Occupy the Traveling Now

Hello all.

Thanks for tuning in.

Traveling Now to Politics: NUTS!

So right now I am so sick of politics I could kick a stump. I could go full mountain man, live in a hut in the woods and trap muskrats for sustenance. I could quit every political origination I belong to, stop watching the news and reading blogs and putting an effort into forming my opinions.  I could find distractions, so many wonderful distractions that could keep me utterly divorced from what is going on my nation. I could watch reality shows about cooking, and art, and music. Music! I could utterly immerse myself in music (carefully avoiding overtly political bands) and live a very fulfilled life, just leave the greasy business of American politics behind and its attendant stress behind forever.

If it weren’t so goddamn important.

Right now I feel like there are extremists out there trying to make my country into something it isn’t by pretending that it used to be something it wasn’t. I feel like the response by the so-called centrists has been so timid and careful that absolutely nothing is being done. I feel like the leaders who I helped elect are utterly terrified to call bullshit on bullshit. I look from pigs to men, and men to pigs, and it’s harder and harder to convince myself that there is any difference.

I am not naive. I know that all your average citizen sees are the tiniest fraction of what is actually happening in our government. I am smart enough to know that I don’t have all the facts. But I am keenly aware of the trend that the weapons used to fight our current political battles – not the issues, mind you, but the tools used to wring support out of the American people – are getting uglier and more coarse. And I fear that these weapons set a standard and our national character follows.

You could almost despair . . . except for Occupy Wall Street.

Heroic Fanfare, Courageous Montage!

 

Real Americans

Full disclosure: I have barely participated in the Occupation. I did a little writing for a friend who is an organizer, and that was that. I haven’t stood for one minute with the Occupy folks. Have not been at risk, nor cold and uncomfortable, nor abused by the police, nor hectored by passers by.

There are lots of reasons why I didn’t participate directly in my local Occupy movement.  I certainly don’t really have time to participate – I work between fifty and sixty hours a week, and I write, and I spend time with my family and friends. My life does not leave much time for occupying. But I could have found some time, I am certain, found some way to make it work If I had really wanted to.

But I didn’t directly participate because I went to an early organizing meeting and was thoroughly freaked out by some of the participants. I just didn’t have the energy to make myself go on one of my rare and precious days off and deal with some of the folks, and some of the situations I would surely find myself in.

Getting that off my chest feels good.

The meeting was in my town and I showed up energized and hopeful. Occupy Wall Street really captured my imagination. I saw that there were people who shared my concerns about the corporatization of our government and values, people who shared my passion for democracy.

There were also anarchists at the meeting. I try to take people’s beliefs in stride, but I classify anarchists with conspiracy theorists, religious fundamentalists, luddites, and objectivists: people to whom you owe a duty to never allow their vision of society to materialize. As I walked in the door one fiery fellow was shouting about burning down the banks. Was he serious? Certainly not fully, but he was certainly more serious than I was comfortable with.

I walked through the room just listening to the conversations of people.  Folks were gleefully planning on being arrested, folks who were obviously there with a personal agenda that had little or nothing to do with politics. There were people there who seemed to me just wanted to be seen.   

Now hear me: the majority of the people there were progressives, politically minded responsible citizens who wanted to stand up for a better America. That was by far the majority. But they never seemed to be the loudest ones, and that freaked me out. Just listening to the conversations exhausted me.

Long story short, I dipped first chance I got. My friends who got involved and stayed involved are my heroes; they were strong where I was weak, they sacrificed where I was selfish.

Also they are cooler, and more attractive to the opposite sex.

But I went to that meeting and the passion drained out of me. Occupy Wall Street – any major public protest – calls for passion, and when I didn’t feel that any longer I absented myself. I won’t do anything like that half-assed, its not fair to the people who are in it 100%.

So I just want to say thank you to the people who did stand out there, who did put themselves at risk, who stood and withstood. Thank you to those of you I agreed with, thank you to those of you whom I did not, thank you to those of you I feel are a danger to yourself and society. To everyone who participated: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Unshopping

People come to my pawn shop to Unshop. 

The woman comes in, looks over my tools. “I’ve got a really nice cordless drill,” she says, watching me sidelong. “DeWalt. Hardly ever used. Two batteries.” Then she looks at me hopefully.

