3 Days.

"Went back home to the refinery. Hiring man said 'Son if it were up to me...'. Went down to see my V.A. man. He said 'Son, don't you understand?"

:Bruce Springsteen "Born in the U.S.A."


I remember it like it was last week. I sat on the other side of this guy's desk in a freshly pressed suit. I was wearing the spit shined D.O.D issued oxfords that every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine had been issued but only Marines ever seemed to keep and maintain. My hair was still so short that  if you were standing behind me you could clearly see the coin slot scar at the crown of my head that I got when I was seven which has always caused me to be a bit selfconscious.
          He held my resume in his left hand as he extended his right to shake mine and thanked me for coming in for an interview.  He told me it was always an honor to meet someone who'd been in the service and that I out of respect for me he would be up front and tell me that I wasn't getting the job. He didn't think I'd be a "good fit", he went on to say that given how disciplined and focused I appeared to be, he doubted that I would be looking for work for very long.
           I have friends who are veterans who've told me similar stories.  Many soldiers, sailors and Marines leave their branch of service and seek employment only to be told they're "unqualified". Some re-enlist others elect to use their G.I. bill benefits and get an education only to be told they're "over qualified" when seeking work. At what point was the veteran qualified "enough"?  This problem is hardly new.  Many vets feel as if they're on the "fringes" of society as if they are alienated by society as a whole. In 1932, 10,000 veterans of world war one marched upon Washington because they'd been given certificates for "cash bonuses" which had yet to be honored. This lead to the G.I. Bill of rights.

     At the end of the second world war many called ex soldiers and sailors living on unemployment "drains on society" and many struggled to adjust to post military life.  Korean war vets fared slightly better, but Vietnam seemed to change the rules.  Veterans of the conflict in Southeast Asia were often ostracized and treated with hostility.   In 1972 David Morelle wrote the novel "First Blood" which chronicled Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and prisoner of war John Rambo who after the war couldn't keep a job parking cars and became a drifter who gets into a small war with a small town sheriff in Oregon who arrests him and roughs him up for "vagrancy."  In the novel Rambo takes on the sheriff's department and seriously injures the sheriff and several of his men. The conflict ends when Rambo's former commanding officer arrives to take him into custody and hand him over to we assume State Police.  The Rambo character is portrayed as a sensitive soul who became a killing machine who felt discarded by a nation he loved and saw his friends dying to protect.
    I'm mentioning the Morelle  novel because in my lifetime I've turned on my television to see a veteran of the first gulf war named  Sergeant Tim McVey blow up a Federal Building in Oklahoma city.  I saw a former Gulf War Vet Sergeant John Muhammad randomly kill innocent men and women in the District of Columbia.  L.A.P.D officer and Naval Reserve Lieutenant Christopher Donner went on a killing spree that crossed state lines before being killed by an incendiary device.  Former Sailor Aaron Alexis went on a killing spree at the U.S. Naval yard in Washington DC, and most recently in the Cities of Dallas and Baton Rouge Army reservist and Afghan war vet  Micah Johnson and Marine Corps Sergeant  and Iraq veteran Gavin Long went on rampages killing eight police officers between them.

      What is my point?  Let me say off the bat that I DO NOT CONDONE the actions taken by those I've mentioned, nor do I in any way justify them.  What I'm attempting to say is that veterans (especially war vets) need the government whom they were willing to give their lives to protect to have their backs.  They need access to doctors and mental health services. They need vocational training.  Many need access to mental health care professionals as they've seen things that most of us can't even imagine.  I'm just some schmuck who served in the military during peace time. I don't think I warrant the respect due to combat veterans but I definitely feel they deserve far more than they get.
      Let's face it this country has a seriously short attention span and a "what have you done for me lately" attitude. There seem to be three days on the American calendar when Veterans receive the respect of the American people: Memorial Day, the fourth of July and Veterans day.  Vets are often turned down for work by the same people who might have put up red white and blue streamers the day before and thanked them for their service a week earlier without much thought.

