I find myself in a genuine conundrum over the state of the economy. I suspect I'm not the only one conflicted between feeling sad for the economy, the lost jobs, the havoc that is being wreaked on our status as a Ecnomic Superpower and the joy of cheap-ass gas, even lower prices at Wally World, and genuinely not really feeling the pinch; if anything the other way around. Am I alone here?
I suppose if this drags on for another year or two I'll be changing my tune, but just for a second those of us who have insulated themselves from the worst parts of the Glodal Recession From Hell (insulated so far, nothing is impervious) should pat ourselves on the back, even if it's in your coat closet with the lights off at 3am so no one knows.
All joking aside, it is interesting to see how economic downturns impact different countries economies across the world. If Thomas Friedman critics were looking for a good case to make against his "World Is Flat" line of books, I suppose the past six months would make a pretty strong foundation argument. In an era of superglobalization, you could really only expect so much. The concept of tying every country's currency, manufacturing, IT systems together was a start down the path. This of course went hand in hand with the growth of the Multinational, diversifying geographically to capitalize on increased markets, economies of scale and geography, etc. So I don't think The WSJ was the first publication to figure out where we were headed; that a worldwide market explosion would lead to a worldwide market correction. Yet other countries seem so surprised and angered that the U.S. has "taken them down" with them.
I suppose the natural response would have to be "and where did we take you FROM"?
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Incoherent Ramblings, say hello to TwitterFeed!!!
In an never-ending attempt to increase my readership to my blog, I have chosen to invoke the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse and push my blog feed to Twitter.
If you already enjoy my blog postings, then enjoy. IF you don't and were barely hanging on to my Twitter updates by a thread already, then I guess it's been nice knowin ya.
If you already enjoy my blog postings, then enjoy. IF you don't and were barely hanging on to my Twitter updates by a thread already, then I guess it's been nice knowin ya.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The NOISE....
This past 18 months have been pretty interesting for me. After spending six years doing IT work for the Federal Gov't, I took a job with a silicon valley software company and haven't seen my house that much since. I figure out of the past 540 nights, I have probably spent about 300 in hotel rooms. Not exactly conducive to keeping those phenomenal abs I've always wanted. That's 300 days and nights of takeout, uncomfortable beds, crappy television, crappier air quality, and constantly feeling on the verge of being lost (18 months and still don't own a nav system. I'm a rebel!). That's a lot of nights without seeing your wife too, which is not too cool.
That all said, I wouldn't change it, not for the world. We all have to choose our path in life, whether it be an outright noble cause like defending our country by joining the military, the fire department or police force, or teaching children in developing or war-torn countries. All noble; all mean you'll never be home. I'm not saying running around writing software is noble by any stretch, but it fulfills as any other career does, or should. I feel good at the end of the day because I am able to provide comfortably for my family, gain some incredible experiences, continue to learn and use my brain (which is hard to do in a lot of jobs these days), and most of all, it's something I have a passion for. That's rare, something you often only find in those who work in some of the truly noble fields I listed above. So you could almost say that the more often a person is away form his home and family, the more passionate they must be about what they do, because that's what it probably takes to be away from the things you love and care about.
The reality is, for me, too many marriages become too much about some abstract idea of what you and your spouse are together. Some couples throw themselves full-force into each others lives and existence, and become one conjoined person. That's fine for some, but I'd guess not for others. The fact is, we all have our own life to live, and we all at the end of the day have to be able to look ourselves in the mirror and be OK with what we see. I love my wife to death and would do anything for her, but ultimately I can't make her feel fulfilled in life.