“Wow you have some nice guitars,” a dude with a pony tail says. “I’ve got one, its an acoustic like this. Do you think you could give me, like, two hundred dollars for it? “

A woman checks out the wall over my desk, gets excited. “Oh, you take paintings?” She looks so hopeful, as if she just discovered the answer to a horrible dilemma right there on my wall.

Whatever else you can say about the American Economic Downturn you can say this: it has certainly forced many people to rethink their priorities. Here in Georgia, where work is scarce and the leading industry, at least when viewed from behind my counter, seems to be disability claims, folks are trying to turn all the crap they spent money on over the years back into money. People are hit with the hard reality that all that crap and nonsense, the material stuff they lusted after for ages is, for the most part, meaningless crap that has to go. 

Of course, since everyone is trying to do this all at once nobody is getting what they want.

Least of all myself. My industry is not recession proof by any means.  The housing market is in the toilet in Georgia. This means that all the construction companies are out of work. Which leads contractors to leave their tools with me. All of them, all at once it seems. And since nobody is working, nobody is buying them. Which means that over the months I had to pay less and less for tools, and now I can’t really take them at all.  Which puts a huge dent in my bottom line. 

Interesting that while cash is king and everyone is selling anything they have for whatever they can get, the one item that is always a rock-solid loan is the Flat Screen TV. Folks will loose everything, guns they could have hunted meat with and tools they could have made money with and heirloom gold and collectables they swore were handed down ten generations, stuff they sword they would never loose. But they come back after the 42” 1080P Plasma. I find that sad.

To Tell The Truth

 Hey once more. Thanks for coming back. Just a short one today.

How Short?
 Axiom: If you have to lie to bolster your cause, your cause is lost.

It might not be right away. It might not be this year. It might not be in your lifetime. But if you rationally decide that the only way to make an argument work is by distortion, then your side is lost, your cause is lost. You are supporting something that may benefit you in the short run but that will eventually crumble and fall.

So you have to ask yourself - if you have to use deception to make something work, why support it in the first place? 

That's Racist, Liz Lemon

Hey all, thanks for coming back.

Casual Racism 

Anyone who thinks that we live in post-racial America has never been to my pawn shop. Or my state, for that matter.

We need to build a better vocabulary to discern between all the different types of racists. Let me share a couple of examples.

The first one is a landscaper, owns his own business. This landscaper finds a way to disparage Mexicans in every conversation we have. We could be talking about anything - the weather, how much he owes me, movies we have seen recently - and at some point he will work in some casual racism about Mexicans. Its like he wants us to all to be aware at all times that he doesn't like Mexicans. Sometimes I feel like he is looking for a call back, for me to say something like "Yeah, I don't like me no Mexicans neither!" That would mean that we were on the same level, that he found someone that shared his worldview. I never, ever, ever take the bait - but I don't call bullshit on him either. If I was to alienate every racist that came through my doors by calling them on their bullshit I would very soon find myself without a client base. That's a bitch, but its the reality of the situation. I just frown at him and ignore the comment. He eventually got the hint, and now we just talk weather or whatever.

Anyway, that is one type of racist. Here goes another.

I have another customer, a hustler. He always comes to me with these business plans that he wants to include me in, these amazing money making schemes that shall, at least in his armchair imaginings, make us both rich. The other day he was trying to sell me on a product and part of his pitch was " (the item) could differentiate between, say, your wife taking the garbage out and some black guys trying to steal stuff." See, this man may or may not actively hate/ fear/ whatever black folks, but he is counting on my being a racist to help him make a sale. Its shitty, but you must admit an entirely different shade of shitty than my man the landscaper brings to the table.

(I did call bullshit on this guy. I couldn't' stop myself. I asked if his device could also catch white criminals. He mealy-mouthed some excuse and then moved on with his sales pitch. A real pro). 

The landscaper wants us to bond over racism. The hustler assumes I'm a racist and is using it to lever a sale.

Here goes a third type. I'm using a second hand anecdote here.

A friend of mine has a boss who is a complete and utter racist. Nice as can be to everyone face, no matter what their skin color or national origin. But when its just whites in the room he always points out that he is proud of such-and-such for being adequate at their job because, you know, work standards are different in their community. "You know, the blacks, they don't put as much emphasis on education." I'm going to borrow from Tracy Morgan's 30 Rock character Tracy Jordan who borrowed from either Bing Crosby or Bill Cosby, but its "the subtle racism of lowered expectations".