       I'm weary of listening to politicians from major parties telling me how they will fix the Veterans Administration system and hospitals. I hear this empty rhetoric from men and women with elephants and donkeys next to their names (some of whom ARE veterans themselves) but at the same time I see their colleagues in the House of Representatives and the Senate blocking bills that would give veterans hospitals more funding or give vets greater access to psychiatric help simply because the bill in question MAY have been put forth by someone from an opposing party and they deemed it more important to score political points. As that bickering goes on I find myself driving past men and women near freeway over passes who may or may not be homeless veterans.
  
     Navy Seal and American Hero Chief Petty Officer Chris Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield were both shot and killed while attempting to counsel former Marine Eddie Routh at a gun range.  Which leaves us to ask, if Routh had greater access to mental health care would  Chris Kyle be alive today?  If this nation's love for veterans extended beyond three days a year, would any of the homicidal veterans I've mentioned have committed their atrocious acts?

You Can't Hide Forever...we WILL find you...(satire)

I've imagine the scenario more than once. It's always at night and he's running down darkened streets. We walk in a large group knowing full well that he wouldn't be able to evade us. No matter where he turned we were seconds behind him until finally he runs into either an alley or is standing before an abandoned store front and finds himself desperately pleading with us. "Guys. You...you can't be serious! It was 1981." One of us would angrily say "Why not Larry, or Bobby or Steven? Hell you could have even gone Matthew!"
He would then plead with us "Come on guys it's just a song." and before we set upon him one of us would defiantly  yell "It's your damn SIGNATURE song!"  We would then rain kicks and blows upon him and as we left, one of us would start to whistle the melody of the song with which we'd been tortured and maybe one of them would look back at him as he lay in the street and taunt "Hey Springfield...this is all just a bad dream. If anyone asks remember...Jesse is a friend" and then sing "and yes he is a good friend of mine...but lately somethin's changed..."
              I'm sure Rick Springfield has had this dream but usually wakes up from it in terror.  The greatest writer in the history of the English language once said: "What's in a name? It is neither hand, nor foot, nor any other part belonging to a man." Shakespeare said this in Romeo and Juliet, but at the time when he wrote it "Bill" (one of the shortened forms of the name William) wasn't an annoying note one got for services rendered at the end of a month, and it certainly wasn't a song in which the lovely Marilyn McCoo was asking him to her.  Had either been true he might have thought twice about the use of the brilliant phrase.

            Being the muse for a brilliant musician or even a mediocre one has to be quite the compliment, but if you just happen to share a name with someone about whom a song is written and that song becomes a huge hit,  it can be more annoying than those tiny lose hairs that always seem to be on your neck after you get a haircut. When Beethoven wrote "Fur Elise" (whose name was Therese by the way) you have to know she was flattered, but how many women named Elise have wanted to bludgeon the genius for having written it?

Doubt me? Find any woman who grew up in the 1970s named Caroline and serenade her with the Neil Diamond classic which bears her name. If she doesn't lunge at you with murderous intent consider yourself lucky. Neil Diamond probably has round the clock security simply to protect himself from women named Caroline.  The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson probably could wall paper his Malibu home with copies of the restraining orders he's had to get against women named "Barbara Ann" who want to take his hand and punch him in the face with it while asking "Why ya hittin' yourself? Why ya hittin' yourself?" They might want to see him "rockin' and a rollin' " and even "rockin' and a reelin' " down the hill his house sits on into the Pacific. Who knows one of them might have so much "Fun, Fun Fun" she'll drive off in a T-bird till LAPD takes it away. Yes those were horrible puns. I regret nothing.
 
        Ask any woman named Janie if she's "Got a gun". Stephen Tyler is smart enough NOT to do so. Women named "Nikki" don't like to be told how "Darling" they are. Women named "Layla" don't like to be told that you've got them on their knees. conversely women named "Donna" and "Peggy Sue" would most likely be sending hate mail to rock and roll legends Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holley and while Micheal Jackson was one of his generations greatest entertainers women named Billie Jean probably used to throw things at him in airports. Have women named "Lucille" or known as "Long Tall Sally" stopped wanting to assault Architect of Rock and Roll Little Richard? Hell your given name doesn't even have to be IN a some for someone to annoy you with it.  Don't believe me? Sing the song "Tomorrow" from the musical Annie to ANY woman named Tamara and replace the title of the song with her name.

