Archive for the ‘Truly horrible behavior’ Category
Why Can’t We Communicate?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been quite frustrated, I will admit.
It seems like the world has forgotten how to communicate. Left can’t talk with right, centrists like me trying to find common ground are ostracized, and it seems impossible to just talk with someone — even with the assumption we’ll disagree about nearly everything, but civilly — most of the time.
I don’t know why we can’t communicate. And it bothers me.**
The cultural assumption in the United States used to be that anyone could say anything (except yell “fire” in a crowded theatre, of course), and we’d agree they could do this. So long as people were peacefully protesting, that was just fine.
That’s what we are supposed to be about, in America. Free speech, yes, and peaceful protests, yes.
But we’re now looking at a scenario I’d never envisioned.
Instead of people agreeing to disagree, we’re mostly staying in crisis mode and assuming our neighbors will hate us unless they agree with us in every respect. (Which, by the way, is impossible, but I digress.) And the threat of violence seems so large, even the current President of the US has talked about it — though mostly in his terms, and because he seems afraid he will lose his grip on the power he has.
I live in a “purple” state. We are split down the middle, more or less, between people on the left and people on the right. Centrists, who just want to get the potholes filled and work out the remaining problems civilly and non-violently, are present, but keeping their heads low ’cause centrists are the only ones who get yelled at by all.
(“Blessed be the peacemakers,” indeed. But again, I digress.)
So, if there’s going to be violence if one side or the other doesn’t get their way, my home state of Wisconsin seems a likely target.
I don’t have any answers, mind you. But I do at least know what the right questions are, and the first one, as I said before, is “Why can’t we communicate?” Learning how to civilly disagree, without violence, used to be the first thing people learned, after all. So why is it that we can’t seem to remember that now?
————
**I do hope that people will stop getting so upset that they can’t even talk with their neighbors and/or friends about the things that matter. Politically, you can disagree with someone, but that doesn’t mean personally, morally, spiritually, or ethically that you disagree…and yet, we’ve become so tribally oriented for some reason, it seems like if you disagree at all, you’re just a non-person.
I find that so upsetting, I don’t have words to describe it. Thus this post.
Yes, We Need Freedom of the Press
Folks, today is a day for action. As a writer, I feel it’s important to let you know that hundreds of newspapers have written and published editorials about the importance of the freedom of the press, due to constant verbal battering by President Donald J. Trump calling any news he dislikes “fake news.” (If you want to know more about it, take a look at the New York Times editorial from today, and then click on a few of the associated publications that are listed. And those aren’t all of them; those are just the ones the Times knows about, as far as I can tell.)
See, the 45th President of the United States complains that all news is fake. Or at least all news that he doesn’t like must be fake. And he constantly proclaims this from the highest mountaintop, letting everyone know he hates the press, he hates everything they say (unless they fawn over him, of course, as they often do on Fox News’ morning programs), and that supposedly the press is “the enemy of the people.”
Um, no, Mr. President. They aren’t.
As a writer, I want you to know where I stand on this.
We need the First Amendment to hold, and as such, we absolutely must have freedom of the press to operate as they will, to find out what they can, and to hold the powerful accountable. (Is that emphatic enough? Do I need to add emojis? GIFs? Frowny faces? Or will this do?)
(Moving on…)
I’ve written for a few newspapers in the past. (Two college papers, and freelance articles in a few other places, to be exact.) We took what we did seriously. We researched. We wrote. We edited. We checked our facts. And then we wrote and edited some more…yes, sometimes errors were still made, but we did our best to correct them. (Something President Trump doesn’t seem too worried about doing, if you ask me. But I digress.)
As today’s Kenosha News‘ editorial put it (this being the closest paper to me that’s taking part in the nationwide effort; my hometown paper, the Racine Journal-Times, did not, which shames me):
Presenting news that you disagree with is not “fake news.” We work hard to inform, serving as watchdogs of government and institutions, while also celebrating the good in the community. This has been going on for decades.
Absolutely correct. And without watchdogs, what would we learn except spin, spin, and more spin?
Here’s why we need the free press: They find stuff out everyone needs to know when the bigwigs in state, local, or federal government (or, perhaps, the very, very wealthy corporations) don’t want anyone to find out.
