What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore -
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over -
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

-Langston Hughes

I listen just about every afternoon to AM radio, but also CB radio--that outdated earliest chat-room for big-rig truck drivers and for many nostalgic Midwesterners.  I would assert that you can learn more about where the average American is by hearing conversations on Channel 19 of a CB radio than you do on AM radio shock-jock air, or on blogs, or on a cable TV show.

Plus, truckers typically say whats really on there mind.

The other day, three or four truckers were passing through, and the discussion was about Obama.  One kept saying that Obama was only going to be a one term President; that he had lost white people, even those who months before had elected him--because he had shown true colors in recent months.  Using ACORN, the whole racial "Beer Summit" fiasco, and most of all--the proposed Health Care changes, the three drivers agreed that Obama was a Communist, a racist, and probably a Muslim. 

"He is worse than Hitler," said one driver, "and you know what should've happened there..." he said matter of factly.  The other driver chimed in, "Yep, that M----- F----- won't get no second term."  A new voice keyed up his mike and said, "If this Health Care thing passes, that N----- is as good as dead."  Two or three mikes quickly keyed up and agreed, one saying, "You know there are people in this country who won't stand for this.  They won't let him f--- this country up.  Alot of 'em military that served, they 'aint gonna let this country become like Russia.  They'd do the patriotic thing and just shoot the bastard."

This went on for awhile, not in quiet paranoid whispers, but in, as stated above, matter of fact confidence and acceptance.  No one that I could hear disagreed.  Usually the airwaves on the CB is a rowdy, uncivil and disorderly set of cursing, jokes, and local info, all stepping over each other.  But this day the channel was orderly, patient, and respectful.  No doubt many a Vigilance Committee a hundred years ago was such.

I couldn't take much more, and I shut the damn thing off.  I turned on my car radio, and "El Rushbo" was basically touching on a similar subject, albeit in hushed tones, and clothing the fiery thought in implicit words.

The other night, I wondered aloud whether something is going to happen, regarding the recent culture of anger in America, but involving the issue of terror.  I forgot in that discussion that the first real terrorists ito attack inside the United States were the Ku Klux Klan.

Tonight, I realize that it is not only racism that is confronting us, nor is it an act of terrorism that I fear most.

I must speak candidly on a subject I admittedly am loathe to discuss, or mention, or allude to.

Something happened in this country in the last 6 months.  I can't put my finger on it, but something has happened. 

The people who were once overjoyed, hopeful, wiping tears from their eyes in jubilation have disappeared.  The movement has wavered.  The brotherly love, as after 9/11, has dissipated.

The overwhelming feeling of overcoming some racial crossroads has largely left; the naive notion of bipartisanship has been denied.  Passion has been redefined.  A new path, a new momentum is taking shape.  

What has replaced it has become anger, fear, and most of all, zeal.  A zealot is someone committed so much to a cause or principle, that they become extremist, militant, fanatical.  Hitler, Stalin, Rasputin--the tyrants all are ascribed with these characteristics.

But just as true, John Wilkes Booth was such a person, as was John Brown, as were all American political assassins.  Such is the same with any terrorist, whether they be hatching evil in a cave in Pakistan, or sitting in a truckstop in Shreveport.  Their aims are the same; Righting some imaginary or real injustice, by any means necessary.

I hate to sound nonchalant, or reduce such a sensitive human issue with trivial data, but it must be said that statistically it is more likely that a political assassination happens sometime in the next two years in the United States than a Terrorist attack, a war, or--for that matter--another term for a black man as President.  There is no falseness in that statement; statistically, it is so. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts

Whether we face it or not, assassination is a constant presence in our history. So why do we avoid this subject?  Why do we treat it as the elephant in the room, pretending if we never say it, it cannot happen? 

I wish no reality as such.  I would rather cut off my left hand than loose this President to a madman.  I take no pleasure in furthering this discourse.  It is a poor subject. 

But, it is there.  The chips are falling, and we all hear it every day, and if we do not hear it, we feel it.    

There are people in this country, our own countrymen, who want the first African-American dead.  And, some of them as stated above, openly say so. 

Because he is a black man.  Because he wants to change things.  Because he is so successful.  They fear what he represents. 

Norman Mailer had a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald--an avowed lefty--killed JFK, a man Oswald admired, not because he disagreed with him, hated him, nor feared the changes in freedom, civil rights, or peace that Kennedy represented.  Oswald despised instead the system, Capitalism, of the United States.  Since JFK--the head of the system--was so popular, so charming, so moral--he was therefore in the way for an evil system that had to self-destruct.  In other words, he was too good.  He was too effective.  As a result, he must be removed for proper evolution to take course; for Capitalism to fall.

Norman Mailer is a good author, but it is just a theory.  But what is curious is how it rings true today. 

This is exactly what is to be heard on both the CB radio on any given day, as well as on the EIB network, on FOX, and out of the mouths of Limbaugh and Beck and Hannity.  They realize the dilemma, and clothe their fiery thoughts in the way a poet does.  But people who listen, who feel--get the message.  If Obama too was seen too effective, too articulate, too successful--any opponent with an ounce of zeal would shed no tears if Obama went away.  Forever.  After all, He stands in the way of natural selection.  He wants to make himself King of America.  It is only fitting and proper for someone to right this wrong, so our country won't fail, so our nation won't fall.  

Such was said of Lincoln, by Booth.

Such excuses arent new.  John Brown said that "the crimes of this guilty land" would only be purged away with blood.  He did the equivalent of taking over a military base in 1859, and let his sons be killed for his cause.  He too was a zealot.  

Lincoln won the Civil War, thus--was too successful.  One side was happy.  Others were angry, fearful, hateful.  One man among them determined that the country owed all of it's troubles to Lincoln, and that he had then done the heroic thing and saved us Lincoln's tyranny.

