to look like Carrie Underwood to win. The audition process wasn’t a nationwide weeks-long freak show. The host was Carson Daly, who is to Ryan Seacrest what Jerry Seinfeld is to Andrew “Dice” Clay. The judges – coaches, whatever – were much more interesting, it would seem, than Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson; I love Maroon 5, and Cee Lo Green. They would more than make up for that country guy who I’d never heard of and Christina Aguilera, who I could take or leave.

So we watched the first season. And honestly? That was a good show. The singers were very impressive, varied in their ability and style and the type of music they sang, which made for a good competition. This guy, Javier Colon, had one of the finest singing voices I’ve ever heard. And he won. Perfect! We watched the second season: Jermaine Paul, who won that one, wasn’t my favorite, but he also had a hell of a set of pipes. Carson Daly was solid; Adam Levine was hilarious; it was fun to watch Cee Lo’s eloquence, originality, and creativity; and I had grown to like Blake as much as I had grown to dislike Christina Aguilera.

Jesus – Christina Aguilera. You know, I’ll give her this: she’s really an incredible singer, one of a kind, one of the best singers and performers of our generation. She’s pretty, too, though I loathe her fashion sense. But she’s crap as a coach, and the reason is simple: she’s a diva. Ever since she was – what, four months old when she started singing? – the attention has always been on her, and that’s where she wants it. If you watch the show, there’s only one coach who ever sings along with her team members during rehearsal, and every time, she acts like it’s a gift she’s giving them; and they, who know where their bread is buttered, respond in kind, “Omigawd I’m singing with Christina Aguileraaaaaaaa!!!” Of course, all of the singers she chooses resemble her in terms of singing style and song choice, so it’s not surprising that they would share her love for – well, for herself.

But then the show started to go downhill. The third season was won by the cute girl who sang country, who beat out far better singers to do it. Fourth season was won by the cuter girl who sang even more country, who beat out other country singers, because together they had eliminated the far better singers. The fifth season winner, TessAnne Chin, was indeed the best singer that year – but she was also the most attractive woman on the show. There was a problem, here. It wasn’t all bad in Voice-Town: Christina Aguilera left, replaced by the wonderful and effervescent Shakira, and then by the sweet and amusing Gwen Stefani. Shakira I had always derided as a shaking ass that sang stupid songs out of its other end, but she quickly won my respect for her intelligence and generosity as a coach, and for her humility — despite being markedly more successful as a pop singer than Christina Aguilera. That was a definite improvement. They also, thankfully, got rid of the mind-wrenchingly obnoxious Mouseketeer Christina Milian and her goddamn social media updates. Cee Lo left, which was bad, but Usher was a fine replacement, and Pharrell an even better one. A mixture of good and bad changes to a generally good show—it should have been able to hold it together and keep making good television, while also introducing talented singers to the country. And as American Idol showed us, with Jennifer Hudson and Chris Daughtry and Adam Lambert and others, you don’t need to win the show to become successful afterwards, so even the dominance of pretty wasn’t the kiss of death.

Unfortunately, something happened. It was, as I recall, during the fourth season, when Blake’s All-Country team wiped out all competition, like WalMart smashing through mom-and-pop stores in rural Alabama. Adam’s team had a pair of amazing singers – two of the best the show had seen, one of whom, Judith Hill, I was so sure was a lock to win the whole thing that I was a little annoyed that there was no suspense – and America eliminated them both at one fell swoop, preferring extra tall stacks of country music. (I mean, come on—the Swonn Brothers? Over this? Seriously?) And in the last seconds of that results show, as Carson Daly revealed the final vote, Adam Levine said into a live mike, “I hate this country!”

I think that’s when the shit hit the fan, and sprayed all over the show. It shouldn’t have: Adam was voicing a moment of frustration, both as a competitor and as a lover of good music, because he – and we – lost on both counts, in that one vote. He was right: just then, America sucked. But of course, just as we learned from the Dixie Chicks, celebrities cannot criticize our country. Adam had to apologize for what he said. But that wasn’t enough: the producers had to make sure that that wouldn’t happen again. I think that’s why it’s gone downhill ever since, culminating in this last season, which was not at all good. Sawyer Fredericks is not a great singer. He has talent, certainly, but he isn’t great. Neither were the other contestants, though Meghan Linsey was better, and I liked Koryn Hawthorne when she wasn’t singing the wrong songs – which, sadly, she frequently was. But out of a field of good-but-not-great, Sawyer Fredericks was probably third and maybe farther back. Yet he won. Same thing last season, with Craig Wayne Boyd, the redneck-from-the-seventies, (By the way: here are some other men with the middle name Wayne.) taking it over two better singers (Damien and Matt McAndrew).

