21 DAYS

…the Bleacherman has entered the stadium…

 The Boston Marathon bombing tore through our collective soul on April 15, 2013.

 Twenty-one days have passed since that day of tragedy.

 The time for anger is now over.  The time to be afraid has ended.  The time to seek retribution and revenge has passed.  The time for introspection and reflection has begun. 

 And that is exactly what I have started.  I have begun the process of thinking about what just happened, why it happened and how we as a nation responded to the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.

 With a good cigar and a snifter filled with cognac in hand, I leaned back in my chair and quickly and painfully realized that this country’s often stated belief that we are a Nation adorned in the values and ethics of human rights is at best, an act of self-serving communal delusion. When it comes to the principles and morals articulated in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, our overall attitude reflects a heavy influence of both hypocrisy and schizophrenia. 

 On one day we demand the protections afforded by the Constitution’s Second Amendment; yet on the following day, we demand the almost total disregard of the same Constitution’s protections articulated in the Fifth and Sixth Amendment (Miranda ruling.)

 This has to stop.  Protections afforded by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights must not be subject to the prevailing winds of a political agenda which changes week to week.  One cannot honor one amendment while holding another in contempt.  If we do so, then all that we say we are is a lie.  We are lying to ourselves and we are lying to those who admire our constitutional form of government.

 Too often than not, political opportunists force us into a rabbit hole that tries to circumvent the vaulted principles that we say are the core of our soul.  When it serves us politically, we as a Nation are quick to try to find an end run around Constitutional protections and guarantees.

 Immediately following the capture of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Fox News, never an organization that hesitates to pound on the drums of hate , anti-Islamic rhetoric and the call for war, held true to its corrupted soul and began belching one accusatory epitaph after another.   They were quick and relentless in advocating for a complete denial of constitutional rights for the suspect in custody.  They called for, among the usual host of their home-grown insanities, denying the accused his Miranda Rights, the use of waterboarding and in the name of complicity and conspiracy advocated the bombing of both Iran or Chechnya or any country not liked by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.

 But it didn’t end there. In the Fox New World, hate is infectious and spreads everywhere like an out of control virus. Nothing was sacred, nothing innocent enough to escape the Vomits of Wrath disgorged by Fox News commentators and pundits.  Some wanted to deny all students of the Islamic religion access to US colleges.  Some rallied to wiretap all mosques.   Ann Coulter, supported by her boy toy Sean Hannity, wanted to jail women who choose to wear a Hijab on an American street.  What’s next?  Jailing Jewish men for wearing those “funny hats” on the Sabbath?  Or should we jail the Timothy McVays of the world for driving pickup trucks and vans?

 What drives these people?  Paranoia?  Xenophobic hysteria? Religious hatred?  Ratings?

 I can’t speak for the motivations of others but there was a time long ago when my soul marched to the beat of a similar revenge, narrow-minded, self-serving drumbeat.  I vocally and vociferously echoed similar hate-filled emotions.  I believed that there were bad guys out there who threatened my well-being and my way of life and if caught, deserved neither constitutional protection nor legal compassion. 

 My outrage manifested into a malignancy in 1977.  The place was the township of Skokie, a small community located just north of the city of Chicago.  At that time, Skokie was the home to one out of every six Jewish survivor of the German holocaust.  Many had immigrated to the United States expecting to live in peace and free from religious persecution. 

 And then, once again, came the Nazis.  This time it was the American Nazi party that claimed a First Amendment right to bring their vile hatred and anti-Semitism to the streets of Skokie. They believed that they had the right to confront those that had already suffered more than their share of pain and misery.

 I was horrified by their gall and sickened by their intent.  And I was not alone in my outrage and disgust.  In my mind, this had nothing to do with First Amendment rights.  This was the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater.  The Nazis’ desires represented an act of pure malice.  They wanted to hurt and offend. 

 I was outraged and demanded that the City deny the Nazis the needed authorizations to hold their march.  My anger was intensified by the fact that the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) took up the Nazi cause and defended their right to march and vomit their malignant vile where ever they wanted to.

 “Fuck the Constitution!” I yelled.