I hear these movements echoed in the stream of voices of today.  I hear the cry of tyranny in every anti-Obama attack.  It is not racism alone.  It is not ignorance either.  It is the cry of "I want my country back!"  "Obama is a Communist!"  And, "Bury ObamaCare with Kennedy'

This whole topic of conversation here no doubt will be met with scorn, with a harsh "how dare you", as if I were the one printing large placards with Obama wearing Hitler's mustache.  As if I were the one showing up at town hall's where Obama is speaking with a gun.  As if I wanted to cleanse the country with blood.

I am not the one.

It is the ones who say "I want Obama to Fail."  That compare him to Socialists, Communists, Nazis, and Terrorists.  Well?  How have we dealt with those people?  These comparisons lead the person to see him as foreign, as tyrannical, as treasonous. 

"He won't make it to another term," they say--and not through some political process, but through some act of God.  It is they who propel my thoughts and words onto this horrifying prospect, and convince me, really convince me--that all it takes is one person who wants to be a hero. 

There is a climate of hate out there not unlike the one that on the morning of November 22, 1963 prompted someone to run a full page ad in the Dallas Morning News, showing a picture of JFK, with the words "WANTED FOR TREASON."  The man that took a rifle and shot him that morning did not put it there--but he felt the opportunity meet him, somehow.  He felt it necessary, somehow.  

If you are an Obama supporter, I ask you to pray, keep your eyes open, keep your eyes on the prize, and hold on. 

If you are an Obama opponent, tend to your own house.  The fires being lit all over this country stinks of familiar moments in our history; when one Senator from South Carolina took his cane and beat another abolitionist Senator nearly to death on the Senate Floor; of another Senator flaming hysteria and paranoia about the backgrounds and allegiance of other members of the government, and of men who rose to the highest office to change things, and were struck down for their vision. 

So this blog is not for the person whose first reaction is, "Joe, why talk about such a thing?"  (As if to say, "Why give them ideas?")

I am speaking to the people I have known all too well.  The people who are malcontent, angry, passionate, and zealous.  The militant, and the patriotic.  The ones who feel that voices and ballots are not sufficient.  The disgruntled.  The hopeless.  The people who feel they have lost their country.

Look around, and see and hear and feel the temperature.  Know the road and the direction that this tends.  It is not one of peaceful change nor common good.  Ask yourself, "Whither are we tending?" 

It is a climate that is felt, and though one cannot point to it and say, "therein it lie"--we know what world we live in, and what our history becomes in such a charged climate.  If we don't understand that much, my God, that is truly dangerous. 

The reality is this; that someone will try to defeat Obama.  One way or another.  If not politically, or personally, then there are other means, motives, and opportunities.  As if saying aloud, "Sic Semper Tyrannis."  "Thus always to Tyrants."  It was said after the election that he would not become President; I personally remember hearing the voices saying that a black man will not make it there alive.  It has already been said, promised, that if he succeeds with Health Care, there will be consequences.  I fear someone out there truly means it literally.  How many voices can we not overhear?  How many malcontents are there seeking meaning and purpose, and the will to act to get their country back?  We should have learned by now that all it takes is one.

If some forlorn individual seeks purpose, and belonging, and a cause--perhaps we need to do as Harvey Milk said, and recruit them.  People are, after all, worth saving.

Going back to Norman Mailer, he recounts a tale from a now grown man in Dallas, who was but a boy in November, 1963.  He remembers a day when he was playing outside with a neighbor, a nice man who he would see play with his new baby.  "Are you a good boy?," the man asked him.  He remembers saying no for some reason.  "Well, don't ever be so bad that you hurt someone," the nice man said to him.  He said that man was Lee Harvey Oswald.

It does not have to end like this.  Enough people in this country have fallen for a belief.  In politics, in war, and even in their own office buildings.  Each one of us has to make sure we help elevate the observance of decorum and respect, and assuage the passion and hopelessness and fear that exists, that truly exists, about our President Barack Hussein Obama.  This culture of vitriol must be turned around.  At a time such as this when we are out of work, unsecure, at war, and facing challenges abroad--we should pray for this man, whose responsibility is to preserve, protect, and defend our country and way of life, and all of us.  No one should wish him harm.

 I can remember, not too long ago, when the country faced just as hard times as we have been facing now.  I recall a fear, an anger, an outrage.  But I distinctly recall with fondness the spirit of the time, and the pride in taking part in supporting and healing those who lived through it.  I remember us all seeming to forget pettiness, being kinder, and rallying behind our leader to steer our country through such times.  We honored this event on September 11.

I pray that nothing untoward ever occurs, despite my estimation of the current weather.  I hope I am proven wrong.  It solves nothing to do violence.  We do not want to wake up one more morning--one unassuming day--and anguish over another national tragedy.  We do not want to ask, "My God, why did we let this fester."  "Why didn't I try to ramp down my passion."  "Why did I not speak up; challenge, counsel, alleviate?"  "Why was I ever a part in this?" 

Be aware of your world.  Participate in it.  Understand other points of view.  Speak out, and be part of solutions.  On Jackie Robinson's grave is written the inscription:

A Life Is Unimportant

Except In The Impact It Has

On Other Lives

Know you can make a difference.  

Stress the positive.

Focus on what is possible.

In these things are the antidote.  

As a disclaimer, I am one of those laid-off people who worked hard and played by the rules. 

I have no health care.  I am a diabetic.  I had no health care when I did work last.  The last time I did have insurance, 2 years ago, the insurance company reserved the right to change my prescriptions at their will, which they did twice.  I found better control paying full cost for the insulin which I knew I needed, and which was cheaper.

My beef is this.

For more than two weeks now, I have eaten dinner each night and watched handfuls upon handfuls of sound bites from those organized opponents to the President's plan on health care. 

I have seen angry, sometimes violent Americans who are pointing a finger at the administration we elected in November, and calling them everything from Socialists to Nazis.  I have seen more angry middle aged white people in the last month then when O.J. was aquitted for Nicole's Murder.

Then we had a man bring a gun near Obama's town hall.  Then, assault rifles at an event a few days ago.

There is outrage and anger, fear and villification, and above all highly executed assembly, free speech, and organization behind all of this.  No doubt some of these are expressing their personal well formed opinion.  But likewise some of these people listen and fear from what their leaders predict, whether they be Senators or Radio hosts. 

