You Might Be A Hypocrite, If…

According to Wikipedia:

Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos (Greek: Ἱπποκράτης; Hippokrátēs; ca. 460 BC – ca. 370 BC) was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles (Classical Athens), and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is referred to as the father of Western medicine^[2][3][4] in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic School of medicine. This intellectual school revolutionized medicine in ancient Greece, establishing it as a discipline distinct from other fields that it had traditionally been associated with (notably theurgy and philosophy), thus establishing medicine as a profession.^[5][6]

Now I have to tell you that this guy has absolutely nothing, NOTHING to do with whether or not, or to what extent you might be a hypocrite, because, much to my astonishment, Hippocrates did NOT invent hypocrisy! If I could only spell, I might have figured it out sooner.

But, undaunted by the gods of spelling and even syntax, I have devised a survey to see if you too might be a hypocrite like me or some other type of two-faced individual. Just what is a hypocrite? Inquiring minds want to know. According to Dictionary.com:

hyp·o·crite [is]

   /ˈhɪp ə krɪt/ Show Spelled[hip-uh-krit] Show IPA

–noun

1.

a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.

2.

a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, especially one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements

Although either definition should make my point without going further, I have to go further because, I am bored and lots of people still wallow in the erroneous belief that they don’t wallow in hypocrisy. Perhaps we should start general and work our way down to more specific modes of slander.

                                     Love v. Hate

You might be a hypocrite if you claim to love humanity, but your blood boils, every time you think of any person, or group who disagrees with your point of view. Some might write a sonnet or an ode or yet another sequel to Sleepless in Seattle about this timeless contradiction. To me, it is really quite straight-forward, as I am probably the world’s worst practicing love-hater and can speak plainly from personal experience.

I know that I should always work to find areas of common ground with folks espousing opposing points of view and then simply agree to disagree about the rest, but I spend my time instead being way too angry at those ignorant bastardos! I preach love for humanity, but I find myself hating humans and think and write about people I really and truly hate all the time. I have convinced myself that they hate me too, which makes the whole process so much easier to rationalize.

Some people are binge-haters who spend an intense but brief time hating everyone, while some are serial haters who hate the particular person or group en-vogue and then move on to the next one. I prefer a binge/serial combo, which allows me to hate everyone all of the time, but I devote more energy to one group or another, as the 24-hour-news cycle dictates.

Where might you fit in? If you love humanity and get all warm and fuzzy for that one hour a week while you are in church or temple, or mosque, or somewhere else ostensibly holy and at peace with the world, but you spend the rest of the week as a mean-spirited hateful wretch, you still might a hypocrite.

                     Altruism v. Let Em Eat Cake.

You might be a hypocrite, if you keep saying that you want to want to help people who are less fortunate than you are, but you happily spend 40+ hours a week at a job which involves ripping people off. Someone who works as an executive or an actuary at an insurance company is a prime example. Insurance companies are supposed to help you if your car gets stolen, or your house burns down, or you get sick, or your spouse dies, right? But the main goal of insurance companies is to make money by not helping you. CEOs and their trusty actuaries spend their days figuring out how to not compensate people for their losses under the above circumstances. And again, one hour of caring and sharing per week, doesn’t make them any less hypocritical, it just provides the psychological smoke and mirrors so that they can sleep nights. If you spend more time saying no to people in need than yes, you might have a hypocrisy issue which requires attention.

                  Liberals v. In Name only

Let’s get another definition from Dictionary.com.:

lib·er·al

   /ˈlɪb ər əl, ˈlɪb rəl/ Show Spelled[lib-er-uh l, lib-ruh l] Show IPA

–adjective

1.

favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.

2.

( often initial capital letter ) noting or pertaining to a political party advocating measures of progressive political reform.

3.

of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating liberalism.

4.

favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.

5.

favoring or permitting freedom of action, especially with respect to matters of personal belief or expression: a liberal policy toward dissident artists and writers.

6.

of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.

7.

free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant: a liberal attitude toward foreigners.

8.

open-minded or tolerant, especially free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.

9.

characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts: a liberal donor.

10.

given freely or abundantly; generous: a liberal donation.

11.

not strict or rigorous; free; not literal: a liberal interpretation of a rule.

