Seasons of Awards

We are entering the season of awards programs. Each week until the Oscar ceremony, there is a similar ceremony each with any number of categories and each category most of the time has five nominees to choose from. Some more, a few less. And of course each ceremony has in the days and hours prior to the ceremony, a series of little ceremonies oft times called "the red carpet." In this ceremonial atmosphere both nominees and associated non-nominees dress in their finery and parade benignly before adoring fans with cameras and phone devices along with the professional camera jockeys amid squeals of delight, pleasurable gushes, and much outpouring of emotion. Back in the studios of the broadcasters, the commentariat hired for these events, gather in numbers of two to five both male and female and talk about what the viewer has just seen proffering approval or tut tutting less than approval so the viewer herself can make the appropriate judgment so desired by the broadcaster whose advertisers are paying for it all.

But everyone is in on the act so that in the hours before and in the hours after judgment upon judgment is heaped, sifted, sorted and presented and the comments by the anonymous and non anonymous both are also part of the event. And commenting upon commenters comments both for and against rage hour after hour oft times overlapping with the next set of awards, thundering along in tweets and Facebook postings and whatever else as if there is actual thundering and not the sound of keyboard clicks.  Did I mention that these ceremonies are accompanied by so much snark that it is impossible to hear one honest expression?

And why is everyone in on the act. It's cold out? Nothing to do? There is a need to be heard? The human psyche likes to root for favorite things? Well it's that last thing rooting for something that I think is the crux of what I am trying to say. Because it's not just the awards ceremonies going on for this window of time, but every season seems to bring some kind of award need. Let's examine sports, for example.

We are in the process of finishing up the college football awards. The "fifty" odd bowl games if you tried to watch them all and each with a rooting interest on your part might just drive you mad. Except everything is already decided for the big one in a week or so. The endless sports interview programs. More broadcaster commenters commenting. The secret knowledge that you, yes you, know for sure how the win will be achieved. And you fearlessly comment yourself on these matters. And then there's the thundering keyboard clicks of the Twitter and the Facebook.

This week the MLB hall of fame nominees are in and thus much speculation about who will be awarded the honors are being bandied about with associated like and dislikes not to mention statistics gleaned from a myriad of sources.

Now the professional NFL awards games have begun and it will roll in like a gathering storm and ultimately spin about like a cyclone and end in a hoopla of everything I've just said. And on and on and on. March madness. NBA finals. The NHL. Then baseball. Ultimately everything ends with an award. Or maybe it ends with turned over cars, fires, shootings and arrests.

And then we start all over again.

And did I leave out politics? Tsk tsk. The Presidential race awards are coming up in less than two years and so far we've had a few teasers to get our juices flowing or our tweets tweeting and our Facebooks defacing in those moments when we're not engaged in the other associated award shows and events.

And of course we do have liberal/conservative endless debates that never end, never provide an award and ultimately never have a result. Yet there we are rooting for one POV or the other. Yes there we are once again rooting for something.

What is this fundamental need that we who do not directly participate in these endless games and shows and presidential elections (remember that little thing called the electoral college?) must glean from them some kind of joy or thrill as if the award itself is a badge we wear? Is the award itself on our mantle? Because our candidate has won does that mean we are now in control? Do we have that Super Bowl ring? That player who has five World Series rings are those rings ours too just because we rooted for the player?

What is this "rooting?" Wishful thinking made real for the moment? The fear of being by oneself with one's thoughts? The worries and concerns that up till now everything you've done is wrong? Your death. . .which will come?  Maybe death can be postponed while you root? Or maybe we're just looking for a fight. Or maybe we just want to say: nyah nyah I'm better than you, you who rooted for a loser. I rooted for the winner.  

Oh fan. Oh fanatic, contemporary life has come down to this: either we're the lonely man/woman in the desert raising our fist and cursing the stars or we're the sideline chorus egging on the performers. In every case we suffer for our inauthenticity. We have lost all meaning and our own true experiences are nothing.

