Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

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The whole World warns America about hate speech

Where does the World get off telling us Americans to cool it with the hate speech?  Who does the World think they are?  Trying to alter our relatively young nation into the likes of China, Africa, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Korea, Russia?  I don’t think so!  Free speech is what makes this country great.  And it’s what makes us unique.  It means we Americans can say whatever we want (almost) whenever we want.  So take that, World!  We can say “I hate (fill in name/race here)” or “All those (fill in ethnic/religious group here) are idiots” and even “Down with the president”—and no one can cart us off to jail.  Let’s not forget this is not the case throughout most of the world.  Isn’t free speech the most fiendishly wonderful right a human being can ever have?  It cuts like a knife sometimes, but freedom-loving Americans wouldn’t have it any other way.  See, to make it in this country, pal, you gotta put up with a lot of talk.

Sigh.

After the violent and deadly Charlottesville rally between white racists and their self-proclaimed moral opponents, leaders of Planet Earth got together and put out a warning to America and Americans: Stop the hate speech.  No way!  We can say “I hate racists” or ask “Who would attend a White People Matter rally?” and my personal favorite “You all can go straight to hell.”  Being American means we can mouth off.  Just watch our movies and TV shows, since the ’30s.  But being an American means we have to put up with a lot of ideas out there that collectively and wholeheartedly we don’t believe nor support.  Yet we acknowledge the hateful among us have just as much right as the love crowd to say their piece.

Problem is … hate is like a communicable disease.  It spreads from mouth to ear and infects the mind.  It has spread like wildfire over the internet worldwide.  You know, love speech can infect humans, too, even turn wretched lives into beautiful productive people.  But these days, hostility is on the rise in America with huge numbers of people that just aren’t happy looking for a dissimilar yet smaller group of humanity to blame—such as blacks, Jews, Muslims, Mexicans to name but a few pulled from the very old dusty list of America’s yesteryear.  And, by the way, lovers don’t make good, loud, obnoxious fighters.  They’re busy taking care of their own personal family unit of two or more.  Niceness doesn’t make good news copy or video images either.  So nowadays, opposing sides lash out.  It’s all the rage.  Peace remains elusive, and diplomacy has left the building, nationally speaking.  The very word, the very idea, has been kicked to the curb … for the time being.

The whole world is watching

The World knows better than Americans how words can kill.  We’d like to think words don’t hurt.  We might even agree guns kill but not speech.  We were raised on the smarty-pants ditty: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  The mature among us, however, know very well how malicious words—repeated in vicious tones by a crowd (in or outside the mind) on the street, from the internet, around schools or in the home—can and do kill, sometimes the very cause of a self-inflicted death among the very young.

History records how words can and do kill every time.  It seems with every generation, one lone charismatic big mouth grabs power and before the World can stop him, it’s all-out war.  Been a long time since Hitler did just that, leaving Europe decimated and millions of people dead, lives ruined, and survivors left to carry on as if nothing ever happened.  The generation that lived through it is practically gone from the planet.

The reason why the World is getting all up in our business these days is not only because of worldwide terrorism ignited by hate speech in places of worship but also because of what happened relatively recently in, say, Rwanda.  During the 1990s, the Hutu, an ethnic majority, went on a hostile bloody murder spree to rid their country of a minority called the Tutsi, leaving close to a million dead.  All that upheaval started when hate speech was broadcast daily on radio.  A man with the fervor of an evangelical preacher can allure ears and minds, especially impoverished and uneducated minds, minds that don’t check facts or consider all sides of every issue, minds in a society that does not cultivate empathy.  In no time, the little country was at war as the Hutu used hatchets to slash and kill: genocide over mere words and deep-seated hate, animosity and jealousy among the majority toward a minority.  Add free guns (another American right), a large number of sociopaths (look it up, America leads the world) and other unchecked mental illnesses with violent tendencies, and the World can clearly foresee how our nation is becoming a boiling pot unwilling to melt and blend—like we used to sing about with pride back in our school days, like we figured out how to get along and live in peace, like we had learned the lesson “Live and let live,” like we could lead the World.  And we did.

The World, bless its heart, must mean well telling us Americans what to do when it comes to our government-sanctioned free speech rights at rallies.  The World’s a-worryin’ ’bout us Americans, not unlike an adult sister fears the danger her wild younger sibling might get into if not more careful—always nagging us to think before we speak.  Perhaps America is like a surly adolescent who just won’t listen, too cocky and brash to believe the elders who say our country could erupt in civil war again.

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The great American witch hunts continue even today

Been thinking a lot lately about Early American history, specifically the Salem witch trials.  These dark thoughts, and feelings, are due to a recent trip to the Boston area.  I set out to tour nearby Salem, that beautiful small New England town … where such horrible murderous crimes against mostly women occurred back in 1692—long before the United States of America was declared a new nation on earth.

From what is learned at the Salem Witch Museum, the town’s witch hunt started when a couple of adolescent girls, preacher’s daughters, swore their African slave was a witch.  The female slave, only a few years older than a teen herself, had been telling the girls scary folk tales from her Caribbean culture.  The Puritan girls were already living in a territory of Natives whom they naturally feared and considered strange in color, dress, language, music and religion.  And the Puritans believed in literal and strict adherence to Bible teachings, and anyone who did not was condemned to eternal hell fire.  Many a lengthy Sunday sermon warned of evil forces cast by the devil himself, always out to trick humans in order to damn their souls forever and ever and ever.

Besides the slave’s peculiar tales from the dark side, she was known to make herbal concoctions to cure ailments and reduce pain and suffering.  The year 1692 was on the cusp of The Enlightenment, already catching on in progressive Europe.  But in many ways Early American life remained entrenched in the Middle Ages.  In the New World, many of our colonizing forefathers were an Anglo clan skeptical of new discoveries and philosophical thought that would deem clinging to the Old World ridiculous and ignorant.  Nobody wants to be called ignorant.

Hang ’em high

So in 1692 Salem, the black slave girl suddenly found herself jailed and presented in trial where the preacher’s daughters and other adolescent girls in the community accused her of witchcraft: this by displaying before a jury—and in the presence of the alleged witch—convulsions, fits, contortions, hives, even speaking in tongues.  The slave was judged guilty of being a witch, thereby creating a community menace, and was summarily hung.