 I was in tears.  I was shaking with rage.  I was ashamed.  How could this happen again?  How could this be?  How can America be so tolerant?  Do we not remember what these people represent?    Do we not still bear the scars of the Nazi concentration camps?  Is freedom this tolerant?  Do we not remember Kristallnacht?  Could such tolerance lead to a resurgence of the American Nazi Party and the German Bund?  Will I have to wear an armband again identifying me as a Jew?

 Ultimately the ACLU and the Nazis won their right to march but when all the shouting ended there was no march.  Some blamed internal conflicts within the American Nazi party while others pointed to the threat of violence by groups opposed to what the Nazis represented.

 Many years later, when I was able to distance my mind from my emotions was I able to fully understand that the freedom of speech and other constitutionally guaranteed rights must be defended even when the beneficiaries of that defense are far from admirable individuals.   We as a Nation must never replace justice with the impulse for revenge.  Our Bill of Rights must be universally applied and must never be influenced by politics or current events.

 Never has this been more important than today when the genesis of intellectual lynch mobs seem to be stirring over the fate of the surviving member of the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing.   The ugly hand of passion again blinds us and is sending us down a path that in the future we will surely come to regret.

 Twenty-one days have passed since the flood of emotions overwhelmed our Nation.  We shall never forget what happened in Boston nor will we.  But in this time of reflection and introspection, we must never lose sight of who and what we are as a Nation.  Democracy must always be protected.  Once we start playing word games with the Constitution and find cracks in the wall of protections afforded s by our Bill of Rights, then and only then can the terrorists claim victory.

 …the Bleacherman has left the stadium…

WE ARE A NATION OF VIOLENCE AND RAGE

…the Bleacherman has entered the stadium…

After the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings had been mercifully captured, I quickly realized that the time had come for me to sit down over a large glass of wine and a half filled bong and try to make sense of what was happening around me.  The world that I once knew seemed to be changing; not evolving and growing into a better world but devolving, deteriorating into a microcosm dominated by violence and hate.  It was easy for me to see that what I was witnessing was not the America the Beautiful I once proudly sang to with a voice resonating in pride and appreciation.  America that I was now living in was America the Violent and the purple mountain majesties above the fruited plains are now nothing more than Killing Fields flooded in blood and did not warrant song or praise.

From bombs at the Boston Marathon, to the tragedy at Sandy Hill, to the shootings at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and a massacre at a Congresswoman’s public outreach meeting in Tucson, Arizona; rarely a day goes by where a newspaper’s headline or a breaking news report on television does not ring with accounts of innocent people being killed somewhere in our country. 

We have become a nation surrounded and immersed in a culture where stories of malice and rage are commonplace and are as ubiquitous in our lives as are traffic and weather reports. We have traded in our civility and gentility for a core personality dominated by hateful and nasty behavior.

Everywhere you look, you will find the contemptible and the despicable.   It is in our movies, video games and dominates the language used by our politicians and political pundits. The internet with its veil of anonymity fosters outrageous and egregious rhetoric that shakes us into a sobering realization that America has become its own vulgar and vile (and embarrassing) reality television show.

America has become a culture where benevolence and compassion have been downgraded to nothing more than a historical footnote. We have become a society that has grown numb to the grotesque and unconcerned about the immoral. 

We build higher gates to protect our homes, hire more police to protect our streets and find more open space to bury our dead. But we have been unwilling to mitigate our newly cultured dependence on violence.  We love it.  It sells movie tickets, cars, foods, fashions and even perfume and cologne.

I am a baby boomer and I grew up in an environment where the hero that I watched on television or saw live and in large, living color on the movie theater screen had to carry a gun or some other weapon that killed the bad guys that seemed to be lurking in every shadow, in every town and on every street corner.

The good guys were always easy to identity.  They were white skinned and all wore white hats or Armani hand tailored space-suits or adorned in finely tailored, narrow-lapelled sports jackets with thin ties.  The good guys were always well groomed, never sweated or got dirty and had teeth molded to perfection by God and Colgate.  The good guys went to church and saluted the flag.  They defended us from Satan, Stalin, Goldfinger and Indians with painted faces. 