I have so many friends, good friends, who spend so much time focused on what their boyfriend or husband is doing that they pretty much just forget all about themselves. That's just tragic to me, because I have to think that at some point it becomes a tool to just avoid dealing with what isn't in their own life. And not begin happy with yourself: what you wake up and do every day, how you look, how you feel, is something that can certainly be avoided or masked by hopelessly devoting yourself to things all around you, but can't be avoided forever. I think that's the real but hidden danger with raising a family today. Society tells you that once your children are born, your life becomes completely devoted to them. Admittedly not being s father yet, I can't say from experience whether that's true, but I'd have to believe that it is. I know I will have no problem dropping my most earnest passion in life to be the best father I can be. But there really should be an asterisk by that really noble, beautiful selfless statement. The idea, when the framers of the ideal parent said that, was that first you should be happy with yourself. THEN, when you have children, you can devote your life to them and be truly fulfilled, even more than before.
I've always believed very strongly in that sequence, you know? It's not a foreign concept, it's a well-tread line to say you have to love yourself before you can really love someone else. And these days, as divorce rates climb, kids become more dissociated from their families, parents drift away from their responsibilities, you have to wonder why. Is it that our society has become morally bankrupt or that children today are more inclined to not want to be parented in traditional ways? Or that the prevalence of the internet, mass media, fast food, and video games, and era of instant gratification has ruined our ability to long for something better in life? I think that could be part of it. But again, I see all of that more as noise than a real root cause of what ails so many families today.
I read an article in Newsweek a few years ago citing that more than 10% of all kids were prescribed some form of antidepressant or on some treatment plan for Associative Mood Disorder or ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). I thought that was just ridiculous (not to go Tom Cruise on you), but TEN PERCENT?! Unreal. I started thinking about why all these kids were so much more messed up than my generation that they needed these meds and therapy just to be normal. I'm pretty sure if I was a kid today, I would have been diagnosed with ADD. I could never keep still or focus on anything. I WAS A KID. Pretty big part of being a kid, as I recall, was being hyper and easily distracted. Kids today arent' any different than they were 20, 50, 1000 years ago. It just gets easier and easier to distract them as more and more noise enters our lives.
When I say "noise", I mean distraction. Social Pollution, if you will. Youtube, social norms imposed upon someone they don't really believe in, 24-hour news cycles, online pornography, mp3 players, online retailers, universal remote controls, WIFI, all of this, in my mind, is noise; things that have been created to infiltrate our lives and alter our state of mind in one form or another. All of them have one thing in mind; instant gratification. Some more easy to connect than others, but all of thes things didn't exist even 20 years ago. Sometimes I don't think we'll be happy until we all are born with one big, red, shiny button on our ass that does whatever we want when we press it. and NOW.
Disjointed blog? Possibly. But I feel there's a connection there. With so much noise in our lives, so much distraction that so readily infiltrates how we think, feel, and communicate, how much time is left between us and ourselves? Not much. Kids today get older and older faster all the time, it seems, or in my view, just get more polluted with all this crap a lot earlier in life. I mean, by age 12, most kids probably have a blog, a facebook page, myspace account, flickr feed to keep up with, buddy lists of friends constantly pinging them, email from the same friends, some different ones, it's amazing they have time to go to school.
We fill our lives up with this noise sometimes and forget about the big things, the important things. Then the important things come, and we never set out to do what we really meant to do. I can't escape the feeling that our generation will end up of old, retired has-beens who are all sure we did a lot of important shit with our lives, but aren't really sure what it was.
I'm proud of my wife. Really proud. She spent four years bouncing around after school, from one job to another, went out and partied (good for her), we moved into the house and she really threw herself full-on into decorating and, I guess you'd call it "nesting". And after a couple years (and one painful trip to Australia), she realized that her life was shockingly devoid of purpose. She came back home and is studying as I type this for her GRE's, and is startging her graduate degree in Environmental Studies in the spring. So in six months she went from studying pottern barn catalogs to studying how to preserve Southeast Asia's water table. Not too shabby.
And I believe, at the root of it, she was awoken by her ability to filter out the noise in her life. We were dropped in Brisbane, Australia, with a crappy internet connection, 13 tv channels, no friends (other than the ones we made there, who are awesome!), and distraction. So little noise it was creepy. The fights came, and they went. That'll happen with 13 tv channels. She went through all the moods of the rainbow, and I believe came out the other side a changed and grateful woman. We were set on starting a family when we got back from Australia, but she came back with an even higher purpose: a belief that if she did not set out to achieve something great in life, that she would regret missing that chance well into motherhood, and possibly forever. And who wants to leave that kind of legacy behind.
