Month: June 2021

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Whenever anyone talks about the dangers of Critical Race Theory (CRT), I think of my 12 years of Catholic education. The purpose of Catholic education, or so my parents thought, was to deliver good Catholic adults. It failed miserably with me and my brothers and my sisters. Not a good Catholic among 5 children. If after thousands of years of practice, the Catholic Church can’t deliver even one child out of 5, I really don’t worry much about CRT indoctrination. If the hidden agenda of CRT is making bomb throwing America hating Bolsheviks, I am confident that the marketing departments of America’s commercial enterprises will triumph over the theoretical dogma of CRT. 

People are pretty practical about grand theories. If you ask the average Catholic about the Church, they could care less about why the Church encourages Infant Baptism, or did Jesus’ body Ascend into Heaven, or was Mother Mary a virgin. They are drawn to the church for the big picture messages – love they neighbor and your sins will be forgiven by a loving God. They pick and choose what they believe. Birth control is a good example of individual Catholics taking what they believe to be most important and ignoring the rest.   For example, most Catholics today have much smaller families than previous generations.  If I had to choose why, I would say they are using birth control. The Church stand on birth control is quite different.

Which brings me back to CRT.  First, and most importantly, public schools are not teaching CRT. It is an academic theory so laden with technical jargon to make it incomprehensible to the average adult much less a child. I am completely fine with people not teaching any of the theory unless it was before nap time. Now, on the other hand, where CRT might prove helpful is when educators are putting together a history curriculum. An understanding of CRT might encourage these educators to include sessions about how race affects people of color and can help us understand the history of our country.  If they don’t want to talk about race, how are they going to explain what happened to the indigenous people when they encountered the European settlers? Or why Africans were forced into slavery.   If it wasn’t racism, explain the terrible treatment these groups received from the European settlers?  These discussions would certainly benefit from an understanding of race.

Critics of CRT are pretty coy about what they want instead. By conflating teaching about race and racism with CRT, they are campaigning to remove race completely from the curriculum. Which means what? The Civil War was about two groups of good citizens fighting about state’s rights. The indigenous peoples happily relocated to reservations to make room for the European settlers.   Will they talk about lynchings? The Tulsa Race Riot? Discrimination?

It annoys me that Liberals are put on the defense over something like CRT. Critics are going after some of the most strident parts of the theory and saying this is wrong and because this particular point is wrong, it makes the whole theory wrong.  I have never believed in any doctrine 100 percent and I don’t think anyone ever has. The important takeaway from any theory is the big picture and, from where I stand, the big picture message from CRT is that to understand America, race and racism has to be talked about. I believe that to be true. So, until something better comes along, I am comfortable with big picture CRT and will leave theoretical CRT to the academics. 

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Boney Fingers

Work your fingers to the bone – whadda ya get?
Whoo-whoo. Boney Fingers – Boney Fing-gers.

                                                            Hoyt Axton

Hoyt Axton’s great country western song rumbles around in my brain a lot these days. There is this strongly held notion that hard work eventually pays off. We continue to pass this notion down generation after generation to ensure children know that hard work, at some point, may be necessary for success. 

I grew up thinking that hard work mattered – anyone who put in a full days’ work would receive the fruits for their labor. Nothing luxurious – a roof over your head, enough food for your family, affordable transportation and decent education for your children.  The perfect middle class idea was a man putting in an eight-hour day at a job while the woman staying at home to raise the children. For a short time, it was the expectation in post-World War II America and, to a large extent, the whole western world. The prosperity was so prevalent that we were lulled into to believing that all a person had to for the good life is work hard.

Yet there is more than enough evidence that this notion is false even when prosperity was the norm.  Everybody knew people who have worked hard all of their life and received little. This notion of hard work fails to consider other factors like Intelligence and luck. And even people who have all three elements going in their favor, often failed. Hard work is just not enough.

Yet, we continue to sing the praises of hard work.  Why? There are people working three jobs to keep afloat with so much debt that there is little expectation that in this life time, these debts will be paid. Don’t worry the hard work mythers have an answer for that.  There are stories about people who were in exactly the same situation who worked their way out of their problems, continued to work hard and now are billionaires. It is possible only if you keep trying.

These success stories are singular experiences not the norm. These stories, in fact, are rare. How many billionaires do you know? Most people do not achieve that kind of success from hard work.  These myths rarely highlight the luck or smarts involved for these people to succeed.  All that is needed is that nose to the grindstone.  This is the lesson we pass on to children so that they continue to work hard.  Wouldn’t want them to stop working hard now would we?

To me, the notion of hard work is pernicious. Everybody talks about hard work as the answer to our problems and people are working themselves to death for what? Western society is rife with addictive behavior – we drink too much, drug too much, gamble too much, buy too much, watch TV too much – the list is endless. The answer is work.  Work on your addictions, work on your relationships, work, work, work.  The problem is always the individual not working hard enough to succeed. This, of course, is a distraction. If you view yourself as the problem, you will always be addressing how you don’t quite measure up to the system. It is a distraction from the real problem – the system. All most people will get from hard work is boney fingers.

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The US government has been a little cagey lately about the existence of UFO’s which leads me to believe that there may be some evidence to suggest that they exist and we share the universe with other intelligent life.