But then there would be another woman and another and another and another who would be jailed, briefly tried and quickly found guilty of practicing witchcraft.  By the end of this peculiar period in American history, a good twenty innocent women and a couple of men were killed by the words, actions and hands of their own neighbors.  One condemned man was pressed to death.  A couple hundred Salem citizens as well as their children remained jailed indefinitely, again for the charge of witchcraft.

The Salem witch trials were halted only when a governing official from Boston found out what was going on.  He ordered the ‘witch’ trials to be judged by citizens who were not members of the preacher’s church and to stop hysterical teen testimony (which included their uncanny ability to see the evil spirit of an alleged witch).  The Enlightenment of rational human thought and reason finally shined bright upon New England’s shores and ended the witch hunt at least in that neck of the woods.

Today Salem is picturesque with a charming town square centered by a century-old bandstand, shaded by tall aged trees and encircled by a walking track and park benches.  The Salem Witch Museum is located right outside the square in a former Unitarian Church, built in spooky Gothic Revival style.  A walk through the town reveals Salem residents and shop owners have handled the town’s notorious past with humor, another American trait.  There are several New Age, Eastern religion, and ‘witchy’ shops along with psychic readers.  The town’s graveyard includes a preserved area for the condemned of 1692 marked by a jagged row of tombstones where visitors leave flowers.  Indeed this section of the cemetery is wonderfully fragrant—perhaps indicating the human spirit never dies.

The Museum includes a world history presentation about ‘witches’: from ancient pagan women, who learned the herbal folk trade and midwife duties from their mothers; to practitioners of Wicca, a religion that worships God through nature.  Our ancient ancestors were in tune with earthly elements, believing every ailment and disease could be cured by what grows here on earth, and they paid reverence to the ever-changing seasons—Halloween being the most important day of the cyclic year.

Scared senseless

The Salem witch trials are intriguing.  I mean, what kind of person would believe another person is a witch, working behind the scenes with the devil just to drag thousands of souls to hell?  And what adult today would believe a group of hysterical teens?  Isn’t this the stuff of scary fiction and movies like “Rosemary’s Baby?”  Or are we all silently screaming like Rosemary upon learning the truth of her devil baby: “No!  It can’t beeeee!” followed by whimpers of “Oh God!” only to be scolded by the satanical cult proclaiming God is dead.  Oooooo, eerie.  Straight from the Bible.  Must be true.

Still … the very thought jolts our collective psyche.  This is because our brain is emotional as well as intellectual.  Time and again, human history reveals us to be equally capable of great intellectual reasoning and empathy toward our fellow man as well knee-jerk irrational, cruel, harsh and fearful … usually before each and every one of us takes the time to think and breathe and rationalize a situation or accusation.

Even with the lessons of 1692 Salem, America continues conducting ‘witch hunts.’  In modern history there was the 1950s communist ‘red menace’ scare.  At the time the U.S. Congress called movie stars, show business Jews, and intellectuals to appear before the dead-serious House Un-American Activities Committee.  HUAC ruined many lives—and never did find any communist plot to infiltrate Hollywood’s movie industry in order to destroy America.  This sorry episode in recent American history was ended by the one man called before HUAC who publicly refused to recognize its right to ask questions about his political beliefs or associations or to force him to name others who may have Leftist leanings.

This American hero was playwright Arthur Miller, who had written The Crucible to draw the obvious comparison between HUAC and the Salem witch trials—both episodes shameful and morally wrong.  The point was innocent lives were lost and ruined because of a collective and irrational fear, which still sweeps across America every now and then.  “They’re out to get us: the devil, the communists, the Martians, the hippies, the anti-war demonstrators, the Democrats, the atheists, the Illuminati, the illegal aliens, the Muslim terrorists”—always some huge evil force out to doom us all and destroy America.  It’s as if we have taken to heart every episode of The Twilight Zone.  Yet in time we would learn that communist countries were having financial problems, their Utopian ideals unable to support millions of people with basic necessities like food, medicine, and meaningful livelihoods.  Communism would be seen for what it is: a political philosophy that in reality does not work, because of man’s inclination toward greed, selfishness, and one-upmanship … as well as individual freedom.

I’ve lived through several American scares, real and/or imagined, against: homosexuality, abortion, the mentally ill, marijuana, satanic cults, and AIDS victims.  In Texas our latest tangent is public restrooms used by transgender students.  The line of bull is we should protect our little girls when they go potty.  Our state legislature is spending time and tax money on this issue, which is not a big deal to school officials.  Superintendents have tried to ensure the rare transgender student is the least of their plethora of problems—doesn’t even make the Top Ten.  Here is my own quickly devised Top Ten list of public school problems, if the Texas Legislature is so inclined to fix our societal messes: guns, drugs, gangs, violence, bullying, sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancies, poverty, racial tension, and emotional problems.  These are real problems, not tangents.  Yet for some reason, these issues don’t have that ‘certain something’ to ignite the righteous indignation of tens of millions of Americans.

So spare me another great American hysterical scare, always found within the gray moral sphere of human existence.  ‘Witch hunts’ always reveal the very worst in us; are always proven to have been the wrong thing to do; and leave us all scarred, guilt ridden and trying in some small way to make amends to the very people who were judged, scorned, humiliated, and intentionally misunderstood—without a second thought of their right to basic human dignity.  As for supernatural forces like the devil, well let’s try to remember now America is home of the brave.  The movies always depict us that way.

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Founding Fathers saw education key to democracy

Maybe it’s the writer in me or the reporter or an overwhelming passion to express my opinion on political and social matters, but I feel the Constitutional right of free speech is worth dying for.  So as we celebrate our American independence, I pay tribute to our Constitutional Framers: the extremely educated forefathers who showed future generations of Americans how to maintain a democracy in order to live and enjoy freedom … by first knowing how to think.

The Constitutional Framers were relatively wealthy which coincides with highly educated.  These were men who as young boys studied a classical education, specifically the subjects of philosophy, astronomy, the sciences, math, Latin and Greek, theology, and even music.  In so doing, they were to become men of diverse abilities.  They could work the land and make it fruitful while designing and constructing their own homes and buildings, some still standing today.  As practical as they were in their lives and livelihoods, they were innovators and inventors and most of all free thinkers, always curious about the past and the future.

Collectively they were most intrigued by the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, having thoroughly studied the languages as well as the history and downfall.  Government buildings in Washington, D.C., reflect roots in democratic rule such as ‘government for and by the people’ as opposed to a king, electing representatives instead of bowing to a family dynasty, freedom to ponder and express and debate issues instead of punishing dissenters, and placing no restriction on the most private matter of spiritual beliefs and religious practice.