OK, I get the irony here. It's a blog; by my own definition it is noise itself. But, I guess, call it noise wit ha higher purpose. Stop reading this, turn of the computer, go find a park and just sit down in the grass and spend an entire hour without saying a thing. No cell phone, no ipod, no nothing. Just be. I think you'd be amazed at how good it feels.
300 nights out of 540 in a hotel room have taught me this. I just thought I'd save you the trouble.
That all said, I wouldn't change it, not for the world. We all have to choose our path in life, whether it be an outright noble cause like defending our country by joining the military, the fire department or police force, or teaching children in developing or war-torn countries. All noble; all mean you'll never be home. I'm not saying running around writing software is noble by any stretch, but it fulfills as any other career does, or should. I feel good at the end of the day because I am able to provide comfortably for my family, gain some incredible experiences, continue to learn and use my brain (which is hard to do in a lot of jobs these days), and most of all, it's something I have a passion for. That's rare, something you often only find in those who work in some of the truly noble fields I listed above. So you could almost say that the more often a person is away form his home and family, the more passionate they must be about what they do, because that's what it probably takes to be away from the things you love and care about.
The reality is, for me, too many marriages become too much about some abstract idea of what you and your spouse are together. Some couples throw themselves full-force into each others lives and existence, and become one conjoined person. That's fine for some, but I'd guess not for others. The fact is, we all have our own life to live, and we all at the end of the day have to be able to look ourselves in the mirror and be OK with what we see. I love my wife to death and would do anything for her, but ultimately I can't make her feel fulfilled in life.
I have so many friends, good friends, who spend so much time focused on what their boyfriend or husband is doing that they pretty much just forget all about themselves. That's just tragic to me, because I have to think that at some point it becomes a tool to just avoid dealing with what isn't in their own life. And not begin happy with yourself: what you wake up and do every day, how you look, how you feel, is something that can certainly be avoided or masked by hopelessly devoting yourself to things all around you, but can't be avoided forever. I think that's the real but hidden danger with raising a family today. Society tells you that once your children are born, your life becomes completely devoted to them. Admittedly not being s father yet, I can't say from experience whether that's true, but I'd have to believe that it is. I know I will have no problem dropping my most earnest passion in life to be the best father I can be. But there really should be an asterisk by that really noble, beautiful selfless statement. The idea, when the framers of the ideal parent said that, was that first you should be happy with yourself. THEN, when you have children, you can devote your life to them and be truly fulfilled, even more than before.
I've always believed very strongly in that sequence, you know? It's not a foreign concept, it's a well-tread line to say you have to love yourself before you can really love someone else. And these days, as divorce rates climb, kids become more dissociated from their families, parents drift away from their responsibilities, you have to wonder why. Is it that our society has become morally bankrupt or that children today are more inclined to not want to be parented in traditional ways? Or that the prevalence of the internet, mass media, fast food, and video games, and era of instant gratification has ruined our ability to long for something better in life? I think that could be part of it. But again, I see all of that more as noise than a real root cause of what ails so many families today.
I read an article in Newsweek a few years ago citing that more than 10% of all kids were prescribed some form of antidepressant or on some treatment plan for Associative Mood Disorder or ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). I thought that was just ridiculous (not to go Tom Cruise on you), but TEN PERCENT?! Unreal. I started thinking about why all these kids were so much more messed up than my generation that they needed these meds and therapy just to be normal. I'm pretty sure if I was a kid today, I would have been diagnosed with ADD. I could never keep still or focus on anything. I WAS A KID. Pretty big part of being a kid, as I recall, was being hyper and easily distracted. Kids today arent' any different than they were 20, 50, 1000 years ago. It just gets easier and easier to distract them as more and more noise enters our lives.