Ok, now that we have a definition, how many of you readers out there call yourselves liberal? And of those, how many actually walk-the-liberal-walk and how many drive instead?

              Abortion v. State-Sanctioned Murder

Ask a liberal how she can support abortion on demand for any reason, but oppose the death penalty under any circumstances. “Oh, but abortion is nuanced,” she says. “It is not a viable life. It’s just a fetus. It’s about a woman’s right to choose and the imposition of the will of men upon women etc., while state-sanctioned killing someone for killing someone is simply barbaric.” To the liberal who might be a hypocrite, the grief and visceral rage that a family member of a murder victim might feel, must be discounted to pursue  the greater good of societal evolution. “Euthanasia is so humane, state sanctioned executions are always wrong and abortions are none of your Goddamned business!”

Now before you women-folk start frothing at the mouth, I am not taking a position here. Most of you who read my stuff already know how I feel about and deal with this particular contradiction, but it is a contradiction and if you are not willing to acknowledge and come to terms with the contradiction, you might be a liberal hypocrite.

                        Environment v. Lite

Speaking of walking and driving, a liberal might be a hypocrite, if he can walk, or take the bus, but drives instead; can recycle and compost, but tosses it in the trash instead; can dig up those dandelions, but uses Roundup instead, and can’t seem to wait for dusk to run the gas-powered lawn mower over 1,500 square Ft. of Kentucky Blue in the semi-arid (becoming more arid all the time) Colorado climate.

I lean towards hypocrisy in this area as well. I am getting better, but in so doing I am also getting a better understanding of what heroine users go though to break the chains of their addiction. Taking that first walk to the post office was the worst!  I felt so unprotected out in the open air and I immediately discovered that the outdoors contained actual people with whom I felt compelled to at least acknowledge and some car-drivers really were jerks when I tried to cross the street and my knees got all shaky and I broke out in a cold sweat when I got home. It was Hell, but I made it and am thinking seriously of doing it again.

        Living Equality v. Du Jour Political Correctness

You also might be a liberal hypocrite if you get your panties in a bunch if someone tells a gay-joke or a Jewish-princess-joke, but still think it is okay to make fat-jokes and/or geriatric-jokes. Here, I count myself as both an occasional offender and one of the offended. I must acknowledge that I am sometimes a walking, talking, albeit minor example of political incorrectness, but I am also beginning to get really pissed off, every time I hear some 20-something confess that she refused a second date with a guy because he was…EEWW!...YUK!...GAG!…BARF!...almost 40! And just what in the hell did Kirstie Alley do (in addition to being fat) to deserve the rash of trash she is getting from all over this country? But, when I suggested that LGBT should switch their acronym to GBLT and serve sandwiches at rallies, I was roundly trounced by the fat/old jokers. Go figure.

                Hunger v. Gucci

With people going homeless and hungry in this country and all over this world, how can any self-respecting liberal have a closet full of $2,000 suits and $600 shoes? I’ll just leave it at that and let you figure it out.

               Liberal v. Cultivated Ignorance

Why do liberals, especially young liberals, think that the government is obligated to use their secret magic power to make it all better… RIGHT NOW!, but they never make the slightest effort to learn about  politics, the art of the possible, which is the only means available by which we can make anything better at all.?

I have said in the past that opinions are like… well…belly buttons. Everybody has one. You can back up an opinion with stats, but we all know that stats can be manipulated. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and, but if more people would opinionate less at each other and communicate more with each other, they might find some common ground upon which they already share. Opinions thereafter might be tweakable, or at least not matter as much in the grand design and something might actually get done.

But President Obama has not completed every single thing that he campaigned about and some liberals were expecting immediate gratification. It doesn’t matter that he has a country to run and has managed more crises on his watch, in the last two plus years, than the last five Presidents combined, and has to contend with the Tea/GOP, who, these days, are more and more resembling a bunch of insane, self-destructive, rabble-rousing, Anarchists than just the usual ignorant, self-centered, self-aggrandizing sanctimonious, reactionaries.

