Memorial Day

While I realize that nationally, Memorial Day is all about war and heroes and sacrifice, in my own memory, it is about family--family and flowers.

Today, my son and I are going to do our own version of those long ago trips to the family cemeteries, withou the trunk full of fresh cut flowers from the gardens of Grandma and my aunts and uncles and parents.  We tried to go yearly though after 18 it turned into once every 5 years or so.  We never went to my fathers, too far away and if we stayed home, we just went to the lake.

My parents weren't from around here.

From those memorial day trips, I heard all kinds of family stories.  About my uncle collecting a mouse from between graves and slipping it in his pocket.  My grandmother laughed, but was obviously a bit horrified.  Farm people--animals don't live in the house if you are civilized, there were barn cats to eat mice and farm dogs to watch the yard but mice--just nasty.

I heard about relatives long gone that my grandmother remembered like they just left. (I'm starting to get that, time does strange things in the mind, telescoping, shrinking, like seeing 2 times at once sometimes.)  I heard about who was in which war, and who died young and who died very old.  She even told us about the little marker in the family plot that said "baby",; a family traveling through that lost a child while staying nearby.  There were details back then.  Just a little sadness now for the family that lost a baby and then moved on to where they were going.

Back then, the roses and peonies were in bloom on this day.  And while there are still a few straggling roses and the roses will repeat quite a few times this summer, the peonies have been gone a while and the lilies are starting.   The spring started very early this year.

We used to go to multiple cemeteries on this weekend, because while they were my one family, they were not related 150 years ago when they started getting to that area. The cemeteries were small or large, well tended or a little seedy and showed no signs of corporate control.  They had large trees or no trees, marble and granite or concrete and limestone, and in many of them, the graves had a rose or some other flowering plant that came back year after year.

So today, we are going to my parents grave.  It is in a cemetery that was new when they bought there.  A package deal they purchased after some death in the family without telling us kiddies what was going on.  A deal that started with a cold call by a marketer of death.  The cemetery is a long way from their home, but we moved to a city that was sprawling.  It was a cemetery with a plan, a marketing plan, a maintenance plan, and its own flower shop.  It is death done by big business.  there are no weeping angels or little marble children holding hands.

I hate that cemetery.  It is a cemetery that no one wants to go to, no one wants to wander in or pray in or sit and be alone for a while.

It is a cemetery that never quite meets the promises they sold my parents.

But I go because my son invited me and his kids could use the roots of such a trip.

I'm buying flowers at the supermarket.

American Wars

The United States has been  active militarily since its creation.  The number of wars we have declared are not nearly so clearly counted.    Since the American Revolution, the USA has been in 5 declared wars.  But since WWII, there is practically no peace time.

Overhearing something on NPR about the way the USA makes every war about themselves, I thought I'd dig around a bit, see if the speaker was right (I feared he was) and see if I could determine why, since we dropped any semblance of isolationism, we now considered ourselves to be the only ones that could keep the peace;  why only our type of government was acceptable.  God knows, many of us in this country quit buying that 50 years ago.

So, lets start with the War of 1812. (1812-1814) While I lost ancestors to this war, I never really understood it.  In my class, it was all about America.  What I didn't get was that it was actually about Europe, specifically Napoleon Bonaparte.  England did not want the new USA to partner with France--again.  It was also assisting Native American leaders in fighting against the westward expansion of the USA.  I would hate that more if I didn't know what imperialist colonizers the British were at that time.  At any rate, the main cause was an inability to agree on trade with other countries/embargos and fighting to take over the rest of the continent.

The next declared war was the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Well, we fought this on foreign soil due to "manifest destiny".  You know, The USA is going to be from Atlantic to Pacific Ocean.  We were expanding our territories.  (Don't we fight other countries when they try to take territory from their neighbors?)  We were not exactly the good guys here.  Just greed and bullying in the image of Great Britain.  Not once in school did I ever learn anything about Mexico except the Aztecs cutting hearts out of people.  I know nothing about Mexico in the late 1840s.  I do know that when a war is fought where you live, the people shooting and looting and destroying your home are not seen as heroes but as invading monsters.

Then came the Spanish-American War fought in 1898.  This started with the sinking of the Maine (later determined not to be caused by the Spanish military) and ended with the freeing of Cuba to develop its own government and the changing of Guam and Puerto Rico to US ownership and Spain sold the Phillipines to the US for $20,000,000.  This took Spain out of the Americas and by serendipity, having no colonies to focus on, resulted in a Spanish renaissance at home.

