Month: April 2022

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During the 2008 Presidential Election, I talked with a man who thought Barrack Obama was a Muslim. I tried to correct him. He didn’t believe me. Several friends joined the conversation but nothing anyone said would change the man’s mind. I don’t know why we we pursued the matter because I knew from the start it was hopeless. This didn’t stop me from trying. I thought it was important that he understood that Obama wasn’t a Muslim. This was a lie and, as long as he understood that was a lie, he was free to vote for anyone he wanted. Of course, I failed miserably. He still believed Obama was a Muslim when our conversation ended.

This experience was quite frustrating. I don’t mind someone disagreeing with me as long as we are working with the same facts. But instead of arguing about what a fact means, we were arguing on what a fact was. I took Obama at his word that he was a Christian. The other man believed what someone mistakenly told him on the internet. We both believed our facts even though both couldn’t be true. How can you have an honest argument when you can choose your facts?

This explosion of conflicting facts has people wanting to keep misinformation from reaching the public. Can we stop the spread of false information? More importantly, should we stop the spread of false information? The world be a better place if people heard only the truth but how can we do it in such a way that our civil liberties are protected?

It when I reach that last question where I begin to feel differently about removing lies from public debates.

In my attempt to persuade my acquaintance that Obama wasn’t a Muslim, I gave him new and accurate information. The truth, however, and unfortunately, didn’t change his mind. The shining light of truth is no match for the closed mind. The truth quite simply didn’t matter. The answer, however, isn’t keeping the lie from the close mind. The internet isn’t the only source of misinformation. Humans have been spreading lies for thousands of years without the help of modern technology. Keeping lies off the internet only stops the speed, not the spread.

What, then, is the advantage of keeping lies off the internet. The lie doesn’t go away peacefully. The lie is still there waiting for someone to pick it up and carry it to a new person. Wouldn’t it be better to know the lie and be able to battle the lie instead of keeping a lie from the closed mind?

Don’t Social Media companies have a responsibility to the public to have truthful information on their sites? I am torn here. Do they? Isn’t Social Media supposed to be the town square? Facebook is offering a place to talk and not a court room for evaluating truth. Social Media companies presently police their squares for bad behavior. It is primarily a passive monitoring and works best when people are misbehaving. People prone to offense will always find something to be offended about. The Social Media police are kept busy evaluating these infractions.

Even this minimal policing has troublesome aspects. Who is monitoring? What do they believe? Where do they draw the line as opposed to someone else who holds a different set of beliefs? How much harm can a lie do versus how much damage does it do to not hear the truth. Don’t get me wrong lies are harmful. I would prefer that everyone tell the truth. That just isn’t realistic. Lies are always going to happen as long as humans are involved. We can only respond with the truth whenever a lie arises. To tell the truth, I must know the truth.

I can live with closed minded people reading lies on the internet as long as I get the truth as well. In order to insure this happens, I’m afraid the lies must be heard as well as the truth.

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I remember the good old days when I drank fluids without the foggiest notion of where the restroom was. I could reasonably gauge when I needed one and had a good fifteen minutes or so before I needed one. Not any more. If I start drinking, I need to know that a restroom is nearby because I have lost any excess time to go searching for one. Once I feel the need to pee, I desperately must reach that toilet within seconds. At night, this is particularly dangerous for my poor toes as I groggily race from my sound sleep to the bathroom for relief. For some reason, probably the not unreasonable fear that I am about to pee my pants, my toes bump into anything that might be in the way — slow moving cats, cabinet feet, improperly stored shoes — all become obstacles in my desperate journey to the bathroom.

Don’t drink before bed, you say. This would have been an option say 10 years ago, however, I am a man of a certain age when keeping the body together requires a certain amount of medication. Some of those pills need to be taken before bed, some of these prescriptions even advise a full glass of water with the pill. How do you hydrate and not urinate, I ask you?

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Governor DeSantis thinks that Florida teachers are in the business of sexual indoctrination. It isn’t happening but it’s scaring a lot of people needlessly which is precisely what DeSantis wants.

The most important thing to remember is that it isn’t happening. But instead of saying this over and over again, the people who oppose this law are saying “Don’t Say Gay.” But what is meant here is that a teacher might have to explain to a 2nd grader why Johnny has two mommies. What I fear some parents are thinking instead is why on earth do teachers need to say gay to 2nd graders. Let me repeat yet again, no one is explaining the joys of gay sex to 2nd Graders, or any sex, for that matter. It is a divisive political tool and nothing more. The law is not giving children any extra protection from being indoctrinated because no one is trying to indoctrinate them.

