Learning Acceptance

The Willards invited us and a couple of other neighbors over for a barbecue on their giant new gas grill.  Ann greeted us at the door, and after we thanked her for inviting us, Patty asked, “By the way, is it some special occasion?”

We’ve known the Willards for years.  Ann flushed, hesitated, and then said, “I suppose it’s okay to talk about it.  Dean has been having some... anxiety for a while, and I finally persuaded him to see a psychiatrist.  It took some intensive therapy and some medication, but they finally got him adjusted.  Dean had a hard time adapting to the new ‘normal.’  But he’s made the breakthrough.”  She gave a little smile of relief.  “He’s fine now.  So we felt like having a quiet celebration with our friends.”

I couldn’t restrain myself.  Despite a warning glance from Patty and a sharp kick to my shin, I asked, “Uh, what’s this ‘new normal’ he’s come to accept?  What’s that about?”

“Oh, it’s nothing earthshaking,” she said dismissively.  “Just learning to accept the world the way it is.”

“Like what, for instance?”  

“Ordinary things,” she said.  “You know.  Kidnapping people and shipping them to CIA black sites overseas to be tortured.  Jailing people in Guantanamo while denying them lawyers and visits by family members and holding them for years without charging them with a crime.  And then finding them innocent but continuing to hold them for more years.”

“Heck, that kind of thing is old hat now,” I said.  “First Bush, and now Obama.  Dean always seemed like a sensible guy.  I would have expected him to learn to go with the flow, like most people have.”

“I don’t want to make him sound fanatical,” she said, a little defensively.  “He probably could have handled it if that was all it was.  But then that SEAL force assassinated Osama bin Laden when he was unarmed, and killed a defenseless woman in the process, and that really bothered him.  He felt as if the man should have been captured and brought back to stand trial.  He said that’s the way a government operating under the rule of law would have done it.”

I patted her on the shoulder.  “I can see what a burden you’ve been carrying.  I haven’t thought about bin Laden in years.  That’s not just yesterday’s news; that’s history.”

Ann gave me a weak smile of gratitude.  “I think he might have gotten over that, but then these drone attacks kept escalating.  When he learned that 90% of the people killed by the drones are innocent women and children, somehow he couldn’t let go.  It just kept gnawing on him.  He lost his appetite and had trouble getting to sleep at night.  He began carrying a copy of the Constitution around in his pocket, and he’d pull it out and read it over and over, at the most inappropriate times.”

“He must have been desperate, grasping for anything to give him a hold on reality,” I said.  “ But you say he’s recovered now?”

“I think so,” she said, nodding.  “We couldn’t let his depression keep on like that, so we reached out for help.”

“I can certainly understand that,” I said.  “Some things you can’t just let ride.  You have to do something about them.”

“I’m glad you understand,” she said.  “We were starting to feel so isolated, with people all around us just going about their lives, while he was stuck on brooding constantly about our government’s--I don’t know what you would call them.  Imperfections?  I mean, that’s just the way things are, right?  Nobody’s perfect.”

“Sure,” I agreed.  “And that was all that was bothering him?”

“Well, no,” she admitted.  “He had a laundry list of things that haunted him.  It seemed to prey on his mind that Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are all on the chopping block.  That states are shredding contracts with state workers and denying them the right to strike.  That we have the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, and the response is budget cuts that will create more unemployment.  That CEOs are making astronomical sums at the same time they’re cutting the pay of hourly workers.  That corporations are hiding billions in profits offshore and paying no income tax.  That we’re all being spied on by our own government.  He just didn’t think those things were fair.  He’s always been a little old-fashioned, you know.  He still thinks we should look out for each other and treat each other decently.”

“He’s lucky to have a wife who pays attention,” said Patty sympathetically.  “It sounds as if you have a really good understanding of his problem.”

“I had to listen to him often enough,” Ann sighed.  “At first I just took it as Dean’s blowing off steam.  But he wouldn’t let things roll off his back like a normal person.  You’d think it was his money funding war and murder by executive order, his family’s safety net that was being threatened, his community’s environment being polluted.  He took it all so personally.”

“Mental health issues can be frightening,” I told her.  “I’m glad it’s all worked out for the two of you.  Which way’s the beer?” 

© Tony Russell, 2013

Shopping Bags Full of Money

Afghan president confirms he received tens of millions of dollars from the CIA in suitcases and sacks 'for access to Karzai's inner circle'       

      - Headline, The Daily Mail, 29 April 2013

Each year the Hur Chamber of Commerce confers its coveted “Golden Scissors Award” to that federal department or agency which has done the most to cut through government red tape.  The award is normally not conferred until December, but this year the Chamber judged that one agency has already distinguished itself so markedly that the outcome of the competition is no longer in doubt.

In announcing that the Central Intelligence Agency is the 2013 winner, Robert Spinner, the Chamber’s president, heaped praise upon the agency, calling it “a model for the entire federal government.”

“We in the business community have long decried government bureaucracy,” said Spinner, “but the CIA has shown that it is possible for government to transcend itself, working with the same ‘can do’ attitude that distinguishes private enterprise.  Our hats are off to them.”

The announcement comes less than a month after the New York Times revealed that for the last decade the CIA has handed out tens of millions of dollars to Afghan officials in monthly payments.  Wads of money were delivered in backpacks, suitcases, and plastic shopping bags.  

The cash--variously described as “payments,” “bribes,” and “assistance”--is apparently not subject to the oversight, restrictions, and accountability of official American aid.  