When I say "noise", I mean distraction. Social Pollution, if you will. Youtube, social norms imposed upon someone they don't really believe in, 24-hour news cycles, online pornography, mp3 players, online retailers, universal remote controls, WIFI, all of this, in my mind, is noise; things that have been created to infiltrate our lives and alter our state of mind in one form or another. All of them have one thing in mind; instant gratification. Some more easy to connect than others, but all of thes things didn't exist even 20 years ago. Sometimes I don't think we'll be happy until we all are born with one big, red, shiny button on our ass that does whatever we want when we press it. and NOW.
Disjointed blog? Possibly. But I feel there's a connection there. With so much noise in our lives, so much distraction that so readily infiltrates how we think, feel, and communicate, how much time is left between us and ourselves? Not much. Kids today get older and older faster all the time, it seems, or in my view, just get more polluted with all this crap a lot earlier in life. I mean, by age 12, most kids probably have a blog, a facebook page, myspace account, flickr feed to keep up with, buddy lists of friends constantly pinging them, email from the same friends, some different ones, it's amazing they have time to go to school.
We fill our lives up with this noise sometimes and forget about the big things, the important things. Then the important things come, and we never set out to do what we really meant to do. I can't escape the feeling that our generation will end up of old, retired has-beens who are all sure we did a lot of important shit with our lives, but aren't really sure what it was.
I'm proud of my wife. Really proud. She spent four years bouncing around after school, from one job to another, went out and partied (good for her), we moved into the house and she really threw herself full-on into decorating and, I guess you'd call it "nesting". And after a couple years (and one painful trip to Australia), she realized that her life was shockingly devoid of purpose. She came back home and is studying as I type this for her GRE's, and is startging her graduate degree in Environmental Studies in the spring. So in six months she went from studying pottern barn catalogs to studying how to preserve Southeast Asia's water table. Not too shabby.
And I believe, at the root of it, she was awoken by her ability to filter out the noise in her life. We were dropped in Brisbane, Australia, with a crappy internet connection, 13 tv channels, no friends (other than the ones we made there, who are awesome!), and distraction. So little noise it was creepy. The fights came, and they went. That'll happen with 13 tv channels. She went through all the moods of the rainbow, and I believe came out the other side a changed and grateful woman. We were set on starting a family when we got back from Australia, but she came back with an even higher purpose: a belief that if she did not set out to achieve something great in life, that she would regret missing that chance well into motherhood, and possibly forever. And who wants to leave that kind of legacy behind.
OK, I get the irony here. It's a blog; by my own definition it is noise itself. But, I guess, call it noise wit ha higher purpose. Stop reading this, turn of the computer, go find a park and just sit down in the grass and spend an entire hour without saying a thing. No cell phone, no ipod, no nothing. Just be. I think you'd be amazed at how good it feels.
300 nights out of 540 in a hotel room have taught me this. I just thought I'd save you the trouble.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Election Wrap-Up
We all lived to see history last night.
You have to admit, this has been an eventful decade. Not all good, but eventful nonetheless. We've really run the extremes so far in the 2000's, from the tragic (largest attack on American soil, largest mass murder in U.S. history, largest stock market crash in history) to the euphoric (largest stock market surge in history, proliferation of high-speed internet, public acceptance of global warming, legalization of gay marriage, first Black President).
Just think about where we were as a society a generation ago. Computers were the size of houses. Cars pushed 10 mpg. We were afraid of the commies and the Libyans. Most Americans did not have a college education, all citizens did not have equals rights under the law, women were expected not to work nor fight for our country, no 401k's, no supplemental insurance, no internet, the list goes on and on. Our parents were born into the Industrial Age, and their children are most likely going to see the end of it. In the next 20 years, we will witness the U.S.A no longer the dominant economic world power, and the predominant nationality in the U.S. not Caucasian. And we're just getting started.
If you're wondering what on earth this has to do with the election, you're probably a republican.