If there was indoctrination going on, and I can’t say this often enough — there isn’t, it would fail miserably. If your child identifies as a heterosexual, then no amount of indoctrination will change that. None. Zero. Nada. It will not happen.

The reason I know that is, as a gay man, I went through years of heterosexual indoctrination and still turned out gay. Even though the whole social structure I grew up in supports heterosexual relationships, even though the art I saw idealized heterosexual love, even though the religion I grew up only recognized heterosexual marriage, despite the fact the almost everyone I knew was heterosexual and I desperately wanted to heterosexual, I turned out gay.

There was also a strong social stigma against being gay. I grew up with a very real fear, unfounded thankfully, that every person I know and loved could turn against me if the learned I was gay. I could be fired from jobs for being gay. I could be arrested for being gay. Straight boys could get away with beating up a gays by saying the gay guy made a pass at him. Or the gay guy wouldn’t press charges because he somehow felt he deserved it. Still, despite all of the social support for heterosexuality and all the social pressure against being gay, I turned out gay.

You can’t make someone gay. Overbearing mothers don’t make you gay nor does distant fathers nor does playing with dolls or being a tomboy or any of a million different explanations. Right now, the only explanation, and I hate to quote Lady Gaga here, is that people are born that way and thus unable to change no matter how hard you try. This would also mean that heterosexuals are born that way as well. No amount of indoctrination is going to change someone’s sexual identity.

For DeSantis to claim that the Florida schools have been turned into sexual indoctrination centers is more than a little disingenuous. He is using gays, a group that doesn’t vote for him and is proportionately a small part of the Florida electorate, as a straw man. He wants to frighten parents into thinking that Florida teachers are trying to make their children gay or transgender.

I would ask him what the Florida teachers are actually doing to indoctrinate children.

Are they telling heterosexual children they are going to Hell just because they are heterosexual?

Are they forcing conversion therapy on heterosexual children? Which is, by the way, still legal in Florida and he supports. Parents can force their children to undergo this therapy against the wishes of the child. I am curious does this mean it would be OK for a parent to use conversion therapy on their heterosexual child to make them gay? If a parent can dictate their child’s preferred sexual identification, why not?

Are they forcing heterosexual children to take medication that makes them vomit when they see heterosexual pornography so that the child will learn to hate heterosexual sex? Or do they use electric shock therapy to stop children from being aroused by heterosexual sex?

Do they punish boys who like to play with trucks? What about girls who like to play with dolls?

If DeSantis really wanted to stop the indoctrination of children’s sexual identity, he might ponder making conversion therapy illegal and let the Florida teachers get back to their actual jobs of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.

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Whenever I hear people saying if only children could pray in the schools, America would be a better place. They assume that forcing children to pray in school will somehow make them religious in the future. As someone who experienced twelve years of Catholic schools where prayer, religious ceremonies and religious instructions were all a part of the daily schedule, I can assure you that this rigorous adherence to prayer and religious faith in no way guarantees a Christian when this education ends. I have no desire be a Christian.

The religious training I received was boring, incoherent, and, whenever the questions got difficult, fell to stop asking all these questions and believe whatever I am telling you. Daily Mass was bore number one. If you want to turn a kid off religion, there is nothing better than daily Mass to do the trick. Mostly because it was daily. At some point, someone realized it was counter productive to force children, particularly small children, to sit quietly in Mass and listen to a religious service that had little meaning to them and so they went to a three days a week Mass schedule. By the time I graduated 8th grade, I think we were down to once a week. The teachers spent most of the Mass maintaining order among their unruly charges while the priest raced through the Mass in order to end, as quickly as possible, everyone’s misery. My fondest memories of Mass was that they sometimes served Long Johns (maple bars and chocolate bars) afterwards.

I attended St. Pius X grade school. One of St Pius X greatest achievements while he was pope was he lowered the age when a person could receive first communion. Children, if willing, could now participate in the sacraments. A fact that we were reminded about on a frequent basis. How lucky we were that we could become Catholics so young. Which is why I learned to curse Pope Pius X’s name because instead of limiting religious training to those few 7 year olds who freely choose to be Catholic, the Church, after Pius X, assumed that every child attending first grade would receive the sacraments whether they liked it or not. I guess I could have objected and the whole process would have stopped. But who is going to listen to a 7 year old concerning his religious commitment. They were in the business of making Catholics and no child was going to stop them from their duty.