Oh, and werewolf discrimination? Also not cool. 

Less overt, but ever so shitty. Perhaps even worse than the other two because you could hook Subtlety Racist Boss up to a lie detector, ask him if he was a racist, and he would ring the gold bars. He certainly doesn't think of himself like that. But he has absorbed the bullshit of the world for so long that it bends his thinking without him ever realizing it. Lots of liberals I know are like that. Lots and lots.


Okay, Now Fix It Bright Boy

What's the cure? Why, its Time, of course.

Ever hear of "No Irish Need Apply?" Its true - the Irish were once one of the most hated of all racial groups. Irish immigrating to the United States in the early 20th Century had a difficult time finding employment or housing because they were Irish. Can you even imagine? Its hard because times have changed. That's what times do. Now every March 17 the whole lot of us turn Irish for the day.

For better or for worse

In 1964 the US Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, outlawing segregation and sexual discrimination. Before that it was perfectly acceptable for states and cities to pass ordinances to pass laws based on race or gender discrimination.

Think about that for just a tick. If you were born before 1964 you were born in a country with institutionalized racism. If your parents were born before 1964 you were raised by folks that lived in a country with institutionalized racism. That has got to mess with your psyche. Racisim was legal back before then, and if the government says its okay, then gosh by golly it must be so.

Of course now we know better. And the generation after us will know much better, and today's minority groups will fare better as we really come together in what could possibly be an actual post racial America - really, a Post Civil Rights Act America. The generation after the next generation will be even more removed from Racist America and so on and so on. Times will change. 

Thanks for coming by. Anyone who can find me the true origin and real author of the quote I attributed to either Crosby or Cosby wins today's Traveling Now WHOOOOOOO! prize, complete with phone call and personalized WHOOOOOOO!

Makes Me Wanna Hollar

Hey all,

Thanks for stopping in once again.

Song for America

"Listening to Grant-Lee Phillips' "Mockingbirds", watching my daughter play, & feeling like America is over" - Tweet from Patton Oswalt 

I know, right? The debt ceiling vote of  2011 couldn't be much more depressing to me.

In hindsight, how could things work out any other way? The Bush Tax cuts cut taxes on the rich. So they get richer. Now, they don't create any jobs - I mean, why would you do that when you can outsource to India so friggin cheaply? - but instead, they use there new surplus of money to buy more political influence. And with all of that influence do you think they are going to decide to raise their own taxes? No sir, I do not believe they will. Nope, they will buy more influence, which makes them richer, so they can buy more influence . . . I'm sure you are getting the picture. And its one of those cycles that will not stop itself without crashing.

So . . .is M. Oswalt right? Is America over?

No it is not. Let me restate: frack no, it is not. 

Guess who is considering shooting a superior asshole?

But we do have to open our eyes to the reality of the situation.

Here is what I believe about our current conflict in America.

There is no left wing versus right wing. That's what they keep telling us but its a great fat lie to keep us fighting amongst ourselves, which of course we do because we are idiots.

If its not left wing versus right wing then what's the issue? Rich versus poor.

The rich want more, they have the means to get more, and if it keeps the poor poor then fine - that's that many more parking spaces at Martha's Vinyard or whatever the frack rich bastards congregate where they can not be offended by us sorry commoners.

"Squatting just two blocks from the gallery! Have you ever seen such bad taste?"

So what's next? Tons of hard work.

We have to stop the cycle. We the people - you remember we the people, you read about us in civics class once - have to raise so much hell that we can not be ignored. We have to vote out everyone who is wholly owned by America Inc., tax the people who need to get taxed (or - and I like this even better - force them to create the jobs that Fox News pretends they create - and set the whole country back on the path of progress, liberty, justice,  and equality. The hardest bit - we have to truly educate the masses, teach them to think for themselves so they can look at what they are being fed by the Media and pick it apart until the underlying truths shine out like diamonds.

Simple, ain't it? Now go and get started. More on how to do so later.

Just a quick one today. Hope all are well, thanks for tuning in. Last one out from under oppression hit the lights.

Hello friends old and new! Thanks for stopping by.

Give Us Money If You Want To Live

Billboard adverts for hospitals piss me off.

Why do hospitals advertise? Well to make more money, of course. That's why anyone advertises. What pisses me off is that the theme of almost all of the hospital advertising that you see is something to the effect of We Care About People, implying that they aren't worried about a trivial little thing like profits. What matters is your health!