Michael Brown and the language of white racism

Calling Michael Brown a "demon" underscores for me language in the subconscious of a majority of white policemen and a good majority of white people in general that see black men, in particular young black men and teens, as a danger no matter what they are doing. Do you walk on the other side of the street when you see black teen(s) coming towards you?  Do you lock your car doors at a traffic light when a young black man walks in front of your car? Do you do the same when you see white young men? That is not to say that crimes don't occur, but the majority of crimes that occur are white on white and black on black.  It is just our subconscious alerting us  and the fight or flight principal takes over. We could be thinking of absolutely nothing or thinking about buying that new car or when our next break for coffee and donuts is, but our subconscious takes over and anything else but fear freezes and disappears well into the background.

White slave owners had to be fearful any time they were in the midst of their slaves. Thus, they carried weapons and hired violent overseers. And it is this fear which evolved over hundreds of years like any idea that evolves from a small group to the overall population until it becomes so acceptable that to say it is now hard wired in our brains would not be that much of a stretch though in reality it is something that we have to be taught. 

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!  -- South Pacific (you've got to be carefully taught)  

You can do your own simple test. If you are white and the police pass you, do they look at you? If you are black don't you feel all eyes are on you at all times? I've done this test many times. An old white man like me is hardly ever worth a second look or even a first look either from police or store owners or any other person walking towards me. I'm not a subconscious alert mainly because I'm white and look like I'm about to set off to sea like the ancient mariner in a sailing vessel. 

Ferguson, MO, where the black population outnumbers the white population by more than 3-1 I think provoked the subconscious within the individuals of the majority white police force and even today makes them feel the same way the white slave owners felt being among their slaves. The police in Ferguson is the opposite of the population where its white force members outnumber by way more than 3-1 its black force members. This story is not a new story. It is an ancient story older even than the foundation of American slavery. It is fear of the other. Fear of the other in this country  could be understandable if say black people suddenly turned up for the first time in the 21st century. But our histories intertwined, examined and shared should bring us different results by now. This country had a horrific war over slavery.This country marched and protested and many including whites were beaten and killed in the name of civil rights. Jim Crow laws were eventually crushed. Six years ago America elected a black man (51% black BTW) for President.  Yet what is the one result from all of that? Fear of the other persists  and in its extreme form racism (including some white responses to our President) 

What is the language of racism? 

"An integral part of any culture is its language. Language not
only develops in conjunction with society’s historical, economic and political evolution, but
also reflects that society’s attitudes and thinking. Language not only expresses ideas and
concepts, but actually shapes thought. If one accepts that our dominant white culture is
racist, then one would expect our language- an indispensable transmitter of culture- to be
racist as well. Whites, as the dominant group, are not subjected to the same abusive
characterization by our language that people of color receive." (https://www.pcc.edu/resources/illumination/documents/racism-in-the-english-language.pdf) 

I believe subjugated peoples have always been called derogatory names by their oppressors. It's part of the psychological war to give the oppressor the upper hand and to feel as though he is dealing with a lesser being. And conversely I think the subjugated individual internalizes this language and agrees with the oppressor that he is a lesser being in order to find some kind of homeostasis or otherwise he will go mad.  He knows fighting back individually is a thoroughly losing battle. However, when derogatory names don't seem to be enough violence is used.

Does white racism persist here and now even in our language covert as it might be?  You're goddamn right it does though for the most part out of fear of being excoriated in public it doesn't reveal itself until an event such as  a white policeman killing another young black man occurs. Then we hear the cheers for the white policeman and hear of the grotesqueness of his victim. And once again the truth of racial hatred is revealed in the language used to justify that slaying. Demon, he said.

Eight years and counting: My retirement as told through the window of our evolving technology and the demise of great cultural institutions.

I retired on Oct 2, 2006. My final day of work was Sept 29, 2006. I had been a computer programmer, a systems analyst and finally in my last dozen years a technical manager and director. No one at my retirement dinner was checking their pocket devices because at that time there were no smartphones. (Of course today that's all you see in restaurants) Yes, there had been attempts prior to 2006, PDAs, some mobile devices that integrated telephony & data, but not until the iPhone in the summer of 2007 did the explosion of smartphones occur. Android phones soon appeared after the iPhone. And the clam shell phone died (only to be resurrected by a small group of rebellious hipsters.) And Windows phones way after that. And then cometh the tablet. There were text messages you could send with the clam shell phone and Blackberry had the ability to message with QWERTY keyboard but texting wasn't well used then as it is now. 