Particularly troublesome for me was Communion. The whole idea seemed weird to me. The priest changed a piece of bread into the body of Jesus. I couldn’t figure out why. Really. Why are they doing this? Why did the church think it was so important to change a piece of bread into the body of Jesus Christ? More importantly, why did I have to eat Jesus’ body after the priest made the change? I was assured that one day it would make sense to me. I am still waiting.

Then there was Confirmation. Why? The only thing I could figure out is it allowed me to meet the archbishop of our diocese and I got to choose my confirmation name. Except my mother wouldn’t let me. My mother insisted my name was too long as it was. For those of you who don’t know, my name is Thomas Bartholomew Fitzpatrick. She insisted that my confirmation name be Bartholomew because of that. I tried to argue the point. In my confirmation training I was encouraged to find a saint who I resonated with. I reviewed the Lives of the Saints and found my saint. It was pointless. My mother, of course, won the argument and so all I really got from the whole Confirmation thing was a handshake from the Archbishop.

Too prepare for all these sacraments, most of the first four years of religion training was reviewing the Baltimore Catechism. The book outlined the important Catholic beliefs in a question/response format. By that I mean the book had a question: Who is Satan and then the book gave you the Catholic Church’s approved response to the question. If anyone in authority ever asked you a question about your faith, all you had to do is give the canned response from the Baltimore Catechism. Since I was good at memorization, I was golden. But I can’t say that I had a good sense of what the Catholic Church was about. In fact, soon after being confirmed, I promptly forgot everything I learned because someone older and wiser, perhaps my older brother or sister, informed me that no one will ever ask you a question from the Baltimore Catechism again. I, in case you are wondering, can confirm this to be true. I have yet to have anyone ask me a question that required a response from the Baltimore Catechism.

After twelve years of Catholic education, all I really I took from this time is a vague fear of Hell, a hatred of Confession, a difficultly staying awake during Mass, an unhealthy attachment to personal suffering and a pretty good recollection of biblical stories. Of these, only my recollection of biblical stories has helped me in real life as Biblical questions occasionally comes up in trivia contests. Faith, however, eluded me. I never quite developed any faith. I even asked my parents if I could stop going to church as I really wasn’t believing it. My parents declined my proposal and assured me that some day down the road, faith would come to me in some moment of need. I needed to continue with religion and religious education in order to prepare myself for this eventuality. As long as I lived with them, I had to go to church.

This might work for some people. It, however, was the worst possible way to persuade me. What I have discovered its that people either have religious sentiments or don’t. If you don’t, no amount of prayer is going to change that. In the 4th grade I remember a fellow student telling me he didn’t believe in God or any of this Catholic shit. I was amazed because, even though I had similar sentiments, I was confident that my parents were right. At some point in my life, it would all make sense to me. All I had to do was wait. I had no definite opinions on God one way or the other, but my friend definitively told me, “I don’t believe in God.” Think about it. After four years of Catholic education, in disagreement with his parents, his teachers and society as a whole, at ten years of age, he came to this conclusion. It is a feeling deep inside of him. You either have it or you don’t.

My parents wanted their children to be Catholics. In order to insure this outcome, they sent, at some expense, their five children to Catholic schools. The Church failed miserably. Zero Catholics out of five. I am sure there are better outcomes out there but I am betting those results had very little to do with prayer in the school or Catholic education. I once was arguing with my mother about God and I finally asked her, “What do you want from me?” She replied, “To get you to heaven.” I thought will this is impossible then. In her eyes, you are either Catholic or hell bound. For her, I was hell bound. How horrible to do everything possible to make your children Catholic and to fail. You won’t share eternity with your children because they rejected the Catholic faith. It was at this point I turned irretrievably against the Catholic Church. All I could think, and still think to this day, what a horrible religion. I understand that the Catholic Church is less strident about such ideas these day. Well good, it is, unfortunately, too late for my mother.

Pray with your children. Give your children a Christian education if you wish. Just don’t count on having a Christian when you are done.

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The Ukrainians, for now, have stopped the Russians. They have done a much better job than I, or, for that matter, a bunch of better-connected experts, believed possible.