There is billboard for a children's hospital that I see when I travel to Marietta, saying something to the effect of "For People, Not Profits." It makes me want to call the hospital director and point out that he could better spend his "for people" money on more nursing staff, or dialysis machines, or even pure research, rather than advertising. I tell a lie: it really makes me want to scream and drive my car off a cliff.

Meet Dr. Han. He pulls down 450K a year, after taxes, thanks to billboards like these. 

I can only imagine a scene where I am lying in a puddle of my own blood, looking up at a paramedic and with my last conscious breath spit out: "Just don't take me to the place with more robot surgery than any other facility in North Georgia . . . gasp . . . take me to the one where . . . cough . . . their experience makes my experience better."


Tip The Balance

Nobody wants to live in the Land of Pure Capitalism. Where the cops show up and ask for your credit card before they help. Where every transaction is buyer beware and if you don't want to get taken advantage of then, hey, don't go to the store. Where you eventually reach your maximum potential earning point and your family has to decide if its still worth it to feed you, or is it time to put you out on the ice flow. Where innovation is everywhere but no one regulates safety testing so that Next Amazing Thing just might give you cancer. Where you get fired for work injuries that affect your productivity. Seriously, all of y'all who think that Ayn Rand is a saint lack the imagination to really picture that world.

Nobody wants to live in the Land of Pure Socialism. Where the genius who discovers a way to stop organ transplant rejection can expect the exact same salary and place to live as the slacker who delivers your pizza late. Where your professional decisions have little or no consequence that your job becomes wholly interchangeable, so everyone aspires to the low stress trades and nobody has any motivation to be a soldier or fireman, much less an eight-year-of-school-needin', irregular heartbeat-fixin' Doctor Han. And no offense to the idealists everywhere but the Magic Happy Sunflower world we all dream of is umpteenth generations of human evolution away - if it can ever exist at all. 

So lets agree that a good society needs a mix. Some institutions should be based on Profit Motive - department stores leap to mind, as do manufacturers, advertisers, the folks who make beer and pretzels and frozen pizza.

Some institutions should clearly not be based on Profit Motive - our police, military, intelligence forces, the post office in the age of Fed Ex, and our government.all spring to mind.

Thus Spake The Traveling Now

I say we take health care from the For Profit column and add it to the Not For Profit column. Get hospitals out from under the oppression of having to earn shit tons of money for the shareholders.

Anytime a consumer is forced to make a capitalist decision about the quality of his life or extent of his longevity, society fails. Period. No one should ever go bankrupt because they or someone in their family is ill, no one should have to decide between paying their mortgage or having their cancer treated, no one should ever be placed in a position where they have to consider terminating a pregnancy because they discover that their child will have expensive health issues for all its life.

Can We Talk About Something Else Mister Preachy ?

I started this blog to help me get through the bad times, those times when I want to get stuff off my chest. And so far so good. I have three followers, received my first comment ("tits please" - can't help you there Anonymous, but thanks anyhow), and I've had the space to put my two cents in.

Now I want your two cents. Input gets output. What do you want? More personal stuff, more politics, more pictures? You let me know and I'll try to accommodate. And yes, If I get enough requests for tits I'll see what I can do.

Be careful what you wish for, amigos. 

Anyway I am still dealing with content and format issues. Did you notice that I stole the Cracked dot com photo/ small caption joke format?

What can I say? I even think in Cracked idioms these days. Thanks Cracked folks!

Anyway the format will evolve. Everything evolves. If I can leave you with a bit of advice today its that you shouldn't resist evolution, much less deny it, and you should proudly wear your influences. After all, your influences are are your teachers - honor them.

Traveling Now Out!

Miss me? I missed you.

I hope this finds you well and good and loving life.

Does This Smell Funny To You?

Last night my wife and I had our tradational Friday night throw down. Nothing too insane, but we did have a few shots of Jagermeister, a nice stir-fry and a lot of laughs. Okay, five shots.

At one point I asked her what she thought of my blog. As she is my wife, my beloved companion, the light of my light, and my only follower at this point, her opinion trumps all.

She liked it but she recognized that I was holding back being funny. Let a bit more of your personality come through, she advised, and stop holding back on the funny stuff. 