In 2006 Gmail had almost arrived for everyone but was still invitation only. Twitter could only be accessed by PC/Mac type technology and was hardly used. Up until late 2006, Twitter was mainly a communication application within the Twitter start up. Facebook launched for everyone the week I retired. Till then it was only for university students. So up until that time the best way to communicate with your aunt Tillie or some individual you fancied was by land line, cell phones that were only phones and email or IM on your desktop or notebooks or for that matter by card or letter which would take days or you could pass a note under the door or leave a mash one for someone you liked in the cubicle down the hall. 

In 2006 you still shared music with your fellows mainly by cassette tapes or burning CDs if you could afford a CD burner. Yes there were the peer to peer networks Napster and others but were soon deemed illegal and Bit Torrrent was not widely used yet and was considered controversial. The music

industry was still selling CDs and even cassette tapes were still being sold. Tower records did go out of business in late 2006. Sam Goody stores died around the same time. Best Buy was still selling CDs. Newspapers were already in decline at the time but there were plenty of viable companies and the NY Times cost $1.00. The e-Reader was yet to arrive. So there were books and bookstores still and newspapers and magazines.  Used to be when you got on the subway most people were hidden behind newspapers. 

There were some social networking precedents like Friendster and MySpace and some others though these had more specific maybe more niche like approaches. Myspace was largely a site that was dominated by music groups and fans and Friendster was a rising popular network but ultimately had limited appeal and ultimately declined. Maybe if there had been smartphones at their height of popularity they might have dominated since they had been up and running since 2002. But the world of social networking had not really begun to take over our internet existence. Perhaps you might even say, social networking created our internet existence. Also realize there were no selfies or photobombing or gifs or instagram or vine or snapchats or dick pics or internet bullying and so on. 

There were no net books, no tablets, etc. Microsoft sold a pocket computer but it was fairly useless. There was email. There were corporate intranets and of course the internet and the discussion was about Internet 2.0., the new safer, smarter internet. Still the really big thing that year in 2006 was the Blu Ray DVD player. And to fully enjoy the Blu Ray player you had to have an HD TV. Am I ignoring HD TVs? No, they started cropping up in the early 2000s but boy were they expensive and a little difficult to set up. There was no streaming Netflix service, no Amazon Prime, none of the hundreds of streaming services that exist today. You tube was in its toddlerhood having launched the year or so before, but you needed a computer to watch it not your phone.

In the fall of 2006 I set up my first router and connected with my Gateway XP windows notebook and hard wired my Dell desktop also running XP. The main internet browser was IE. I first started using Firefox then. I think they had a 5% market share. Then along in 2008 came the Chrome browser and together Mozilla and Google made the IE largely a joke. DVR technology was limited and there were court challenges. I did have an iPod that held 5 gigs of data, mainly music. (iPod had been around since 2001.) 

So that was 8 years ago. What will the next 8 years bring? Some new revolutionary way to communicate and share information? Or just bigger smartphones, more tablets, clunkier buggier software. And more hype & bullshit so that the corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon,

Facebook and Verizon etc. continue to dominate the field and are now lacking any kind of startling innovation and continue to make and hog all the money to prevent real technical innovation? We shall see. Meanwhile we've lost bookstores,  newspapers, TV broadcast viewing and most of all our privacy.

An email I sent to friends about the Iraq War and the march I was on March 23, 2003

Dear Folks,

I wonder how people are actually feeling about the push to war in Iraq. Is this really a legal or illegal war? (Can there be an application of such terms to war?) How unprecedented is this assault on what is, for all intents and purposes, still a third world country? After all we have a 400 billion dollar defense budget and Iraq has 1.4 billion dollar defense budget. . . And 50% of Iraq's population is under age 14. . .Is this an attack on children?  Is this a battle of the rich against the poor? Is there a racist component to this war?  Or do you feel as if there is some emotional link for you between the 9/11 destruction and the taking down of Saddam Hussein that gives you some small sense of satisfaction? Can any of us honestly make an open and shut case for or against this current war?