The bad guys were always dirty and disheveled.  They were often men of color. They were mean; they hated dogs and never ate apple pie nor loved their mothers.  They were always leaders of gangs or empires of evil.  They always died a violent death; the more violent the death the more loudly we clapped and the more stale popcorn we consumed.

We were taught that violence was necessary.  Violence was not only necessary it was moral and ethical and blessed by God himself when used by people of virtue to kill people of dishonor and evil.  

We all fell in love with guns.  We begged our parents to buy us toy guns and toy soldiers and we waged war against the yellow-skinned Japs and Krauts and shot the bad Indians who were trying to stop us from stealing their lands. We killed to keep the bad Emperor Ming, the Merciless, isolated on his planet Mongo.  We needed ray guns and laser guns to combat flying Monkeys.   We needed the power of a super being to keep the capitalists and their mining machines from exploiting the land of the People of Pandora.  We needed secret decoding rings to keep Captain Midnight safe so he could encourage us to drink more of democracy-saving Ovaltine.

Violence and malice are now as American as a Norman Rockwell painting.  They have become a part of our nation’s landscape.  They have become the core root of our language; dominating our conversations and actions. 

It has become harder to distinguish the good guys from the bad because the line that separates them has been blurred by the failure of society to defend and define that what is righteous and that what is right.

We will continue this war between good and bad and we will continue to arm the old, the young, the mentally unstable and the criminal.  We will let them have true weapons of war; rifles that fire hundreds of rounds of ammunition per minutes and we will let them have magazine clips that can hold hundreds of rounds of bullets.  We will let people buy weapons of death in the anonymity of the internet because it is more important to arm people then determine who should be armed

And when these weapons are used on innocent children we will shrug our shoulders and point to a Constitution and say but its legal….

…the Bleacherman has left the stadium…

YOM HASHOAH: HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 5733 (2013)

On March 20, 1933, Germany opened the Dachau Concentration Camp.  Eighteen days later, the German government enacted the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which required all government offices to immediately “retire” any civil servant who was not of pure Aryan decent. 

The genesis of the Holocaust had begun.

Eighty years later, the blowing wind of time slowly steals our memories, dulls our anger and pushes the horrors of the genocide further beyond our cognition.  Too many children growing up in America today have no real idea as to what the Holocaust was all about.  Despite our best efforts, today’s youth grow up in a fog of ignorance and fall victim to the lies conjured up by the Holocaust deniers and other anti-Semites who wish to continue the attack on the Jewish people.

(At times like this, I wonder if General Eisenhower, upon first discovering the extermination camps,  could read the tea leaves of the future when he ordered photographers to film and record every gruesome detail of the liberated camps.  Did he know the time erases all memories?  No matter how terrible and haunting they are; people forget, living witnesses die and revisionists rise to change the truth of history.)

Today we mourn those that died.  Too many of them are just part of a number.  Too many of them are just a picture found in the ashes; an image without a name or a history.  

We all have an inner voice that wants to be reassured that somehow our names and deeds will be remembered in the future.  We will have a known history.  Our past existence will be more than a name carved into a gravestone that sits on top of an ignored and forgotten grave.

Many years ago, following the horrors in Rwanda, I wrote the following poem.  It is as valid today as it was seventy years ago.

Why?  Why is it still valid?

CHANT OF YESTERDAY’S REQUIEM

Rwanda

 Sewn into the seams of the wind

I hear the screaming sound of betrayal,

it rings like a requiem –

            a cross between a plea for mercy

            and a schoolmaster’s scolding.

The intonations are all too familiar,

they have been cried before;

all too many times last times before.

 

 Anger saturates my mind

like used car ads fill the Sunday classifieds,

I remember the promises that were once made-

the assurances that were once given-

the prophecies that were proclaimed by the wisest of wise

who said this would never happen again.

 

Yes, they snickered

crossing their fingers behind their backs,

there will still be madmen

and there will still be the tyrants and despots

who will climb upon their thrones

and masturbate their power.

But it was assured and promised

that a vaccine to the insanity of war

had been found and administered to all.