But all is not lost. The show still has a good foundation to build on: three good coaches, a good host, a great concept – a contest that focuses on the actual singing, that rewards musical talent, that highlights the best part of pop music: the voice. It really is a good idea, one that has a place in America’s notoriously superficial pop culture. I don’t want to give up on my show. But I haven’t wanted to watch the last season and a half of it – maybe not even since Josh Kaufman won season six, the last guy who was the right one to go all the way, and who did it solely on his voice and not on his looks nor the kind of music he sang.

So, in order to ensure that The Voice can regain its fading glory before it jumps the shark and hires Ellen Degeneres as the fifth coach – or, God forbid, Nicki Minaj – I have some suggestions. Some of them are just my personal preferences, but mostly, they are intended to keep this contest alive, and to honor the hard work and talent of actual musicians, both those who compete and those who have won fame the hard way, because I think it a deep insult to make celebrities out of people  who just aren’t that good – it’s bad enough to skip people ahead to the front of the line by putting them on TV in the first place. Here we go: eleven things that will save The Voice.

#1: America should not vote. No, that’s too harsh: America should not be the only vote. Especially not through social media. You want to know why Sawyer Fredericks won this season? Because he’s sixteen, and he’s a boy, and he’s cute. The same thing happened with American Idol, over and over again. Because the show allows people to vote using text messages, and it allows one person to vote more than once. And nobody on this planet texts more often, or with greater speed and agility, than 14-year-old girls. They also have higher turnout in these sorts of votes, like retired conservatives in off-year political elections, because young girls watch a lot of TV, and they fall in love easily, and they – come on, do I need to explain, or can I just say Justin Bieber? When the show allows America to vote, they ensure that the cute young contestants win over older, talented ones. They also push it more towards men than women, generally speaking, simply because teenaged boys are too busy playing video games. Or watching porn.

America can be the fifth vote, the tie breaker; but the coaches should generally decide who stays and who goes. When you watch the battle rounds, when the coaches make the decisions, they almost always choose the right ones; when they don’t, I generally think it is because Blake figured out that America’s votes would go to the cute young ones, and so the coaches lean towards those contestants who can win over those who sing better, simply because they (the coaches) all want to win. The answer, if the show is to be a real musical competition, is to stop letting America decide.

#2: For mostly the same reason, there should be a minimum age to compete, and it probably should be 18. I know there are prodigies out there, but there are a whole lot more mediocrities, and mostly the people who go far despite being very young do it on their looks rather than their ability, which is, unsurprisingly, immature and thus limited, even if they do have real talent. Letting in teenagers is a way to get ratings, not a way to get great singers.

I will also confess that I’m sick to death of hearing children sing about lost love and broken hearts, shattered dreams, and frustrated lives. If I hear one more of those little girls say, “Well, I’ve never had a boyfriend, but I lost a friend in fifth grade (when she told me she hated Justin Bieber), so I’m going to use that emotion while I sing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart.’” Listen up, kids: you need to experience some life before you can sing the blues, okay? It’s just how it is. So, minimum age. Maybe they could require a high school diploma, so we can encourage public education. I’d like that.

#3: Tone down the production. This is The Voice. It should be a singer, on a stage, with a band and lights; that’s it. No dancers. No wacky background projections. No falling spark-fountains or pyrotechnics. Please stop making these untrained, inexperienced singers work a stage the size of a football field. Give them a mike stand to hide behind, and let. Them. Sing. I suppose you can dress them up in cool outfits, and then compliment them on their style, but that really shouldn’t be a thing that matters. Just – the Voice. Right? Along with that, take out the most contrived and artificial elements: no more pretending to drive up in a car before the battle rounds, no more of the mini-runways leading down into the audience so the singers can high-five some of their “fans” (You know, the people who got tickets to the show having no idea who was going to be singing that night, because I don’t believe for a second that they fill the audience the same day they record), no more gimmicky shit like gospel choirs or kids choirs or having the singer do that back-to-back-crouch-down-and-stand-up-again-ROCK’N’ROLL! WOO! thing with the guitarist like they’ve been playing shows together for fifteen years. It’s a house band. You don’t know the guy’s name. Stop rubbing against him while he’s playing. And stop letting the “singer/songwriters” play an acoustic guitar that isn’t even miked while they are singing. It’s silly. Especially when they give up the pretense after the first chorus and just let the guitar hang there like Tom Robinson’s left arm, and then have to walk down to the front of the stage for high-fives with this giant wooden prop strapped to their chests for no reason.