        Lest you think everyone whose name is used in a song is annoyed by it, I've never met any woman named Angela who didn't love David Bowie's tribute to his wife "Angie" as she was leaving him as sang by his friend Mick Jagger.  Peter Chris' (formerly the drummer of KISS) wife "Beth" still hasn't dumped him despite having written one of the most ANNOYING ballads in the history of music about her circa 1970 something.  Most women named "Bernadette" love the Four Tops song which bears their name and there are women named "Michelle" who adore the Beatles song which bears their name.

        Before you call the FBI and tell 80s Australian actor/singer Rick Springfield that  kabal of guys named Jesse are hunting him down, I'm kidding! Most of us mean Rick no harm, except maybe guys named "Bruce" who hated being immortalized in his tongue in cheek song "Bruce" about once having a groupie confuse him for rock legend Bruce Springsteen. Hell I have to admit I actually like the REST of the guy's music.

       To musicians out there who feel inspired to write a song about someone, take a lesson from some of the greats. Carley Simon has YET to tell us the name of the guy who was "So Vain" that he probably thought the song was about him...well wasn't it?  Alanis Moiressette to this day hasn't divulged the name of the guy to whom she gave fellatio in a theatre. Dave Coulier from the 90s sitcom Full House claims it was him and truthfully if I'd dated Alanis Moiressette before that song was written I'd probably say it was about me. Wouldn't you? Jim Morrison died without telling us the name of the girl to whom he walked up and proclaimed "Hello I love You."  Who was the "Lady" Lionel Ritchie sang of? He must have loved her because he wrote a second song about her (with the same title) and let Kenny Rogers sing it. "The Girl from Ipanema" enjoyed relative anonymity as did the "Island Girl" of whom Elton John sang.
       At the end of the day, those of us who have been inadvertently immortalized by song writers consider ourselves somewhat fortunate.  Somewhere out there is a guy named Fong who would love to hear his name in a song. Don't worry Fong my man, some love struck girl is probably immortalizing you as you read this. Hope her song's a hit.

America. Black and Blue

Thursday July 7, 2016 I turned on CNN and saw my friend Christina's block in downtown Dallas on TV.  There was a Black Lives Matter protest which both CNN and Fox News agreed was "peaceful." The event had been peaceful UNTIL a sniper decided to open fire on the Dallas Police and Dallas Area Rapid Transit Police from a parking garage. I sat there trying not to cry and feeling as if I'd been kicked in the gut.
        

Let's back up. For as long as there have been black communities there have been police in them.  Richard Penniman who is better known as the self proclaimed "Architect of rock and Roll" Little Richard's father ran a bar in Macon Georgia and was shot and killed by one of the bar's patrons. The police detained the murderer but released him and explained that one black man killing another wasn't a crime worth wasting "tax payer money" to bring to court. Richard was infuriated but there was nothing that could or would be done.
       In 1955, Chicago teen Emmet Til was kidnapped at gun point from his cousin's home in rural Mississippi where he was tortured and killed for being "fresh" with a woman whose husband owned a local store. Two men were arrested and tried for the teen's murder but were found not guilty. The reason? Til was black and the two men who killed him were white.

      The Ku Klux Klan once used as a major selling point in recruiting that none of its members had ever been convicted of killing a black man. When John Lewis (now an elderly congressman) was one of the "Freedom Riders" who attempted to integrate interstate buses in the 60s was traveling across the South, J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation called local sheriff's departments and let them know when bus loads of "agitators" and "trouble makers" were to arrive.  The result was usually the sheriff letting local hotheads know when the buses would arrive and then when the sheriffs department would arrive.  Essentially the sheriff's departments were giving the local thugs a good 10 minutes to crack skulls and leave before they arrived. In the minds of many people of color the police were the guys who kept you in line and who protected those who brutalized and slaughtered you. Luckily the 60s brought about laws that enabled persons of color to integrate universities, vote, become civil servants (like police officers and elected officials) and to sit on juries.

          Let's put things into context here.  During the 1960s black cops were as rare as four leaf clovers. In many cities and states the idea of a black police officer male or female seemed laughable. Things have changed. Police randomly placing a random black man in jail because a crime was committed are over, but generations of this occurring have lead to a degree of distrust that has been passed along like a horrible disease.  Police brutality at one point WAS rampant in this country no matter what  your race. Blacks (in my opinion) probably felt more "victimized" because the criminal justice system more often than not gives them harsher sentences than whites accused of similar crimes.  The criminal justice system is harsher on defendants who can't afford good legal representation and as many of the impoverished are persons of color this creates the appearance of a bias. 