She was one hundret percent right, of course. I really have been holding back on the humor. Really, I was writing like I used to when I was the Viewpoints editor for the Kennesaw Sentinel. My blog doesn't sound like me, it sounds like me blogging.


On That Note

Lets Fix That. Here goes my favorite joke. 

The Pope and Queen Elizabeth are standing on a balcony, waving to the crowd. The Queen leans over and whispers “Bet you a fiver I can make every Englishman out there cheer for a full minute with just a wave.” “You’re on,” says the Pope. She gives an enthusiastic wave and the crowd cheers for a full minute.

The Pope scowls, being out a fiver. “Say,” he whispers to the queen. “Double or nothing I can make every Irishman out there cheer for an hour with just a nod.” “Your on,” says the Queen.

So the Pope headbutts her. 

Rimshot!

Guns, Guns, Guns

Sometimes I hate being an advocate of gun ownership.

Guns kill folks. Every school shooting, every cop who gets shot, every time an idiot illegally sells a gun to another idiot who causes trouble, I find my belief in the right of Americans to own and carry firearms shaken.

But I do believe that the right to bear arms is an important part of the Constitution. I believe in the right of Americans to hunt game, to compete in target shooting, to defend themselves from intruders and criminals and the odd rampaging bear.More than all of this I believe that citizens have to have the ability to defend themselves from their government. Sometimes governments go bad and if you have an unarmed citizenry then an entire nation can fall to a few bad men in power.

And yet well meaning dolts go wrong with guns all the time and innocent people die.

Lets strip this issue down to its absolute basics. First, lets remember that I am not talking about criminals possessing firearms - every reasonable person is against that. We have laws in place that address that issue. No one is saying that criminals should have the right to bear arms, and no one at all is trying to justify violence committed by criminals. Obviously everyone but criminals are against gun crime.

I want to focus here on when lawfully obtained weapons are used for criminal, even negligently criminal purposes. That includes all the tragedies that happen because of careless gun owners, or drunks with legal weapons, or any of the infinite variety of good old stupidity that cause lawful citizens to cause tragedies.

So what is the base of the problem in America? Other nations with private gun ownership have no where near the difficulties that we do here in the States. What are we dong wrong?

As I see it, the problem is two fold - American gun culture and weakness in how we regulate firearms.

Under The Gun

I have been selling guns at one pawn shop or another since the late 90s. I have handed many guns to many people, either buying them for the first time or redeeming pawns. Most gun people are just normal folks who hunt, or target shoot, or who own a firearm to defend their home.

Lots of gun people, however, are wierd about guns.

I can say quite honestly that more Americans than you would care to tabulate have what can only be called a gun fetish. I have seen the gleam in their eyes, heard the language that they use when describing the firearms they want. Its sexual, pure and simple. Gun fetishists are into the look, the feel, the sensuality of firearms. They want one that makes them feel real or alive or invincible or sexy. A gun is a tool, a dangerous one that, in the wrong hands, one that creates misery with misuse -- but people look past that because, damn it, were talking about guns.

I have had people come in to my shop and ask to see a dozen guns, only to then tell me that they were ineligible to own a firearm in the US and had just missed holding one. I have had people come in to my shop and look me in the eye and tell me they knew nothing about guns but wanted one that looked good in their hand, something sleek and black. I have personally made gun sales based only on a color or a style or, in one memorable case, the wood grain pattern in the but of a shotgun (full disclosure: it was great looking gun). I have seen couples buying household guns with the furtive excitement most reserve for buying sex toys. I have seen all of this again and again and again.

These folks come by their fetish honestly. The mythology of the gun is pervades the American consciousness

Ask any amature historian and the'll tell you that our country was carved out of the land of other people by Americans with guns. In our national imaginings the Westward Expansion of our nation was led by cowboys with six-shooters and the early repeating rifles - and really, who ever made guns sexier than cowboys? Think of the pagentry we associate with guns, the gun flourishing popularized by Westerns and the old dime store novels. Think of how modern movies and music make guns such an object of power and desire.

We have a gun fetish here in the US, and it makes us put more logical considerations aside. We have to have guns because . . . well, we just have to have them! Sure they do all kinds of bad and nobody wants to see somebody they like get shot but, well, we just have to have them! That's fetish mentality, the same one that makes politicians risk their carerrs and families on sneaky sex. The same mentality that sends celebrities out looking for tranny hookers, that drives otherwise sensible folks to the worst sort of dangerous companionship. We just have to have it!