The next official US war was World War I.  The US participated from 1917 to 1918 fighting against Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire.  It started with an assassination by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia in 1914. An escalation of threats and mobilization orders followed the incident, leading by mid-August to the outbreak of World War I, which pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (the so-called Central Powers) against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Japan (the Allied Powers). The Allies were joined after 1917 by the United States. The four years of the Great War–as it was then known–saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction, thanks to grueling trench warfare and the introduction of modern weaponry such as machine guns, tanks and chemical weapons. By the time World War I ended in the defeat of the Central Powers in November 1918, more than 9 million soldiers had been killed and 21 million more wounded. (from history.com)
So the USA was there the last year of 4 bloody years, but every show I ever saw on WWI was about the US military heroics.  It was fought in Europe. Of the 9 million deaths, US deaths were estimated between 53,000 and 150,000.  I do not think WWI is about the United States.  We lost people and those people will be forever mourned, but this is not our story.

The next official war is WWII.  While my grandfather was in the first world war, my father and practically every man his age (it seemed) was in the second world war.

The USA was in WWII from 1941-1945.

Overview of World War II  (Digital History ID 2922)
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths.

World War II started in 1939.  The USA joined the allies in 1941 after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

The US was horrified that our Naval yard was bombed.  Globally, the deaths from this war had been going on for 2 years and we were shocked that someone attacked us.  Amazingly,  the shows I saw as a kid were always about the glories of US soldiers fighting evil, never about the Allies pre-1941, and god-forbid if they had been from the side of the enemy.

In addition to these declared wars, there have been eleven Congressionally approved actions and 7 UN authorized while funded by congress peace-keeping things.  Interestingly, the Vietnam War, from 1964-1973 was one of the first type  ( I had a roommate that lost her soldier father in Vietnam several years before 1964--my first clue that they weren't telling us everything), and the Korean War, 1950-1953 was one of the second kind.

In the 1800's, we fought about trade, pirating, slave trading, and the acquisition of territory.

In the 1900's, we fought about stopping regimes we saw as against our best interests, translate that as fear-mongering over "communism" and loss of access to cheap natural resources.

In this century, its confusing.  We want the oil.  We hate their religion.  We hate kings.  We don't like who they voted into power.  We jump into other people's civil wars and revolutions, then ignore genocides and slavery.  There is no rhyme or reason---until you look at the strangely woven corporate loyalties and political intrigues that determine which bad guy is good and which bad guy is our enemy.

But of all of those wars, only 2 have been fought in our land--the American Revolution and the American Civil War.  Those were about us.

There rest of them really are someone else's stories.  We need to not be so egocentric. 

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The United Nations

What if:

• The United Nations really was a global peace keeper?
• What if every nation treated their membership in the group as their "golden ticket" to participation in global commerce.
• What if members of the United Nations could not go to war and only the United Nations could decide to send troops to an area to maintain peace.
• What if all military personnel of a nation, participated in activities in their own nations, working with peaceful needs such as disaster relief.
• What if all military personnel of a nation were dually a part of the United Nations military and participated as needed to protect the peace of the world.
• What if, nations that were not members were not considered to be global participants, thus losing their rights to trade with nations that were members.
• What if the most important thing we did was offer to help nations that weren't members, assistance in meeting requirements for becoming members, and improving the human condition of their citizens.

That is a lot of what ifs, but WHAT IF?

When looking back, there has been one instance of UN participation in a police action--we called it the Korean War, and....we won?  Two of the countries backing the civil war, and it was a civil war, north versus south, (there but by the grace of god goes the USA), were the People's Republic of China--new and not a member and the United Soviet Socialist Republic- a charter member of the United Nations.  That whole thing was part of the bloody fight against socialism, the start? of the Cold War.  A shame that Stalin and Mao Zedong grabbed the reins of people's fights against the usual oligarchies and turned them into their own, private dictatorships.  Both are huge countries.  Could the UN have kept those two nations from becoming human rights nightmares?  I don't know.  But most of the civil wars, revolutions and police actions between 1947 and now were more about controlling another country's natural resources and creating puppet regimes that were friendlier to the wants and desires of the backing nations.  The United Nations could have said and done something about that.

If the United Nations hadn't had its teeth pulled and claws removed at its initial creation.




Those nations that like to call themselves the world leaders, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the United States,  you know, the rich countries that were known as colonial giants, that half the little revolts and wars were to get out from under, didn't want to be told they couldn't go in and create havoc.  They just wanted the other countries to not be able to create havoc.