Putin, however, is still president of Russia. He is angry and hurt that a less powerful nation knocked the socks off his nuclear power, one of the largest armies in the world nation. He needs a face saving way out of the mess he has made. Barring the remote, but still possible Russian coup, there are few possible face saving events that would stop the bloodshed in the Ukraine and leave Putin looking like a hero to his people. According to the experts, while keeping in mind that the experts have been mostly wrong about the war so far, is that Putin is about to turn his canons onto Eastern Ukraine and try to bomb it into submission. So more war, more bloodshed for the Ukrainians because Putin needs to look like a winner even though he is a loser.

What to do? The whole world, including Putin’s nominal allies in Belarus and China, now know him to be a liar and a loser and just all around asshole. The world knows the Ukrainians won the war. Well, not everyone. The Russians who have not been exposed to western media probably don’t know the Ukrainians have won the war. If the war continues, there is no guarantee that the Russians will perform any better than they have to date. Perhaps Putin could be persuaded that to save his nation any further humiliation, the world will let him claim victory as long as he stays within his borders. Since, at this point, the Russians are the only people who need to be convinced Putin is the winner, can’t we all agree to just tell the Russians they have won the war.

Now, before you get all grumpy about this, give me a hearing.

Even though the Ukrainians have beaten the Russians soundly, they have been bloodied by the war. It would be better if the war was over. The world outside of Russia knows the truth, only the Russians would be kept in the dark. Let’s face it, the Russians are used to being lied to by their government. It is nothing new. The wise ones would figure it out, and the rest would think Putin is a winner and that’s all that matters. Putin can even say he has decided to be magnanimous with the Ukrainians by allowing them to keep their government. Putin saves face. The Ukrainians can start rebuilding their war torn country. The refugees could return. The war would be over.

It would take some co-ordination but I think the citizens of the world could agree to this little white lie to save the Ukrainians any further suffering.

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A lot of people in California are talking about the homeless. The homeless population is growing. The homeless used to be invisible but now are visible to an uncomfortable degree. Because of this, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore them. They are annoying. They beg for money. They go through trashcans sometimes not even extending the courtesy of waiting for you to return to your home. They defecate on the streets. Their camps occupy block after block of city streets. They sometimes are angry. They are sometimes crazy. They are scary. They are making the California urban experience pretty unpleasant.

Californians are asking what can we do about the homeless? When anyone is ever pressed for a solution, though, they shrug their shoulders. There is no solution. Which isn’t exactly true. There are no cheap solutions.

Every solution, no matter where it comes from (Right, Left, Center), has the same glaring flaw. Money.

Some people want to jail them. Except this means we will need more police, more judges, more prisons. Plus there is the irony, particularly for people who don’t like spending money on the poor, that the tax payer ends up both housing the homeless and feeding them. No matter, it is a moot point. Despite the great satisfaction many people would have in rounding up the homeless and sending them to prison, there is no money for it.

Some people want to take care of the homeless which seems like the most humane way to handle them but, of course, housing costs money. Money for property buildings, money for property managers, money to maintain buildings. The rents will probably be supplemented by the government. All of this means money.

Some people want to address the psychiatric and/or drug problems that some of the homeless have. This requires hospitals, doctors, nurses, and social workers, all of which costs money.

You can see the problem here. It is money. Few people want to spend money on the homeless. I learned this first hand once when I had a conversation with a neighbor about the hepatitis epidemic which began in the homeless population. It had spilled over into the general population, so the city was trying to take action to stop the spread. My neighbor discovered a homeless man defecating on a sidewalk in our neighborhood. After filling me in on how he gave that particular piece of vermin a piece of his mind, he went on to fulminate about the city proposing a new tax that would provide more public restrooms for the homeless. He couldn’t understand why he should have to pay more taxes so the homeless would have restrooms. I thought I had a reasonable argument for him. I ventured, well, if there were more public toilets maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about homeless people defecating on the sidewalk. I was wrong. He would rather watch the neighborhood himself and chase away any offenders when necessary than pay more taxes. Mind you this was during a hepatitis epidemic. The city was washing down the streets with clorox.

So, the real problem here is we don’t have a way of raising the money that can address the needs of our homeless population. They are comparatively small group of citizens, don’t vote and seem completely overwhelmed by their circumstances to organize themselves into an effective political unit. This means that it is unlikely that any money is going to be funneled in their direction. In the meantime, we are left with the homeless.

