In a Just World the Bullies Wouldn't Win

Sticks and stones my break my bones but words will never hurt me. Mother taught me that when I came home crying from school after being teased mercilessly. She was wrong. She was also wrong about those teasing me secretly wanted to be my friends. She was right that I was too thin skinned.

I have never gone into politics other than in the background because of that thin skin. Who really wants to make themselves that miserable. I can get all emotional about my chosen candidate getting called names even.

I have not blogged here on my "political" blog of late because I have not even been able to objectively watch the news with all the unreasonable anger and name calling going on over the health care issue. Aren't adults suppose to be able to sit down at the table and talk in a reasoned tone of voice? Okay, maybe there are no adults in congress.

Yesterday, because my own personal life was going relatively well, I got on my objective observer hat and took a tour through the health care debate (actually my speech teacher would have never used the word debate for a shouting match) again. A couple truths (or as I see it) stood out: All Republicans are shouting these days, and they are not shouting logical arguments.

Republicans, be they on the floor of the house or in town halls or just in front of a Fox camera being egged on by a Fox reporter (did you by chance see that brief clip on CNN before it was pulled from the internet?), are bullies. They are the type of people that used to make me run home from the fifth grade (it reached an all time high that year) in tears and develop a tummy ache for the next week. I even knew the foods I was allergic to that I could eat and break out in hives. Just anything to not got to school and have to face their shouted names and cruel innuendos (none of them would have known what that word meant).

And so why I became a writer. It gives me distance. And here on blogland ultimate power. I can delete your abusive comments. But what I want is reasoned debate. An open forum for logic. The impossible. Republicans are bullies. Democrats know the meaning of words like innuendo. And most liberals I know are frightfully thinned skinned. I guess we are always going to lose in what my father (ever more truthful than Mom) would have called a pissing match.

Shut off the TV and the streaming videos and read only the reasoned articles on the subject and then write your congressman. We need health care reform and all the name calling led by Rush and Fox news won't change that.

A World without Modifiers?

Let me begin the blog with a modifier. We are not all as alike as the golden rays in the picture here.
And thank goodness for that.

People are diverse and unique and I do think that is wonderful but I also dream of a world where certain things and individuals do not have to be singled out with a modifier. As in first Hispanic female Supreme Court nominee. Or gay marriage. Or first black president of the United States.

Though I hope I live to see the day we have the first lesbian woman president not because of any personal bias but it will mean that we have come a long way as unbiased voters.

Not using (or feeling we have to use modifiers) to identify certain individuals is singling them out and showing that we are not totally accepting of them in that office or action or our lives. When we can say simply Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor she will be free to be the best supreme she can be without regard to race or sex. And we will be free to not add conditions.

I especially am repulsed by the racial modifiers to American. I loathe the term Anglo American. Who picked that? The Hispanic Americans? In this age of increasing ethnic diversity it calls for arbitrary judgments and usually on the part of people that haven't a clue.

And while we are dropping modifiers how about Liberal Democrat and Conservative Republican. Your guess as to what is the modifier here - first word or last word? I like the term Centralist because it usually is not paired with anything to belittle it.

So here is to President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, and marriage between two individuals that want to share their lives together.

Confessions of a Liberal

I must confess that President Obama shaking hands with Chavez of Venezuela did not offend me. Here in the United States we shake hands with everyone. Now had he hugged him that might be another thing all together.

But I belong to that camp that was more offended when his predecessor, G W Bush, did not shake hands. That in this country is sort of a major shun and not good manners. In fact if someone extends a hand to you and you do not grasp it volumes have been said.

I'm told the handshake goes back to the days of swords and in this country gun fights. If you are shaking hands with someone you are not reaching for a weapon. And one of the reasons historically the left handed have not been trusted - because they could still be reaching for that weapon with their dominant hand.

I was also not offended this week by Obama extending the "figurative hand of friendship" to Cuba. About time is all I have to say. Those of us in this country that even remember the Cuban Missile Crisis are few and far between. And nothing ever was solved by not talking about it as was GW's approach to everything. Course if I talked like him I might want to keep my mouth shut too.

But how silly is it that we torture enemy compatants on an island we do not have diplomatic conversations with? The conservatives seem more upset that Obama revealed these conversations under torture than that the US under GW conducted them. First I would argue that it was no big secret but I am shocked that we used some of these techniques over 400 times against just two detainees. What is the big surprise was that some people still believe we got the truth! Torture me - hell, just threaten to torture me - and I will tell you anything you want to hear. And I am damn good at making things up. I aim to please.

And so do most torture victims. The Spanish Inquisition proved that.

So bottomline I am all for the handshakes and totally against the thumb screws. So despite the fact that I generally describe myself as a centralist on these two issues I am firmly in the liberal camp.