"Fake News" and Nations divided

I've been largely avoiding social media and news for a while now. While I miss hearing about events in the lives of friends, I don't find I  miss the rest of it. I haven't found myself feeling particularly uninformed either.

I've had some time to consider the term "Fake" News. Conservatives throw it about regarding any story that casts a bad light on them, and liberals, make fun of conservatives for doing it.

Conservatives have chosen the wrong moniker. IT isn't fake news. "Fake" suggests false. And - mostly - what is being reported isn't false.

One for-instance: Children being separated from their (illegal immigrant) parents. Not fake.

It is happening. It also happened while Obama was president. The news media fail to report that. In fact, many of the stories seem carefully crafted to imply the problem is new and unique to the current presidency. So they are in fact telling the truth, just not the whole truth. And of course with the inclusion of opinion, innuendo and unsubstantiated claims, "Nothing but the truth" is also sacrificed.

But it is not fake. Irresponsible, yes. Lacking integrity, yes. Unethical...

Yes, I know Fox News does the same. I'm not taking a side, just correcting terminology.

At any rate, I haven't missed it, and I haven't felt the least bit uninformed.


Anyhow, as I was considering the increasing divide between the conservative and liberal parties. It occurred to me that it actually a bit of history repeating.

Most of you will probably jump to the Civil War. North vs South. The winning side of course claims the cause was just - ending slavery. A few disgruntled ancestors of the losing side still claim that it wasn't really about slavery, that the slavery issue was a distraction from the real drivers behind the war (mostly they claim it was financial. The north was taxing the south to support their lifestyle). But of course, history is written by the victor, so....


But that isn't actually what I was considering. Approximately two thousand years ago, a group if people immigrated to the united states. They prospered for many years. Over time however, conflicts rose, largely motivated by the desires for greater wealth and/or greater power. They eventually split into two parties.Ultimately they slaughtered each other to the last man (see the "Book of Ether" in the Book of Mormon for details).


Of course another group arrived about 600 BC, They too ultimately divided into two factions, then reconciled, then divided again... One of the two factions survived that conflict, the other did not (Read the rest of the Book of Mormon for that saga). So I supposed the liberals and conservatives can both take heart from that. One of you might survive to write the history, and thus claim that your cause was just, was righteous, was beyond reproach... You might even manage to convince yourself that it's true

Good luck with that.

It's the Carbs?

So this thought is tied to my last post, the conversation I had with the guy in Germany, about obesity in the US and the growing problem in Germany, elsewhere, and mutual suspicion we shard about industrial food being a contributor.

Currently it is in vogue to blame it on carbs, but I just took at look at the ingredients list on a "Healthy", whole grain, multi-grain loaf of bread....

The white bread, which is more common traded in the brown sugar for corn syrup.

The bread in the picture below, is also white bread.

It contains flower, water, salt, and yeast.

I'm  thinking maybe the carbs aren't really the problem here....

Adventures in Ireland, Germany and Seattle

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend almost a week in Ireland, Followed by a Few days in Germany. It was the first business travel fro me in over a decade. Let me share a few of my observations and adventures.

I have concluded Europeans in general have amazing bladder control. They must. Because how else can they get through day in a city with virtually no public toilets? I did finally manage to find one in the open market in the middle of Cork, Ireland.

Oh yeah, when you travel in Europe, you are going to want to have a few coins in the local currency. The door to the toilet doesn't take credit cards.

Fortunately, a compassionate shop-keep noticed my plight and provided me with the necessary coinage to spare me from disaster.

The fish market in Cork was amazing! Perhaps more so to an inland dweller like myself than to others but...

And there was a restaurant right upstairs which was supplied directly from the market.

I grew up during the cold war, so the "enemy du jour" was the communists, specifically the USSR. But It was still close enough to post WWII, that I was privy to considerable WWII propaganda, in the form of cartoons, Hogans Heroes, etc... I also have vague memories of News reports during the Red Army Faction Era. So, I entered Germany with some subconscious bias, that Germans were abrupt, stern, easily angered... I did my best to ignore it, but it was still there.