        Being a cop is like being president of the United States. There are those who love you and in whose eyes you can do no wrong, some who can be objective to you and what you do and those who vilify everything you do. Your actions have an impact and you have to make decisions upon which the lives of others hang in the balance.  It's not a job any geek of the street could do. The great thigns you do will often be ignored and your every error will be hung around your neck like an albatross.
    
       I can't claim to be an expert in the "black experience". My "black experience" was growing up with both parents in a working class neighborhood. I can't speak for someone who grew up in a much poorer neighborhood with a single parent. I can't speak for someone who grew up literally afraid to cross a street in the North or Midwest for fear of entering an Irish or Italian neighborhood because I have no idea what that's like. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said last week according to Time Magazine:  “If you are a normal, white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America and you instinctively under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.” If I said the exact same thing I'd be called a whiner or simply ignored or dismissed.  I do however know what it's like to be unfairly stereotyped and judged by the actions of others OR by the preconceptions of others and to that end I'll wager most cops do too.
      Cops and men of color have much in common. Entirely too many people are quick to assume the very worst about both us to be true. Many make snap judgements about both of us based on the actions of a handful of sociopaths who in no way represent all of us. Both groups have to deal with stereotypes and prejudice from people who have limited (if any interaction) with us.  Sadly both groups have detractors who wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if large numbers of us were brutally killed.

Oh and we have one other thing in common,  neither of us seems to want to listen to the other.  There are serious similarities between men of color and the cops and differences. What needs to happen is a dialogue in which we take a good look at the common ground we share and stop looking at our ugly history.  We should think about where this country is headed and make sure that one day when or if we hear about a man being shot by police, we don't ask his race but rather what events lead to the confrontation between he and local police.

Guns! Guns! Guns!

I was trying as best I could to get comfortable. When the troop handlers told us to pack our sleeping bags we thought them insane, but after the desert sun had set and the temperatures had dropped we were thankful that we'd followed what had seemed like a ridiculous order at the time.  Every newly minted Marine happily stuffed himself into the warmth of the thick down sleeping bag he'd been forced to pack under threat of court martial or at least a write up.
         Getting comfortable proved difficult because each of us had to have in his bag his new girlfriend better known as his M-16 A2.  It was a cold piece of steel and plastic for which each of us was held responsible and which would have set us back $1500 and a good month in the brig had we lost her. Some of us gave names to the ones we had in basic. I'd named mine Charlene, not as an homage to the movie Full Metal Jacket, but rather to the bottom heavy cheerleader with whom I had NO CHANCE in hell in high school.  The weapon I had in combat training was simply an inconvenience.  Even if you didn't fire it, you had to clean her at least three times a day because of the dust in the lovely area of southern California in which we found ourselves.
          If at the end of the week the armorers didn't think your weapon was clean enough your weekend liberty was cancelled until it was. The happiest part of the end of combat training was simply giving the Corps back its damned weapon.  I've disliked the M-16A2 ever since then and whenever I see some guy at a sporting goods store or gun show buying an AR-15 (the cheap floozy kid sister of the M-16A2 )  I try not to laugh and think: "You must really love cleaning rifles bud."
        Over the past several years I've turned on the news and seen multiple shootings committed by various idiots and whenever it does the same thing happens.  Whomever the president is says how tragic it is, a bunch of well meaning pundits express their grief then the political debate begins. The left points out how easy it is to have a gun, the right points out how the constitution gives each American the RIGHT to own as many as he can afford. They argue until a new news item takes the front page only to resume when the NEXT gun tragedy occurs.