#4: Stop with the social media. I am extremely grateful, if that wasn’t already clear, that they dumped Christina Milian and the Sprint Skybox, but I must also say: I don’t want to listen to Carson Daly read tweets from the Heartland or from the contestants’ moms, I don’t want to read what the coaches tweet right after a decision is made about their team, and I really can’t stand the Instant Twitter Save thing they’re doing now, where the bottom two or three perform and then one person is saved by tweet-votes. I know what this is: this is market research saying that the more you can get the audience involved, the more loyal they are to the show and the more they watch. But you know what actually makes people watch a show? Make a good show. Ask The Simpsons, who never had twitter-feeds. (Maybe they do now. I stopped watching the show, even though that breaks my heart. Know why I stopped watching? It wasn’t that I lacked buy-in. They just stopped making good shows. Just do a good show, guys, all right? Screw market research.)

#5: Also with the same rationale, you should let the coaches actually coach, which means: let them criticize. Ever since Adam’s blowup – and that may not have been the precipitating factor, though I’m sure it didn’t help – the coaches have stopped telling the singers when they do a bad job. Or when they miss a note. Or when it is the wrong song choice. Or when the production was overdone, or just plain weird. No, all they say now is, “That was great, you’re the best, I’m a fan, I love everything you do, that was the best performance you’ve done (Choose one:) so far/of the night/of the season/I’ve ever seen on this show.” Nothing but praise. Now I’m sure what happened was market research and focus groups: the producers brought in a test audience, gave them those happiness-dials, and had them watch the show; and every time a coach said, “You were off pitch, and that dance routine was just offputting,” the test audience dropped into the red. Because here in ‘Merica, it is rude to criticize. Telling people they did something wrong is judgmental, it is arrogant, it is often racist, sexist, ageist, elitist, and it is a direct insult to that person’s hometown, home state, alma mater, mama, and to God Himself. I saw the same thing with Simon Cowell on American Idol: every time he said the singer did a poor job (and he was pretty much always right), the audience booed, he’d roll his eyes, Seacrest would say something genuinely nasty disguised as funny, and in order to allow the show to move on, Cowell would give Seacrest a level look and just accept his punishment for having the temerity to, y’know, tell the truth.

What’s funny, though? The contestants never really seemed to mind very much. Because honest criticism makes you better, and if you actually care about your craft, then you seek it out and are grateful when you get it. These coaches on The Voice are, I think, generally smart and perceptive and experienced in music and performance; we should let them say what they really think, and be grateful when their advice makes the artists better. And makes the show more interesting – it would be nice if Toni and I didn’t have to fast forward through the commentary after every performance when we watch on Hulu.

#6: No more guests. Unless the guest is going to perform with the contestants, all they’re doing is slowing down the show so they can promote their new single. I can see how that is a good deal for Sia or Gym Class Heroes, but I really couldn’t care less. And also, no more painful pretense of friendship and the casual visit, when Carson goes out into the audience to see his “pals,” the cast of whatever-piece-of-crap-NBC-put-on-after-The-Voice, so they can say they just dropped by to enjoy the incredible talent, and by the way, they’re on at 7 Eastern, 2:15 Central, on alternate Thursdays and Easters. It makes the whole show ring false, and that’s bad for both the singers and the audience. And never, NEVER, does that kind of advertising work. If I want to watch a show, it’s not because “Hey! I saw them in the audience on The Voice, doing nothing even remotely like what they do on the show that I decided I want to watch based on seeing them in an absurd non-sequitur!” Unless they make a show called Audience Crashers. Then, okay.

#7: Along with that No Guests rule, the results shows should be faster. There’s absolutely no reason why it should be an hour. I get that you want to milk it for advertising, but handle it some other way. Maybe a half-hour reaction show with guests afterwards, like Talking Dead, because then I just won’t watch it (like Talking Dead) and everyone’s happy. I’m sick to death of how long it takes to find out what actually happened, and what’s worse, the results shows are so boring, Toni and I tend not to watch them right away, because we have to galvanize our spirits in order to sit through tonight’s special guest Nick Jonas (AGAIN!), and so we get the results spoiled for us by the damn Internet. And tell Carson to just read the damn results, without the minute-long pause between “America . . . saved . . . . . . . .“ and the name. Oh – and if it’s not too much to ask, can you stop asking the contestants to say how much the experience has meant to them? We already know. The answer is always the same. Ditto for asking the coaches why America should vote for this person. But then, this last-second-interview is a standard trope of every reality contest show, and it always annoys me (Maybe the worst for this is Gordon Ramsey, who asks every single contestant up for elimination – two a show, every show, and sometimes more – why they should stay on Hell’s Kitchen. Gets on my nerves. But this is way off topic now.)