I have been reading some tremendous books lately. Books that have really made me stop and think not so much about the quantifiable history of the world these past ten years or so, but more about the momentum of things and where the trends we may or may not pick up on are invariably shaping our future. Lately, my thoughts have been shaped by the following three books:
1) The Way of the World by Ronald Suskin
2) The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
3) Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
These books combine to tell a story; a stark reality that a lot of Americans would not want to look at, and no politician who wants to be re-elected would own up to. We are quickly declining as a superpower for all the reasons every great society since Ancient Greece; we took our eye off the ball. You could argue til you're blue in the face about the competitive advantage America has over the world; what sets us apart. Michael Porter would point to one of the Five Forces; I'd lean towards first mover advantage, since we had a country left after WWII. But it was more than that; it was the innovation that this country brought to the world table that not only bought us a seat, but the head seat. This innovation came from the fact that the brightest minds, whether born here (Warren Buffett) or were lured here (Albert Einstein) by the spirit of what America was; the land of limitless opportunity, open minds, and attainable dreams.
In a lot of ways, we are still that nation. But you take a decent look at where this country has spent its time and attention (and $$$) the past 8 years (I don't blame all this on Bush; I just picked 2000 as a reference point), it's been predominantly on national defense and healthcare. Healthcare for a country who no longer has the sense to take care of itself and defense spending that has outran any numbers we've seen (adjusted for inflation) since any time since WWII. This in a world where there are no enemies who could invade this country, nor would want to.
The decline in public programs spending has been epic. National parks, domestic infrastructure, education (sciences, arts, and mathematics), post-graduate education funding, you-name-it on the "liberal agenda", has been axed over and over again, to the point where I'm honestly surprised we graduate any musicians or scientists any more. Some may roll their eyes at this fact, but the reality remains that most countries in the world, even those less developed than ours, graduate more scientists, architects, mathematicians, and scholars than the U.S. does every year. China, in 2007, graduates more students with Master's degrees than we did students. Period.
We continue to shrug our shoulders and say, "so what"? We own technology. But for how long? Eventually, time will pass and the country's scientists and Great Thinkers will retire and move on to better places. And we will have a mass bankruptcy of intellectual property in this country. The bottom line: we're spending too much time and focus on the things that will produce immediate returns. We send all our kids to school to major in IT; an industry that has survived on fabricating its own demand, mostly out of its own immaturity and inefficiency. We only spend money on measurable things; things we can see with our own eyes, that bear fruit before the next election season. We can't even fathom the idea of investing in things we may not see the benefits of in 10, 20 years, maybe until after we are dead and our children have inherited the earth (can we say Environment???).
Barack Obama is not a socialist. He is not a terrorist. And he understands what I am talking about. He understands even if you do not; even if the majority of his supporters do not. Obama will make strides to better this world, and I believe he will do this even if it costs him a portion of his potential "legacy". But I don't think it will. FDR built the New Deal to put Americans back to work; but in that he gave us the second phase of the Industrial Revolution. He gave birth to the distribution system (highway system, trains) that has carried this economy to the top of the economic pile. His real contributions to this country weren't fully recognized until long after he left office. Truly great men recognize this and willingly make that sacrifice.
Such is the man we elected here, some 24 hours ago.
You have to admit, this has been an eventful decade. Not all good, but eventful nonetheless. We've really run the extremes so far in the 2000's, from the tragic (largest attack on American soil, largest mass murder in U.S. history, largest stock market crash in history) to the euphoric (largest stock market surge in history, proliferation of high-speed internet, public acceptance of global warming, legalization of gay marriage, first Black President).
Just think about where we were as a society a generation ago. Computers were the size of houses. Cars pushed 10 mpg. We were afraid of the commies and the Libyans. Most Americans did not have a college education, all citizens did not have equals rights under the law, women were expected not to work nor fight for our country, no 401k's, no supplemental insurance, no internet, the list goes on and on. Our parents were born into the Industrial Age, and their children are most likely going to see the end of it. In the next 20 years, we will witness the U.S.A no longer the dominant economic world power, and the predominant nationality in the U.S. not Caucasian. And we're just getting started.
If you're wondering what on earth this has to do with the election, you're probably a republican.