My travel plans for that leg of the trip were not especially solid.I arrived in in Hannover late at night, needing to travel to Einohoven, which was a considerable distance away. I couldn't bring myself to spend the roughly $150 for cab fare (even if it was the company's money), so I decided I would try to get there by using the trains.

I don't speak German.

I managed with some small amount of luck to acquire a ticket. I even manged to find the right platform for the first leg of the trip. I knew the name of the stop where I would need to switch trains. I had no idea when that stop would occur.

I managed a timid "Sprechenzie English?" to the  train conductor, who gave the the correct stop count, and he even let me know my next train would be at platform C. Arriving at the correct stop I exited the train.

Panic.

There was platform A, and Station B. There was no platform C. Just then a sweet old lady tapped my shoulder, she had overheard my query on the train. Observing my panic she came over to direct me to  a staircase which would lead me to platform C.

I Finally arrived in Einhoven at 11:30 pm. My heart sank. All I could see was darkness. This was a tiny station, not directly in the city. It was unmanned. I was arriving in the dark of night, and oh yeah, my cell phone wasn't working. I had a brief vision of a news article about a stupid American found beaten to death by an angry Neo-Nazi gang. As I exited the train, I saw a young woman ahead of me. I ran up,  got confirmation that she spoke English, then began to explain my situation, I asked if she could possibly call a cab for me to take me to the Hotel. She called the cab, and then walked me to the location the cab would arrive, letting me know he would be there in 3-5 minutes.

At the end of my work, I got back to the Airport in Hanover the same way. relying on the kindness of strangers. In one case the individual didn't speak English, but by pointing to the tracks and saying "Flughaven?" I was able to express my need to get to the airport. He helped me get onto the correct train.

I spent a bit of time just wandering the streets in Germany. I didn't think to ask about safe or dangerous parts of town. I never found myself concerned for my well being. Everyone I encountered was very kind, very warm, very willing to help.

I contrast that with Seattle.

Due to a medical emergency which delayed our departed from London Heathrow. (That is an intimidating airport. It is enormous, you need a big layover just to get from one part to the next. But, once you understand their process, it is incredibly efficient, and consistent. It is also nice that virtually every airport in Europe uses the same security procedures, unlike the US, where I am never sure when or where I need to remove my shoes, belt, etc...). Once I arrived I went looking for the correct place to work out alternate arrangements since I had missed my connection. The airport employees were too busy playing on their phones to even bother to look up as they gave me terse, and generally inaccurate directions. It took me losing my temper and becoming... ahem... assertive... to finally get some attention. It won't hurt my feelings if I never set foot in Seattle again.

 Oh, there was an amazing Motorcycle museum in Einhoven also, which I got to tour. That was a treat!

They discussed the various unsavory aspects of Germany's history as well in the tour. It was - I felt - impressively frank, fair and honest, without being unnecessarily condemning.

Oh, one particular note I observed which I thought worth considering and taking heed, lest we continue on the path of history repeating...

I also learned in both Ireland and Germany that America has a solid stereotype. Large portions and large girths. A few jokes were made in both sites about my size and appetite being atypical American. Though both sites also commented that was probably an unfair stereotype. More interestingly, In Germany the individual observed that Germany was beginning to experience a problem of growing waistlines. We conversed about it at some length, and concluded the likely key contributors were the growing number of sedentary jobs, the proliferation of electronics (games, TV), and the increased consumption of industrial food (i.e. not fresh, high in preservatives, sugar...)

We also talked healthcare. That was an enlightening conversation. I concluded that there really is no such thing as socialized healthcare. In the countries we classify as having socialized medicine,  there are essentially two healthcare systems. There is the "Socialized" system that we clamor for - that we believe will solve all our problems and make everyone equal. This system is the one for the average and lower class folks it is the one the government pays for. It is the one with four to six month waiting times to see the doctor. Then there is the healthcare system for the upper-middle and wealthy. It either exists as a 2nd tier, or as an under-the-table (aka bribery) system.