And here we are today living in America 2017.  Each and every one of us should be ashamed.  A nation built on so much promise, in time granting all people equality and the right to vote, yet elected leaders both Republican and Democrat cannot even discuss in a civil tone matters of national importance, continue to play games just to suppress the other side, lie and cheat and manipulate for political party victories instead of the good of the country.  They have become assorted suits in love with hearing their own voices.  All this nonsense at the expense of the very people they were sent to Congress to represent.  And by represent I mean care for.  They have forgotten our American roots, struggles, empathy and ideals.  They, our modern American fathers sans stockings and wigs, have forgotten what it means to be American.

Washington 1776

When men signed their names on the Declaration of Independence, they committed the most courageous act of their lives.  They knew they were doomed if the Revolutionary War were lost.  These famous men set themselves up as known enemies and risked imprisonment, property loss, poverty and death.  Yet they were brave, willing to fight for freedom, to set up a new democratic nation.  They were probably unsure if the experiment in democracy called the United States of America would last even two hundred years.  Yet it has, even with a horrible civil war and times of an angry and divided populace.

The most ingenious political formation the Framers created was the separation of governing powers.  The three branches of government remain executive, legislative and judicial.  But today’s Americans have forgotten all about the wisdom to divide power.  Though we may forget about it, the U.S. president is not the most powerful person and in the end holds a position equal to Congress and the Supreme Court.  It’s called checks and balances to ensure the president in particular will never take total control of the country.

Being human, the Framers must have had dissenting views among themselves on how to form the new nation and government.  Yet they were gentlemen trained to listened to opposing views and suggestions and eventually would come together to sign and approve the same documents.  This is how government gets done.  Listen and counter, edit, scrap or rephrase.  They showed us the way.  But something has been lost in the last fifty or so years.  It must have something to do with our officials’ various educational backgrounds and religious upbringing coupled with the supersonic tech age.  Instead we have created a nation of intolerance, injustice, and most of all ignorance.

The Enlightenment               

One of the biggest arguments while writing the Constitution was whether or not the vote should be given solely to educated men, men who owned land, or to every man including the poor and uneducated.  The decision was to allow every man a vote.  But in so doing, the Founding Fathers designed our nation so every American child would be guaranteed a free education.  An educated population, well studied in various subjects and lifelong learners, was the key to maintaining a democracy.

Now we have a nation divided among the very issue of education: public schools notorious for harboring almost exclusively the poorest students and private schools supported by families who can afford it and believe wholeheartedly the separation is in the best interest of their own children.  Our nation’s schools, it turns out, were of crucial importance in the minds of the Founding Fathers.  We have let them down, allowing prejudice and ignorance to fester, along with mounting poverty and wealth.

In America educational opportunities are not equal at all and have created a nation of voters incapable of self governing.  The times have changed greatly from the days of our Founding Fathers—of legalized slavery and racial persecution and inequality.  But somehow Americans hold on dearly to a bygone mentality that makes no sense and holds no purpose in this age and time.  In other words, when it comes to racial inequality and human rights, we know better than our nation’s Founding Fathers.  Yet their intentions for the greater good of the nation cannot be ignored.  When it comes to the needs and rights and desires of every human being, their words ring true.

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Ode to 1967: both hip and square

The year 1967 was … magi-… no, color- … true but not quite capturing the spirit of the time … wild, not really … weird, a bit.  Looking back at that year through a 50-year-old music festival documentary, the summer of ’67 was whimsical.  The Beatles had just released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—an album so profound and extraordinary, referred to in the annals of pop music as the band’s masterpiece—which was played full length repeatedly on radio all over the country.  Then they released All You Need is Love, and those words set the tone for the Summer of Love.  But a musical moment in California captured, presented and preserved the times as they were lived by those who would (as opposed to those who wouldn’t).  Monterrey International Pop Festival captures a moment in time: when music and culture united in peace, harmony and love.

The festival was one weekend in June near San Francisco.  The movie opens with a young girl gushing on camera about a ‘love in,’ expecting to experience the highest high with all the great bands performing on one stage.  Countering her naïve enthusiasm, a police chief expresses dire concern with the possibility of the ‘Hell’s Angels,’ then he corrects himself to say ‘the hippies,’ coming in droves to camp out in this idyllic community.  The logistics were dubious.  The town would run out of food in one day.  A lot could go wrong with a gathering of so many people—and by people he meant ‘freaks.’  Yet everything, as far as the camera lens shows, went beautifully.

It was a groovy summer for all those hippies wearing flowers in their hair out in San Francisco.  A lot of America’s young people were heading West for sun and fun and endless summer or so they envisioned.  Frisco is cold at night, no place to be walking around in bare feet.  Ah, but the Monterrey Festival was spread out on an endless green lawn.  The film by D.A. Pennebaker, featuring several songs by The Mamas and The Papas, is a perfect time capsule for everyone who missed the concert—and the dawn of a new era.

A heavy happening

The film records the throngs of hippies coming together to set up the festival.  Spotted on the sidelines are major performing artists like Janis Joplin, the girl singer for Big Brother & the Holding Company.  At the time American radio had not heard of her or her unique gravelly power-tooled Texas drawl.  She killed at Monterrey with a Big Mama Thornton blues song called Ball ‘n’ Chain.  The band matches Joplin’s vocal audacity with an electric guitar lead that pierces the ears and the heart.  During the performance, Pennebaker holds the camera on Mama Cass, sitting front row and obviously blown away by the new vocal talent.

Simon and Garfunkel perform songs from their hit movie of 1967, The Graduate.  Also performing were: Otis Redding, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, The Association, The Animals, Canned Heat, The Who, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience—another first-time performer before a huge live American audience.  While Hendrix concludes his version of Wild Thing—featuring a one-handed tribute to Sinatra’s Strangers in the Night—he lights his guitar on fire and throws it against the amps until it’s torn apart then tosses the pieces to the audience.  The camera catches some audience reaction of confusion and disgust with the antics … soon to be standard at hard rock concerts.