There is misinformation being spread and repeated and heard loudly.  It is a message that is working, lies or not.

But I am not angry.  I am not outraged.  Not over this.

What I am outraged at is how the left has left Obama out there to do the work.  To carry the fight.

Where in the Hell is the left?  Where are the organized troops that brought the first black man in America to the Presidency?  Where in the Hell is the outrage, the anger, the movement?

Right now, it is with, of all people and of all times--with the Right.

Why? 

It wasn't so long ago we had Bush, Cheney, Rove.  We had the controlled, limited, covert, censored America.  But that is over.

We have everything going for us, don't we?  The right should have no reason to be on cable, tv, radio--spreading their message.  They lost the entire New England region.  They still have the lowest following politically and the lowest poll numbers.  They were soundly defeated in 2008, and we have 60 senators in Congress.  All we do not have is control of this issue.  They do.

So I grow angry and outraged when I hear media on the left criticize Obama.  He has been the one out there, since he was elected.  He has been the one forcing this issue.  He is the one that has been out there on the stage, calling us out to move.  Calling us out there to bring it.  To speak out, get up, and be heard.

I am downright pissed off that this issue has been left to him only.  No troops.  No organizing.  No public outcry for Health Care Reform Now!

We are not helping him win this fight.  We must think that once we elected him, he can do the rest by himself.  As if he were dictator.

If this fails, we have no one to blame but ourselves.  And then, we will have handed the Right a major victory to go forward into 2010 with. 

We have been letting the Right lead the news, and the debate, as though we had handed them the microphone, and sat down and shut our mouths.  Maybe Bill Maher was correct when he called Americans "stupid."

God damn America if we sit down, lay back and relax any longer.

When I was a young boy, I remember constantly being scolded over and over by my Father on how to be polite.  "Don't yell."  "Watch your mouth, dammit!"  Apparently, I was always saying or repeating something that made me either sound smart, or gave me instant attention. 

I had realized early on that being impolite, or downright rude--often makes people 1) not only remember your name, and 2) gives you a position of authority over certain people's feelings--but, that 3) they will forget what they were saying.  I didn't realize at the time that these three things are the only sense of power a rude, obnoxious child can really have.

Assuredly, the reasons behind my rudeness had little to do with whom I addressed the rudeness to.  It had alot to do, I found, with the fact that I really either didn't matter much, or, felt in myself a sense of looming insecurity. 

Insecurity was probably the motivation behind the first twelve or thirteen years of my formative years, sad to say.  Fear, timidity, self-doubt, and anxiety.  I knew somehow that I was always on the losing side, left out of the loop, on the wrong side of destiny.  So I worked with what tools I had.

But, luckily for me, wisdom finally knocked on my door, or rather--I accepted it as my teacher, and not a bit too soon.  All too soon, I came to learn that what I had misunderstood for sounding smart, was actually just being obnoxious or obtuse, and that being the center of attention can be achieved just as easily by a car-wreck as that of a brilliant performance.  It is easy to point out an obvious truth; easier still to manufacture a new one.  What is hard, is to understand the hidden truths, which actually do exist--and to skillfully wield them one after another, never showing your hand. 

It's that kind of realization where you realized "they were laughing at you, not with you." that makes you change from ad hominem rudeness and inference, to something that is more responsible and more admirable.  I then came to understand that I had actually always, almost as a rule, said or behaved in a way that communicated the exact opposite of my hopes, spoke to the worst parts of my nature, and actually affected my efforts with a negative result, in every instance. 

The people whom I lashed out at either never forgot, never forgave, or, worse even--found the easy task of slamming me back with the wisdom or strength which escaped both me and any possible comeback worthy of spouting.  This then made me forever forgettable.

Dad always said, "It doesn't hurt to be polite." And, "It is good exercise to be courteous."

Exercise indeed, especially when thrust in the face of grown people with no home training.

When we are polite, when we are "disarming"--we bring strength and admiration to our effort, to our argument--even against the most vociferous opponent, or most skeptical audience.  When we are polite, and never rude, people instantly relate to us, and respect us as people.  They feel insecure attacking a kind person, who commands respect.  Who says, 'Please" and "Thank You."

Points at a debate are not scored as at a boxing ring, nor at a home run derby.  The object is really a sense of promise, loyalty.  How loyalty is won--is done so in much the same way as through a musical performance, a fine restaurant, or a work of art--through both conscious and unconcious harmony.  Communion.

So our words, and their tone, is most important.  Especially when we have little else working for us. 

So I have often thought that when we are at our weakest, most open to attack--most vulnerable--simple politeness and courtesy works as a best defense, and a best offense as well.  It works the best on those who think the very worst of you.  If nothing else, at least one will have earned respect.

So whenever I overhear someone else being rude, uncourteous, impolite--I smile.  It is knowing not only the chasm from which such behavior surely takes its root, but also--the level of respect it is sure to communicate to a wise adversary or to an observant audience, and the likely odds of such persuasiveness.

سلام به دوستان

In America, for the past month my family and I have watched the images and sounds coming out of Iran.  We have stayed up nights to listen to the voice of the Supreme Leader, to see the outcome of vast seas of marchers determined to be heard in the streets of Tehran.  We have downloaded clandestinely filmed video of a night sky illuminated with the echoes of "Allah Akbar."

I am 31 years old.  Americans of my age have seen over the course of their lifetime many other images from Iran, filtered through the years by our own media and government.  Those images left a sense of fear and anxiety for our future relations, and were reinforced by the policies of our mutual governments as well, producing in the mind of the average American a biased and somewhat negative reaction.  However, in recent years, due to the focus of the American government on the Middle East, and to the failures of that government to produce positive change or dialogue towards that region, many Americans have reexamined their own attitudes.  They have questioned not only the motives of their own government officials, but of the policies which have stood in the way of dialogue and peace for too long in our lifetime.