And as far as I can tell there is nothing to be done about the American Gun Fetish. It is just a part of our national character. Someday we may grow out of it but I certainly can't picture it.

Regulation

A gun is a tool, a dangerous one that, in the wrong hands, creates misery with misuse. They must be regulated, and they are. But for the most part we make a piss poor job of it.

As someone who buys and sells guns I am here to say that our current system is antiquated and inadequate. If I take a gun across the counter it gets logged into a Gun Book. This is an actual paper ledger, and it must be done in handwriting. We do a backround check, but that only asks for the number and types of firearms being transferred (hand guns or long guns). If a gun dealer lost his gun book, say in a fire, you could eventually collect all of the data you lost but it would be a painstaking, time consuming process. It lacks redundancy, and in the computer age that's all but unforgivable.

In the US all you need to own a gun is a valid ID and a clean record. You don't have to know a thing about guns, you don't have to know how they work or what the parts are called or how not to shoot yourself in the face while you clean it. Can you imagine buying a car and having the right to take it off the lot if you didn't know how to drive? That's how we regulate guns in the US.

Sometimes I believe that we keep our gun regulation basic and sort of old fashioned out of a sense of nostalgia. We romanticize the old west, buying shotguns from the Sears Robuck catalog or the local dry goods store. Its a mentality our legislators must grow beyond.

What I do believe in is a major change in the way that we handle the sale and licensing of firearms.

Traveling Now Saves The World, Pt 1

Here is what I propose, what I have proposed for years and years: license guns like cars.

If you want to own a firearm, you go when you turn 21 and take classes in safety and legality. If you pass a written and practical test, you get a license - a real damn license, by the way, with your picture and an official seal, not the current carry permit that looks like you made it at Kinkos. When you go in to buy a gun, you show your license and the seller scans it. The gun purchase goes through the ATF, who gets a record of the transaction, including the make, model and serial number of the gun purchase. Screw up (by which I mean commit a crime, transfer a gun illegally or similar) and you loose your license and the ATF impounds all of your firearms. Ta daaaa!

I know the American political landscape and human nature too well to believe that this will happen, but a blog can dream, can't it?

Idelogical Gumbo

Welcome back! Thanks for looking in.

Bad Ideology Gumbo

From CNN's Political Ticker Blog:

"I support intelligent design," Bachmann told reporters in New Orleans following her speech to the Republican Leadership Conference. "What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don't think it's a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides."

This is a fine strategy for eliminating any chance of the United States being competitive with other nations in science and technology, and therefore in the economy of tomorrow. There is nothing to intelligent design, no one in the scientific main stream thinks so. By handicapping tomorrows potential scientific minds with the garbage of mythological "what if"s  we retard the chances of our nation developing as a technology superpower. Our next generation of highly pious wrong-thinkers can possibly get work driving trucks and cleaning floors for foreign tech firms who will literally be creating the future.

So we should put all the science on the table and let high school students decide? So astrology, phrenology, dowsing, psychic surgery, crystal healing . . . we put all of this in front of the 9th graders and let them decide? Do you think they will choose the ones that have a real basis in the scientific method, or the ones with the fewest crunchy bits to memorize so they can rely on nice easy mid-terms?

Young minds need to be protected from garbage thinking. There is a reason why we regulate education, why its arguably the most important job of government. Young people have no real basis to decide what is good science or bad science. That's why they go to school, to learn how to think critically. Garbage in, garbage out. Eventually that generation of poorly educated dupes will be the ones in the emergency room, the research laboratories, and The White House. We have the power to think them to think, or teach them the substitutions for thinking.

The political right wing of our country has become a bad ideological gumbo of anarchists, entrenched racists, greed-fueled robber barons, theocrats, false historians who want the world to go back to a fictional Leave It To Beaver paradise, culture warriors, and just good normal folk. The good normal folk deserve better representation and much better bedfellows. We all do.

The real problem is that America truly needs a good, intellectual, ideologically sound right wing.  Someone should work towards limiting government spending, to keep our government to a manageable size, to keep business regulations reasonable. And, as of this writing, we do not have that right wing.

Currently Digging

I am going to do a spot in my blog where I can list things that I am, indeed, currently digging. Truth in advertising!

Currently digging:: Madeline, Trader Joe's, Not The Nine O'Clock News, my super cute wife's new haircut.  