Is anyone who is opposed to this war in any facet guilty of being "unpatriotic?"  (Is patriotism the last refuge of the scoundrel?) Or are those who feel that we have to now fight, since our troops are caught up in it and it would seem untoward to not feel sympathy for them or to not support them, subconsciously "baby killers?"  What do you think of the message being sent by our political leaders who "oppose" the war but still "support" the troops?  Shouldn't we be sympathetic to all the troops?  After all "troops" don't really want to go to war. It's not normal to feel dying is in one's interest. . .

What should we do and say now?  The war has started. The violence is under way. What do we do? Most of our political leaders even if they are opposed to the war are in a state of paralysis and at best are engaged in wishful thinking, believing that we can have business as usual, and at worst they are still manipulating us, our emotions, our beliefs. . .

After participating in yesterday's demonstration down Broadway I was interested to see that in fact this was a true representation of New York City.  Granted the bulk of the people were white 20 and 30 somethings, but for the most part it looked like the same people I travel to work with in the mornings. Every group and category was obviously represented, from small children to the aged.  You could see broad representations of every color of the human spectrum, many individuals wearing definable ethnic clothing. Truly we live in an international city.  Thus in some ways we are the voice of the world.   And that voice stretched from Washington Square to Times Square for almost 5 hours.  Do the actual numbers matter?  It was huge and the reports of "violence" marring the march were overblown as usual by the news media who can't report anything without some kind of contrary view in their goal of "objective" reporting.  Is New York City out of step with the rest of the country?

At first I went to the march feeling a little ambivalent, asking myself what is the point?  The point came to me very simply: This is democracy in action. Democracy is a participatory form of political action. There were no leaders here telling us what to do or what to say. Democracy is not just voting or saying and doing the "right" thing at the convenient time and then sitting down in Starbucks and fretting over the NY Times. Democracy of course is an idea and not a political system.  But we shouldn't give up on an idea that ultimately is the foundation for this nation.  This democracy is a strong message being sent to the (appointed and paid for) leadership of this country that their policy, however it is defined, is wrong!  And that message comes from the city that has suffered the worst from a over half a century of bad US policy, a policy that seems to have an inexorable bent toward empire. If we don't, at the least, practice our rights to be who we are as citizens of this country, we have lost.  All is lost!  That was my ultimate justification for marching yesterday.  That is the most patriotic thing I can do at this time.

But questions remain. What do we do now, today?  How do we proceed in the future? Can marching in the streets ultimately lead to another kind of war?  Are we doomed to repeat history again and again? Are we doing this for future generations?  How do we get back our country?  And finally if the Bush war on Iraq is the war on terrorism would anyone rather take their chances with terrorism? At this point I am still mulling that question over. . .

Killing for a Theory -- Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment

Polish film director Andrzej Wajda points out in an article that Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment" kills for a "theory." Raskolnikov had already expounded upon this theory in his justification for murdering the old pawnbroker and her sister. That theory went something like this: There are two groups of people, one group are your ordinary worthless scum of the earth and the other are geniuses like himself, Raskolnikov,  who have the right merely for that reason to do what they will to the scum of the earth. He brings Napoleon into the argument, equates himself with him, claiming that Napolean took what he wanted and killed when he had to with no remorse because he had a theory and a belief in himself and its rightness, that his actions served a higher purpose. Thus Raskolnikov's actions served that same higher purpose.

In particular the argument was demonstrated again while he was engaged in one of his dialogs with the examining magistrate Porfiry Petrovich who is not entirely shocked by this theory. In fact he's the one who refers to it as a theory.  Raskolnikov wasn't some crackpot, foaming at the mouth, who hadn't thought through his theory. In fact Raskolnikov is a brilliant ex-law student yet a sensitive & compassionate individual who demonstrates his compassion on a number of occasions in particular with Katerina Ivanovna and his love for his sister, Mother and for the prostitute Sofya/Sonia, daughter of Katerina Ivanovna and he also confesses to her, his Magdalene. In fact she is forced to hear his confession. So if he is a psychopath it would have to be determined by psychiatric treatment, but since he is not a living, breathing being we have to go by his actions in the novel where he tried and believed he did good after the murders. No that wasn't in particular to atone for the murders, he still believed his theory, but actually the "good" developed out of the feelings of empathy within him, particularly for Sonia. Svidrigailov, that swine points out to Dunya that she should think of the good her brother might do one day (even though Svidrigailov has ulterior motives and is trying to blackmail Dunya into marrying him) According to Svidrigailov, Raskolnikov is a genius and he may do more good in the world eventually that allows one to ignore such a transgression against humanity as murdering two "worthless" women, one who in Raskolnikov's eyes was definitely scum of the earth. . . However, Poor Lizavetta, who witnessed the initial crime, was just collateral damage.  