#8: More variety of songs. There is a whole world of music out there, going back literally a hundred years. So many fantastic singers, so many wonderful, beautiful songs. And they just keep singing Beyonce. And Simon and Garfunkel. And Sam Smith. And Coldplay. Creedence Clearwater Revival, too. When I was looking up clips to link to for this blog, I kept seeing the same songs, over and over again. Make It Rain. Amazing Grace (oy.). Fix You. Jealous by Nick Jonas (vey). But every time they do this, I think, “Why doesn’t anyone sing blues? Ella Fitzgerald? Jonny Lang? Or what about Ray Charles?” Or Elton John. The Beatles, who rarely show up, or Elvis, who never does. Or what about some hard rock? Aerosmith (Not “Dream On,” of course, but anything else in their forty years of music.)? The Who? If you want ballads, you can’t beat the Scorpions. Seriously. And that guy has a hell of a voice: good fodder for singers.

I wonder quite a lot about the song choices. Sometimes the singers pick their favorite songs, which is sweet and all, but we don’t always like the best songs. We don’t even like good songs. I can’t help but enjoy the Backstreet Boys. The larger problem for a show like The Voice is that we don’t like songs that are good for us to sing. I’m a singer. My favorite bands include Tool, Soundgarden, and, in my cheesier moments, Journey. There’s not a song by those three bands that I could sing well. My voice just doesn’t do that. A song that I love and could sing well is XTC’s “Dear God.” But that’s a song about how Christianity has screwed up the world for humanity, and not, therefore, something I should be singing were I ever on national television, especially not in Jesus-lovin’ ‘Merica. Then there are the contestants who sing songs by people who can’t sing well, like Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty. Here’s the problem: those guys may write good music (not my style, but to each their own), but that actually makes it worse. Because Tom Petty, for instance, understands that his voice sounds like a live chicken being grated into a pot of Velveeta fondue, and so he uses his songwriting abilities to – ready for this? – hide his own voice. This means that “Free Falling” is a song with a wonderfully catchy hook, interesting lyrics, and a terrible melody to sing. The coaches should know this, and yet they force their contestants to sing unmelodic songs, or anything by Sting, or Whitney Houston, or someone else with a set of pipes that simply cannot be matched.

Here’s my last gripe about song choice. There are some songs that match the original singer, and nobody else. They are legendary classics, often, and this is because they were done so very well that no one can touch them. “I Feel Good” by James Brown. “Dream On” by Aerosmith. “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. “Creep” by Radiohead. These songs, and several others like them, are uncoverable. I know people try, but their versions are crap. Don’t take crap as inspiration to do your own crap. Find a good song that is more anonymous than that. Pick one that speaks to you even more than it spoke to the original artist. Jimi Hendrix did it with “All Along the Watchtower,” which is a Bob Dylan song. Elvis did it with “Hound Dog.” Hell, “Respect” was an Otis Redding tune before Aretha Franklin owned it for all eternity, and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” was Dolly Parton’s. There is a whole world of music out there. If you’re serious about trying to create a moment, take more than a moment in picking your song. Okay?

#9: No more fucking arm waving.  This one is personal, I admit, but hey, don’t I deserve something for all this helpful advice I’m offering? I’m saving your show! Now you can do something for me. Take all of those people in the sections right in front of the stage and tell them: stop waving your arms from side to side over your head whenever any singer starts anything even remotely slow in tempo. It’s entirely artificial, and entirely obnoxious. The only time anyone should wave their arms in the air is when they are waving to someone far away, or when the spirit of God compels them, or when the person on stage has just said “Hip hop hooray!” That’s it. It is otherwise never appropriate, and it enrages me every time I see it. Just stop.

#10: No more Christina Aguilera. Please? And for the assistant coaches, get people who actually know what they’re talking about. Get a producer I’ve never heard of who knows how to help people sing better, instead of Meghan Trainor, who is very sweet, but entirely unhelpful. Please note that American Idol‘s first “permanent mentor” was Jimmy Iovine. But seriously: no more Christina Aguilera. Everyone else who has ever been on the show was a better coach. And I’m including Christina Milian, mainly because she never referred to herself as X-Tina. That is, if you’re not aware, Miss Aguilera (and I’m sure you’re aware), a reference to Jesus Christ; Christmas becoming Xmas using the first letter in the word “Christ” when written in Greek. And no matter how well you sing: you are not the Messiah. Just because you personally could win the contest doesn’t mean you should run the contest. Just think of beauty pageants run by contestants. Or prisons run by inmates. It’s a bad idea.