How would we have learned about big problems that led to the meltdown of Three Mile Island’s nuclear reactor without the press? (Wouldn’t the government have just spun everything, and said everything was fine?) How would we have learned about the Flint water crisis, and all the problems with the pipes, without the press? (Especially as the Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, did his best to obfuscate and “happy talk” the problems away until they got so big, they had to be dealt with publicly? Not that they’re over by any stretch, but at least we know about them now.) How would we have known at all about the problems of Senator Joseph McCarthy (who was from Wisconsin), if not for the press? (Wouldn’t Senator McCarthy have continued his reign of terror, accusing people of being Communists willy-nilly, and ruining even more people’s lives, reputations, and livelihoods thereby?)
And those are just three examples. There are many more. (For my conservative friends, think about how Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky would’ve been covered up if there were no journalists. Linda Tripp could’ve spoken until she was blue in the face, but if there was no one to publish what she had to say, other than the folks in her limited circle, who else would’ve known?)
This is why I urge you to please remember that the press is not the “enemy of the people,” no matter who says it, no matter how many times that person says it.
And start thinking about why someone who holds the highest office in the US of A keeps nattering on about “enemies of the people,” hm? Because shouldn’t he have bigger fish to fry, like North Korea? Or better yet, trying to make sure hackers don’t shut down our power grid in the middle of winter?
———–
P.S. And yes, dammit, the Russia investigation needs to be fully investigated, if for no other reason than to find out once and for all what happened. We need to know.
And if nothing happened, well, we need to know that, too. (I wait for facts. But the way this President has behaved, including his atrocious behavior in Helsinki alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin, makes me wonder just what he’s trying to hide. Surely I can’t be the only one?)
Why I Don’t Care About Josh Hader’s Teenage Tweets
As most of you know, I am a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers. I love baseball, enjoy the Brewers, watch their games, sometimes write blogs about them, and have been happy to keep the faith over many years of mostly non-winning, non-viable teams.
This year, the Brewers have a better team than they’ve had in years. After last year’s shockingly good season (where they missed the playoffs by only one game), they remain in the playoff hunt. And they placed five players, a team record, in the All-Star Game: Jeremy Jeffress, Lorenzo Cain, Christian Yelich, Jesus Aguilar, and Josh Hader. Two of them, Hader and Jeffress, are relief pitchers; two, Cain and Yelich, are outfielders; the last one, Aguilar, is a first baseman.
But rather than being happy the Brewers placed five players on the All-Star team (a nice accolade to have), Brewers fans woke up yesterday to a very sour story, that of Josh Hader’s teenage Tweets. Hader’s Twitter account (now locked down to “private” mode) was public, and went all the way back to 2010 or 2011…and some of the Tweets from that time period were pretty raw. Hader bragged about the size of his, er, male anatomy; he quoted raunchy song lyrics without attribution; he said he couldn’t stand gay people; he even made an odd KKK Tweet. (This latter made no sense, but Hader has been an elite-level pitcher since high school. I want to believe he maybe meant this as a reference to three strikeouts in a game he’d pitched, though who knows?) Worst of all, to my mind, was the disregard he showed, whether it was to women, LGBT people, minorities, or anyone else nonwhite and not an elite athlete like himself.
(Note that I am not linking to the screen-capped Tweets, mostly because this is a family blog. (I also believe you can find them elsewhere without too much difficulty.) They aren’t pleasant reading. I felt like washing my mind out with soap after reading them. But back to the blog.)
The thing is, Hader was seventeen at the time of these Tweets. I do not condone what he said; I, myself, would not have said anything remotely like that at seventeen, and I was considered an elite-level musician at the time, with multiple scholarship offers. (Not exactly the same thing as Hader, and certainly without the earning potential. But close enough.)
Still. He was seventeen. And one would hope he’s learned better by now, as he’s now twenty-four.
His teammates have said what’s expected. (Jesus Aguilar in particular came out and said Hader’s not racist, and that everyone should know it.) They know Hader better than anyone else. They do not believe he’s a bigot. Nor do they believe he’s misogynistic.
Look. We all have said something we shouldn’t, that hurts us. (I know I have.) It may not be as bad as this, no. But it is something we do because we haven’t fully matured yet, or maybe we just don’t realize the impact our words have on others yet.
Or, perhaps, we all make mistakes, so we can learn from them? Or try to learn from them?