The multicultural performance comes from Ravi Shankar, the famous Indian sitar player who performs a morning raga.  As the strange twangs are heard mid morning, the camera pans slowly across the audience, all sitting attentive and well behaved in a sea of metal chairs.  Hey, is that Ann-Margret?  Look, it’s Jimi Hendrix seriously digging the sitar.  There’s Micky Dolenz!  Some in the audience meditate; some study the music, listening to every note of the performing ensemble classically featuring the drone of the tambura and the quick rhythmic accents from the tabla.  A few along the outskirts gyrate to the sexy Eastern beat.  One man stands alone in the congregation violently shaking his body as if casting out a demon.  Shankar looks his most virile, handsome, full of health and vitality, sitting on the stage with one leg crossed over his lap, his bare foot moving to the musical ebullience on which he is elaborating.  For twenty minutes, the energetic music builds slowly but surely, ending with a dizzying visual of Shankar’s incredible multi-strumming, impossible to the naked eye.  Yet there it is, captured on film.

Other showstoppers are Country Joe and Fish improvising on psychedelic rock, with a very young Peter Frampton playing his signature licks on guitar, and jazz fusionist Hugh Masekela performing a piece with a title translating to mean Healing Song.  Opening with African conga beats, the jazz begins as Masekela screams in what seems to be gibberish, shouting out to connect with Mother Africa or Mother God.  Who knows?  The complex percussion and congas beat fiercely while the brass clash loudly.  Then the music changes mood for serenity and calm, a young white guy in the audience smiles and nods, really digging it.

Mayberry USA

In contrast to the counterculture or the hippie movement, America was still very Squaresville.  This can be best determined by thumbing through the pages of many a high school yearbook, where guys’ hair is clean cut and above the ears and girls’ hairdos are bouffant and sprayed.  Think My Three Sons because that was America in 1967.  The pop festival makes it out like everyone was wearing long straight hair, little or no makeup, feathers, flowers, lace, granny glasses and thrift store clothes.  Long hair on guys was a sign of protest against the Vietnam War and the draft.

Another way to determine America at that time would be by turning the TV channel dial.  Number one was The Andy Griffith Show followed by The Lucy Show, both in or soon to be in color.  Color was a BIG development in TV.  The change to color film coincided with fashion combinations that a decade earlier would have turned stomachs: yellow and purple, red and orange, all colors swirled together.

Psychedelic was the word for the new fashions in swirled colors.  It also was a drug reference.  LSD—that drug that makes colors heard and sounds visible—was influential in the changing color schemes, tasteful or not.  The drug had been legal for decades and seriously used in psychotherapy especially among creative people.  Somehow it got into the public and was regularly consumed for recreation by a lot of youth in the late 1960s.  LSD wasn’t made an illegal narcotic until 1966.  But the genie was out of the bottle, so the effects were well known or going to be among America’s middle class.

Another way to fully understand 1967 would be to check the box office.  The number one movie was the violent Bonnie & Clyde.  Other top movies were not near as bloody yet reveal a growing unrest and dissatisfaction among young people with middle class mores and expectations: The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Cool Hand Luke, In the Heat of the Night.  This in combination with the number one pop music hit of 1967, To Sir With Love, cast a calm if not ordinary perspective on the times.  But another huge hit was the dark mesmerizing Ode to Billie Joe.  Along with pop hits such as Windy, I’m a Believer, and Somethin’ Stupid, the year could be deemed as ‘suppressed contradictions’ to following generations.

Kind of a drag

The whole ’60s era in modern minds is 1967.  But it wasn’t.  In many respects, 1967 wasn’t 1967.  Within the national population, a small but multiplying number of young people, mostly residing in major cities and college educated, were hip to the times and willing to experiment with drugs, follow Eastern religion, and participate in alternative lifestyles like communes or living together unmarried.

The theme of the year came, naturally, from a very important song by The Beatles: All you need is love.  And for a time, a very brief time historically speaking, quite a few young Americans were able to love their way through life.  And in so doing, they experienced total bliss, were unencumbered by responsibilities and obligations, happy just to do their own thing of which music was the major focus.  Life should be total joy.  But soon the drugs wore off, adulthood sunk in, duty called.  American hippies grew up.  Most can count their blessings they evaded addiction, overdose, arrest and prison.

Monterrey Pop indicates its own carefree moment will be brief as the camera strolls through festival booths and spots a sick, lonely and conspicuously overdressed Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones—his fate ominous.  Modern audiences watch performers like Joplin, Hendrix and members of Canned Heat from the perspective of their fate: death by overdose, death at a young age, death from foolishness, totally accidental deaths.  Whimsy, then, is best lived for a day or two, a fond experience on which to reminisce, like watching Monterrey Pop.

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This is our brains on smart phones

By now there are scads of research on how our constant use of smart phones, cell phones with internet access, are affecting our behavior, perhaps causing an addiction, and certainly transforming our family relations and society.  It may be technology overload, but many people cannot wait to read their emails or texts, delve into Facebook, or check the internet for the latest terrorist attack or national controversy.  We have been living in the Information Age for more than one generation, and there is ample research to indicate the human brain is impacted: whether it’s checking emails or news updates every few minutes while carrying on conversations over dinner or becoming engrossed in e-chat or an e-article at work … or worse while driving.

Did you see the woman who, while on her smart phone and walking a loud city street, fell right into a manhole?  What about young people listening to music from their ear buds while crossing busy streets?  God gave us several senses for a reason, if not for mere self preservation.  Maybe licenses should be issued in order to use smart phones while walking in public.  How many more people on smart phones have to injure themselves or others?

There was the news report about kids getting easily bored and restless as their parents habitually check out the latest on their smart phones, the little kids referring to them as ‘dumb phones.’  Pretty clever.  Though yet aged enough to be articulate, the kids perceived their parents’ smart phone interest as disinterest in the lives of their own children.  So when kids get to be a certain age, many parents simply give them smart phones, too.  What a big happy.

Call you back

Remember those public service announcements about fifteen years ago promoting a non-tech night or family night whereby everyone shuts off all cell phones and laptops—to spend quality time together?  What happened to those family-centered ads?  There is a generation now unaware that once there was a societal suggestion to turn off the technology especially at night.  Now kids are growing up thinking ‘the family that techs together stays together’—like our technology keeps us all connected; better connected than ever before in human history; instantaneously connected; so much preferable to the old fashioned phone call, typed or hand-written letter, or car ride to grandma.

From what I’ve seen and experienced, having the internet in the palm of my hand has had a detrimental effect on relationships.  Yet I would not want to live without it.  I can turn it off, and I do before bed.  But some people don’t turn off the internet in their hands, leaving their minds to obsess over the latest news or gossip.  Gotta know what’s going on all the time everywhere.  Kids have been known to actually sleep with a cell phone under their pillow, sometimes found to be the source of a fire in the middle of the night.