        Sad facts? Simply having access to guns DOES NOT mean someone is more likely to commit a criminal act. Most gun owners aren't shooting up the streets on a daily basis; conversely, it is remarkably easy to legally procure a weapon in these United States. Contrary to the popular opinion of many liberals, the average person doesn't have access to fully automatic weapons, and simply being able to fire more rounds DOESN'T mean you're going on a killing spree.
         But if I may be blunt with my conservative counterparts, the 2nd amendment is the shortest and most VAGUELY written amendment IN the Bill of Rights.  You can CORRECTLY argue that the words "shall not be infringed" means precisely what it states, but be honest and admit that the founding fathers wanted us to have weapons in the event that we had to rise and for militias as they did NOT want a standing army AND they realized that many hunted for food in the 18th century.  Also please stop pretending that the same founding fathers who didn't want us to directly elect senators or the president would have been cool with us having fully automatic weapons, flame throwers and grenade launchers.  Does anyone actually believe that had they known what kinds of weapons we'd develop they wouldn't have made the 2nd amendment FAR more specific?
         The far right however does raise a very interesting point about killers not needing a gun in order to kill.  Human life is very fragile. You can kill another human being with anything you can physically handle and if you can't find anything to pick up, you can use your bare hands.

            America's problem ISN'T Guns and access them, nor is it Indians,  The British, The  Mexican army,  Rebels,  Chinese Immigrants, Irish immigrants, Italian Immigrants, The Kaiser,  Communists,  Negroes,  Illegal Immigrants or members of a particular religion. It's VIOLENCE. We Americans solve every other problem with violence. This country was taken from it's first inhabitants with violence.  Africans were forced to build the south (and part of the north) with violence and psychological torture. Irish, Italian and Chinese immigrants were met with low wages and violence upon their arrival and more often than not the robber barons of the 19th and 20th century settled labor disputes with violence.
            Martin Luther King Jr. is considered a hero by many because he championed non violence as a means of getting unjust laws changed. The unjust laws were kept in place with acts of violence. We canonize King and vilify those who tell us to defend ourselves "By any means necessary."  Because at our core we've accepted violence as part of who we are as Americans.   Our movies involve explosions and our heroes are armed with high calibre weapons. We pay hard earned money to see grown men locked into steel cages and pummel one another.
            We Americans are a violent people and we simply don't want to accept that. Accepting that fact would require us to use more thought when resolving our problems. It would deprive us of the opportunity to solve problems with our fists and trigger fingers. It would deprive us of scapegoats and boogie men and require us as a nation to engage in some retrospective.  We need to accept that violence begets violence and as long as we are a culture of violence there will be mass shootings in our schools, theatres, clubs, office buildings, streets and shopping malls.  We need to clear our heads and dedicate some time to have that existential moment when we as a nation see ourselves for who we are and figure out what our next move will be. Perhaps we'll have that great epiphany while field striping and cleaning our AR-15s.

Gentrification

A friend of mine is in the hospital. I ignored a persistent cough and decided to visit her.  I elected to park my car and use mass transit to get to and from the hospital to avoid the traffic and nightmare of driving around for a rare $12.00 parking spot.  Upon leaving the hospital in the early evening, I returned downtown to discover that finding the bus which had delivered me downtown to bring me back to my car would prove to slightly easier than finding an honest man at pickpocket convention.
          The bus routes in my city have recently been changed supposedly for the better, and no one seemed to know ANYTHING about the routes which have been in place for two months now. I asked a driver who knew nothing, a bus system employee who knew less and the final person I spoke to was a large black woman in a bad wig who only said: "Chiiild...I don't know nothing about the bus routes" as the words "Metro Administrative Officers" served  as an ironic backdrop over her right shoulder.  I walked through downtown on what was once the bus route and saw abandoned bus shelters and bus signs.
       I finally got to where I knew a bus would be when I entered an area of Houston's second ward which used to be old Chinatown. The new residents elected to call this enclave "Ea-do" to indicate that it's "east" of "downtown".  Maybe they thought they were paying homage to either London's Soho in Westminster or it's namesake in NewYork city. Hipsters are known more for their sad need to belong than for any degree of originality.
        This section 10 years ago was warehouses, empty lots and shotgun houses. Seeing opportunity, our realtors bought as much as they could, slapped up shoddy town-homes as quickly as they could and sold them for five times what surrounding properties cost. The  result was a spike in property taxes which forced long time residents to vacate because they couldn't afford to pay taxes on homes they'd owned for generations. Funny. Groups of people can be relegated to living in certain parts of a city because of real estate prices, but when those who did the initial relegation change their minds those living on that land must simply pick up and go to the next sport designated for the poor. It's basically what the U.S. Government did to the Indians and what became the state of Oklahoma.