This kind of thing that I fear,

they told me,

would never happen again.

 

So what is wrong, I ask;

pointing to the horizon

that is filled once again with a wind

that carries the smell of death,

the smell of war,

the smell of promises ignored?

Once again

the sounds vomited by lunatics of domination

surge up from the bowels of the gutter

to infect throngs of innocent and ignorant.

Once again

despots and dictators

and people of hate

            immune to the inoculations

            and morals of humanity

call attention to the differences of man

and demand extinction of those deemed the other kind -

all in the name of a common and greater good.

 

 

Once again

a race of people

stand on the plank of extinction

as the world goes on with its business

too busy and self focused

to lift a finger of concern.

The war drums beat,

weapons are made ready

and our children are lined up

and programmed

to march off, once again,

to die in the name of war.

JUSTICE PERVERTED BY MONEY AND FAME

…the Bleacherman has entered the stadium…

When the great legal minds of American jurisprudence portray justice as being blind and impartial, I can only laugh.  Nothing can be further from the truth especially here in Los Angeles County where there is nothing blind, impartial or equal about the way justice is administered.

Here, in a land where fame and fortune is everything, the process of fair and equal justice has been changed to a judicial system that is specifically designed and slanted to favor and even protect the community’s elite and famous. In the shadows of the renowned Hollywood sign, for the privilege few, an encounter with the county’s legal process, when all is said and done, turns out to be nothing more than a mere nuisance.

Sentences imposed by judges are often the low range of recommended options and regardless of the length of a levied punishment, the real consequences of judicial chastisement for Hollywood’s elite translates into nothing more than a few hours of acting humble and remorseful while sequestered in a safe room in the County Jail.  There they wait for the cover of darkness in order to be released in the dead of night so as to avoid the all-seeing eye of the tabloid paparazzi.   

It seems that for the Hollywood celebrity, the Los Angeles County jail system is always too crowded to afford adequate and appropriate housing and the Sheriff’s Department has no choice but to release convicts of fortune and distinction after serving only a very small fraction of their sentence.  The rest of the not so fortunate, not so powerful schlubs of the county are afforded no similar opportunity and I would venture to say serve a much higher percentage of their sentence incarcerated in the Sheriff’s gulag than their rich counter-parts do. 

This is a travesty of justice.

How does one justify or even explain how Bobby Brown, a celebrity of sorts, was sentenced to 55 days in jail for a DUI conviction yet served only a total of 8 hours of imprisonment.  Such a sham is neither a punishment nor a deterrent.  Does that same algorithm, which freed Mr. Brown after serving only one-half of one percent of his sentence, apply to all people convicted of DUI and sentenced to 55 days in jail?  Or is that punishment reserved for the only for the celebrity and the rich and powerful? 

A more offending mockery of the judicial process is how the courts have interacted with Lindsay Lohan.  It seems that star-struck judges show the young lady a leniency and tolerance very seldom practiced with the county’s ordinary citizen.  Ms. Lohan has made it a career of parading in front of the paparazzi as she keeps playing the (very willing) judicial system like a fiddle. 

Lady Justice, in theory, is supposed to blind, impartial and fair in its application, administration and adjudication.  Nowhere is there a constitutional foundation for a tiered system of justice where celebrities and the rich and powerful are treated one way and the rest of society treated another.

End the insult.  End the inequality.  Put the justice back into the judicial system. 

…the Bleacherman has left the stadium…

 

 

 

ISRAELI – PALESINIAN PEACE: JUST A FANTASY

…the Bleacherman has entered the stadium…

With President Obama making an obligatory trip to the Mideast, the talk of peace between the people of Israel and the people of Palestine fills the airwaves and gives cable news pundits license to expound one worthless theory after another on why peace is illusive.  Many point their blame fingers at the Palestinians, others at the Israelis.  In the end, no one wants to get in front of a camera and tell it like it is.  Truth is as elusive as peace in the Middle East. 

There will never – ever! – be a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.   Any talk of such is simply fantasy and ignores the realities of history and present day politics.

Taking from the movie A Few Good Men, the truth of why there will never be peace in the Middle East is something everyone knows but finds hard to talk about and accept. 