Above is a map of members of the members of the United Nations. The yellow spots are non-members, can you see them, I know it is tough--but I think there are 2 yellow spots in Africa.

Since the creation of United Nations, there has been an endless stream of wars, and while many are civil wars and revolutions and bloody coupes, most have had the monetary and political and war machine assistance of those same military giants, but not for peace, or humanity or justice.

For Profit.

We don't back people because they are poor and have an awful life and an expectation of an early death.  We back wars because we want the oil, or the diamonds or the cheap labor or the wonderful farm produce that won't grow anywhere else.

For Profit,  for our (read our as the leaders, the shakers and movers, the rich and powerful) personal profit.

And when we decide, as a nation, to send our troops, we don't send the sons and daughters of our leaders, our political leaders, our corporate leaders--we send the sons and daughters of those people that have their children join for the possibility of a job, a chance to get an education that they otherwise couldn't afford, a chance at a better life--or death.

For Profit.

How many wars could be avoided if the citizens of a place were free to participate in the governing of themselves.

How many wars could be avoided if a country that was not a member of the UN could not sell goods outside their own country. ( Oh My!  we can't get their stuff?  we can't take advantage of their lack of human rights? No, I need my diamonds and chocolate and tiger skins and elephant tusks, without all that, how can I show how filthy rich and powerful I am)

How many civil wars and revolutions could be avoided if the UN assisted them in building their infrastructure, building schools, obtaining medicine, starting businesses that allowed all participants in the business a livelihood.

Imagine a world in which the war machine, the weapons factories, the defense research were all redirected toward the good of mankind: instead of weapons, farm equipment and playground equipment, instead of defense research, medical research for those orphan illnesses and those diseases that attack the poor--we have spent enough on erectile dysfunction and baldness to last 5 lifetimes.

Until those nations that originally created the United Nations see it as more valuable than themselves, more important toward world peace, instead of like an club to hold over the heads of the less powerful nations while they continue to do as they want, we will continue in our endless cycle of war...

For Profit.

If you have never been poor...

Imagine yourself in a desert; sand for miles, when it is hot it is oven hot and when it is cold it is freezing.  There is no food unless you can eat insects or maybe cactus and there is no water to drink.  There is no where to buy what you need.  And no place to get a job.  There are other people, many other people, in the same situation you are.  If one of them pulls out a bottle of water or a candy bar, the fight for who gets to consume it is on.

Now change the scenery.

You are in an urban area surrounded by dilapidated buildings, failing vehicles, and there are thousands of other people, also in this area.  There is no where to work.  There are no places to live that have functional heat or air.  The water is contaminated, plumbing doesn't work, and electricity is frequently off--nonpayment or failed infrastructure.

There is no where to buy anything but liquor or junk food within walking distance.  No one has a car that works.  The bus service is not easily accessed from here and taxi's and Uber won't go there.  No one can pay for the ride, anyway.  The refrigerator doesn't work even when the electricity is on.  There ARE insects but no one wants to eat them or even live with them, but there isn't any cactus.

I have spent my life living paycheck to paycheck.  I have been broke.  I have even had a few of times that I couldn't eat a meal.  I have never truly been poor.

I have worked with people that were poor.  I have taught people that were poor.  I have talked with people that have always been poor.  But I have never been poor.

Paycheck to paycheck is tough, scary, anger-inducing, hopeless, tiring and depressing.

Poor is a whole other level of living.

When you are poor, a nurse or a plumber are part of the rich folks.

When you are poor, owning a house makes you middle class--and that is if it is a little house in a questionable neighborhood--mcmansion is rich.

When you are poor, you know you need to get lucky, catch a break, be a superstar if you are ever going to do better.

I have talked with 13 year olds that thought that having a baby so they could get WIC and SNAP was going to be a better life.  I have seen 14 year old boys that broke the law so they could quit sleeping in the park--the park at night was scary.  I have talked with homeless people about taking care of their chronic diseases and their response is not how, but why?  Why?

Healthcare routinely treats homeless people as if going back to the street was both a choice and their home.  I have never heard any child say "when I grow up, i want to be homeless".

Schools enroll students by utility bill as proof of residence.  I would see kids out there in the streets during school days, never in school, and wonder if they were homeless and thus couldn't enroll.