When many Americans saw the developments immediately after the 1388 election in Iran, what arose in the mind's eye was their personal feelings of the American 2000 election, a wound has yet to heal.  Not just the idea of "what might have been." But the pulse of liberty and freedom squashed by power and injustice.  The voice of the people extinguished by tyranny.  A fraud on all of our people.

So we already had sided with those wronged Iranian men and women who took to the street.  It was tragically human. 

When we saw the image burned into our psyche of a young woman killed in the pinnicle of life, senseless, anguished, and so quickly evaporated and stolen--that of our Neda--I say "our," we knew this cause was worth fighting for, even to the last man, the last battle, the last voice.  Flags and borders matter little at such times, when humanity is threatened by injustice, and lives of innocents are in peril.

There is a frustration here in America; a frustration that we cannot do anything to help our brothers and sisters in Iran.  We can speak out.  We can exert pressure.  We can agitate our leaders to either intervene or open dialogue through channels.  But we, as citizens of the world, feel somewhat powerless, and do know our immunity here in our relative safety of America.

But we also know that we can do something.  We can affect the next generation of minds, of ordinary Americans, and Iranians.  We can communicate.  We can open dialogue.  We can establish lifelong, meaningful relations with Iran.  Through personal exchanges, conversations, and friendships across this vast ocean of space and injustice. 

We do identify with you, though we do not yet know you.  But let us each take the first step, to say that world peace and human rights is a matter of concern for all of us, even when it seems not to affect our daily lives.  It starts with us.

So to my American brothers and sisters, and to my Iranian ones--let us open our hearts and minds.  Let us be free of old attitudes, and open to learning the true nature of our perilous and beautiful humanity.  Let us be open to learning to be willing to correct and admit to our errors, and willing to be honest and courageous in our dialogue and friendship and mutual respect.  We cannot understand each other if we do not know each other.  We cannot be friends unless we speak openly to one another.  If our leaders fail us, let us lead them, and take the first step towards a better world.

If we did not care about Iran before, we do now. 

Through five American Presidents, we knew Iran as a Turban on a white-bearded man's face, a man with dark brooding eyes.  We knew Iran as a group of hostage takers.  We knew Iran as Ahmadinejad.

By we, I mean the average American, who does not watch each political movement or nuance in the world with great interest, nor has the time to attempt to.  I mean the person who cares a great deal about his family, or his friends, may have either served in the military, or protested the war.

This average American never memorized Martin Luther King's speeches, but they recognize his voice.  They never learned about all of the events in the history of the United States, but they have a good idea what it stands for.

Today, that average American turned on their TV, and as in the last few days, saw in the streets of Tehran the translatable, understandable human condition of injustice. 

We have been robbed before; the nostalgia may have aroused many a disillusioned 2000 voter to a familiar human anger.  And those on the opposite spectrum may have felt the anger of seeing a system falter, or both--at the hypocrisy of that system forced upon an eager populace.

Iran has for a time, instilled in the minds of the west an awe, an awe that accompanies a society foreign to us, and one we fail to understand.  And, I must add, a mystical fear.  The fear that all the nightmares of man will one day meet.  The fear that as each time our TV news broadcast says the word, "IRAN" amidst the images and words of missiles and holocaust, that there must be a reason for it in us. 

But today, the average American does not fear when hearing the sound, Iran.  Today it is not fear, but concern.  Not of fear, but of anger.  Out of this anger grows resolve, sympathy, but also solidarity. 

We care about what happens where you are.  We want the people out on Tehran's streets to continue, to march, to rally, to grow louder.

We want the voices to not be stilled.  We wish the voices to move mountains, to topple buildings, to overturn thrones.

Before today, many of us had never heard of Azadi Square, or of Tehran University, and if we had, we would never seen nor heard tens of thousands of Iranian voices there.

We would have only heard one.

Actually, there was one voice today in Tehran.  But it was a different voice.

The average American, who could care less about the Middle East--heard that voice today of Iran.  And it was one we identify with.  It is one we cheer for.  One we march with.  One we fight and die for.

The average American saw today not muslims being beaten--but instead a Kent State, a Birmingham, a Berlin, and--a March on Washington.

We are with you. 

May Peace Be Upon You.

As noted in another post, many white people in our media, as well as many of us, seem to think that racism ends when we go to school with bussed in children, or when we choose not to use the "N" word. 

They seem to measure racism as a superficial wound, that can be treated locally with a smile and a handshake, and beyond that--indifference. 

I assume he may think it sufficient and necessary to have a black co-worker or two that he speaks to, that he jokes with.  That he smiles at and laughs at every opportunity to show what a nice and friendly white man he truly is.  That he attends the required social events, and pats and hugs the right people.  That he never uses the "N" word, and that he tells people this.

I will say that when a host of a talk show says that racism was basically over because, after all, he had gone to school with blacks years ago--shows just how well they paid attention.

If he spent a week living as the only white person in an inner city neighborhood, he may begin to see that the discrepancy between that life and his own is much greater than his own apprehension at being the only one who is different. But people like him will never understand that claim, because they are not willing to go find out.

I went to school in an African-American neighborhood while in the Jr Naval Academy. At first, my apprehension was as his probably is; I was the only one different. But years later, when I decided to MOVE TO, and not from, the inner city, I picked the neighborhood of St. Louis's northside. Smack Dab in the so-called "worst neighborhood" in St. Louis. Guess what I found out? It was not the worst because it had a 99.9% black population, but because--for some reason--drugs and propstitution was allowed to sell on the open market, at the gas station, near the doorstep of the ever-present abandoned building, and on any sidewalk one passes in their daily life.

It was the worst neighborhood in spite of who lived there, not because of it.

The fact is that it is allowed to thrive there, despite the many, many law abiding people who have either by choice or by necessity have not yet abandoned their home, and despite their best efforts to change it.

But if it were a white suburb, and the same conditions existed, it would not be tolerated, and would not be allowed to continue in the open life of the community, for all to see.

 
I came to believe that some people want that image seen there. And I was not just taking a vacation there. I lived there for years, and then moved to another equally challenged and crime rampant community, perhaps just to see what truths were out there to learn.