In every conversation we came to the same conclusion. We all want everyone to have good healthcare. And we all recognized that "Good healthcare" is entirely too objective, entirely too relative, and is ultimately infinite in size and cost. We all seem willing to give up some of what we have to help others in need, but at the same time we all seem to agree that those who have gotten to where they are by blatant disregard (emphysema from smoking, diabetes from a consistently bad diet...) should be held accountable for their bad choices. We all seemed to realize and acknowledge that at some point, tough decisions must be made, and compromises must be established. Who then makes those decisions? That was the unanswered question.

I noticed that architecturally, Germany was kind of... boring. The houses were all square boxes with unadorned, simple roofs. They all looked the same. And it struck me how incredibly practical it was. They were built to get the most real estate for the least money. Not to impress the neighbors.  It is worth noting I did not see large swaths of the country, and much of what I saw, though on the western side, was near the east/west border. I did catch a glimpse of a castle, sadly I wan't prepared and missed the photo opportunity. :(

While In Germany, an article was released in a business magazine, essentially blaming Germany for Europe's financial struggles. The argument was that the Germans were too thrifty, they were "hoarding" their money instead of "investing in the economy". It occurred to me, that what the business article was actually complaining about was that fact that the German people  hadn't bought into the  popular "eat, drink, and be merry" mindset that everyone else has. Instead of living right on the ragged edge of disaster and hoping someone will come along and bail them out when something doesn't go according to plan, the Germans are largely living within their means, saving for that inevitable rainy day. Good on them.

One last interesting observation: During one of my Heathrow layovers, I was sitting near a group of young British girls (as in mid 20's to mid 30's). I overheard them discussing various locations in the US, which were far superior in culture, custom, politics, etc... than their own home country. That was an unexpected eye opener for me. Perhaps it was naive of me, but I honestly thought Americans were the only people people who spent a couple days in another country, and then went about snobbishly denigrating their own country based on their now "vast knowledge" of said other country.
 People really are the same everywhere.

Fixing Terrorism and Mass shootings

After this post, I will likely have a new “regrets” post to write. But as I have watched the conversation around mass shootings, I feel compelled to write.

First, let me explain to you why I feel I am qualified to have a voice on this topic (here comes the regret post). When I was around six or seven years old, one of my best friends tried to psychologically manipulate me into participating in anal intercourse with him. No, I new nothing about the birds and the bees at the time. Nor did I at age nine or ten when I was exposed to hard core pornography. Nor did I at the age of 12 when I was molested by a leader at a scout camp (I didn’t connect the dots until roughly ten years later, when I saw a new report of that individual being arrested for similar offenses).

I was… am… moderately socially incompetent. I am also an introvert, with a social anxiety disorder, and a predisposition to compulsion and addiction.

On my mission, I had a companion who was fostering a relationship with a young woman. Everyone else figured it out, I didn’t catch on until 3 days before I got called in and yelled at for not reporting it.

In my late twenties, my employer took all his employees to the lake one weekend. As we were unloading his personal water craft, a young woman came and very overtly came on to me. Everyone at the lake could tell. Except me. I got teased mercilessly for that. Later that year, the same employer took us to see a comedian in Las Vegas while at a technology convention. This comedian’s humor consisted mostly of picking on audience members (aka bullying). I was in the front row. Nearly his entire 1 hour on stage revolved around jokes about a nearly 30 year old computer nerd/virgin/loser from Utah. I went to my hotel room that night and cursed the window locks that prevented me from jumping.

Prior to that job, I was in college, relying on a scholarship to pay my way. Somehow, when trying to transition to off campus housing, I got trapped with two apartment contracts, one on-campus and one off-campus. I tried to get help resolving the situation, but… large bureaucratic organizations aren’t sympathetic to quiet, introverts who have neither the social nor financial connections to get the wheels turning. At the time I was struggling to keep myself fed. I had no idea how I would pay two contracts. I was shuffled around from one bureaucrat’s office to the next, listening to a steady drone about “policy and procedure…”. When I finally lost my mind and had a full-blown screaming meltdown in one office, they finally released the contract, and sent me on my way with a token for a free ice cream cone.