I have been reading some tremendous books lately. Books that have really made me stop and think not so much about the quantifiable history of the world these past ten years or so, but more about the momentum of things and where the trends we may or may not pick up on are invariably shaping our future. Lately, my thoughts have been shaped by the following three books:
1) The Way of the World by Ronald Suskin
2) The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
3) Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
These books combine to tell a story; a stark reality that a lot of Americans would not want to look at, and no politician who wants to be re-elected would own up to. We are quickly declining as a superpower for all the reasons every great society since Ancient Greece; we took our eye off the ball. You could argue til you're blue in the face about the competitive advantage America has over the world; what sets us apart. Michael Porter would point to one of the Five Forces; I'd lean towards first mover advantage, since we had a country left after WWII. But it was more than that; it was the innovation that this country brought to the world table that not only bought us a seat, but the head seat. This innovation came from the fact that the brightest minds, whether born here (Warren Buffett) or were lured here (Albert Einstein) by the spirit of what America was; the land of limitless opportunity, open minds, and attainable dreams.
In a lot of ways, we are still that nation. But you take a decent look at where this country has spent its time and attention (and $$$) the past 8 years (I don't blame all this on Bush; I just picked 2000 as a reference point), it's been predominantly on national defense and healthcare. Healthcare for a country who no longer has the sense to take care of itself and defense spending that has outran any numbers we've seen (adjusted for inflation) since any time since WWII. This in a world where there are no enemies who could invade this country, nor would want to.
The decline in public programs spending has been epic. National parks, domestic infrastructure, education (sciences, arts, and mathematics), post-graduate education funding, you-name-it on the "liberal agenda", has been axed over and over again, to the point where I'm honestly surprised we graduate any musicians or scientists any more. Some may roll their eyes at this fact, but the reality remains that most countries in the world, even those less developed than ours, graduate more scientists, architects, mathematicians, and scholars than the U.S. does every year. China, in 2007, graduates more students with Master's degrees than we did students. Period.
We continue to shrug our shoulders and say, "so what"? We own technology. But for how long? Eventually, time will pass and the country's scientists and Great Thinkers will retire and move on to better places. And we will have a mass bankruptcy of intellectual property in this country. The bottom line: we're spending too much time and focus on the things that will produce immediate returns. We send all our kids to school to major in IT; an industry that has survived on fabricating its own demand, mostly out of its own immaturity and inefficiency. We only spend money on measurable things; things we can see with our own eyes, that bear fruit before the next election season. We can't even fathom the idea of investing in things we may not see the benefits of in 10, 20 years, maybe until after we are dead and our children have inherited the earth (can we say Environment???).
Barack Obama is not a socialist. He is not a terrorist. And he understands what I am talking about. He understands even if you do not; even if the majority of his supporters do not. Obama will make strides to better this world, and I believe he will do this even if it costs him a portion of his potential "legacy". But I don't think it will. FDR built the New Deal to put Americans back to work; but in that he gave us the second phase of the Industrial Revolution. He gave birth to the distribution system (highway system, trains) that has carried this economy to the top of the economic pile. His real contributions to this country weren't fully recognized until long after he left office. Truly great men recognize this and willingly make that sacrifice.
Such is the man we elected here, some 24 hours ago.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
The Mos't Depressing Campaign EVER
I think post people would agree this Presidential campaign has been pretty darn ugly at times. It seems to me that every four years, democrats and republicans alike engage in some unscrupulous, unethical "who-can-top-who" contest to come up with the most awful, baseless, slanderous piece of media possible to sling at the opponent. And this campaign has been no different: from carefully-chosen buzz words such as "Terrorist" and "Outsider" picked by panels of psychologists because they instill the maximum amount of fear in uneducated people to attacks on age and health issues that have no substantiation whatsoever, and border on discrimination.
But lost in all this (not totally lost, I have seen one or two articles, mostly op-ed pieces about the subject), is probably the most offensive tactic I have seen used this campaign; the lobbing around of Barack's associations with the Muslim faith.