      I walked past a vacant lot which had been a known brothel five years ago until they built town homes next to it. Strangely enough the new residents rather than trying to figure out why they'd purchased property next to a whore-house simply called the cops and harassed their "neighbors" until they eventually moved.
       I glanced over at gate that a moderately handicapped man could scale with ease and atop a tiny aluminum post slightly above my head saw a cheap security camera the size of a man's wallet. I chuckled as it caught my eye and nearly blinded me with an impossibly bright red light affixed next to its tiny lens,  I gave a toothy grin and extended my middle finger and continued walking until I heard an effeminate male voice in the darkness utter a pathetically sarcastic "thank you."  I laughed and said "I love you too pal, have a good night." How miserable is your existence if you've nothing better to do at night but watch your security camera in the dark on a Tuesday night?
      I followed the ghost bus route further until I saw what looked like a warehouse for all intents and purposes from the outside which had been converted to a bar with  and gated outdoor section. I scanned the crowd inside as well as those outside who seemed to be playing some sport with a net which could have been either badminton or volleyball (it was truly of NO consequence to me) and was saddened not to have seen a single face with any pigment. There were no blacks, no Latinos and there might have been one Asian girlfriend but she was the exception.
      The exterior was gated off the same way the town-homes a block away had been. This neighborhood until seven years ago had been black and Hispanic but now new "urban" dwellers who wanted it said they lived in the city but wished to do so without having do deal with the aforementioned put up gates to insure that they wouldn't have to.  The zoo simply wouldn't be as fun an outing without cages to protect you from the animals would it.

         I trudged along pristine sidewalks that were ignored when I and people named Fuentes and Rodriguez begged for them to be resurfaced. I walked past ugly, quickly constructed buildings whose sole purpose was to drive up property taxes and was nearly blinded by the street lamps. I couldn't help but wonder where the hell were these lights when I and neighbors  asked the city for them? Ironically black rock group Living Colour's song "Open Letter to a Landlord"  (which is about a slumlord who ignores the plight of his tenants and eventually burns the building to the ground to rebuild and sell for a profit) came on my ipod.  Irony in two senses. Living Colour initially couldn't get a record deal (until discovered by Mick Jagger) because no record execs were willing to listen to a black rock group and secondly because I found myself walking across a landscape that while familiar was seeming more alien and less inviting than it had ever been when it was what many would consider a "rough" neighborhood.

       Do I have a problem with people investing in urban neighborhoods? No I have no problem with people engaging in commerce as it makes the world go round. Do I object to people building homes and living where ever they choose? Not at all.  I am however bothered by the fact that if I built a house on the same piece of land that  it would have no effect on the value of that property.  I would welcome any man or woman as my neighbor if he or she were a decent human being.  Do I take issue with my city raising my property taxes simply because non minorities choose to become my neighbors, but LOWERING my taxes when more persons of color like myself move in? You're damned right I do. A society which tells me I'm "equal" should treat me the same way it would treat anyone else rather than using buzz worlds and phrases when I choose to live in a certain area or if someone wants me out.

        Near the end of my walk I can see my car. Three buses heading in the opposite direction passed me during my evening stroll, but as my car is in site as is the bus stop where I would have disembarked, the bus for which I was initially waiting finally passed me by.  I uttered a loud epithet before approaching my car but as I did I thought about my friend Dave who lived a few blocks away. He'd told me how some bottom feeding real estate lowlife had knocked on his door and offered to give him cash for his home. The problem is he only offered him 1/4 of the homes value. Had he sold, it would have gotten a fresh coat of paint and simply have been sold to some hipster douche-bag who would have boasted about his new place "in the city" but only after getting the latest in burglar alarms and maybe a tiny security cam atop a slender aluminum pole.

"We Smarter Than Y'all Was! "

I found myself in a classroom today in which an English teacher had an "unplanned" absence. She broke one of her ankles being Superwoman on the basketball court and to that end left no assignment for her kids.  I won't call myself a writer as I don't get paid for it, but I do pride myself in my ability to put sentences together. I gave myself five minutes to think and came up with a writing prompt which I thought wouldn't prove too daunting to a ninth grade English class. The prompt?