I tried to get additional scholarships after that. I spent a fair amount of time perusing an enormous book of scholarships, looking for some I could apply for. There were pages upon pages of scholarships with requirements I could not meet; African-American, Hispanic, Native American, Female (there was one specific scholarship restricted to women over 6 feet tall in fact)…

I finally had to drop out, of school due to illness brought on by stress. Every test was a trigger. Group critiques were even worse. Finances were always a matter of just getting by. I had found it necessary to take on school loans when the one scholarship I had ran out. So, I left the university – without a degree -  to a low paying job, with the burden of student loan debt, and a maxed-out credit card to cover medical costs.

A decade later, I managed to finish a degree by taking one class a semester, and thanks to a series of fortunate events which placed me with an employer who funded those courses. and with a manager who saw my intellectual and ethical value, in spite of my social incompetence and lack of degree.

Sadly, such things don’t last. The company was acquired by ever larger corporations, and once again I find myself a quiet, insecure, introvert in a boundless bureaucracy which rewards extroverts. And grinds my lot to dust.

I live In a world which continues to send the message that I am somehow inherently bad because I am white, male, straight, religious (it is funny how exclusionary the inclusivity rhetoric can feel)…

I live in a world that utterly disregards my struggles with addiction, deriding any who dare speak out about the proliferation of sensual media as prudish, and demanding their freedom of expression.

I live in a world that produces mountains of negative, contentious media which overloads my introverted anxiety-ridden mind. I live in a world where I am all to often alone in a crowded room, enduring levels of stimulation I cannot bear because it is “the norm”, and because I must, in order maintain my career, to feed my family.

I believe I am qualified to speak on this topic because I understand. I know the feeling of hopelessness, of Isolation. Of not fitting in. Of seeing no path forward through the morass of rules and regulations, policies and procedures, cliques and clans, social barriers…

More rules and regulations won’t fix this. They are in fact part of the problem…the frustrating, uncaring, bureaucracy they foster helps create the environment where isolation, hopelessness and anonymity wreak havoc on the tender mind.

The mental health conversation as it stands won’t help either. This group already feels like victims of discrimination. They are already isolated, already on the outside. Do you really believe further stigmatization, further restriction, further discrimination will help?

What will help? For starters, practice that “Inclusiveness” that you pretend to believe in. stop picking winners in the victim game. We are all victims in one way or another. Life is hard, bad stuff happens. Demonstrate a little tolerance and empathy. For everyone. Especially those individuals you don’t easily relate to.

Don’t demand that everyone conform to your standard of “normal”. We as a society spend millions to accommodate the hearing impaired, the blind. We construct modern buildings to accommodate those who are wheelchair bound. We have special schools for the autistic and for various mental handicaps to tailor the learning experience to their specific needs, we create work environments to accommodate their limitations, capitalize on their strengths and help them to be able to thrive as they are. Yet those who deal with attention deficit disorders, anxiety, even to a lesser degree introversion are expected to conform to the “norm”. and if they are unable to do so sufficiently on their own, then we medicate them to make them behave more “normally”.

I believe that to a considerable extent this country exists because of ADD. It would take a certain degree of dissatisfaction and disregard for personal safety in order to cause a person to leave the “civilized world”, cross a massive ocean on a little wooden boat, then attempt to carve out a livelihood in a new, untamed, unfamiliar land. Yet we now consider that trait which played such a key role in the creation of this nation as a blight, an undesirable trait that must be quashed. That is part of why I don’t think it is valid to compare Europe to the US. The US was created by those who could no longer tolerate the European way of doing things. They came here to get away from that. It is simply not in their DNA. I don’t in any way imply one is better than the other. They are simply different. If you are so fond of the European way, then perhaps you should move to Europe, and leave America for the “Crazy”, Anxious, ADD Americans.

Can we not find a way to accommodate their needs, and capitalize on their strengths, and help them to be able to thrive as they are? Must they be forced to deal with the cost and side effects of mind altering medications in order to fit in? Can they not also be included, accepted and celebrated for who they are?

Do you know what kept me from being one of the headlines? My Family, and my religion.