But who else killed for a theory and still continues to kill for a theory? Everyone who has ever engaged in the violence of war in the modern era. Is Nazism a theory? Communism? Democracy? Even radical Islam? Not to mention all the other radical religious interpretations, interpreters & other smaller theories that operate where madmen masquerade with rationality. They don't foam at the mouth.  Hitler fulminated. He didn't foam. Stalin ruled with an iron fist. No one dared think of him much less call him a Madman until he was dead. President  Obama is as rational as any Professor can be and so was a no account like G.W. Bush and so were all Presidents and congressmen & congresswomen & all the judges.  But they all live for theories. All of their theories are right. All of their theories justify murder. Or they find ways to justify it when they have to. They are no different then the murderers who fly planes into buildings or who drop Sarin gas in a subway or blow up children in marketplaces. Because those people also don't foam at the mouth. They're rational.  They all share this one feature. They murder out of rationality and claim their theories are the true theories. They claim that their theories are better than the murderous theories against which they are opposed.

It's really no different than religion. Yes Islam is a religion. But its radical form, like radical Christianity, radical Judaism is also a theory. It is a theory that always proves that the adherent is always right and that they are doing it for the glory of God and the mass of people who would otherwise suffer if they didn't that they would lose the love of God. They claim to be merely the messenger listening to the words of a being greater than themselves. Political leaders, however, aren't listening to the word of a greater being but to their own inner greater being. That being is their so-called conscience. What Socrates called his "inner demon" they call their conscience.  But most if not every political leader's only conscience is to maintain the power that he possesses and thus it is this power that is rationalized as his conscience and if conscience dictates that murder must occur to salve that conscience, well so be it.

So what about our savior of the nation, Abraham Lincoln? Our greatest President. Our most revered. The one who was so ignominiously slain in office? Our Lincoln who "freed the slaves," an act of, I believe, genuine courage and conscience, even if it was the conscience of many at the time. By doing so he risked his political power. And there was John Brown who murdered in the cause of ending slavery. He was following his conscience. But he had to do that just like Lincoln had to though the ends were different. Brown murdered as an abolitionist. It was a necessary belief ultimately a theory supported by religious and moral belief. And even with Brown there is an element of rationality. But that "good" thing, ending slavery,  required at least according to Brown, murder. But it was limited, limited to the end of slavery. Lincoln, however,  had to condemn thousands to death for a theory. It wasn't just a religious and moral belief that prodded him to end slavery or his conscience screaming to end slavery but the overriding theory. That theory was that the United States was a democracy and that it would not, that it could never be torn asunder by states seceding because their secession was over the question of slavery. So whether or not Lincoln was just excerising his free will, listening to his conscience or willing to risk everything in order to maintain his power and hold together the nation we can never truly know. But murder was the necessary supporting beam for his theory.

Yet there have been those in the modern era who did not believe that their theories should be supported by murder. And for that what was their pay back? Ghandi, MLK Jr.  Even RFK who atoned for his sins was later murdered like Ghandi, like Martin Luther King Jr. for having a theory without murder as its driving force or main support.

In the modern era the ends always justify the means. and political leaders can always justify those means whether it means one dead, two dead or thousands upon thousands dead And so often it is done without anger, without prejudice, without concern for the knowable or unintended consequences along with innumerable innocents as collateral damage.   But for Raskolnikov. though there really were no "ends" to justify his actions, his means are murder in support of a theory, a theory that is just as boneheaded as any theory that justifies murder as its bearing wall or main beam or driving force.  

The origins of some commonly used phrases and customs

1. Where did "Piss Poor" come from?  They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot. And then once it was full it was taken and sold to the tannery... If you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor".  But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot...thus

2. "Didn't have a pot to piss in." Those who "didn't even have a pot to piss in" were the lowest of the low.