We hear of people being arrested for sticking a roast down their pants and trying to walk out of a store.  We have seen people shoplift from dollar stores.  Junk food in convenience stores near schools is always a hot item.  Why are people stealing cheap items and food?  Don't confuse them with the super-rich teenager whose lawyer gets them out for emotional problems when they try to steal a 2,000$ scarf that they had the cash to buy in their purse.  We are talking survival-type thefts.  We are talking about people that are stealing items so cheap its hard to even call it petty theft, but for which the person stealing it has a need, whether physical or emotional, but no cash.  Maybe it is hunger.  Maybe they just can't keep listening to a loved one wish for such a little thing while knowing it is so far from possible.

We wonder about crime in places of  deep poverty. It is why it is so easy to blame the poor for their own situation. But in truth, when enough people are excluded from the mainstream successes and abundance and hope, they will find a way to make their own.  Such has been the cause of organized crime, cartels, and gangs since time began.  When the population of those excluded from participating in the world of opportunity and abundance becomes large enough, they create their own opportunities and abundance, and those don't fit the rules of the larger society.  The poor neighborhoods do not always hate them.  They can be seen as more Robin Hood than plague,  especially to those whose desperate needs are ignored by the "legitimate" government.

Its hard to understand that when we are  broke, cash-strapped, employed but going no where while following the rules, how so many people can be complaining about poverty and yet embracing lives of crime and drugs and sexploitation.  For most of us that talk about hard times, we have a roof over our heads all the time, the utilities may be on notice, but rarely get turned off.  Our kids go to school, and while a public school education is not currently turning out world-class educated citizens, it will teach you to read and print and do simple math.  If you are very lucky, your child will have a teacher that connects with them and still cares enough to try to make a horrible curriculum provide valuable information and insight.  Being broke is nothing like being poor.

We broke folks like to think of ourselves as sort of middle class.  We envision the poor as brown and ignorant, morally bankrupt and chemically dependent.  But where did we get that expectation.  Media has tried to keep that going. In fact, the recipients are as likely to be white as black or brown; as likely to speak English as another language.  In many states, being male makes being assisted unlikely without a physician saying you have a problem; drugs, alcohol. mental, emotional or physical, no disability, no assist. Since most of this group only gets healthcare through emergency rooms, they are unlikely to have someone diagnose them with more than "drug-seeking".  No disability papers, no further intervention.  Women with children are the most likely to qualify.  Women without children only slightly more likely than men. In about half the states, the amount of assistance can be more than the pay of a minimum wage job.

Why wouldn't the minimum wage be determined by the money number that equals the poverty level.  Why do we have jobs that will not pay a living wage.  How do we have business owners that don't work in their own business while claiming that they don't make enough to pay someone enough to live.  If you aren't working there, but are making enough for all kinds of extras, why?  Why do you get extras like playing golf  and fancy vacations while your employee needs government assistance?   If your business can't afford to pay someone for their time, you might be the one that needs to be working.

When someone gets rich off the uncompensated or undercompensated  labor of another, that is wrong.  We called it wrong when we made slavery illegal.  We called it wrong when children were worked instead of educated, and it is still wrong.

So finally, why do we have approximately 20% of the population in the wealthiest nation in the world falling near or below the poverty level.  Why are so many children living there.  How did that happen.  How can that be right.  How can we let that continue.  If the annual income of this country was spread out more evenly, no one would make less than $50,000 a year.  

We could still be periodically broke--but no one would ever need to be poor again.

Cultural dissonance

In Cognitive Dissonance their are feelings of discomfort that result from holding two conflicting beliefs. When there is a discrepancy between beliefs and behaviors, something must change in order to eliminate or reduce the dissonance.

In human culture these days, there is what I will call Cultural Dissonance.  That is the individual and social consciousness--what some people think of as waking up on a political/community level--that is causing many people to seek a societal answer to the differences between what we all know is right and what is currently being shoved down our throats as (chose your poison) just the way things are; normal corruption; money talks, bullshtick walks; business as usual; how the world works; one hand washes the other; you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours;  it's not personal, it's business; how power works; survival of the fittest.

Every religion, spiritual belief system, philosophical belief system and even secular humanism--which denies being a belief system, share certain ideologies about how to act.  Chief among those is the golden rule--treat others as you want to be treated.  Not far behind is you reap what you sow, otherwise stated as what goes around comes around, and live by the sword, die by the sword.  In other words, if you don't treat others like you want to be treated, it will come back to haunt you--whether in this life or the next.

Other truisms; be honest, be true to your word, don't take what isn't yours, whether it is a life or a material object or an opportunity that is obtained by removing the same from another person.   Be a good steward, care for what you have, do what you say you will do, don't put material things above living creatures.  There are a million variations of these but it all comes down to the same thing, treat others as you want to be treated.