“That’s the beauty of it," said a CIA official.  “Nobody on our end asks what we do with the money they give us, and we don’t even count it when we’re packing the shopping bags.  The money all goes directly to President Karzai and whomever he wants to share it with, and he doesn’t have to account for it to anyone on that end either.”  It was this chain of creative shortcuts that drew special praise from the Chamber.  

Disgruntled Afghans who didn’t get their own shopping bags full of money complain that the payoffs have “fueled corruption and empowered warlords who may be linked to the Taliban as well as politicians with ties to the drug trade.”  

Equally bitter are American officials who didn’t get an opportunity to pass out money bags themselves.  They have gone so far as to charge that “the biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan has been the United States.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, however, described the bags of money as “multi-purpose assistance.”  

“It really hasn’t been that much money,” Karzai added.  “Most of it went to providing assistance to the wounded, the sick, and the disabled.”  He was unable to supply documentation for this assertion, of course, since he too has been cutting red tape.

A CIA spokesperson said that the agency stood ready, if asked, to provide training and technical support to the Department of Defense in developing streamlined financial disbursements of the sort for which his agency has just been recognized.  

“You have to remember,” he said, “that the cost of the war in Afghanistan--our CIA cash not included--runs about $60 billion a year.  The military’s expenditures make ours look like a drop in the ocean.”

Despite the popularity of the Chamber of Commerce choice, not everyone has been so positive about revelations of the CIA’s so-called “ghost money” payments.  One elderly county resident, claiming to remember “a time when the Constitution still meant something,” denounced the CIA ‘s actions as “yet another sign that in the Founders’ system of checks and balances, the checks have been replaced by cash.”

Full disclosure:  a former correspondent for the Hur Herald is said to be attempting to organize a march of the unemployed on CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.  Marchers will carry their own empty shopping bags to the headquarters, hoping to have them filled, while singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”

© Tony Russell, 2013

Four Thousand Upward

A southwest Virginia school district [Giles County] is reposting copies of the Bible's Ten Commandments in all county schools, despite concerns that doing so is unconstitutional. ....  The decision came even though the board's attorney had previously advised that such Christian displays represent unconstitutional government endorsement of religion. - ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON, Associated Press

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LA School Board Approves Posting of Texts from Upanishad, Qur'an, Tao Te Ching, The Analects of Confucius,  Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Book of Mormon, The Divine Principle, Zend Avesta, Kojiki, Dianetics, and Zhuan Falun

LOS ANGELES, Ca (MP) - This Californian school district is posting texts from the Upanishad, the Qur’an, the Tao Te Ching, the Analects of Confucius,  Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the Book of Mormon, The Divine Principle, Zend Avesta, Kojiki, Dianetics, and Zhuan Falun in all classrooms in the district, despite objections that doing so violates the Constitution.

The seven-member Los Angeles School Board voted unanimously to post the framed three-foot-wide-by-four-foot-tall texts after parents and local ministers, rabbis, gurus, monks, healers, teachers, elders, and other religious leaders demanded space equal to that of Christians, who recently pressured the board to hang copies of the Ten Commandments in the district’s classrooms.  

Monday night’s board meeting was packed with supporters from the various faiths, who sat in separate sections to avoid contamination and reduce the chance of violence.  Speakers from each faith rose to shout over the objections of the others, telling the board that the schools had a moral obligation to reinforce God’s/Allah’s/the Supreme Being’s/Vishna’s/the Tao’s/Mohammed’s/Confucius’s/et cetera’s teachings.  

“After hearing from these members of our community,” said perspiring Superintendent Donald Madison, “we just felt this was the right thing to do.  It will take us a while to get copies of all the texts printed and framed, but we think we can have them in the classrooms by mid-April, at the latest.”  

Madison noted that other faith traditions, not represented at last night’s meeting, might also demand to be included.  Preliminary research by a reporter for the Herald indicates that while the precise number of religions in the world cannot be determined, the best estimates range from four thousand upward.

Harried teachers said after the meeting that they were concerned about whether there was space to incorporate that much moral obligation in their classrooms.  “Right now we’re looking at a hundred and ninety eight square feet of wall space devoted to religious texts, with more likely” worried Aakifah Ali, who teaches geography at Jefferson Middle School.  “I don’t have space now for everything I’d like to display.  I’ll have to take down my maps, posters, material on current events, and student papers.  Even then I’m not sure all the religious texts will fit.  Maybe they can mount them on the ceiling,” she joked.

One segment of the audience which left dissatisfied was a sizable contingent of secularists/non-religious parents.  Daniel Brinkman, spokesperson for the group, had risen to point out that one in six Americans have opted out of organized religion and consider themselves non-believers.  He asked about having one-sixth of available space allotted for his group to post their absence of belief, but was rebuffed by Madison, who said that the blank, transparent windows in the room already fulfilled that function.

Christians, who had earlier succeeded in having the Ten Commandments posted in classrooms, were furious at news that they would have to share wall space with groups they regard as heathens.  “It’s blasphemy, pure and simple,” asserted Rev. Randall Snodgrass, a leader of the group who had previously won the right to insert their religious text into the classroom.  

When reminded that he had earlier argued that the Ten Commandments belonged there because of their historical rather their religious value, and that each of the subsequent groups had argued for inclusion of their texts on the same grounds, he had to be restrained by security personnel.  “That was just a legal maneuver cooked up by our lawyers to get our faith in the schools where it belongs.  This farce tonight is all the work of the ACLU, the ADA, the Democratic Party, and other hate groups!” he yelled as he was being escorted out by half a dozen guards.

Constitutional scholars, almost unanimously, expect the courts to reverse the board’s actions.  Taxpayers will foot the bill for all legal expenses incurred.

© Tony Russell, 2011