I was slow to join Facebook, not ever liking the way I look, unwilling to mug at the camera every so often to post an update.  I know I’m aging.  Why would I want everyone in the world to witness the graying, wrinkling, and additional pounds?  But the best thing for me to come from Facebook is finding old classmates and acquaintances, even reuniting with them in person.  That is indeed a fun part of our modern times.  It is particularly interesting to see that some couples who married right out of high school still celebrating anniversaries decades later.  That is quite a surprise, statistically speaking.

There are, too, the sad reports of battling cancer and other crises.  There are the ones who air dirty laundry and shouldn’t on Facebook.  There are those who simply re-post some inspirational quip or informative and cute video found online.  As a writer, that inclination to re-post what another has written or taped makes no sense.  How often have I been sucked into good writing about cancer or whatever topic only to find myself thinking after the first few sentences, “There is no way this person wrote this?”  So I scroll on in hopes of finding original posts, which is becoming rarer by the day.

Brainstorm

“60 Minutes” investigated how individual smart phone use is monitored.  Big Brother, so to speak, collects data on our news and shopping interests which we pursue on our devices—and then hooks us into similar articles to read and things to buy.  That is in the end the purpose of smart phones, loaded with information and constantly updated for which we pay virtually nothing other than a phone bill or cable/internet bundle.  We have to wade through the ads, handpicked just for us to lure us into buying stuff, in order to read what we want when we want … which is now.

Studies are showing that smart phones not only are addictive but create a short attention span, and this is exactly what students in school and college do not need.  Multi tasking is actually impossible.  The human brain handles very well only one (1) task at a time, not two, three, four or five.  The latest brain research shows that whenever we start doing more than one thing at the same time, the quality of each task is greatly reduced (talking on the phone, reading emails, typing, driving).  Instead of giving one hundred percent of our effort and attention to one task, we are divvying up the brain which itself determines the reduction: perhaps ten percent email comprehension, fifty percent conversation participation, twenty percent recipe following, and so on.  We don’t decide the quality division; the brain does.

The brain is more Buddhist than we’d like to acknowledge.  Is there really a difference between the brain and the mind?  Maybe they are the same.  In that regard, mindfulness—total concentration on one thing at a time—truly is the only way to a happy and productive life, one lived and enjoyed to full measure, every thought and especially every human emotion recalled in clarity and satisfaction.  Smart phones may be turning our nation and world into a bunch of walking zombies: people who think their brains are growing due to all the recently accumulated knowledge and stuff but are really intellectually stunted, cluttered with confusion, unable to determine truth from lies, emotionally overwhelmed, and left wondering where did all the time go.

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Mess with the Bull, you get the horns

Dear Kathy Griffin:

So, you think you went too far in the realm of macabre comedy stunts, huh?  I’ve seen funnier than Trump’s bloody decapitated head.  Yawn.  But the thing about free speech imagery is it’s best not to offend tens of millions of people, well tens of millions of Americans.  And that’s what you did, girlfriend!  As your stunt picture was taking shape, you even conceded you and your photographer would have to leave the country.  And Trump, well he has totally lost his sense of humor since becoming president.   And it’s funny, for someone who relishes free speech ad nauseam, he sure is willing to release the hounds to rip the head off anyone who would dare besmirch him.  [Pssst, “Frontline” did a recent report theorizing that Trump ran for president because of a comedic remark by President Obama who smugly declared Trump would never be called President.]

Famous comedians and entertainers like you whose purpose is to rebel rouse, and as you put it ‘push the envelope,’ should expect a one-time public scorning.  Take Joan Rivers, your dearly departed comedic mentor.  She went through an awful period in the 1980s where she could not get a job.  Her situation was not really based on her loud bawdy comedy—a little too much goading of Liz Taylor for her weight, as I recall—but more of the cut-throat entertainment industry.  The word was Johnny Carson had her banned or had put out a bad word on her, and she was history for a long time until she decided to step back into her high heels and take the bull by the horns.  She remade herself into the comic legend we fondly revere today.

Take the Dixie Chicks and that remark in front of a London audience after 9/11 when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and later Iraq—two undeclared wars that would last longer than Vietnam, still ongoing in many respects, end in countless ruined lives and deaths and lifelong misery and suffering especially among our young men, and cost about a billion dollars a day at one point, all funded off the books.  But I digress.  Before singing a Texas song, Natalie Maines remarked that the Chicks were “ashamed” the President was from Texas.

Heavens to Betsy, all hell broke out!  Remember?  First, the Dixie Chicks, the hottest country-crossover girl band ever, were banned from country radio nationwide.  Fans were tossing their CDs.  Then the hate mail and death threats came a-pouring in, among the letters one that strongly advised the lady entertainers to just ‘shut up and sing.’  They posed nude on the cover of a major news magazine, their bodies painted with the hateful words and common female epithets from those irate letters.  It was a scary time, especially for proponents of free speech.  Anti-war speech was suddenly verboten.  Lenny Bruce and George Carlin would have taken the right all the way to the Supreme Court.  Nothing to fear but fear, I can hear them say from the Great Mike in the Sky.  But … they were men, not women.  Female entertainers face a more dangerous reality when it comes to personal safety.

And let’s not forget the most important comedian blackballed from late night TV: Bill Maher—again, his ordeal having to do with post 9/11 puffed-up patriotism.  During his political comedy show’s roundtable discussion, he talked about the terrorists being called ‘cowards’ by the president.  He thought aloud that anyone who would drive a plane into a building could be called many things but not a coward—not that the terrorists were brave but that as humans universally fear death, men who would knowingly commit suicide to attack America and Americans were not cowards, in Maher’s mind meaning afraid of death.

Snap.  Oh how our national outrage hit the fan!  Maher was out on his can within hours.  His show was funny, thought provoking and cutting edge.  But our nation at the time was sorely wounded and humiliated and was not about to let some so-called comic slander America or our President’s use of wordery like referring to terrorists as cowards.  The good news is Bill Maher returned in full form where he belongs … on cable TV, where he can say whatever the ef he wants.  And I believe he never apologized for trying to correct the adjective used by President Bush when describing suicidal terrorists.  Did anyone ever get the point that Maher was not taking up for the terrorists or praising them or calling them brave?  No, no one ever considered his thought on the subject of word use and meaning.  The network suits and political pressure cut off his head, so to speak.