I love my family. I feel loved by them. The thought of causing them pain or sorrow has more than once brought me back from the precipice.

My religion gives me hope that at least some portion of what I think and feel is because I am “broken”, just as a person born without limbs, or eyes, or hearing, or with a malfunctioning heart… is broken. That it is not really - who I am. It gives me hope that someday - perhaps not until after my time on this earth is over, but someday – Through the atonement of Jesus Christ, I will be made whole. I will be repaired. I will be able to think and feel as I really am, without the limitations imposed on me by this imperfect, mortal body.

My religion gives me the book of Mormon and with it, stories of a few brief periods when groups of people on this earth managed to live “after the manner of happiness”. Periods when they treated each other with respect and kindness.  When they reached out to their neighbors and made sure that none were left without food, clothing, or shelter. When they spent their time looking for opportunities to serve and lift rather than working to get their government to make sure everyone conformed to their particular view of “fairness”, or compensate those who in their eyes suffered more. I cling desperately to the hope that someday, maybe I can experience that.

Of course this, will likely be ignored or “poo-pooed” by many because I am just another one of those  “uneducated backwoods folks, with his inherent privilege, clinging to his religion”. And because “statistics say blah blah…”. What you are failing to understand is the people you are talking about are part of the three, four, or even six sigma. They don’t fall within the standard deviation. They are the anomaly in your statistical analysis. Your way of viewing the world fails to account for their experience. Your intellectual superiority is really just blind arrogance, and lack of real empathy.

You really want to make a difference? Then YOU make a difference. Be kinder, be more tolerant, look for opportunities to encourage, serve and lift others.

Stop spreading negative memes and stories. The country has survived over a century of “bad presidents” who were going to be the “ruin of the nation”.  Some of those terrible presidents are even revered today. This president won’t be any different, nor will the next one, so long as “we the people” make kindness our watchword. And that starts with you. There have always been groups who were misunderstood, mistreated. Continuing to dredge up the past in order to lay blame, or claim reparations only perpetuates the problem. All the negative rhetoric does is contribute to the sense of hopelessness that threatens to engulf those who deal with anxiety and isolation. All it does is make us look down, rather than up. They become Self-fulfilling prophecies.

If everyone stops watching the negative news, then those who produce it will be forced to find more productive ways to earn money. It will dry up, and the cycle will stop.

You really want to make a difference. Make a sincere effort to see the world through the eyes of others. For example, you know those Victoria’s Secret posters and other sexy ads you feel are no big deal and are protected by free speech? Those yoga pants that show off those curves you’ve worked so hard to achieve, and deserve to show off? To those struggling with sex addiction, those are roughly the equivalent of a handful of cocaine blown into the face of a recovering drug addict. Imagine taking a super soaker full of bourbon and hosing down a struggling alcoholic. It’s kind of like that. I’m not suggesting passing restrictive laws. I am asking you to consider the millions of people around you every day, and make an effort – if not to make their lives a little better, then to at least not contribute to their personal hell.

You really want to make a difference? Then Serve. Love. Follow the Example of Jesus Christ. You don’t have to believe he is the Son of God to study his life – his example of kindness, healing, serving, humility, encouragement, mercy… – and emulate it. A staunch atheist can appreciate and emulate him as easily as a faithful devotee.

Of course I imagine none of what I have written matters. I remember a conversation I had with someone not long ago, somehow the subject of Marijuana came up. He said that "If there were any real medical benefit to be had from Marijuana, the big pharmaceutical companies would have already capitalized on it. Having worked in close proximity to Big Pharma, a Noted that Marijuana was a difficult play for them, because as a natural substance there was little opportunity for patents or other means to be able to recoup the inordinate cost to bring a product through the regulatory hurdles to market. Additionally, int he US at least, the legal classification of Marijuana makes it more difficult to work with than Heroin. Finally, I noted some studies which have shown efficacy relating to certain specific treatments. He stared at me blankly for a moment, then repeated the exact same comment as before, nearly word for word.

In other words. Nothing I have said will matter, because nobody will really listen. 

And with that, I will close this, and begin my cycle of regret for having written it in the first place.