Last but not least, #11: If this is supposed to be a show that makes people stars, that gives them a chance to succeed in the music industry, then please, please, actually do that. There is not a single winner from this show who has become successful, or who was even heard on the radio afterwards, except for, God help us all, the country singers. And the Swonn Brothers. The show finishes with its contestants, and then chucks them away until they want to bring them back for a guest appearance on future episodes. Some of the singers have managed to make it themselves, which of course I respect; but the show is letting down its own people, which is not a good way to bring the best talent on future seasons. I know you can’t actually make people into stars, because pop is fickle; but they should try harder. The coaches always say they love their contestants, and plan to keep in touch with them, and it always feels like a lie.

I don’t want my show to be a lie.

So do it right, and do it for real. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Do it. Thanks very much.

What is this?

Dusty 2 Comments

(Please note: throughout this piece, every use of “I” and “me” should be taken to mean both myself and my wife; we are equal partners in this endeavor. She has read and approved this before publication, and she has kindly let me speak for us both. It was just too awkward to keep saying “Toni and I.”)

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This is the dog who lives at my house. The question is, what does that make me?

I call myself his father; I call him my son. But of course, he’s not that; we are of different species. He doesn’t look like me at all. I don’t treat him as I would a human son. He doesn’t eat at the table. He doesn’t wear clothing. He doesn’t have Legos.

My human son would have Legos. I would teach him to read, and to talk like a pirate. We would watch The Iron Giant and Monty Python together, and play Sorry and Parcheesi and War. I would learn to play chess so I could teach him.

None of these things are true with the dog. So he must not be my son.

The law calls me his owner; him, my property. But how can that be? The measure of an individual life, the distinction between an object and a person, between animate and inanimate, is sentience. Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive: the dog can clearly do both. His perceptions are markedly more sensitive than mine, in some cases.

Not in all cases, though. His sense of taste, for instance. Not only does he regularly chew up live, squirming insects of any kind that he can catch, he also picks up anything — anything — that might resemble food, no matter how remotely, while on his walk. Sure, he grabbed that discarded Goldfish cracker, and he tried to eat the doughnut that someone dropped and then ran over; but he also picks up bird feathers, cigarette butts, flower petals, balls of lint and hair, pieces of tar and plastic, shiny things, and the excrement of other animals. He also regularly licks the tile floor in the kitchen, for minutes at a time. I have doubts about the functionality and acuity of those taste buds.

But there is no doubt that he can feel. He misses me when I am gone. He is happy when I return. He loves to cuddle, and to play tug-fetch. He has trouble with anxiety: when I change my routine, it can upset him, and he — well, he freaks out. He starts moving and breathing quickly, and he tries to get as close to me as possible, nipping at me and whimpering softly, desperately; if he doesn’t calm down at that point, the next stage is a good five minutes of sprinting, at top speed, in and out of the room where I am, throwing himself as violently as possible onto the bed or couch where I lay, barking at every turn and biting anything or anyone who intervenes. Clearly he has feelings — prodigiously strong feelings. He suffers because of it.

The mechanistic paradigm would hold that these are nothing more than reaction to stimuli and conditioned response, and perhaps so. As such, they are no different from any of my feelings, about which one could make the same argument — I smile when he comes to me and rolls onto his back because doing so ensures me a pleasurable experience, namely rubbing his belly, which feels good to my fingers, lowers my blood pressure, and so on. Such affection is pleasurable because it signifies pack bonding, which helps to ensure my individual survival: for I have allies in the hunt and against my enemies.

Whatever. The point is, he is as sentient as I. I do not think he can be considered an object. Property. No more than I.

When I come home, he meets me at the door, wagging his tail, but he is not a jumper; he likes it when I come down to his level. I crouch down, usually with one knee on the floor and the other out to the side, and he curls into me, pressing his body against my leg and across my torso, and I put my arms around him and bend low to kiss his head, and he is surrounded and encapsulated by me. Each morning when I get up, I lay on the couch to drink my first coffee, and he leaps up to lay beside me, sitting in the space made by my sideways lap. He leans against me while I pet him, and if I use only one hand, he puts his front paw on the other one and tugs, as if to say, “Why aren’t you using this hand, too?” So I do. And he smiles. Within minutes he melts, oozing down to lie beside me in the narrow space I do not occupy, his long legs lolling over the side of the futon. Often he rolls onto his back, hoping that I will gently scratch his belly. That’s his favorite.

He wants to be in the room where I am, no matter what. As I move back and forth between kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom, he follows me, his chew toy in his teeth, laying down on the bed even for the half a minute while I put on my belt and pick up my shoes. Whenever I go to any door, he wants to lead me through it, the grand marshal of my daily parade.

So what does that make him, all of that? My pet? Too condescending. My shadow? Too stalker-y. My companion? Perhaps.