Do we know what we are going to do if we find it? 

If we discover intelligent life that is less technologically advance than us, how do we proceed? Given our history, my fear is that we would use this technology to conquer the planet, strip the planet of their mineral resources and bring back the intelligent life in chains to display in zoos.  Is that what we want to do? 

Once we arrive on a planet, we change it. Should we be travelling the universe, reordering the worlds of other intelligent life just so we can have more iron ore?  Wouldn’t the temptation to bring back this intelligent life be too great for any explorer to ignore? Do we give the life a choice to return with us to earth or do we bring them back in chains? We discover that their meat is tasty, do we use them as a new source of protein – herding them into pens for their eventual slaughter? Do we leave them alone and let them evolve in their own time? Do we keep contact with them, trading our technology for their resources? Letting them evolve on their own time would seem like the most neutral answer to the questions but we are altering the environment of this planet without intending to do so.

I fear if the intelligent life doesn’t have a human like look that they would be doomed to subjugation and life in a zoo.

Or what happens if intelligent life finds us? These beings bring a more advance technology that could wipe us out quickly if we don’t co-operate with them? Do we fight? Or do we live to fight another day? What if this intelligent life wants to drag a million or so bodies to perform some manual labor.  Could we stop them?  Do we give them people in order to save the rest of the world?  How do we decide which humans to give them?

Intergalactic travel is all good and well but actually finding the life is probably a bad idea for both the human race and the intelligent life we find. 

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First, I have to confess I know very little about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. I am uninterested in them. I don’t read about them. I don’t watch them on television. My knowledge is limited to knowing that Prince Harry is in the British Royal family and Meghan Markle is married to him. Despite all this lack of information about the couple, I have an opinion about them.  I think he is dim and she is a megalomaniac monster.

I never really bothered much about having an opinion about them until a friend and I happened to start talking about them. It was soon after their interview with Oprah Winfrey.  I confess I missed the show. The interesting thing is before I could give my opinion about them, he gave me his impression.  It was very close to mine – Prince Harry is dim and Meghan Markle is a megalomaniac monster. Given my history with the friend, I am fairly certain he had as much interest in the royal family as I have – which is none. Why do two different people who have no interest in Meghan and Harry have exactly the same opinion about them. 

Meghan may be a monster and Harry may be dim. I don’t know.  I have no experience with either of them.  I have no relevant data to determine whether this is true or not. It may be. Or it may be incorrect. What concerns me here is that I have an opinion about people who I could care less about and who I so disinterested in that I haven’t bothered to learn more. 

You may say that they are public figures and their behavior permeates the news. I can buy that.   It could be easy to subconsciously pick up this information without actually trying.  They are in the news regularly.  I am aware of their names. Yet there are hundreds of people in the public eye that I have no opinion about.  Meryl Streep, for example.  I like her acting and I have from time to time read about her. The difference here is I still don’t have a particularly strong opinion about Meryl Streep. I like her acting but I don’t have a definite view about the her as a person. I like her because she is a great actress.  I can’t say if she is a monster, or dim, or bat-shit crazy.  All I know is her abilities which is really all I need to know. But Harry and Meghan I have a definite view of the person I might find. 

It concerns me that I have an opinion about someone with whom I have no interest. This opinion popped into my mind without any effort on my part. It obviously coming from somewhere.  Someone is influencing my opinion without me paying too much attention to who it is and why.  Someone wants me to know that Meghan is a monster and Prince Harry is dim. And I do. I have acquired an opinion without even trying. This is troubling.  

Even more troubling is that powerful people want me to believe certain things about which I am not paying very much attention to. I simply don’t care enough to learn more about the couple. But someone does care and they care deeply enough to try to influence my opinion. They have succeeded in this instance. I believe it to be true and am talking about it with other people as if it were true.  I won’t give it another thought because it seems like a silly irrelevant opinion. Why should I give it a second thought? I am not terribly worried about Meghan and Harry, I am fairly certain they will land on their feet no matter what travails they face.  I am, however, deeply concerned on how effortlessly I have been manipulated into having an opinion about them. 

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If you remember back in January of 2018, I was writing a blog.  It is now June of 2021 and this is my first entry since then.  Something happened.  

You see I got a job and started working full time.  I read all of these stories about writers who work day jobs and pursue their writing dreams in the evening.   I am not that person.  Goofing off has always had more allure to me that, well, almost everything else. If you give me a choice between writing for an hour or investigating 2012 Presidential Election voting returns in rural Kentucky. I will be wading through Election returns. For hours, maybe even days. My mind has always worked that way. At this point, it isn’t likely to change.

The good news is that I got laid off. Since I no longer have a job, my primary reason for not writing is gone.  I have the time to think again. A couple of times in the past month while thinking I think I should probably write some of these thoughts down. Then the other day while thinking, my old writing ambitions started churning and what do you know I decided to restart my blog. So, in the next few days, you should be seeing new entries in my blog.

Thank you for waiting so patiently.  I know it must have been Hell waiting for my next  blog entry.  I apologize for any of you who have suffered and hope that the bon mots that will soon appear will make up for my negligence. 

Talk with you all soon.