So disappointed and angry are the young might-be hypocritical liberals, because Obama won’t (not can’t, but refuses to) press a button, like on their I-stuff, and feed the poor, and tax the wealthy, and get white-guy-politicians (and Michelle Bachman) out of other people’s bedrooms, and dismantle the 50 year old Military-Industrial Complex and undo the last 30 years of corporate hegemony. I mean, you had TWO…WHOLE…YEARS…DUDE! “We have been betrayed!” they say, as they sip their Starbucks. “And now, only Ron Paul has the true answers.” OMFG. Please quickly refer to the definitions of liberalism above and then  move on…hypocrite!

                                 War v. Peace

Would somebody puhleeze explain to me why Democratic Presidents have started/escalated almost every war since Lincoln (who would be considered a liberal by today’s standards)? Is there some special hormone that only Presidents get, that makes them want to prove their especially manly, manhood by ordering young men and women to fight and die in the process of killing other young men and women, for some really good reason? And, if we elected a woman as President, would she too feel the heretofore uber-manly urge and be compelled to start a war?

                 Conservatives v. In name only

Another definition from Dictionary.com:

con·serv·a·tive

   /kənˈsɜr və tɪv/ Show Spelled[kuh n-sur-vuh-tiv] Show IPA

–adjective

1.

disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.

2.

cautiously moderate or purposefully low: a conservative estimate.

3.

traditional in style or manner; avoiding novelty or showiness: conservative suit.

4.

( often initial capital letter ) of or pertaining to the Conservative party.

5.

( initial capital letter ) of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Conservative Jews or Conservative judaism.

6.

having the power or tendency to conserve; preservative.

7.

Mathematics . (of a vector or vector function) having curl equal to zero; irrotational; lamellar.

–noun

8.

a person who is conservative in principles, actions, habits, etc.

9.

a supporter of conservative political policies.

10.

( initial capital letter ) a member of a conservative political party, especially the Conservative party in Great Britain.

11.

a preservative.

Okay, so conservatives want to preserve the way things are. Don’t like change. Got it.

              Abortion v. State-Sanctioned Murder

Since conservatives have always lived with the contradiction of abortion/bad, death penalty/good, they don’t want to change. I get that. It is okay to legislate the murder of certain people on the outside of Mom, as long as the 13-year-old keeps the fetus (that her dad or uncle put there) safe inside her. Although we can easily note the obvious exercise of internal hypocrisy in their argument, it is no more or less ridiculous than that of the liberal persuasion. And you have to admire their consistency. Since conservatives don’t believe in evolution, it stands to reason that they would not want to put up with an evolving sense of decency. Kind of like Pleasantville, if you don’t think about the whole rape and incest and too many kids to feed already part.

But I worry that, with the inevitable progress of scientific research, the earlier viability of fetuses in-utero may lead to a fetus committing murder and then…oh wait, conservatives don’t believe in family planning or stem cell research either, so maybe America’s infant mortality rate will remain at the current Third World level and this particular potential conundrum will be avoided.

            Government v. “Our Freedoms”

“Keep your government hands off of my Medicare!” That was one of the signs held up by a Tea Partier, back when the billionaire, Brothers Koch paid the first installment of the millions it took to single-handedly finance the grass roots Tea Bagger movement, before someone told them what “Tea Bagger” actually meant. You might be a conservative hypocrite if you want good roads, schools, law enforcement, safe drinking water, breathable air, and protection from the unbridled charlatanism of big business that is turning the middle class into a class of indentured servants…but… you want some other unnamed group of people (the middle class?) to foot the bill.

Everyone, but the rich must share in the sacrifice for you conservative might-be hypocrites. Persisting in this belief might make you not only a hypocrite, but delusional, if you are actually part of the middle class, but still root for the rich guys to lay you off and transfer their savings to a tax shelters in the Cayman Islands.

You might be also be a conservative hypocrite if you hail from any minority that came over on a boat to this country in the last two-hundred years or so, but still believe that you have the innate ability to tell which human beings are just a tad too dark to melt effectively into the American pot and think it is a great idea to build an actual wall to keep them out.