I call him my friend. My buddy. (I sing the song, which I learned by heart during my adolescence when the television burned at both ends.) And it’s true. But there’s more.

I named him. We call him Samwise — Sammy for short — after my favorite character in the same books that gave my name to my parents (Well, my second-favorite character, but really, The Witch-King of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgul is no name for a dog. That’s a cat name. Or a bunny.). I named myself for him, because I speak for him as I speak to him. I recognize that the names, like the words, like the personality and the voice that I have created for him (He sounds like Sniffles the Mouse from the old cartoons) are all and only of and from me, not from him; but he takes them on, for me. He lets me color him in. He lets me play with him when I want to laugh, and hug him when I want to cry, and always, he makes me feel better.

So what is he, to me?
Here’s why it matters, what he is to me; here’s why I’m writing about this. Here. This is the second time I’ve had a dog-friend-son. The first was Charlie.

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Charlie died last year. He died because of a brain tumor. But really, he died because I killed him. I told the doctor to poison him, and I held him while he died.

If Charlie was my son — and just as I do with Sammy, I called him such, called myself his father; my parents called him their grand-dog — then I would not have done this. I would have fought that tumor, would have put Charlie on the medication, gotten him the CAT scan, talked to doctors about surgery, about chemo and radiation, about prognoses and time and quality of life.

If Charlie was my property, I wouldn’t feel badly about his death. When a possession is broken — and that tumor broke him, at the end, sent him into grand mal seizures, caused apparent blindness and confusion and loss of equilibrium and loss of bladder control, and I can’t imagine how much pain he’d have been in had we not had him on analgesics — you throw it away. Maybe you miss it, but you don’t regret throwing it away. I didn’t even throw Charlie away: I kept his ashes in a white box, high on a shelf, with his collar beside it, and the Christmas ornament we got for him, embroidered with his name.

But I feel badly about Charlie’s death. I regret the decision I made, even if it was the only one I could have. I know it was the only one I could have made, and the actual decision took almost no time; there was no question that it was the right thing to do, none at all. But I wish I hadn’t had to make it. I still wish he was here. I miss him. I loved him. I still do.

If he was my friend, then his death at my hands makes some sense. He was suffering. He was losing himself, and every day that he lived would have taken him further away from who he was. When you face that, it may be your friend — your buddy — that you ask to pull the trigger, to pull the plug, to end it.

But I’ve had friends. I have friends. None of the other ones live with me, and even when they did, I never, ever scratched their tummies like they liked. There’s a connection here, a trust and an intimacy, that friendship does not include. And, more, there’s this: the truth is, I don’t know if Charlie wanted me to have him put to sleep. He didn’t ask me for that. He didn’t decide.

I decided for him.

If I had a human child with a terminal illness, at some point, I would make the same decision — though I might decide differently. But still, I would decide to keep fighting or to let go. I would. Not the child. And I would never make that decision for a friend. Only for someone whose life was actually in my hands, someone who trusted me so completely, that I knew so well, that I could make that call for him. I’ve never had a friendship that close, and don’t expect I ever will.

That kind of relationship is family.

So, I guess that’s what Sammy is, what Charlie was. My family. My pack. My son.

My dog.

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Stay in School. Learn Everywhere.

Dusty Leave a comment

I just saw this on Facebook.

So my first reaction is, “So you are a poet, a musician, with the fire to have something to say and the deftness to say it with music — but you don’t think there was any value in studying Shakespeare? Well you must be a goddamn idiot, then.” But that’s not fair.

Before I get into this any further, let me share this, as well.

 

All right. Not an idiot. Someone who understands that the speaker in a poem does not represent the author (And yes, I’m a little ashamed that I made the obvious assumption, too. But hey! He insulted English! Them’s fightin’ words!). Intelligent young man with, if I may say, some wrong ideas mixed in with the good ones. So only one part of his brain is a goddamn idiot. No, I’m kidding. And I kid because I love.

I love this goddamn idiot.

(Re: the rhetorical question you ask in the response video about why everyone cares so much about your hair. Bro, have you seen your hair? First of all, it’s beautiful; I kept my hair long for twenty years and never got that much length. Secondly, it is by far your most noticeable feature. People look at your hair the way they look at puppies in a pet store window: with the strength of inevitability. It’s like gravity, and your hair is a black hole. It draws the eye and holds it, and thus becomes your identifying quality, and so of course people comment on it.  If you didn’t have the hair, people would call you the thin guy with the lovely hands and the zombie-pallor. If you’re upset that people notice and comment on physical features, get in line behind every woman ever.)