3. Custom of the bride carrying a bouquet.  In the 1500's most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.  Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

4.  "Don't throw the baby out with bath water." Baths when they occurred consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, Then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.  Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

5. "It's raining cats and dogs." Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs."
 
6. Canopied beds. There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed.  Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

7. They're dirt poor.  The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery In the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing..

8. A threshold as your entrance way to a house. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, It would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

9. The rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, etc."  In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.  Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers In the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while.

Hence the rhyme:

“Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.

10. "Bringing home the bacon." When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon."

11. Chewing  the fat. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

12. Why tomatoes were considered poisonous. Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

13.  The Upper Crust.  Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, And guests got the top, or the upper crust.

14.  Holding a wake after death.  Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom; “holding a wake."

15. Saved by the bell or he was a dead ringer.   England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.  When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.

16. The Graveyard Shift.  Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, “saved by the bell" or was "considered a dead ringer."

On the aftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict

I'll be blunt. Where is the revolt? Where is the bringing it to the streets? The anger over the George Zimmerman verdict seems to have ended. (Not to mention that the anger, if there was any, over the Edward Snowden affair has also disappeared. Or the anger over murderous drone strikes. Or the anger over the diminishing of our constitutional rights while fantasies about royals, however, have taken over.  Such things are to be expected.) But in the immediate aftermath of Zimmerman's not guilty verdict, some held up signs. Some marched. Some shouted slogans. Others raised their fists and wore hoodies. There were shouts of anger, tears of despair and the odd bit of window breaking and other sporadic outbursts.  The parents, the sad broken parents of Trayvon, their child, were prodded, by who or what I do not know, into being selfless, forgiving, calm, rational while feeling terribly dispirited & full of sorrow, their anger almost seemingly surgically taken from them by calls for calm or perhaps fears of not wanting to be catalysts of violence. It's understandable.  It's understandable that they would prefer to have their private grief. 

But the President of the United States meanwhile assisted by the news media truly diffused it all.  The President said: I am Trayvon. Demand freedom.  Demand justice. Demand rights. But do it quietly. Be peaceful. Be orderly. And we all did exactly that. There was nothing different. We did exactly what we always do. Nothing! For it is better that we do nothing  as we can go on with our individual lives, our individual days, our individual selves, confronting our nagging inconveniences and paying our bills.  It's all swept under the rug so it seems. It's pushed aside.  It's stale like yesterday's coffee still sitting on the stove.  But having done what was done in that aftermath of "not guilty" we can pat ourselves on our back, our collective backs, for having had the courage to speak out, but willing to keep our powder dry, live to fight another day, hold on to our anger to let it loose the next time an outrage is committed. 

There will be another day and there won't be another day. There will be another day because there is always another day, a new outrage, another we can't take it anymore outrage. Another stunning, shocking, how can it get any worse than this day kind of day.  And yet there will not be another day. There will not be another day because the next response to the next outrage will be the same as the last response to the last outrage. This is because we are paralyzed. This is because we have no leaders. We run in circles and we scream and shout but we get nowhere and we get nothing. Anyone who will take up the mantle as a leader will be immediately suspect will immediately be thought of as someone who has an ulterior motive, an axe to grind, a person with a childhood problem that is being played out in the sandbox of today's reality.

Motive. What might the ulterior motive be of a leader who would lead us out of this morass? Search me. I'm sure the solons of the media could make up something.  But what can be done? Nothing as we talk everything to death. Everything ends up in talk and we take the easy way out because we are all exhausted from the talking and do absolutely nothing. And we slip away into what is the easiest thing to do. That is the real motive, the motive of those who have a stake in seeing nothing done, nothing changed.  

So we return to yoga. We have that run in the park.  We order those tasty fries. We repair to our favorite watering hole or have another Starbucks coffee.  We sit in front of our computers, laptops and TV sets, stream our favorite shows, or we read another detective novel where morality ends up to be upheld. We recharge our smart phones and post another message somewhere or we watch our children play with tablets but carefully regulate what apps they play with. And above all we show up to places with our headphones on, our little mp3 players crushing our hearing with urban lyrics, that subsume our anger. Have a nice day world. We are pathetic. We are weak and we get what we deserve.