If you believe that your Tea/GOP leaders give a spit about your freedoms, you might not  be a hypocrite, but you might be deaf, dumb and blind. They are in it for the money and the power and the pages they can diddle and the golf they can play and the tan and the adoration, just like always. But, come to think of it, since conservatives want everything to remain just as crappy as it was before, maybe there is no hypocrisy here at all; just the same old snake oil salesmen and the same old dupes. You are happily giving away your freedoms, so you can watch from the cheap seats, as the big-business-fueled Tea/GOP folks pretend to turn back time.

                   Balanced Budget v. Taxes

Speaking of turning back time, it would be great if conservatives would agree to take the tax structure WAY back to the 1990’s? If they could remember WAY back that far, the upper 2% of the wealthiest Americans would go back to paying a 35% tax rate, instead of the 11% they are paying now and we would have no budget crisis. Period. Why anyone making $40K/year would be happy with GE paying no taxes and Mobil Oil paying no taxes and Goldman & Sachs paying no taxes? To me, this contradiction appears to be more insidious, and mind-numbingly inane, than just your garden-variety hypocrisy. Or maybe it’s just sour grapes, because I actually pay taxes.

Nobody with a functioning cerebral cortex still believes in the Trickle Down Theory of Economics, but, the way some in the Tea/GOP rant, rave, and pontificate, you’d think that the average sign-carrier in the tri-cornered hat had enough disposable income to be a major stock-holder in one of those companies, instead of living from paycheck to paycheck, like the rest of us.

In the real world, the only Tea/GOP folks who have (or are being given by big business) that kind of money are the politicians. I fully understand and respect the hypocritical bullspit politicians are feeding their base, because the Tea/GOP politicians stand to make a killing. It is the mental health of their cheering section that I am beginning to hold suspect.

                         The Environment

In this area, I find no hypocrisy in the conservative movement at all. Conservatives don’t believe in climate change, or that chemical fracking pollutes the water table, or that nuclear power is dangerous, or that oil companies don’t really care if they kill all marine/human life as long as they can turn a profit. Conservatives do believe whatever BP Oil, GE,  or any other multi-national corporation says is true, as long as the commercials have, flags, puppies, and soothing music. The melting polar ice caps are just nature’s way of altering the location of prime real estate and it makes it easier for Sarah Palin to see the Russians from her back yard. And higher levels of radiation are actually good for you and make you safer, because it helps you see each other better at night!

                      Sanctity of Marriage v. Gays

Do I really need to point out the hypocrisy of people who say that they don’t want to allow gays to  legally and spiritually commit to each other for life, but think it is okay for them to cheat on their spouses at-will and allow themselves multiple church-marriages for life to as many different death-do-us-partners as they can afford? Do we really want to dignify insanity by continuing to wallow in this hypocritical cesspool?

I don’t. It just makes me mad at people with whom I am supposed to be finding common ground.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

In Defense of Christianity

A couple of my friends took my last two diatribes about organized religion as an indictment of all Christians and of Christianity. That could not be farther from my actual perspective and I am sorry that I did not articulate my position more clearly. Language is my second form of communicating, with the first consisting largely of grunts and other bodily noises.

My problem is not with Christians or with Christianity, but with organized religion in general, the business that has become of it, and the fact that Christianity has been hijacked and stood on its head by the far right.

My friends also forced me to dust off one of my copies of the Bible, so I could stop paraphrasing and just state the Word as best as my Revised Standard Version will state it. This is how I feel about what has happened to Christianity. I hope it makes sense to you as well.

Mark 10:23 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Mark 11:15 And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who bought in the temple and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

Mark11:17 My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of robbers.

Mark 12:38  Be ware of the scribes who like to go about in long robes and to have salutations in the market places and the best seats in the synagogue and places of honor at feasts who devour widow’s houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.

Mark 13:06 Many will come in my name saying, I am he! And they will lead many astray.

Matthew 5:03 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:04  Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Matthew 5:05  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Matthew 5:06  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Matthew 5:07  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Matthew 5:08  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Matthew 5:09 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Matthew 5:10  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:11  Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you on my account.

Matthew 5:21 You have hears that it was said to the men of old ‘you shall not kill, and whosoever kills, shall be liable to judgment. Matthew 5:22  But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother, shall be liable to judgment; whosoever insults his brother…]

Matthew 5:38  Do not resist one who is evil but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Matthew 5:43  Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Matthew 6:01 Be ware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them.