So here it is.  Can you handle the truth?

Well, the heartbreaking truth and killer to all idealists, is simple.  None of the major players in the region really wants peace.  To them it serves no purpose. Over the years, these regional powers have benefited far too much from the status quo.  Why stop a good thing?

Look hard enough with open eyes and one can easily see the reality of which I speak.  The world can continue to send past and present Presidents, Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, Cabinet Secretaries, long legged secretaries and rock starts to the Holy Land but in the end, the status quo, which is nothing more than the absence of war broken by brief tenures of hostilities, is to the major players a much better, more powerful and geopolitical more beneficial scenario than living in an era of peaceful tranquility.

In the Middle East, hatred has become a natural and controlling part of the human psyche.  Each side has been condemning the other for so long that neither knows how to stop the bitter and accusatory rancor.  Each side has fought for so long that neither side knows what to do if peace would break out and affect the region.

Let’s look at the realities:

            1/   When the UN granted Israel independence, the Arab nations that surrounded Palestine urged the population to withdraw from areas designated as belonging to the new Jewish state.  While there were violent acts of population expulsions on both sides, history clearly shows that the majority of the Palestinians left their homes and lands voluntarily; deciding to listen to the pleas of the surrounding Arab nations.

            2/   The surrounding Arab nations, including Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia promised that one day (in the very near future) the Jews would be driven into the sea and the Palestinians would be able to return (Right of Return doctrine) to their homes. 

            3/   Every new Palestinian generation has been promised that no peace with Israel will be negotiated without the Right of Return included as part of the terms of this new peace. The Palestinian people bought this bullshit boasting completely and still believe that they will one day return to their homes in Haifa, Jaffa, and the likes.

            4/   For some more radical elements of the Arab world, not only do they seek the enforcement of the right of return but also demand the complete destruction of the State of Israel.  This is not idle talk; the killing of the Jewish population is part of their Charters (see Hamas and Hezbollah).

With positions such as this, how does one negotiate peace?  With Hamas and Hezbollah seeking the elimination of the Jewish State; just who does Israel try to negotiate with?  If the Palestinian Authority offers a more moderate framework for peace, will the radical elements abide by the treaty?  If not, why have a treaty that has no merit and guarantees?  Why waste time with political theater?

            5/   With Arab radical elements embedded in both Gaza and the West Bank, the last thing Israel would want to do is to cede land for peace.  Can you imagine the chaos of a rocket attack launched at Tel Aviv from land that is only a few miles away?

            6/   Radical elements within the Israeli constituency see the West Bank as being part of the State of Israel.  Will these elements abandon their enclaves in the name of a lasting peace?

            7/   Given the fact that the world did nothing to protect Jewish holy sites during the period of 1948 through 1968 (the Wailing Wall, the most holy site in the Jewish religion, was a donkey stable);  does anyone think that Israel can trust maintenance, security and access to the holy sites in East Jerusalem to anyone but themselves?

The truth is a simple fact: no one trusts the other and each side has good cause not to trust the other.

So how does one make peace? 

The answer:  they don’t.

…the Bleacherman has left the stadium…

 

THE PAUL RYAN BUDGET OR HEY I WON THE ELECTION (Part One)

…the Bleacherman has entered the stadium

 How many times have you heard Republicans blame President Obama and the Democrats for crafting legislation that they knew would not pass the GOP controlled House of Representatives?  They are quick to take to the Fox News airways to condemn the President and Democrats for excessive partisan politics and putting party before Country.

 Today, Paul Ryan submitted a budget that, among other partisan-centric policies, included the elimination of ObamaCare and significant cuts to Medicare and Medicare; both of which, needless to say, will not pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.

 So why isn’t the House condemning itself for its anti-bipartisan legislation?  Where are Speaker Boehner and Mitch McConnell oratories condemning failure to work in a bipartisan environment? 

 The most ludicrous thing I heard was when Chris Wallace of Fox News questioned the Wisconsin lawmaker on his repeated effort to repeal ObamaCare; Ryan responded by saying that since he and Romney won the senior vote he had a mandate to seek repeal of this much maligned Democratic healthcare legislation.