I know what you were probably thinking when you participated in that gruesome photo stunt.  Surely you and your photographer saw the cover of Der Spiegel shortly after Trump took over as president?  The image on the German political magazine was of an animated Trump holding the bloody head cut off the Statue of Liberty.  It was a political statement, perhaps not satirical but a realistic European view of the new U.S. President, their concerns that his leadership may threaten democracy in America and abroad.  Very little uproar came from that image, one that surely went viral.

You were thinking along those lines, right?  Maybe trying to say something about Trump has gone so far in his agenda that he’s setting himself up for assassination, or that a lot of people worldwide would like to see him dead?  So you used the image of a beheading because that’s what the terrorists have been doing for years now, uploading  each one online?  That our free speech rights and guaranteed freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are being jeopardized by the Trump agenda?  Am I getting anything close to the intent of your editorial photo, not unlike an editorial cartoon?

Well, most people took one look at your picture holding a fake bloody Trump head and immediately freaked out.  It was too real, especially in these dangerous times.  It’s a real possibility that many people the world over have envisioned: Trump’s assassination, his death perhaps in the hope and manner of the Middle East terrorists.  Americans can take a good joke, bawdy, brazen, truthful, politically honest and culturally insightful.  Perhaps your political imagery should have included a short comment so everyone would have understood your point in such a photo.   Instead, you just shocked the hell ought of everyone, well mostly Americans.

There is a price to pay for free speech, isn’t there?  Everyone isn’t going to like everything you say and do.  But you still have the right to make a political statement, violently bloody or not, just like Der Spiegel does every week over there in Germany, several knocking Trumpian philosophy.  For now, take a break from the comedy circuit.  Lay low, just for a little while, like many of your fellow comedians of the past.  [Oh, I forgot all about Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem all off key and crudely at a televised major league baseball game.]  When it comes to entertainers, the American public is fickle and in time always forgiving (if not forgetting).

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God to Earth, calling all mankind

Why?

Who’s that?

Did ya hear that voice from up on high?

Why?

Lord, that You?

I AM THAT I AM.  Now answer, why?

We praise You Almighty God!!  We praise Your holy name!!

We are Your most unworthy subjects …

You know who I AM.  Answer my question: Why?

Lord, we are sore afraid of Thee.

I’ll ask yet again: Why?

Lord God, what ever do You mean asking us why?

Why?

What why?

Why?

[What in the world is He referring to?  Why what?  He won’t tell us what He’s asking about.  How we s’posed to answer lest we know precisely the question?  Ignert.]

Lord the Holiest of Holy, we mere humans, Your faithful servants, do not understand Your most wise question Ye asketh.

Why?

Perchance You are inquiring into all the wars and mass killings mostly in the name of You, dear God?  Lord, You know more of these matters than we humans.

I created you, each and every one.  But only man knows why he continues to destroy My children, all of you brothers and sisters.

Yea, Lord, we are sore ashamed ….

Stop!

[Cut out the Puritan talk, Americans.  You’re offending Himmmm!]

Lord and Savior of the world and our eternal souls, please help us understand Your question so we best might come up with an answer, something You might understand.

Do you want to know why we continue to make war, kill our fellow man, rape our fellow woman, raise our children in hate—all along dishonoring Your holy name?

As such.  Now, why?

Uh, er, ahem, You really got us on a bad day here now Lord.  We’ve been so awfully busy, see, watching one atrocity after another from all over the world, some of us cleaning ’em up, many of us—no, most of us really—praying and a-praying to You dear God for all the horrific bloodshed to just stop.  You see our hearts are pure and our minds constantly strive toward peaceful solutions.

Man’s natural state is peace, not war.  Yet you reject living among My beautiful creation with peace and love in your hearts.  I only ask why.

Lord, that’s a toughie, we’re just gonna be honest with You.

[Hey, what can we tell Him?  He’s obviously not gonna leave us alone.

He already knows what we’ll say and then turn it around like we really want to destroy the planet.

Yeah, that’s just like Him, sitting up there in heaven, completely silent for millennia, looking down on us mere humans trying to survive our miserable lives in this hellhole of a planet.

Like we like spending centuries feudin’ and fightin’ and killin’.

Like we really like watchin’ it on TV and in movies again and again and again.

Yeah!  I bet He’s not even the real God.

Yeah!!!!]

The Lord Your God is not satisfied with your answers … or thinking.  I’ll ask you only one last time: Why?

[You tell Him.

No, you tell Him.

No, you.

No, you!]

God, please forgive us our sins and trespasses as we forgive those who sin against us.  Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil …

Man is responsible for all evil in the world.

Yeah, but YOU gave us free will!  What did You expect us to do?

Be happy.

Happy?!  Are You crrrazy?  On this planet?  With all the strange people we have to deal with?!!

First, You gave each of us different skin and hair and lips and noses.  We don’t even look alike unless we’re from the same family and race.

Then You allow the masses to grow all over the world, knowing full well that some of Your very own creations would desire to play God themselves and create rules and regulations and religions to control everyone else living in their territory.

Yeah, this whole mess on earth is ALL YOUR FAULT, God!!!!

You shouldn’t have ever given us free will.  You should have made each of us the same.  You should have put something in our brains to make us love one another.

You should have made us JUST LIKE YOU.

But You didn’t, did You, Gawd?

I bet He’s not even real.

Yeah!!!!

Prove You’re really God.

What is the deepest desire of all mankind, my beloved creation?

Peace on earth … right NOW!

You got it.

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Schools should educate mind, body & spirit

On the issue of separation of church and state, I’ve gone back and forth.  As a kid I was for it then got religious as a teen and was vehemently against it.  Later as a liberal young adult fresh out of college, I was again fervently for the complete separation, never foreseeing a day I’d change my mind yet again.  I wholeheartedly believed in the constitutional Framers’ wisdom and intelligence to keep religious beliefs and practices out of the business of government.  But now as I’ve grown much older and perhaps wee bit wiser, I see the error of what has always been an implied constitutional right.  The philosophical epiphany came to me while spending years teaching in the public schools.

Long before I even started first grade, Madalyn Murray O’Hair had gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure American children in tax-supported schools would never be imposed upon to hear, speak or see anything remotely religious and in particular Christian.  In 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in her favor.  Murray v. Curlett officially ended mandatory school prayer in public schools across the nation.

The new law seemed cut and dry.  But when I was in school in the 1970s, prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance were spoken before pep rallies and student assemblies.  Our Congress prays before sessions.  So something about the ‘separation of church and state’ seemed hypocritical in my mind.  Across the land there were always individual kids and parents who spoke up against prayer in school and were equally pushed back by die-hard supporters of school prayer, citing community standards.  In those days most communities across America were Christian.