In this day and age, when mistakes can linger for years and years–as Hader’s did, waiting to bite him on the butt in 2018–shouldn’t we learn how to forgive and forget? Or at least forgive?
Also, keep this in mind: Hader is not making public policy. He is not in charge of the federal government, or the state government, or even the local government…he is a baseball player. A pitcher.
In other words, Hader’s words have only as much effect on us as we allow. And if his teammates are all right with him, and providing he continues to work on himself and mature and become a better person (as we all must, if we want to get something good out of this life at all), why should we care about his teenage Tweets?
So, that’s my position. I do not care about Hader’s Tweets from 2011. But I do care about how he acts right now. And my hope is that he will be able to become a force for good, and use his celebrity and money to good effect.
In that way, he can transform this obnoxious episode from his past into something better. And then, maybe, his old Tweets can become a blessing…that is the best-case scenario.
Insist on Facts, Please
Folks, as I watch the wrangling in Washington, DC, I get more and more frustrated.
The Republicans don’t think anything they do is wrong. So whatever the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, says or does must automatically be right.
And the Democrats don’t think anything they do is wrong, either. So whatever they say must be right, too.
What this does is alienate literally everyone. Because no one takes responsibility for anything. And no one ever admits wrongdoing.
And I’m tired of it.
The thing is, as I watch all this nonsense, I want to remind you of one thing: No matter what is being said, get the facts.
Insist on facts, please.
Do not allow your own biases to be confirmed or denied unless and until you have facts.
And when you see something like a release of a memo by one party (as reportedly will happen within days) about the FBI supposedly doing something wrong, where a whole bunch of stuff can’t be confirmed or denied due to being classified — when the memo by the other party is blocked by the party in power (as the Republicans are going to release the memo authored by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, but won’t release the memo authorized by Democrats) — you must absolutely, positively insist upon facts.
If one party — in this case the Ds — says that the Justice Department and/or the FBI should at least be consulted before releasing the memo due to possible classified information being there, and that the other party — in this case, the Rs — refuses to even consult with the professionals in the area, that is deeply troubling.
And it looks like facts are being ignored, at least from here.
Still. Even now, when all sorts of things look wrong and are annoying and frustrating and nonsensical, get the facts. Get as many facts as you can, before you condemn.
So, while I continue to condemn tribalism and reflexive thinking — if you’re an R, everything the Rs do is good (even if it’s not), or if you’re a D, everything the Ds do is good (even if it’s not) — I urge you to be smart, be prudent, refuse to be snowed, and dammit, to get the facts before you make up your mind. (Please?)
Couple Injured in Store Parking Lot Needs Your Help
Folks, about a week ago in Racine, a young man was driving, high-speed, trying to get away from the police. (As per my policy, I will not name this person. He is a teenager.) He cut through a parking lot and hit two innocent pedestrians, who were coming out of Festival Foods on a Sunday morning.
This couple, Cheryl and Jeffrey Coopman, needs your help. They are raising their granddaughter alone, which was hard enough, as their daughter died last year. (See this story from WISN.com for further details.) They’re in their forties. And all they were doing was shopping at the grocery store.
Now, Mrs. Coopman lacks an arm and a leg, and Mr. Coopman has broken ribs. Both are in the hospital at the present time up in Milwaukee (at Froedtert, one of the best hospitals in Wisconsin), and last I heard, Mrs. Coopman remains in critical condition.
I want you to put yourselves in the place of the Coopmans, just for one moment. Can you imagine yourself, on a sunny but cold January morning, getting out of your car, and walking into the grocery store, finishing your shopping, and coming back out, only to have one of you lose an arm and a leg and the other with broken ribs and internal injuries (no doubt), all because a young person who should’ve known better tried cutting through a parking lot to evade the police?
Then think about the grandchild you have left at home. And how neither of you can care for her…so other relatives have to do it.
This couple’s life has radically changed, all because of one young person who didn’t know his own limits and refused to surrender to authority while he still could. They are in a lot of pain, and even if Mrs. Coopman can make a full recovery (which I pray that she will), she’s going to have a much different life going forward.
My heart aches for these people. They didn’t deserve this. And while life is assuredly not fair, it also doesn’t need to be this unfair.