 Say what?  They won the senior vote and they translate that into a mandate to defund or repeal ObamaCare?  That’s like saying that during the course of a baseball game the losing team claims victory because they scored more runs in the fifth inning then the other team even though they lost the game 8-4.

 If we intend to address budget issues, we need serious and real men and women to begin to tackle the real problems that our country faces today.  We need the Congressional comedians and obstructionists to yield to those that wish to govern, not indoctrinate and let them do what they were elected to do.  Govern the country and not play partisan politics.

  Mr. Ryan needs to stop wasting all of our time and go back to his office and produce a document worth bipartisan consideration.    Mr. Ryan needs to accept once and for all that he and his running mate, Mitt Romney, lost the election.  Period.  They lost by millions of votes and no one, not even the very conservative Chris Wallace, cares whether or not the Republicans carried a specific demographic category.  Like who gives a shit.

 If you apply Ryan’s logic of declaring a mandate based upon one small demographic of the electorate, then the President has the right to push through meaningful immigration reform complete with a pathway to citizenship since Mr.Obama won, by a large margin, the Latino vote.  Right?  Same logic, different topic.

 So here we go.  Buy your tickets and get on the Merry-Go-Round and around and around we go.  Not once will we take a step forward.  Not once will we put Americas needs first. 

 So to all the Tea Party takers, yes, takers, those that enjoy their Social Security and Medicare benefits while wildly, enthusiastically and vociferously demand that the same level of benefits be denied to those Americans who are actually footing the bill for the Tea Party seniors to enjoy their golden years.  Assholes and hypocrites.  Disgusting.

 More on the Ryan budget later; I am so deeply in shock that I cannot think straight.  A majority of the budget cuts comes from  health care related items.  The Kaiser Foundation projects that under the Ryan plan, 35 million Americans will lose their insurance coverage.  I suggest that the first demographic that should lose its health care coverage is Congress.  Let them go without coverage and see how that feels.  Hey, what is good for the Goose (i.e.  the old, the  poor, the middle class) is good for the gander (i.e. the rich, the privilege, Congressional clowns et al.)

 …the Bleacherman has left the stadium…

RAND PAUL’S CIRCUS OF FEAR MONGERING

…the Bleacherman has entered the stadium…

The great grandstanding, filibustering folly known as the Rand Paul Circus ended after a 13 hour performance.  In the end, Chuck Hagel’s nomination for the position of Secretary of Defense was affirmed and Rand Paul claimed victory because President Obama’s administration said that it would not use drones on non-combatant American civilians on American soil except in extreme circumstances. 

 Why do I feel that all of this was an exercise in grandstanding and partisan arrogance? 

 Does anyone, who in the past has found cause to criticize administration policies, really feel that while sitting at Starbucks a drone is going to fire a missile at them? Come on?  Paranoia is one thing but fear of a drone attack is something more consistent with LSD flashbacks; not Congressional debate.

 If there really was a non-combatant American citizen who was deemed to be a threat to the security of the United States, do you think that this or any other administration would eliminate the threat by using a drone fired missile?  Do you really think that any administration would want to answer to causing civilian deaths, injuries and property destruction that goes along with a drone strike?  If the government really wanted to eliminate anyone they would more likely ask James Bond or Bruce Willis to take on the assignment quietly and discretely.  Most likely any such attempt would be done in the darkness of night with a special poison secreted into someone’s coffee.  Not with a bomb taking out an entire coffee shop.

 If Mr. Rand was worried about our constitutional rights, then he would have objected with similar vigor to the Bush administration’s use of illegal wire taps et al.  But again, this filibuster was not about ideals, it was about grandstanding and politics.  How could I forget?

 Rand Paul’s logic and fear was a farce; it was a well-planned and well executed circus act that did more to expand the distrust of government than anything a foreign operative on his or her best day could hope to achieve.

 In some ways, Rand’s theatrics smelled of treason; it was fear mongering and propagandizing at its best and American politics at its worse.

 Shame of you, Senator Paul. 

 …the Bleacherman has left the stadium…