Welcome to the Traveling Now

Welcome to The Traveling Now. Thanks for looking in.

Long Story Short

I was driving to work one day, listening to news on the radio, yelling at my dashboard. I don't recall what the news story was about but it was pissing me off something fierce. Its been two or three months since that day but I remember thinking that the entire world was populated by people determined to slap some short sighted "solution" on some problem that would likely please a group of equally short-sighted voters. No one seemed to understand the issue, that's what I remember being pissed off about.

I recalled that there was a time when I had a way of expressing my displeasure with this sort of thing. This sort of internal, existential displeasure. At one very happy time in my life I was the Viewpoints editor for my college paper. When I would hear about issues that were making me crazy, I would give them some thought, write an editorial about it, and see it in print a few days later. It helped. Writing it helped, seeing what I wrote in print helped.

Still driving, still listening to the radio, I thought about all the thousands of blogs that were out there right now. What if I started a blog? What if I wrote about all these things that pissed me off? I immediately felt better. Just the idea of starting my own blog helped me relax. Writing a blog was the Move.

Three months of agonizing over a title later, a title fell in my lap and I was ready to go. That was yesterday.

The Traveling Now?

Yep. The Traveling Now is a concept from a book I finished yesterday, I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett. In the book (which concerns, among other things, witches, loyalty, duty and the best way to liven up a funeral) certain witches have a way of communicating in which they use a bit of "friendly time" to have a kind of zero-duration conversation unhindered by the usual problems of time and space. The name of the communication space was The Traveling Now and the second I heard it I knew that was the name for my blog. This is a space for communication, a bit of friendly time where I can pass ideas around.

Speaking Of

I read yesterday where Terry Pratchett began the process of committing assisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland. That makes me very sad. Of course, the fact that M. Pratchett suffers from early onset Alzheimer's disease makes me very sad indeed. Ultimately, while I have the right to be sad about one of my favorite author's misfortunes, they are his misfortunes and he has the right to deal with them however he sees fit. I respect whatever decision he makes.

I believe assisted suicide should be legal here in the United States. The main arguments against the legality of the procedure seem to be religious (which is a non-argument, ultimately) or procedural. Folks seem to fear a brave new world where heroic life saving measures are given up for the expedience of just letting borderline case individuals die, or where people are pressured into committing suicide by the uncaring machinations of some dystopic death panel.

If the US had a system of assisted suicide it would invariably be abused. Every system gets abused. Create a program to feed the poor in foreign countries and dictators will steal the food and hold their people hostage. Create a charity and some detestable bastard will find a way to scam it. Kind acts are turned around, honest people are duped, our legal system is vulnerable to greed, medicines developed to help the depressed and confused get taken for thrills. Take away every good thing that can be used for bad ends and you are left with nothing. Rather than surrendering to the possibility of corruption we should build the best institutions we can and remain ever vigilant against the actions of evil men.

Ultimately the argument has to be "Does a man's life belong to himself"? If the answer is yes - and the answer is yes in any world you would want to live in - it must be okay for him to choose to end it himself. This is not to say that life should be thrown away casually or thoughtlessly. But when someone comes to what must be the incredibly difficult decision that they don't have anything else to live for, that the pain is too great and the chance of recovery is nil, then we as a society should not only respect that decision, we should help find a way for him to implement it with dignity.

Liberal? Conservative?

A bit of pragmatism, please. Adopting a ready-made world view is simpleminded and, to my way of thinking, sad.

My liberal friends find me conservative. I believe in animal testing, genetically modified food, gun ownership, the NHL. I believe that two adults should have the right to have a mutually agreed upon fist fight without legal ramifications. I'm for raising the retirement age and making welfare and disability scams a felony.

My conservative friends find me very liberal. I'm for nationalized health care, mass transportation, forgiving third world debt, conservationism. I believe that any two consenting adults should be allowed to have a civil union with all the benefits and responsibilities of marriage. I'm for exponentially increasing what we spend on education and paying for it by leaving off of one or two of our less convenient wars.

Ultimately, I believe that the world is a very complicated place, that it has always been complicated, and that every generations dream of an earlier Golden Age where everyone was happy and life was uncomplicated and straightforward is a fiction. I believe that modern problems have to be approached with pragmatism and careful analysis. I believe we have to appreciate mankind - the good and the bad, and the very good and the very bad - in full.