By the time I had lived in my new community two months, also on the city's northside neighborhood--I had half of the neighborhood boys, from age 6 to 16, joining me in a game of baseball almost every day I lived there.  The first day was just me pitching to my son.  At the end of the day, four others had joined us.  Within a month, they began knocking on my door, to see if we were going to play today.

Why?  Was it because I was white, that I had some special gift?  No.  It was because I owned a bat and ball, and not one of them did.  And a field usually frequented by teenage or twenty-something year old groups of men talking loud, doing drugs, and drinking--had instead people starting a game of baseball.

I realized in my move there not the obvious fact that I was the only white in a black community, and not that I should be applauded for forcing a sort of integration process. Instead, I noticed that the same problems followed, that most of the boys I organized from pranks and running the streets to now playing baseball in a nearby field--that only one out of 15 or 16 of them actually lived with their father.

Half of them were in jail for some offense.  A quarter of them were living with a sibling's mother.  The other ones had either never known their father, or had a dead one.

They lived in apartments with plastic furniture, that had come from thrift stores, or new furniture that usually could not be rented for long. Some wore the sme dirty pajamas over and over. Some apartments were trash heaps. But they all went to school every day, they all knew how to act in front of my Mother they all helped me when I arrived home with groceries, and they all played baseball with my children and I when we came outside.

But guess what had to happen first? No, it didn't take a white man to change their focus, or to save them, or to put them on a different path. It wasn't that I was doing anything. It was that I cared. The rest was already there, and was just being used or neglected in so many ways, if it were a white neighborhood, the people would rise up and demand, along with the media, that this must stop. And it would.

They already knew how to play baseball. They could play better than me. It was that no one had ever played with them. They never saw people playing it there. All it took was someone to start doing it, and it caught on.

 
It is a metaphor for the whole problem that exists. If they never see anyone planting, but only uprooting--how can they ever grow anything?

If no one is there to teach the right things, but instead only the wrong things--then why should they be expected to perform as well as those in a gated community?

I think it would surprise many racists to see just how well African-American kids in the inner city can work and learn, and actually have more responsibility in their own homes than the typical white family in a suburb. I never had to do the things these kids had to do, nor was I disciplined so much either.

 
The wrong set of expectations have been set, and the right set of expectations are too low, and too often become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is not what I brought, but what they did. It is not what I taught, but what I learned.

It is this.

Racism can't just be about the "N" word. It can't just be about stereotypes. It can't just be about history.

It has to be about how a child lives, and about if that child is getting what yours gets unquestionably. It has to be about safety. It has to be about people who put fear aside and help. It has to be about enforcing the law, and opening the eyes, and not allowing things to ruin a child's environment.

It has to be about outrage. If it is lukewarm, and about words that offend people, then the true problem is misdiagnosed; the cause missed, the condition stays the same or worsens. The patient will never recover.

If we don't do anything, no one else will. 

If we want to end racism, then we must end the inequities that really affect people's lives, and their children's.

Everything that  makes man's life worthwhile--family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head--all this depends on  decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which  does not heed the demands of its people. Therefore, the essential  humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government  must answer--not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its people...

 

     We have  passed laws prohibiting discrimination in education, in employment, in  housing, but these laws alone cannot overcome the heritage of  centuries--of broken families and stunted children, and poverty and  degradation and pain...

 

     So the road  toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger  march alongside us. We are committed to peaceful and nonviolent  change, and that is important for all to understand--though all change  is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle  is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for  themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others...

 

     And most  important of all, all the panoply of government power has been  committed to the goal of equality before the law, as we are now  committing ourselves to the achievement of equal opportunity in fact...

 

     We must  recognize the full human equality of all of our people before God,  before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this,  not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not  because of the laws of God command it, although they do; not because  people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and  fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do...

Only earthbound man still  clings to the dark and poisoning superstition that his world is  bounded by the nearest hill, his universe ended at river shore, his  common humanity enclosed in the tight circle of those who share his  town and views and the color of his skin...

 

     It is your  job, the task of the young people of this world, to strip the last  remnants of that ancient, cruel belief from the civilization of man...

     It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history  is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve  the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a  tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different  centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can  sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

-Robert F. Kennedy

Today a 89 year old man with a Confederate flag and a rifle walked up to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, and opened the door.  His website and his book unfurl his feelings towards Jews and Blacks.  He is not so important, as is his symbolism.

In the last few weeks, we have seen three isolated violent incidents with firearms in this country; one against American sold, iers at their office, one against an abortion Doctor at his church, and now, days after Obama's visit to the German killing fields, a shooting at the Holocaust Museum. 

For the last two months, or more, we have heard individuals in this country decry the Obama administration, pray that he fails, say that Al-Queda should hurry up if they wish to destroy America, call a nominee for the Supreme Court a racist, and on and on and on.

This is a newsflash for us, and for those who have spoken such hate-filled speech; there are more old and young people like James Von Braunn.  They may look on success or failure, be educated or ignorant, and may be insane, or sane.

Mr. Von Braunn was not a terrorist from the middle east; he was a WWII veteran and an author.

Sometimes all people need is a little push, just a tap.  Sometimes all they need to hear is the "sign" they have been awaiting.  Sometimes, it is just words they overhear.

We have no idea what pushed Mr. Von Braunn, but this we must be aware of; there are countless others out among us like him, waiting, for an opportunity, a push, or just a sign. 

Obama and Powell and those who want a better, more peaceful world will use power and words to inspire the world.  And Rush Limbaugh and Shaun Hannity and Ann Coulter and others will blame, and ridicule, and use division to inspire their troops that stay in dark corners of America, waiting for the next sign.

If signs come, some will react.  If they fail to come, some will take the lead, and move further.

Some of us want this to truly be a country, and a world, that is inclusive and representative of all.  Some of us do not.

These are matters for ones heart.  The Limbaughs and Coulters of the world will have to ask the right questions, and have the epiphany--or not.  We never could, though we might hope to. 

Words matter.  Bad words inform, inspire, and motivate just as much as good ones.  They appeal even more sometimes, and seem easier to turn into action in a world like ours.