Mixed up

Back in my reporting days, I sought to find how small communities dealt with racial integration—because that was a bygone era I knew nothing about.  Integration began with the public schools.  What I discovered was the black schools had something called ‘chapel,’ a morning ritual that involved all students and faculty congregating in an auditorium and listening to the principal sort of preach before each school day.  What the principals told their students was change was coming.  They foresaw the day of complete racial integration, this before a lot of whites would come to terms with the new social reality.  The adults I interviewed who went to black-only schools spoke of total pride in their separate education, from shining floors and buildings maintained by meticulous custodians to educated teachers with degrees from some of the best universities in the country, not necessarily in Texas or the South.  And their teachers encouraged them to reach for the stars, to feel God’s love and support, and always to stay close to Him in prayer and deed.

But when the public schools integrated during the 1960s and ’70s, black kids were not only frightened to start attending what used to be the ‘white schools’ (because white families were never going to allow their kids to attend former black-only school buildings) but they spoke of a disorientation—of the soul.   They believe the restriction of school prayer, or chapel, was the beginning of community breakdown.  See, the white schools pretty much removed any type of ritual prayer service along with Bibles and crosses from the classrooms, even references of annual December shows as Christmas concerts.  So a whole culture and generation were left to fend for themselves spiritually, perhaps at a time when they needed it most, while attending a new public school system.

Roll Over Tom Jefferson

It’s been decades since all American public schools were integrated and at the same time prayer—even a biblical quote or spoken positive spiritual affirmation—removed.  Today most of the country would agree our public schools are broken.  But a nation’s schools are a reflection of its society, what we are willing to put up with.  As a daily mandatory ‘prayer and preachin’’ were removed from the schoolhouse, so were sincere religious practices from many homes and the family unit.  And that family decision had nothing to do with what was not taught in the schools.  Americans changed.  Churchgoing and practicing a specific denomination or doctrine are not important to many if not most people nowadays.

And nowadays we are accustomed to school shootings and student violence, even student suicide.  We know this was incomprehensible during the days of ‘Leave-it-to-Beaver’ public education.  Parents of all races are not guaranteed their children will come home from school every single day unharmed one way or another.  But they are guaranteed religious and spiritual teachings, prayer, and readings will not be permitted at school.

This is NOT what the men who wrote our nation’s Constitution had in mind.  They were Christian, but they were secular Christians, highly-educated products of the Enlightenment.  They probably never thought this nation would be anything but Christian.  They simply did not want religious ideals to dominate a democracy, they of the 18th century knowing full well of England’s bloody past when it came to ruling Catholics and Protestants.  They did not want any American citizens to literally ‘lose their heads’ because they were of one faith or the other—forget world religions, multiculturalism, and perceptions of African Americans as not fully human.

The intent of separation of church and state could not have meant loss of faith altogether.  And that is what has happened in our public schools, society, communities, and even families.

Any philosophy I have about teaching is centered on first recognizing human beings are not just and only body and mind … but also spirit.  If a portion of Americans do not believe this—and I acknowledge the growing number of atheists and accept their belief in nothing to believe—they are within their rights.  But I have come to see most children do have a need for nurturing of the heart and soul.  They need constant reassurance that comes from feeling loved, wanted and accepted and that their school is a community united in the well being of everyone.  This is what ‘chapel’ provided long ago in the black-only schools.

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From Obamacare to don’t care

What must the world think of Americans now since reneging on expanded public healthcare—and once again going alone from what works in every modern nation on earth?  They can think what I’ve come to know: Americans do not like taking care of other people—and by that I mean they only want to take care of themselves and their own families.  In fairness, I may be too hard on my countrymen.  After all, the rest of the world really can’t think of Americans as the unkindest people on earth.  Americans are usually first to donate to world catastrophes like typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes and famines.  We probably raise more money and send more tax dollars than any other country in that regard.  Didn’t we practically rebuild Europe and Japan after World War II?  What about all the global goodwill from our Peace Corps volunteers?  Isn’t that the kind of altruism for which the world knows us, holding Americans in the highest esteem, the very best of humanity?

Chaps and spurs

Where did Americans get the idea that everyone should just take care of his own?  Well, from wearing blinders for one thing and never seeing how nonwhite people are treated in our own country and have been mistreated here for centuries: Africans, Native Americans, Asians, Italians, the Irish, Jews, Eastern Europeans, Muslims, Mexicans, etc.  But mostly, I have a hutch, this ideal of proud American self sufficiency evolved during the late 20th century … from watching TV shows like “The Rifleman,” “Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza,” “Big Valley” and “Little House on the Prairie.”

America is the only country with a cowboy heritage.  And we’ve romanticized our pioneering Western spirit to the point that fiction has become reality in our minds.  None of us, our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents really know how life was lived way back when, how men treated women, how parents treated children, how communities of mostly one race and religion treated others who did not fit in physically or socially.  We don’t know why Wyatt Earp hung up his guns in public places.

One thing we can assume is within the hundreds of small rural communities that cropped up across the American Western frontier post Civil War, people cared for one another.  If one family lost their home to a fire, the community probably helped rebuild and donated clothing, food and furniture.  Seems like our kin would have done that.  Seems like that’s what the Good Book tells us to do, to help our fellow man especially in time of need.

Modern times

There are a few reasons why Donald Trump won and Hillary Clinton lost.  One was Obamacare.  Democrats liked it; Republicans hated it.  Universal healthcare, like any policy President Obama tried to create, was blocked by Republicans.  President Obama had to take his healthcare policy all the way to the Supreme Court.  The Court found that health insurance was a right of every American citizen, not just for the gainfully employed.  So, expanded Medicaid was crammed down the throats of every American.  Americans don’t like being told what to do now.

From small business owners to young single adults, millions of Americans did not like Obamacare and its punitive clause to collect money from anyone not insured one way or another.  It did not matter that every single doctor, hospital, pharmaceutical and insurance company, and the entire medical profession supported the new law because it meant healthier people through immediate diagnoses and treatment—and maybe assured salary and career future.

Typical of Americans, the good ol’ days was romanticized as the better situation: when anyone who could afford insurance had it and the rest could just rely on Medicaid—which we all have to pay into anyway.  Self reliance and rugged individualism, that’s what built this country!

T’ain’t true!  What built our country was Americans working together, multicultural Americans working together, being allowed to work together.  Having strong charismatic leaders, more father than friend, and one goal at a time built this nation, made America the greatest place on earth.