Right: first, let’s address the concern expressed in the song. He claims that the syllabus of required material in public schools is inefficient, that it spends far too much time on material that is not of any practical use, and that it lacks any standardized instruction in areas that would be of tremendous practical use, such as the laws of the country, good voting practices, taxes. And first aid. And human rights. In the commentary video, as in the captions at the very end of the song, he explains that he thinks the more esoteric subjects like higher math (He says “maths” because British, and I wish I could because I like the term better, but I’m not British so it would be pretentious) should be voluntary, and that the current subject matter choices were made arbitrarily hundreds of years ago, and have no applicability to the modern world.

My instinct when I hear this is to circle my arms around my pretties and frown aggressively, like a four-year-old who scored all the good toys at playtime. I don’t mind him ripping on math, but nobody can touch my English classes! How dare you mock Shakespeare? Do you not realize the influence that man had on our culture? Don’t you see that studying Shakespeare is studying life?!?

Then I remember. I remember first that I myself have argued many times against the specific run of required classes. That I have wished for more electives and greater freedom for students, and even for me as a teacher (Why can’t I teach The Watchmen and V for Vendetta? Oh right: sex and blood. And I quote: “Loosing her virgin belt, he lapped her round in sleep and when the god had consummated his work of love he took her by the hand and hailed her warmly: ‘Rejoice in our love, my lady! And when this year has run its course you will give birth to glorious children— bedding down with the gods is never barren, futile— and you must tend them, breed and rear them well.” Yup; a divine Roofie and rape, followed by, “Hey, be happy now! You’re going to have kids, too!” That would be from The Odyssey, by Homer. Want me to quote the part where Odysseus plunges a burning stake into the cyclops’s eye?). I remember my own public school experience: I hated math, too. If I could have dropped it, I would have pursued more art, probably — I loved my calligraphy class, and I could have gotten behind some ceramics. Or another go at woodshop. That would have been excellent. Of course in my case, I was already taking choir and Italian, and I had gone through every English elective the school offered by Junior year. My school was not the school he is talking about.

I also remember that I kind of hated Shakespeare. I enjoyed Macbeth, but Romeo and Juliet killed me. Seriously? Your plan is to fake your own suicide? That’s what you came up with? Then again, you are seventeen and thirteen, and you’ve known each other for all of three days (By the way: a plot hole that I can never really talk about when I teach this is the fact that the pressure on Romes and Ju-Ju comes from her father’s intention to marry her off to the Prince. The solution to which is to marry the Montague first. They already have a man of God to perform the ceremony, and consummation is not an issue — after which the Prince wouldn’t even want her, and would go away. Because there is no divorce at this time. The Prince or the Capulets would have to kill Romeo, and that little weasel’s harder to kill than cockroaches. Scandal? Ostracism? Sure, but they already have that with Juliet’s plan. And this way, no dying, not even fake dying.). And the best scene in the play is when Mercutio gets stabbed, and cries out, “Oh, I am slain!” and then AFTER that, Romeo asks, “What, art thou hurt?” My friends and I had a field day with that one.

I get it. Especially the hatred for math and the quadratic equation. But higher math is a low-hanging fruit: it seems readily apparent that the more esoteric math is nothing the average person would use on a daily basis. After you come for math, though, the next thing you reach for is the study of great literature, particularly poetry and quality literary non-fiction, George Orwell and James Baldwin and Virginia Woolf. Because why would anyone need to know Shakespeare? Or haiku? And there, I see problems.

Here’s the thing: high school is not about teaching valuable facts. There are not that many valuable facts in the world.  Yes, the things he mentions should be taught, universally and intentionally; his point about people dying for a lack of first aid/critical care knowledge is well-taken. I got first aid, but not everyone does, and everyone should. And we should teach how to balance a checkbook and fill out taxes just so people will stop throwing that in the face of public education every damn day. But you’re talking about maybe a week’s worth of material, in only one class. How long does it take to learn how to fill out a tax form? Maybe the British ones are brutal, but the 1040EZ? Seriously? Even without TurboTax, it’s like fifteen minutes, and the instructions tell you where to find everything. Same with balancing a checkbook: “Save receipts. This column is for Bye-Bye Money, and this one is for Hello Money. Finally, learn how to do math. Now for our next lesson, boys and girls . . .”

I’m exaggerating, and I shouldn’t. Yes, there should be a life skills class. Yes, it should cover the actual method of finding a job, registering for college, and the basics of finance, and laws and rights. I don’t know about parenting, which seems to me a larger subject than could be taught in any school, anywhere — but sex ed? Hell yes. How to recognize mental illness? Probably good, but might be better in a psychology class; I would think that would do better for those interested, rather than everyone. Things that could be taught in a simple manner, and that would be directly applicable to life: I can agree they should be in school. And it really wouldn’t take much to make that happen.