Words matter.

There is no coincidence.  There will soon be an election in Iran.  You have an issue of Newsweek devoted almst entirely to Iran, "Everything You Think You Know About Iran Is Wrong."  You have this corresponding with an effort by CNN to show behind the scenes stories of life in Iran.  And you have an American President using language like "the Islamic Republic of Iran," and "Peace Be Upon Them."

There is no coincidence.  Not from afar.

These things were foretold to via the unpredictible, whirling torrents of experience.  Even far removed from the front lines in the Iran/U.S. cold war--I have experienced nonetheless something....

It is from this that I take not only pause, but also more importantly--I learn.

I was born one year before Black Friday, two years before the shah abandoned Iran and Khomeini began to lead, and three years before the 61 hostages were taken from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.  I have seen my entire lifetime filled with hate and mistrust and fear.  One wonders how a man my age in Iran might also have seen this lifetime as well.

I watched TV documentaries during the mid to late eighties which predicted a WWIII with Iran.  I let 1980s conservative rhetoric shape and inform, and color the palette--which painted an imaginary Iran inside my head.  I had never met an Iranian.  I have never been to any Islamic country, let alone Iran. 

The hinge was swung first on September 11th, 2001. 

I became changed.  The door swung shut.  I let my rules drop on the floor, let my best wishes be thrown away, and openly admit became a hater of all things Islamic.

But now, in the years since, most notably after 2007, something in me wondered if everything I had thought (in the world) was wrong; that perhaps a man could live and thrive until he discovers he is being used by those he enables.

I find myself questioning.  Questioning. 

I slowly began to learn and think again, for myself.  Nosce Te Ipsum.  Bizarre life is.  In some sort of strange catharsis, a person deeply moved and forever wounded by 9/11 to his core--has now come to find both nostalgia and Fernweh in the empty absence of a once palpable, ongoing "United We Stand" culture, lost after the failures of the last 8 years and the recognition of an unjustified war.  I actually find myself enamored and longing for more and more islamic culture, and a more human understanding and reckoning of what happened from both points of view.  Perhaps this sounds crazy, but it is true nonetheless.

The questions become all aligned in the same way; they all point to this--it is harder to defend a way that makes no real sense, and is more and more obviously based on poor intelligence.

I often wonder, how--to the ordinary muslim in Iran--the imaginary United States of America in his head has been slowly painted.  How the very real USA has stacked up next door in Iraq.  How he would imagine me, and what I feel towards him, and his country. 

So, what then? 

By gum, I think I understand myself.  It is now--that I wish, as I have wished, to purge my soul of the passions formerly felt and expressed in deference to 9/11.  How many times I have wondered how the german population felt after the camps of the dead were made public; if they realized their grave error in judgement despite their best intentions and former national pride.  I can't imagine.  Like so many well meant patriotic bleeding hearts, I thought I was being a good American.  I was wrong.

Whether we know it or not, that speech the other day was a hinge also.

I am nobody.  I am just another American white male over 30 who is unemployed.  But If I think it is important in my own life to understand my Iranian counterpart, and beyond that, his culture, his religion, his life--then there truly is hope for once for our two countries to respectively share in a new age of detante.

The time to engage Iran is now.  Now.  Now.

Tonight at 9:57 PM, the world welcomed into it my youngest son Christian Barack Wood.  He was 6 lbs 11 oz, and looks like Daddy.  I am not entirely embarrassed to note that upon arrival, he emerged--and peed directly on his otherwise mild-mannered doctor.  He was crying and screaming, until I got to hold his hand for the first time.  He and Mom are doing well, and I am so pleased that he entered life at this most hopeful and interesting of times. 

Please all of you continue with your personal efforts to help shape, define, and improve this planet for him and for all of the little ones who will grow and learn in it, and "make gentle the life of this world."

One speech cannot turn the tide.  Maybe if you are Dick Cheney, that is true.

I know there are many -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- who question whether we can forge this new beginning.  Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of progress.  Some suggest that it isn't worth the effort -- that we are fated to disagree, and civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur.  There's so much fear, so much mistrust that has built up over the years.  But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward.  And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country -- you, more than anyone, have the ability to reimagine the world, to remake this world.

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort -- a sustained effort -- to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

It's easier to start wars than to end them.  It's easier to blame others than to look inward.  It's easier to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share.  But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path.  There's one rule that lies at the heart of every religion -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.  (Applause.)  This truth transcends nations and peoples -- a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown; that isn't Christian or Muslim or Jew.  It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world.  It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today.

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us:  "O mankind!  We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us:  "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us:  "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."  (Applause.)

The people of the world can live together in peace.  We know that is God's vision.  Now that must be our work here on Earth.

Thank you.  And may God's peace be upon you.  Thank you very much.  Thank you.

I was struck as never before how Obama uses the right words and the right thoughts to lead the listener to the inevitable truths and conclusions, and illuminates the ideas which shape his words. 

He spoke today with authority.  Not the authority of the Drill Instructor, not the Prison Guard.  Obama spoke with the authority of the preacher, the schoolteacher, the nobleman.

When Ronald Reagan used to speak, my father said that Reagan spoke in a tone one uses "with a depressed friend at a bar, or one uses before a game, or after a loss."  "A tone that is both real yet hopeful.  Inspirational.  Soaring, yet mild-mannered.  And above all--wise."

This is the tone that is recognized in all ages, all cultures, and all countries.

Obama exuded this premise today. 

When dealing with differences that are regional, diverse, controversial, vitriolic--what can a speaker do to disarm? 

Be honest.  Speak from the heart.  Use words and language of those on the other side.  Recognize truths from both sides.  Cede points, not ground.

Look: Cairo was an important speech.  There was no denying this, though many tried to lower expectations at the last few hours before it started. 

This was a monumental speech, and was equalled in its merit and content only by its monumental significance of opportunity.

News and views afterwards immediately may say a modest success or a dismal failure.  Many are skeptical.  Some are disappointed.  But I listened and watched the President entirely.  I sat alone in my kitchen, and devoted an hour or so to his thoughts ideas and words.  I heard something else.