"The richest people in the world have offered you a charge card which gives you access to ALL their money for one week. In that week you can spend as much of their money as you can, but you agree that at the end of that week to be executed on live television. There are conditions. You can't simply GIVE their money away. You have to use it to buy things (no you can't BUY a cashiers check for a trillion and give it to your family) but the things can be bought and given away. You can't assassinate the people whose money you're spending and you can't buy your life back.  Would you take it? Explain your answer in detail."

That was the assignment. When invariably asked "How long it gotta be?" I responded "How long does it take you to express yourself? How long does it take for you to evaluate an ethical dilemma? Give me your answer and explain your answer as best you can." Some students took the ball and ran with it. I got some well thought out responses, but I also got a plethora of blank pages and the odd paper with two or three sentences as a response.

One student handed in a two sentence reply. The grammar was horrific, the punctuation was non existent and the subject verb agreement was painful. I looked at the paper and at him and asked: "Is this all you want to say?"
"YEAH!" He replied angrily. "What I'm supposed to do now?"
"Well, read and write down in your reading log." Students are given reading diaries to indicate what their reading and their degree of understanding of the materials. He did that for a few minutes then asked to go to the library. I asked why and was informed that he was "Bored." I pointed out that boredom was part of life and if he was truly bored to read something. He bellowed "I don't come to school ta mutha-fuckin' READ!" I reminded him that he was in an English class and the better part of what we did in English classes was reading and told him not to swear when speaking to me."

One of his classmates chimed in. "We aint here to read. We here to PASS!" I mentioned that every class required some reading and they were in school to learn and that learning was done quite often by reading. "Hell naw!" the student answered "We just gotta pass. We aint gotta read nothin'!"  He then stormed across the room saying "Y'all act like school was so much harder when y'all went through it. All y'all was doin' was READIN' shit. Fuck it! We smarter than y'all was cause we take more tests than y'all did! " His classmates emphatically agreed.

Part of me wanted to laugh in his face for being so ignorant, another part of my wanted to cry because he and his brethren HONESTLY believe what he said to be the truth. He's a ninth grader who reads at maybe a 5th grade level.  His vocabulary  is minuscule and he sincerely believes that not only is he my intellectual superior, but that his superiority is borne of having to take "more tests" and that all he has to do in school is "pass." He made this declaration with such conviction that I didn't doubt his sincerity.
     He reminded me of a chihuahua restrained by a leash as he charges a rottweiler.

I write this piece NOT to ridicule this child as he's obviously NOT the only one, but rather to provide those of you who are NOT in a classroom with a window into what we have to deal with in the course of our day. Children are given low standards from elementary school and are told that "good enough" is all that's expected of them.  You needn't make the honor roll, you need only "pass."  They spend a third of the school year either testing or preparing to be tested and they honestly believe that these tests accurately measure their intellect and make them as smart (if not smarter) than those attempting to teach them.
        Giving students a test once a year and using that test as a bench mark for student progress on the surface isn't a bad idea, but when you reach the point where you've created a culture of quasi-professional test takers whose only education was how to take a test you've damned an entire nation and began the path to the Idiocracy of which Mike Judge wrote.

Terrorist or Traitor? Let's say both but for legal reasons...