So why, right now, or maybe now and at all times previously, but well hidden due to no open internet-type phenomenon, are we seeing so much corruption of roles.  It's not just the petty bureaucrat that does more or faster for a small bribe, its a system that no longer works at all unless money is greasing the wheel.  It is health care aimed at profit not helping people, it is education aimed at mining government loan money with no concern for providing an education that is either high quality or valuable to the person borrowing the money for the school.  Its keeping jails full to fill for-profit jails and prisons and drug trials more interested in getting a drug out there than in whether it both safe and effective.  It's farmers getting money for not planting, or for throwing out their crops to keep prices high while there are people hungry..

Why are we doing these things--and worse things: Wars to keep the weapons factories pulling in the money.  Coups to give new leaders a position so they can favor the rich backer for trade protections, people working in virtual slavery conditions to mine diamonds, farm coffee, cotton, chocolate.  Children whose only value is for the free labor they provide until they fall over dead is just not thought about while we brag about the great buy we made at our favorite discount store.

We complain about people getting assistance with rent, utilities, food, then complain again about worn out and degrading neighborhoods and then complain some more because the homeless people with their carts and dirty clothes are so unpleasant to look at. 

How much of that is the flip side of seeing the top 2% of the wealth owners live lives that look luxurious, that get away with murder and cheating and lying and stealing and it just makes them richer.  How much of crime is just the poor kid standing in front of the candy store window day after day watching well dressed children get whatever they want and then throwing what they don't want in a trashcan.  How much is envy and jealousy.  How much is absolute horror that their own offspring will have no more opportunity to do better than they had, or their parents or grandparents.  How much is fear that all those excuses:  just the way things are; normal corruption; money talks, bullshtick walks; business as usual; how the world works; one hand washes the other; you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours;  it's not personal, it's business; how power works; survival of the fittest, will continue like a twisted mantra to keep the rest of us hopeless and downtrodden and barely energetic enough to keep going to a job that will never take us anywhere but to old age and an early death.

If I was one of those 2% at the top, would I also be blind to those that have too little?  Would I also pat my self on the back for being a hard worker and a smart businessman and wise enough to be born in the right family?  Would I share out money that I would never use anyway to my pet charity and tell myself what a good person I am?

I am not a hero.  I am not a great activist.  I did not join the Peace Corp or the military or Greenpeace.  I did not take my service education to needy places and work for no money to help those worse off than I was.

I did struggle to pay my bills, take care of my children that, now grown, are very concerned with their children's clothing, and opportunities to participate in school and after school activities--because I was raised in handmedowns and home sewed clothes, and could only afford a single activity per child, and sometimes not that.  I did feel guilty that I could not offer them annual summer trips to nice places.  I felt bad that I could not pay for their college and amazed that my own parents had done better with their own family.  I was terrified when the job I had paid no insurance or only the employee, but would cover family for roughly half of the already stretched paycheck.  Suddenly every accident, every cold was a potential loss--life, debility, house, child--none were acceptable, all were too horrible to consider.  The balance was too delicate.  Everyday was a day that treading water might change to drowning.

I  try empathize with those whose own situation is worse than mine, people whose childhood was so poverty-stricken that their parent or parents were struggling just to feed them, or had given up on them, so ravaged by lack and despair that they could not even think of them so they sought escape--drugs, money, a better spouse, any spouse, someone to help, someone to make them forget, something.  Those children could not benefit from school.  They could not concentrate on anything but their own fears and  hunger and pain.  But empathy implies thinking about it, and thinking about it is so painful and so hard to do anything about.  And empathy does not actually fix problems unless the problem is hate.

We do have a lot of hate right now.  We do want to blame those that are worse off than we are for being worse off than we are.  It helps us not have to empathize or do anything.  And if we are also struggling, we want someone to blame.  It is always easy to blame those worse off.  And blame leads to hate--especially when those in horrible situations become so downtrodden they commit crimes to stop being poor, or take drugs to stop feeling powerless and guilty.  We don't like it that there are people getting help from our taxes, money we could have used ourselves.  We don't like it that we are not rich and powerful and capable of giving our families anything they want and of giving our favorite charities great gifts.  We hate those people that are taking our tax money and filling our jails and ignoring their responsibilities while using drugs.

We hate them, because hating them is so much easier than empathizing with their plight.  It feels so much more righteous than the powerlessness of knowing your own children have to get a college scholarship by playing sports or and instrument or studying constantly.  It feels so much less scary than "there but by the grace of god, go I"