I recognized something deeply rooted in what is best about my country, and about man.  I heard what is achieveable about breaking down the most vigorous of barriers.  I saw what is best about forgiveness and understanding.  I saw a universal effort towards a new world.  I felt though he quoted the quran, he evoked the sermon on the mount; the beatitudes.

There was a message here. 

Despite what the papers say, I know what I heard.   I know how hopeful I was after he spoke that indeed the post 9/11 world, both in America and in the Muslim world, can be reconciled with such a humble and noble effort.  I wonder if others were similarly struck at how a weight has been lifted, and words have given flight to the winds of change. 

I begin to see it.

Obama will tomorrow give a highly anticipated and formerly promised speech to the Muslim world, from one of its capitals.

It is pointless no doubt to predict what words he may choose, and fairly obvious to the learned eye what subjects of late he may address.

Some have said that there are reasons that Obama giving this speech rather than just any other American President has specific significance.  These are numerous, so I will only entertain my best educated guess.

He could speak to the individual.  The extremist.  The potential terrorist.

He could appeal to their better nature.  How?  He could point to his own country.  Its conflicted history, its own contridictions. 

 As an African-American, no matter how successfully he has lived, he must understand how people must feel who have been by its own society undervalued, neglected, excluded, and have for a long time been given a set of low expectations and limitations by not only the powerful, but those whom have sought to lead them.  In other words, he could speak to the fact that his unique experience allows him to speak to theirs on a similar playing field. 

 And he is not alone.  He can speak to what RFK meant when asked what would have happened to him had he not been born a Kennedy.  "I probably would have been a juvenile delinquent," he said.  He could summon what Robert's brother John observed when he declared, "When law is not at hand, justice is sought in the streets."  He can relate to them what Langston Hughes called "a dream deferred." 

He not only can condemn; He can alleviate.  He can seek to understand.  He can explain that no one angry black voice ever climbed as high as he had.  No.  Despite the unfair, unjust society he grew up in, he decided to change it from the inside.  To play by the rules better even than those who opposed him.  No.  It took a calm, peaceful and hopeful voice.  He can show how even a person of color in the historically racist United States of America could overcome and be the successor to George W. Bush, and be the leader of the free world.  He could hold up his personal example, and those of others who have also overcome disadvantages and obstacles, whether placed upon them or self-imposed, and show a compassionate and inspiring example of what alternatives there are to those who wish to change the order of things.  Alternatives to violence.

Furthermore, and ironically--he could do what a white, rich, son of a former President couldn't.  Not by forcing slogans and assumptions down their throats--but through personal example--he alone could actually show a few changeable minds how democracy really can be a good system. 

He could demonstrate to the potential young muslim extremist the hope and potential in refusing a dream deferred.  To refuse it in a peaceful, attainable way.  Obama has explained in many of the stump speeches last year how unlikely a person he was to ever think he could be the President of the United States.  His name.  His race.  His family.  In no other place is his story possible.  Not yet. 

All he had was love, support, and hope.   And faith in a more perfect Union.  And, in himself. More faith than our own society teaches us to have in a young African-American man.  It was all up to him.  That is a powerful message.  It was for white people who might have never voted for a black man named Barack Obama.  It was for Republicans who never before voted Democratic.  It might be from just such a person whom they can appreciate, and take authentically.  His message could be his example as what can happen when the fear, hate, and ignorance of others can be overcome by a person who has love, support, and hope.  He can show how violence is fruitless.  He can show rather the power of hope and progress.  Naive perhaps, but it just might be worth trying.   

I attended as a teenager a military academy here in St. Louis.  In naval science class, we not only learned the history of people like John Paul Jones and Admiral Nimitz, we also learned the history of how Robert E. Lee helped save the St. Louis riverfront while in the US Army Corps of Engineers. 

I was a strange cadet at the Cleveland Jr. Naval Academy; a lapsed Catholic Fine Artist who belonged to both the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, as well as the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  I believed in gun control, knew from experience that gun shows were a huge black market for straw purchases--yet by age 15 owned a .303 Enfield, a 8mm Mauser, a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano, a 7.62x54R Mosin-Nagant, as well as 6 other vintage WWII era bolt action rifles. 

I was proud of this collection.  Yet I knew the tragic history.  The Enfield was used in WWI by the British tommies.  The German mauser killed allies in WWII.  The Carcano was also WWII, and a similar model to the one that allegedly assassinated an American President.  The Mosin Nagant saw action in Vietnam.

Yet I was basically a pacifist.  I hated fighting, and couldn't hurt a fly.  I listened to records of Woodstock, Jim Morrison, John Lennon. 

I had relatives and friends that were proud racists, and yet I was openly proud to be in an interracial relationship.

One of my best friends had a father who joked on MLK day, "Boy I tell ya--I wish they'd kill another one, so I can get another day off work."  One boyhood friend grew up to become the head of the White Knights in Overland, Mo.

Many people can't do that.  I believed that any American was redeemable, if they honestly believed in something.  If they couldn't have a friend like me, they'd never have a opportunity to see another POV.  Maybe wrong could one day be brought right. 

There were things that we both could cling to: love of history, battle,love for country, and of audacity. 

I remember seeing the widely acclaimed movie Malcolm X.  I had read The Autobiography of Malcolm X by that time, as well as other books which demonstrated how a man, despite personal tragedy, loss, and hate, can change and with audacity, be redeemed.  I remember the world that movie was born onto; the LA Riots, Rodney King, O.J. and the dragging of James Byrd Jr.  We were struggling with the Civil War still.  But it seemed that movie made many of my white friends respect a side of history they hadn't properly understood.

Another film was that of John Singleton, Higher Learning.  Then came American History X.

These were great films, at a time when we needed to think outside the box.  American History X went further beyond anything I had seen up to that time, and coincided with not only the crossover appeal of rap and r&b to a traditionally white pop/alternative cullture--but also with the political battles over southern culture and the Confederate flag.