A GoFundMe account has been set up to pay for the Coopmans’ medical bills. That will only help the finances. Nothing can help their psychological trauma, and the absolute unfairness and injustice of what happened to them, except time and perhaps some good counselors, and maybe if they’re extremely fortunate they’ll be able to rebuild their lives and continue to find some meaning and joy to enrich themselves despite it all.
And while I urge you to consider donating to this account, I also want you to do whatever your spiritual background allows you to do to send good thoughts, positive energy, prayers, or whatever else you think may help. If you can think of a concrete way to help them, too, be sure to do that…as they’re going to need a lot of help.
In addition, the Festival Foods on Washington Avenue in Racine (the location of the horrible accident) is taking donations at any register. So if you live in Racine, or the surrounding area, and can help this couple, and don’t want to use GoFundMe for some reason, that’s another way to help. (I just thought of this. But it’s accurate. Festival said they’d be taking donations at least through the end of January, and possibly longer, the last time I went in there, which was last week.)
While you’re at it, pray for their granddaughter, who’s already lost her mother and now is in jeopardy of losing her grandmother as well…
This is just wrong. And we, as a people, need to do what we can to let the Coopmans know that we do care about this injustice, and will help them in their hour of need.
Because that is what the whole idea of charity (Christian or otherwise) is all about.
Post-Turkey Day Thoughts
Folks, I know I haven’t blogged in a bit. Due to Thanksgiving, and the family festivities (or at least attempted festivities — more on that in a bit), and also due to me dealing with some sort of respiratory issue, I just haven’t had the wherewithal to blog.
But I do now. (Barely.) So I figured I’d give you a few post-Thanksgiving (Turkey) Day thoughts, in no particular order:
- Following up with my previous blog, I remain disgusted with Roy Moore and firmly hope that the voters of Alabama will look into the (numerous) allegations against him. If they are true in any way (most particularly the ones regarding Moore’s trysts with women younger than eighteen when he was in his thirties, making him a possible pedophile), I hope he will not attain the United States Senate.
- It was good to see my brother and his insanely cute dog, Braunie. (One of these days, I need to take a picture of the two of them. They get along well and make me smile.)
- Note the difference between Senator Al Franken (D-MN) and Roy Moore (the Republican Senatorial candidate) regarding various allegations of sexual misconduct. Franken may have placed his hand on a butt. He also put his hand close to a breast of a sleeping woman, LeeAnn Tweeden. (I can’t really tell if he put it on there or not, but either way, it wasn’t appropriate as she couldn’t consent, being asleep.) And he has apologized for these things, saying he has much making up to do and that he’s going to be more cognizant of his behavior moving forward. Yet Moore firmly denies every allegation, even when it’s been corroborated by mall security and a number of other disinterested parties that Moore, in his thirties, was apparently well-known for being a hound-dog when it came to young women and girls. Even though Moore has apparently said the first time he noticed his wife, she was in her late teens (under eighteen), too…
- So which is the problem child here, hm? The guy who says, “I did wrong but I will do better” with some relatively minor issues? (Not good, and it shouldn’t have happened, granted.) Or the guy who says, “I did nothing wrong, it’s a Democratic frame-job, and all these women who are coming out of the woodwork now don’t matter whatsoever,” and gets Evangelical Christians to pray for him, not the women allegedly hurt by him?
- Note that if anything remotely close to Moore’s alleged behavior comes out against Franken, I will call for Franken’s removal from the Senate immediately. (Does this even need to be said? I am against pedophilia, folks! How awful is it that in 2017, we have to actually state this?)
Anyway, I am happy that I was able to see some of my family. (I was too ill to see most, but I did see some and that’s good.) Though I couldn’t really celebrate, eating some good food (though I stuck to the softer stuff due to my sore throat) was warmly welcomed.
And aside from that, do consider reading some good stuff to distract yourself from the holiday bustle (which tends to make those of us who’ve lost loved ones feel more miserable at this time of year than any other, save for anniversaries of course). May I suggest authors Christopher Nuttall, Kayelle Allen, Zen DiPietro, Jason Cordova, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel, Rosemary Edghill, Patricia C. Wrede, and Lois McMaster Bujold? **Edited to add: How could I forget my friends Loren K. Jones and Christine Amsden? Read their stuff, too…and if I’ve forgotten anyone else, let me know. (Chris Smith, too. And if I keep going, I’ll never stop, so…)
(Or, if you are interested in my writing, please do take a look…you may find something you like there, too.)