Voting, on the other hand. And human rights. That’s a more complicated thing. That, we should teach more seriously.

That, we do teach. Seriously.

I don’t know much about the list of human rights; I’ve  never looked at them. (I probably should.) But I teach good voting. I always have. How do I do this, being an English teacher? I teach critical thinking. That means, to me, that I teach my students not to accept what they see at first read. When we study a poem, we read it through first, and then we try to understand it — which generally means taking each piece of the poem both as an individual statement of meaning, and also contributing to a whole. I teach my students to look for added meaning, like emotional shading and bias, in the words the author chose, in the characters that novelists build, in the specific details that writers include and those they leave out. And I teach my students to connect their lives to the lives of the characters, and the authors; to feel empathy, as much as that can be taught, and to see parallels that aren’t always immediately obvious. These are the very things that should make people good voters: reading motive and sincerity, knowing the difference between facade and reality, understanding the tension between allegiance and independence, and questioning everything. I teach a lot of questioning.

Does every student get it? No. Would more get it if I taught these things explicitly, rather than asking my students to make the mental leap from my class to their actual lives? Probably, but then they wouldn’t be able to make the leap from my explicit lesson to any other aspect of life — as in, if I taught how to vote in a presidential election, could they then use the same skills in determining guilt or innocence when they serve on a jury? If they can’t make the connection themselves between The Crucible and modern politics, why would they make the connection between voting for President and voting guilty or not guilty? At some point, students have to use what they are taught themselves, which means they need to adapt it themselves to their own lives; I cannot teach everything, nor can I walk through each of my students’ lives like some freaky stalker-Yoda, dispensing just the right advice at just the right moment to all of them, forever.

The point is, high school is not where you learn what you need to know. High school teaches you how to think. (College gives you something to think about.) You will never use directly 90% of what you learn in public education, not poetic devices, not the terms of each President or king, not the quadratic formula. You will always use the habits of mind you learn — and not the ones you don’t. And I’ll tell you something else: that quadratic formula that is burned into your mind? If  you don’t use it, you will forget it. I did.  You were rattling it off in your rap, and I was gaping slack-jawed at all the strange letters and symbols. Then I thought, “Okay, I kind of remember that. Not how to use it, though.” But even in the few seconds I was looking at it and thinking about it, and the few minutes afterwards when a shred or two of the formula stayed in my mind, I started to break it down. I thought about simplifying the equation. I thought about the order of operations, and how to isolate a variable.

I thought like a mathematician. Because I learned how to do that in high school. (Thank you, Jo Ellen Hillyer, and all the other teachers whose classes I hated, but learned in anyway.) I took enough math, and learned enough in those classes, to gain a habit of mind. I haven’t used it often, not consciously; but I have learned something about logic, and I have no doubt that when I put on my logic hat, the tag inside says “Math.”

So I think, sir, that you and everyone who agrees with you (including teachers) are thinking of public school curriculum in the wrong way. Don’t think about isolated facts and their utility. Think about the ways you think, and how easy it might be for you to change from a math situation to a science situation to a history to a language. If you took all those classes in college, or if you work in, let’s say, CERN in Switzerland, and you might have to go from an engineering meeting to a physics meeting to a PR meeting to lunch with the French speakers on staff, then consider whether or not the required classes in public school were of use to you.

 

Now. Is all that to say that the schools work well? No. Common Core, standards, and the hegemony of Data are killing American education, and probably having some influence worldwide. Are the required classes the right ones? No; I think you’re probably right about the upper level math making better electives than requirements. But the issue should not be whether a kid is interested in the subject; and it should not be whether a kid is going to use that material in his future career: one of the things killing education, and making your problem worse, is the urge to prepare students for making money; because the business folk will tell you they want students highly trained in math and science. So starting from a career orientation is just going to bring the math hammer down. Allowing pure free choice, while a good and important ideal, will lead to students who take only the easy classes, and others who take classes only in order to get a certain job, and not necessarily one they care about: one they think will get them the right money for the right effort. Free choice is not what you want to base the decision on, not for teenagers. What you want to do is consider this: has the student mastered the habit of mind that comes with that subject? Once you learn to think in math — and I would say that probably comes with algebra, maybe trigonometry or geometry, because proofs and the like, and the manipulation of formulae, and the conversion of functions to graphs and back, are all good mathy ways of thinking — then that’s probably enough. Same with history and language and science. But we need to remember what school can do and what it should do — and it really, really isn’t for allowing kids to explore freely. That’s what the world is for. School is for teaching you how to find what you need, and recognize it when you find it, and that can be taught in any subject, and isn’t taught in enough.

Now: where were those human rights, again? Ah. Here they are.