This slow progression towards tolerance has evolved my entire lifetime.  Just as I have, as have many of my friends and family.  It is not uncommon to see the Confederate Flag displayed in a Dirty South rap video, to have African-American bikers at traditionally exclusive white biker rally, nor to see more interracial couples with children out at the store than racially exclusive ones.  I wonder what it means to now have an African-American president, leaving a wreath at a Confederate Memorial.  I wonder not only what it means to African-Americans who could never have done so, nor to Obama himself, but what it means for those Sons of Confederate Americans, to those White Knights of the KKK, and what it means to those people who hate this man because he is not white. 

This is in my view the greatness of America.  It takes a great man to decide, to decide--to respect men who fought and died so that he would never be President.  To honor your enemies, or former enemies, for giving their lives for a cause--is a pretty audacious thing, something I believe Robert E. Lee could respect, and even be moved by.

That is why Dr. Martin Luther King was so powerful, and so sucessful.  He was able to melt, to warm, to cool, de-escalate, win over, impress, and move people.  Move them from where they felt safe and secure, to a newer, better place, where also they could feel safer, and better.

Obama did two meaningful gestures of note today.  He sent a wreath, as other Predients have, to the Confederate memorial.  He also did something else, he sent a wreath to the African-American Civil War Memorial, in a largely black Washington neighborhood.  Something we haven't seen before.

The first to me is more admirable.  Why?  Because it was probably harder for him to do.

It took balls for Obama to not cave in to pressure, to not pander, or play to his base--and to instead show respect, honor, moxy, and character--and for those who disagree with him totally.

Some see cowardice, politics, fear, and compromise--but I see strength, nobility for our American character; his personal reckoning of what and where this country has been, in relationship to where it is going.   It showed compassion, and incluson, even towards those who in the past have shown little.  He could have said, "We're not going to this year.  Today are looking forward."  But he didn't do that. 

Instead, a black man laid a wreath of honor and respect for fallen soldiers of the Confederacy.  And a President laid a wreath at an African American Civil War Memorial also, for the first time.  Two notable occurences, the first I believe more notable as a man.

It reminded me of a story, that illustrates to me that every person who ever was known was a locket full of contradictions, and not as Shelby Foote once said "easy to pin down."

The story goes to the effect that when a dying Robert E. Lee was no longer a General, but a president of Washington College, he went to church one Sunday where amidst a congregation of stoic, uncomfortable white faces, there knelt a young black student, whom no one dared to sit near to.  Lee strode up the aisle, and knelt directly next to the young black man, and began to likewise pray in silence.  No one dared criticize nor chastize the old general, but sat instead quietly in awe. 

Not unlike Malcolm X, or Robert E. Lee, many Americans arent easy to pin down, nor are they the same person their entire lives. 

America has in it's past not just Abu-Ghraib, not just Gitmo--but the Trail of Tears, Slavery, Custer's Last Stand and yes, the Confederacy.  There are proud Americans who honor all descendants, on all sides, of all of these American legacies. 

We can never know all of the motivations that caused the Civil War, or casued a Confederacy, nor caused the young and old to defend the South, and not the North.  But what we should be able to do is to honor all people who fight for what they believe in, even if we believe them wrong.  We should teach tolerance for diverse points of view.  General Grant could do that.  Robert E. Lee could do that.  Abraham Lincoln could do that.  Martin Luther King could do that.

Perhaps Obama can too.

The movie American History X ends with a beautiful scene of a beach overlooking the ocean.  It could be near Mt. Vernon, Charleston Harbor, Manhattan, or Omaha Beach at Normandy.

The narrator quotes Lincoln's 1st inaugural:

 We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

i slept upon the moonlit night

i sat at where the shadows warm

the darkness felt the coldness numb

and fell upon my wounded arm

i sat upon the windows sky

i ate the anger from my tears

and years of love informed my cry

and hate the burning stench of years

i bathed in starry'd blues beheld

i raped the smiles of looming builds

the ache of art had smoothed the blade

that smelled of carcass rot decayed

i weeped in slowly salty breath

the looming towered arrow flies

and knowing love consumed by death

gives sound to trumpet blooming dies

i sat upon the death of night

as one sits lonely on a throne

to ponder living conscience what

the rosy thorn hath always known

I go to the unemployment office.  Usually once or twice a week. 

I see more and more people applying.  I see longer lines.  I now see men in suits who look uncomfortable being there; figity, obnoxious, panicky.  I suppose this is their first experience.

The wait for the computer job search invests more and more time waiting.  They have more chairs now, but it looks disorderly and cramped.  There are desks that used to be filled with workers, now being used by job seekers doing their "job search."

Most glances reveal multiple windows opn on any given desktop; Google, Myspace or Facebook, and then sometimes eBay.  But there's always a tab just one click away to hide everything the applicant has been doing instead of a job related query, and if anyone passes by, it is clicked.

These are the "Discouraged" workers.  They are a subset of what the government calls "marginally attached to the workforce.  The government counts them, statistically speaking, not as employed nor unemployed.  They are in a sort of purgatory both within and outside the workforce.

These people say, if they open up, "I have looked and looked.  What is the point?"  They point out that looking for a job takes up a huge amount of time and mney, and having only an unemployment check makes their income very little.  To look, and consistently get nowhere is one thing.  But to feel you are also wasting what funds you have on wasted trips in your car is another.  Others call attention to the fact that getting an interview is virtually non-existant.  The days of going in and dressing up, and getting call backs are over.  Once they see your resume, they eliminate you before anyone sees you or hears you.

"To do the same thing over and over again--and achieve the same result is lunacy," said one 40-ish yr old man.  He had been a factory worker for 25 years.  He was let go along with his whole crew.  Then they eliminated his particular trade shop at the factory, so he knows he won't get called back.  He has never done anything else.

People check in every week, report that they've contacted X amount of employers, and then they leave, if they are not going to play on the internet today. 

There are people of every age, every background, every cultural shade of the spectrum.  All hopeless, all discouraged, and all wondering at how many new faces are at the office today, just laid off.