Oh, and if you’re looking for an inspirational thoughts book to whet your interest, take a look at N.N. Light’s latest…it’s available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and I’m sure you’ll love it.
So, that’s it…my post-Thanksgiving Day thoughts. (Now, can I interest you in some leftover turkey? Cranberry sauce? Mashed potatoes? Pecan pie? Please?)
Why I Can’t Stand Roy Moore
Folks, Roy Moore is a candidate for the United States Senate in Alabama. He’s a Republican. And he has been accused of serial sexual assault, with many of the women he’s allegedly kissed, groped, fondled, or worse being under eighteen years of age.
And I can’t stand him.**
Maybe this sounds weird to have to point out. But in this day and age of extremely partisan, tribal politics, I have to do so.
Mind, I didn’t like Moore before this. And had good reasons for disliking him.
Why?
Well, the man has always been a holier-than-thou sort. There was the whole issue of putting a monument of the Ten Commandments from the Bible up, commissioned by Moore while he was the Chief Justice of Alabama, and how he refused to remove it until he was successfully sued.
To my mind, while I dislike that, it’s not so horrible I’d be writing this post. (Not without the allegations of serial sexual assault, many of his accusers being under eighteen at the time, some as young as fourteen.) But one of the other things he did before all these other allegations came out was extremely troubling, too.
What was that, you ask?
Simple. Moore told judges and justices in his state of Alabama not to honor the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that LGBT couples would now be allowed to marry legally in all fifty states, and was removed from his post as Chief Justice because of it.
So, Moore doesn’t seem to believe the rule of law applies to him. We know this by both of these decisions.
And getting back to the current accusations against Moore, I must point out that some of the accusers who’ve come out against him — again, some being as young as fourteen — have said Moore was a District Attorney (and in his early thirties, at minimum) at that time.
I have a real problem with that, too.
Look at the evidence of the things we do know for absolute facts, that of the Ten Commandments decision and the refusal to allow LGBT people to marry legally in Alabama despite SCOTUS’s decision. These two things show that Moore seems to believe only in himself, and his own views, and dislikes, distrusts, and disbelieves everything else.
If that’s the case, it’s much easier for me to believe that Moore may well have believed that anything he did, said, or felt was right, and didn’t even hear any of the young (or younger) women who have apparently said “no” over and over again.
That Roy Moore may still win the Senate seat in Alabama really vexes me. He is, at minimum, hard-headed, difficult, frustrating, and believes only in the most narrow-minded version of Christianity (the type of Christianity, I think, that Jesus Christ himself would neither condone nor accept). He hates the LGBT community, he doesn’t seem to like women, he doesn’t seem to like anyone other than himself…
And at maximum, Moore has probably assaulted many women. Some as young as fourteen. Which should be an immediate disqualification from office…period.
So why am I writing all this? Because Moore has no shame. Anyone else would’ve gotten out of the race, but not Moore. Instead, he’ll stay until the bitter end, and is making a great deal of money from small, grass-roots donors (who either don’t believe Moore’s accusers, or don’t care; I’m not sure which is worse).
That is disgusting. Shocking. Reprehensible. And should not be borne.
And yet, the GOP Governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, has said two contradictory things:
- She believes every single last one of Moore’s accusers.
- But she will still vote for Roy Moore.
This makes no sense.
So, here’s the upshot, folks. I am appalled that this man is running for the Senate. I can’t stand him, and I wish he’d get out.
But since he won’t get out, I hope the voters of Alabama will do the next, best thing: vote for anyone else. (Including their dogs, their cats, or a wet piece of carpet lint.) Because any of them would make a better Senator than Roy Moore. Guaranteed.
—————
**Before anyone asks, I am against this sort of behavior. I detest it with a passion. I would hate it no matter who did it, and no matter what his/her political party affiliation. (That I have to even say this in 2017 is both maddening and frustrating. How tribal have our politics become, that I can’t even say I am very angry that a man accused of serial sexual assault is running for the high office of United States Senator without pointing out I’d detest that a Democrat, a Libertarian, or an alien did the same thing?)
Barb Caffrey's Blog 