Early on in Obama's run, and I suspect when he ran for State office as well in Illinois, there were rumors that Obama was "a Muslim". It echoed over and over throughout the primary season, prompting him to declare his Christian faith publicly (which then got him in another heap of trouble, thanks Rev. Wright!). It's been volleyed around McCain rallies, conservative pundit groups, chat rooms, and everywhere else with an almost universally negative connotation. That a Muslim would be unfit to run this country.
That scares the shit out of me. I can't decide whether I'm more scared that people would think that way or that the mainstream press has given so many a free pass to hurl such a horrible idea around like they are saying he's a known terrorist. Ipso facto, that's what the reference means in context. The very fact that the idea of a Muslim candidate would disqualify a person to hold the highest office in the country, a country who lists as the base of its entire list of freedoms, that of the Freedoms of Speech, Press, Assembly, and from Religious Persecution.
I'm a realist and understnad that while there exists a separation of Church and State, it's an arbitrary separation; a thin candy shell of a wall. People's faith drives some of the major platforms under which candidates run; abortion, wealth distribution (yes it existed before Obama mentioned it, it's called the Progressive Income Tax), and so on. So there are religious issues that are legitimately stitched into modern politics, but what we're talking about is starkly more sinister.
The reality is, seven years ago, we were attacked by a faction of radical Muslims and in that one swift series of horrific motions, a new prejudice was born. Muslims went form "backwards" to "scary" real quick. For a country who likes to think of itself as evolved, having finally granted blacks equal rights under the law and has started to level the balance of power long hoarded by "white, old guys", this should be seen as a major setback. How doomed is history to repeat itself if we not only allow these ideas and fears to become part of our culture, but allow it to be commonplace, or acceptable?
The fact is, the next generation is listening. In a country where we still unfortunately hear derogatory references to people of different races and backgrounds, most view it as their civic duty to try and correct those errant words and ideas as soon as they're espoused. David Duke became a political joke overnight for his (errant) argument that minorities were unfit to hold office. Jesse Jackson's presidential aspirations crashed and burned over a single derogatory reference to jewish neighborhoods in New York (and rightfully so). So what makes this so different, exactly?
Look, all sides are to blame on this. McCain's campaign should have immediately trashed this line of questioning, and Obama's campaign should have followed it up with "so what?" But none of that happened. And in this blogger's opinion, the world is just a tad sadder for it.
But lost in all this (not totally lost, I have seen one or two articles, mostly op-ed pieces about the subject), is probably the most offensive tactic I have seen used this campaign; the lobbing around of Barack's associations with the Muslim faith.
Early on in Obama's run, and I suspect when he ran for State office as well in Illinois, there were rumors that Obama was "a Muslim". It echoed over and over throughout the primary season, prompting him to declare his Christian faith publicly (which then got him in another heap of trouble, thanks Rev. Wright!). It's been volleyed around McCain rallies, conservative pundit groups, chat rooms, and everywhere else with an almost universally negative connotation. That a Muslim would be unfit to run this country.
That scares the shit out of me. I can't decide whether I'm more scared that people would think that way or that the mainstream press has given so many a free pass to hurl such a horrible idea around like they are saying he's a known terrorist. Ipso facto, that's what the reference means in context. The very fact that the idea of a Muslim candidate would disqualify a person to hold the highest office in the country, a country who lists as the base of its entire list of freedoms, that of the Freedoms of Speech, Press, Assembly, and from Religious Persecution.
I'm a realist and understnad that while there exists a separation of Church and State, it's an arbitrary separation; a thin candy shell of a wall. People's faith drives some of the major platforms under which candidates run; abortion, wealth distribution (yes it existed before Obama mentioned it, it's called the Progressive Income Tax), and so on. So there are religious issues that are legitimately stitched into modern politics, but what we're talking about is starkly more sinister.