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Governor DeSantis is pulling the Democrats into an impossible argument with his “Don’t Say Gay” law. DeSantis claims he is trying to protect children from homosexual indoctrination. Democrats say he is preventing teachers from even saying the word Gay in the classroom. Think about the words here. DeSantis is talking about children, protection and indoctrination. Democrats are saying Gay. The optics on this are terrible. The Republicans look like they are trying to protect children from learning about sex before they are ready. Democrats look like they want teachers to talk about Gay relationships. Now, ask your average parent what they want for their children?

DeSantis’ law is vague and nearly impossible to enforce. What is and is not sexual indoctrination is never defined, so this little baby will be in the Florida courts for years to come as martyr teachers and wingnut parents duke it out. In reality, very little will happen as Republicans want you to believe that teachers are introducing the joys of sodomy to small children. This is not happening. Since no one is indoctrinating children in the first place, this law is unnecessary and should be pretty easy to comply with. At its worst, it stifles communication between teachers and students if a child raises the topic of homosexuality. This means that teachers will have to be more circumspect when these issues arise in the classroom. This is sad and incredibly unhelpful to children who may have these concerns.

But, as far as giving children any additional protection from indoctrination, this bill fails to do anything meaningful because teachers are not trying to indoctrinate their charges into homosexuality. This should be obvious to every sane Floridian. The gay population is, at best, 10% of the American population, more conservative estimates peg it a 5%; the transgender population is much smaller coming in at less than 1%. Assuming that Florida’s population mirrors the American estimates, why would 90% of Florida teachers be teaching little Floridians to be gay? It makes absolutely no sense because it isn’t happening.

People have been trying for years to change Gay children into heterosexuals. These children get years of heterosexual indoctrination and they desperately want to change, and yet they can’t change. If straight indoctrination doesn’t work to change someone’s sexual inclinations, why would Gay indoctrination? So DeSantis’ argument that the entire teaching establishment is engaged in a conspiracy to create gay and transgender people is beyond absurd.

On the other hand, DeSantis has cleverly forced the Democrats into defending Gays in the hopes that one of these defenders will stumble into some gaffe that the Republicans can use in campaign ads. Sadly, it is working. Democrats are taking the bait and wanting everyone to say Gay. While the intention is good, teacher should be able to say Gay in the classroom, it is giving a wrong impression on what teachers are doing in the classroom. Again, teachers are not drawing diagrams of the pleasures of gay sex for 2nd graders, they, however, may have to explain to a class why Johnny has two Moms. These are two distinctly different actions. One, which most parents would agree, is something that might occur and needs explanation; the other isn’t happening at all. However what the Democrats are embedding into the public’s mind is that the Democrats want to talk about Gay relationships in schools.

DeSantis has created a problem where there was none to begin with. He denies that the law stops teachers from saying Gay. Time will tell. But lets disabuse ourselves of the notion he doesn’t want people saying Gay. He loves it. Say Gay every chance you get. Gay. Gay. Gay. Say it loudly. Say it clearly. Say it so the news media blasts it on television every night. He is betting that the 90% heterosexual population is, at best, ambivalent about saying Gay in the classroom and, at worst, actually opposed to it. In the meantime, every time a Hollywood star says don’t say Gay, some middle class straight people are thinking why exactly do they want to say Gay in front of 2nd graders? This is not the argument the Democrats want to be having.

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I am late to Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. Richman, the leader of the group has been around since the late 1960’s. He followed the siren call of the Velvet Underground and moved to New York, while still in high school, to be in a band. Which seems to confirm Brian Eno’s famous quote, “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band”

I stumbled across Richman when I went searching for new music. When I am in the mood for new music, I usually go other people’s favorite songs list. These lists remind of a song or group I liked in the past and I can add it to my collection. These lists are surprisingly diverse as everyone and their brother can create them. This how I first encountered the Modern Lovers and Jonathan Richman. I was blown away. I couldn’t understand how I missed them in the 1970’s when I was really listening to music and going to concerts on a weekly basis. Though a little stunned that I have spent 40 years unaware of Richman, I am happy to say I found him now.

Below is a video of Roadrunner

Soon after learning about Roadrunner, I came upon another Richman song while watching the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The song was I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar. At first, the song seemed a little silly but I liked it enough to investigate it further and I soon discovered that this was a Jonathan Richman song. What I like about this song is it is both fun and danceable.

So if you are ever gazing up at our house on Curlew Street and see an old man dancing wildly (or as wild as I can at this age) know that there is a good chance that Roadrunner or I Was Dancing at a Lesbian Bar is playing.