The world probably still thinks America is great, probably believes in America more than Americans do themselves these days.  Our history is unique, yes built on self sufficiency and reliability and determination and total liberty.  But our nation was not built on mass disdain toward the down-trodden and underprivileged—the poorest, weakest and sickest among us.  Whatever their demographic number—10 percent, 25 percent, half the nation and more if we include the over-50 crowd—a nation is known for how it treats its own people.  That’s certainly how America judges all the other countries—often why we get involved overseas, to make things right, make a difference, improve the lives of our fellow man.  It’s the American way.

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Of Holocaust and street riots: What’s wrong with people?

The last week of April brought together two horrible memories in modern human history.  One was Holocaust remembrance week, the other the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots.  Both events have one thing in common: mob mentality.

The Holocaust didn’t just happen overnight.  It can’t be blamed singularly on Hitler either.  For centuries, before and after Christianity, Jews were a persecuted people.  Migrating to Europe and regions that would form Germany met with even more persecution.  For generations Jews could only hold certain jobs.  Non Jews would not associate, trade, or do business with Jews.  Sound familiar in our own American history?

Given where I grew up in Texas, I have known very few people who were Jewish.  One was through college, a piano teacher from Queens New York.  I have been privileged to have met a couple of Holocaust survivors.  One was a Jewish Christian; another was speaking on a lecture tour, his premise about how hate turns into evil.  He was 15 when his family was sent to concentration camps.  He still bore a tattoo of numbers on his forearm.  He said the Force put it there.  When he was 19, his camp was liberated.  He ran to a nearby house, was fed soup and allowed to shower.  He weighed 80 pounds and did not recognize the old man staring back at him in the mirror.  He ended up coming to Dallas and became prosperous in the scrap metal business, a trade his Nazi captors taught him as he had to take apart Allied planes downed by the Germans.

Words of hate

There was a phrase, a racial epithet, spoken throughout Europe that as a Texan I had never heard: dirty Jew.  I cannot recall any member of my family or friends ever saying it … or for that matter even the word ‘Jew’ other than quoting the Bible or speaking of Jesus.  We did not live in or near a known Jewish community.  Our only reference was from TV shows like “All in the Family,” Jewish comedians, movies or news from major cities like New York.

I grew up in a part of Texas where Jews were never spoken against but were never known, too.  They were a cultural mystery.  Only after high school did I realize there were a couple of classmates who were Jewish and kept it to themselves as the rest of us openly celebrated Christmas with presents and music and loving sentiments.

In recent years I learned of the centuries-old offensive phrase ‘dirty Jew.’  I could not imagine why anyone would say it or think it.  From my background, Jewish people were never ‘dirty.’  What could that have meant?  What’s the reference?  Why the word ‘dirty,’ meaning filthy?  Why that judgment against those people, a religious people, a righteous biblical people?  Why was it such a common thought throughout Europe and in some large multi-ethnic American cities with a notable Jewish population?

The only people who made Jews filthy were Nazi captors in the concentration camps where the only shower Jews may have been provided was a gas chamber to kill them.  Now who were the real dirty people—with ugly thoughts, filthy mouths, stained heart and soul?

There is a phrase, a racial epithet, spoken throughout the United States, maybe more so in the South.  I’ve heard it all my life.  I have family and friends who still use the word, the description of a people.  It is offensive to a lot of us in the middle-aged generation.  Yet the word is a source of pride somehow among some black youth and had become a notable lyric in rap songs, however still bleeped from public air waves on radio.

When the Los Angeles street riots happened in 1992, following a not guilty verdict of white police officers who beat a black man under arrest, Americans were shocked.  And that would have included me back then.  Turned out, only white America was surprised.  The black American experience is so different, so Bizarro World from white America, that it is and remains unbelievable.  Why would blacks riot, shatter glass on cars and business strips and then loot and set them on fire?

For three days white America could not understand, called it a shame, a pity, very sad.  Blacks understood.  They may not have a Holocaust tattoo on their forearms.  But they are born with a racial designation that has kept them down throughout American history—and many still insist keeps them down to this day.

Why can’t we all just get along?

Racial and ethnic segregation is created by the people in power.  It is innate and cannot be helped.  It comes from the brain, the primitive part of the human brain, the fight-or-flight part of the brain, the part that is fully developed in early childhood and never really changes despite higher education and continuous addressing of and focus on the issue especially at work and by law.

To most Americans, Los Angeles meant Hollywood, Beverly Hills, the movie and TV industry, posh, wealth, glamour.  For decades it’s been portrayed as the best America has to offer: sun and fun, money and privilege, youth and promise, clean and beautiful.  The other side of L.A. was never featured in the movies or TV shows because America did not want to see it.  Maybe I’m talking 1950s America.  But the same could be said of 1980s America.  What we put before our eyes on TV or the movie screen was what the people in power wanted to see.

Twenty-five years ago I saw the L.A. riots through live TV coverage.  I’ll never forget ‘rioters’ attempting to kill people, in particular that long-haired man dragged out of his delivery truck and smashed repeatedly with cinder blocks.  He could have been killed.  And we would have witnessed a real murder on live TV: blacks killing a white man.

Then a year or so later, we saw the trial of those caught on tape during the riots trying to stomp that man to death.  And we had to listen to the defense use ‘mob mentality’ to explain how the human brain reacts in such conditions: that people caught up in a raging riot just go along with whatever the majority is doing–and in that regard are not responsible for their actions.  Sound familiar in German history of the 1930s?

Anybody believe this?  The L.A. jury did.  The rioters were found not guilty of attempted murder.  Even more incredible is that the man they tried to kill—seen on tape just like the Rodney King police beating—forgave his assailants in the courtroom.  He held no grudge.  He remembers absolutely nothing of his brutal beating and near death.  Unrecalled memory is his blessing from God.

For the rest of us who saw it and remember, there is but one solution.  The solution is: Think before acting.  Don’t we teach children this lesson:  If your buddy is throwing a brick on another guy’s head, would you pick up a brick and do the same thing?

From Nazi Germany to modern-day American street riots, people have the power of personal responsibility.  We can blame people and circumstances for perceived miserable lives: from parents to teachers, schools, bosses, society, guns, gangs, drugs, police, racism, bigotry, poverty and prison. Yet there is no escaping the fact that each of us holds the power to control our tongues and thoughts, attitudes and behavior … before a hateful majority rules.