The reality is, seven years ago, we were attacked by a faction of radical Muslims and in that one swift series of horrific motions, a new prejudice was born. Muslims went form "backwards" to "scary" real quick. For a country who likes to think of itself as evolved, having finally granted blacks equal rights under the law and has started to level the balance of power long hoarded by "white, old guys", this should be seen as a major setback. How doomed is history to repeat itself if we not only allow these ideas and fears to become part of our culture, but allow it to be commonplace, or acceptable?
The fact is, the next generation is listening. In a country where we still unfortunately hear derogatory references to people of different races and backgrounds, most view it as their civic duty to try and correct those errant words and ideas as soon as they're espoused. David Duke became a political joke overnight for his (errant) argument that minorities were unfit to hold office. Jesse Jackson's presidential aspirations crashed and burned over a single derogatory reference to jewish neighborhoods in New York (and rightfully so). So what makes this so different, exactly?
Look, all sides are to blame on this. McCain's campaign should have immediately trashed this line of questioning, and Obama's campaign should have followed it up with "so what?" But none of that happened. And in this blogger's opinion, the world is just a tad sadder for it.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The Perfect Marriage.....Facebook and Blogger!
OK, so this is sweet. For a while now, I have been pretty steamed there hasn't been a way to link the audience of friends I had on Facebook and/or Myspace with my Blogger site. Until I found this cool app (MirrorBlog). I am starting to get the idea behind coding these little apps. Maybe I'll try something.
If there's a good service out there you like, and you'd like to see it interface with Facebook, give me a shout. I'm always looking for good ideas for the next big webapp.
In the meantime, I may give a new API for Twitter a shot, cause the one they have now for Facebook suuucckkkss...
Enjoy the posts, I haven't updated my blogger site in a while, hopefully now that some people may read it, I'll try to hit it more often. I'll do one more election post, then I'll go back and hit some of the places I've been to in the past year or so.
If there's a good service out there you like, and you'd like to see it interface with Facebook, give me a shout. I'm always looking for good ideas for the next big webapp.
In the meantime, I may give a new API for Twitter a shot, cause the one they have now for Facebook suuucckkkss...
Enjoy the posts, I haven't updated my blogger site in a while, hopefully now that some people may read it, I'll try to hit it more often. I'll do one more election post, then I'll go back and hit some of the places I've been to in the past year or so.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Belated "We Are Marshall" Post
I want to apologize, since I just saw "We Are Marshall" for the first time
last night....
In a nutshell, WOW, what a movie. I grew up aorudn the time of the
disaster, so I know all too well how hard it shook the football world, and
the country as a whole. The fact that the program continued on was
largely overlooked, I feel, and I think this film, while a little "Hollywood"
(and who can blame them, they did need to make money in the
process, it's a movie after all) really brought the point home....
...and I'd be lying if I didnt' say the recent events at VT weren't part of
my motivation in finally watching the movie. At a glance there's little
parellel, but when you think about it: a community, centered around a
sport, losing its heart and soul in a senseless tragedy, using that very
sport as a rallying point, and as I feel that part of this season, even if it
isn't said outright, will be to honor those taken this past April in our
togetherness, cheering on our team, as a family.
If you haven't seen the film, or if it's been a while, watch it again.
Honestly, I'd have to think that after what we've all been through, as a
community and a family, you'll see it differently.
last night....
In a nutshell, WOW, what a movie. I grew up aorudn the time of the
disaster, so I know all too well how hard it shook the football world, and
the country as a whole. The fact that the program continued on was
largely overlooked, I feel, and I think this film, while a little "Hollywood"
(and who can blame them, they did need to make money in the
process, it's a movie after all) really brought the point home....
...and I'd be lying if I didnt' say the recent events at VT weren't part of
my motivation in finally watching the movie. At a glance there's little
parellel, but when you think about it: a community, centered around a
sport, losing its heart and soul in a senseless tragedy, using that very
sport as a rallying point, and as I feel that part of this season, even if it
isn't said outright, will be to honor those taken this past April in our
togetherness, cheering on our team, as a family.
If you haven't seen the film, or if it's been a while, watch it again.
Honestly, I'd have to think that after what we've all been through, as a
community and a family, you'll see it differently.
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