On November 5, 2009 United States Army Major, Medical Doctor and Clinical Psychiatrist Nadiq Hassan was on post at his duty station at Fort Hood in Texas, but that day he wasn't going to his office to treat soldiers on their way home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  His views of the United States of America, U.S. Foreign policy and the very army in which he served had slowly transformed into something ugly and twisted.  On that day Major Hassan killed 13 fellow soldiers and injured 30 more.
      He was shot and taken into custody and when he was the debate.  Many who either dislike or distrust the Islamic faith used Hassan and this incident to illustrate their feelings about Islam.   Western powers don't like admitting this, but we were essential in the creation of the autocracies of the middle east. It was a British model first tested in India by the East India Corporation.  Imperialism couldn't simply be entering a country raising your flag and claiming to be in charge, it required smoke and mirrors. There had to be an "independent country" and you had to be the great foreign benefactor. It was simple, find a random schmuck put him in an ornate palace with lots of servants and have him APPEAR to be running the country by issuing the occasional edict provided he passed no laws unfriendly to the great foreign 'benefactors' who were there to become rich while exploiting the country.
          In India the model failed because the British put the leader on an allowance and when he died his son was told to fend for himself which bred the seeds of rebellion. In the post colonial world the British realized the days of the East India Company were over. The best way to continue to get rich from the middle east was to allow them to govern themselves and to let whomever they put in charge become INCREDIBLY rich in the process. Wealthy men want to protect their wealth and absolute rulers became the norm in the middle east. What is the advantage to dealing with an autocrat? No pesky legislatures to deal with because one man's word IS law.
         The problem being that these regions tend to be unstable. The people realize they live in a dictatorship and look at where the dictator gets his money and blame the wealthy western nations who in their minds put the guy in place. How does this relate to Major Hassan? I'll get back to that in a second. The middle east changed forever when in 1979 a group of Islamic fundamentalist overthrew the Shah of Iran a strongman whose father was put in place by the British who was able to keep his father's throne after the CIA helped to oust an attempt at democracy in the 1950s. Yes the CIA ousted a DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT IN IRAN to put the Shah back in charge.
        The Iranian revolution and the birth of the group the American CIA funded Mujahadin in Afghanistan after the Russians invaded created anti western fervor that grew.

         Radical Islamic clerics see any non Muslims in the middle east as an affront and those within their respective governments who allow it as traitorous. The war in Afghanistan was meant to hunt down the Al Quaida network which sprang from the Mujahadin we created after they cowardly attacked us on September 11th.  The war in Iraq supposedly was about "Weapons of mass destruction" which never actually existed or which many claimed were destroyed or simply vanished into thin air. After no weapons were found, then president George W. Bush claimed the war "was never about finding weapons but about freeing the Iraqi people."
         While fighting a war on two fronts we sent soldiers on multiple tours of duty in BOTH theatres. Combat plays havoc on the psyche of those who fight wars and those men and women have access to medical and psychiatric care.  Enter Major Hassan.
        
           Hassan spent time at Walter Reed Army hospital before being sent to the middle east and then to Fort Hood. Somewhere along the way he stopped seeing enemy combatants and saw a people with which he identified. The army should have removed him when this presented itself and didn't.
            Combat veterans I know have told me that they felt they had to dehumanize their enemy. If they considered those whom they fought human it made it difficult to do their jobs. A friend of mine who fought in Vietnam said he never killed a single "person" in Vietnam. He killed well armed "animals" who were attempting to kill him.  Hearing this on a daily basis probably made Hassan develop an us/them mentality. Rather than remembering that he was an American Army Officer he regressed to being one of a handful of Muslims in the neighborhood where he grew up. Rather than being an intelligent decorated field grade officer he was that guy in college who took flack about the ENTIRE Arab world whenever there was a terrorist action anywhere.
         At the end of the day Major Nadiq Hassan decided he was one of the "them" that we created and opened fire on US.

        Many wish to call Hassan a traitor and I am among them. You respect your uniform and the others who wear it ESPECIALLY if you are supposed to be a leader of troops. SOME call him a terrorist and TECHNICALLY he is. Should he be treated as one? I don't think so. Before anyone gets pissed at me here's why.  Terrorist belong to given groups and organizations. If we declared Hassan a "terrorist" we have to treat him under the Geneva accords and possibly hand him over to some terrorist organization which would call him some kind of hero. By declaring him a traitor (as we did) we were able to prosecute him under the fullest extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. What does that mean? As a service member the constitution does NOT apply to you the UCMJ does. People have been prosecuted under the UCMJ for "Assaulting a superior officer with a glass of kool aide".  As a document the UCMJ is incredibly unfair to those being prosecuted to the point where most being court marshalled opt to get civilian lawyers,
         Major Nadiq Hassan didn't deserve a "fair" trial that a terrorist would have gotten. He deserved the stacked deck that only a military court marshall would provide. As a terrorist he MIGHT have gotten life imprisonment. The penalty for treason in time of war for service members in a time of war is death by hanging or firing squad.  Hassan as a terrorist would have a chance at being a free man, Hassan as a traitor to the Uniform and flag of the United States of America will get a firing squad.