Matthew 6:02  Thus, when you give alms; sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that you may be praised by men. Matthew 6:04…so that your alms may be in secret.

Matthew 6:05 And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for the love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at street corners, that they may be seen by men.

Matthew 6:06 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.

Matthew 6:07 And in praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Matthew 6:19 Do not lay upon yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.

Matthew 7:01 Judge not, that you be not judged.

Matthew 7:03  Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Matthew 7:05  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:08  For everyone who asks, receives, and he who knocks, it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will you give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will you give him a serpent?

Mathew 7:12  So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so for them; for this is the law and the prophets.

Matthew 7:15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

What has happened in our world that has taken these words and trashed them, all for the sake of money and power? You can’t just say these words, you have to live them and I don’t know too many people who even remember these words, or the present patently obvious irony, much less live their lives by them. Quite the opposite, I am afraid and I blame the business-fueled theocracy which is being shoved down our throats by the religious right.

They have hijacked Christianity and have made it the diametric opposite of what Jesus taught and for which he died. And that is what I fear so much. True Christians are not pedophile priests, or charlatans like Tammy Baker, or Oral Roberts, or Pat Robertson, or Terry Jones, or Joseph Smith, or L. Ron Hubbard, or any politician who wants to cut taxes for the wealthy and place the burden on the middle class, the old, the sick, and the poor. How can you claim to be a Christian and then sit back and let this happen to your fellow human beings?

That is my point. I am sorry that it took me three tries to make it.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

A Matter of Perspective

I just had a slightly uncomfortable exchange with a very old friend on the preeminent social network which, once again, sent the ghosts of my childhood back to haunt me. It is none of your business, who or what we were talking about, but, suffice it to say that we had diametrically opposed views on a certain political figure. I thought he was joking, because I forgot where I grew up, and he took serious offense at my merciless characterization of said political figure. I hope that we agreed to disagree, although I was such a jerk in my little off-the-cuff diatribe, that I would not blame him if he “unfriended” me. I should know better than to bring up politics or religion…ever. Even when people agree with me, it just upsets them. I must be some kind of masochist.

But the exchange and the unsettling rerun of my life as a minority in Pleasantville really got me to thinking about the notion of perspective and the serious question as to whether or to what extent, a perspective, once ingrained, can ever be altered.

If someone grew up using the words the n-word and the s-word in a normal sentence and still slept nights, has this person’s perspective on racial equality now changed, or does he just parse his words in public? As you might already know from a previous post of mine, I grew up in a town where it was perfectly acceptable if not required to make liberal use of those particular expletives, even though we did not have any actual minorities (me excepted) living amongst us.

As a child, I tested the waters…once…and called one of my (white) friends an n-word. I will never live down uttering that word and it is still one of the most mortifying, self-created, experiences I can recall. I wanted to curl up in a ball and die. I almost puked. The strange part was that my friend was not fazed in the least, as that term was part of his common vocabulary. I held that shame in secret for years. I don’t think I ever had the guts to tell my Mom or Dad. They would have been so ashamed of me. That was because of their perspective, which they never lost, despite the cowboy hats and turquoise string- ties and living out their adult lives among the pasty-white, sub-urban, tomfoolery. I will never know why a couple of ultra-liberal, highly educated, dagos from New York City would knowingly settle down and raise a family in that environment.

And it wasn’t just the racial thing. Every time you would tell someone you were from New York, they would recoil slightly and pinch their noses, like there was suddenly a bad smell right next to you in the room. And the first question would invariably be, “how could you live with all that cement and buildings and crime?” That was their perspective and I had no answer for them, because I came to Colorado at four years of age and really didn’t remember the cement much. It was not until later in life, when I visited Little Italy with my Jewish wife, that I felt totally at home; anonymous, in fact. And I think that this must have been the way my neighbors felt in the town where I grew up as a stranger. That was their perspective and mine.

Did any of my friends and former neighbors eventually visit New York City and the expanse of mountains and farms and forests of New York State? Did one or more end up marrying an Italian…or even a person of color? If one or more did any or all of the above, did their perspective change? I have to think that it did in some cases, but that is only my perspective. I have friends who got out into the world and grew and changed enormously, I believe. But what about those who just hung out with the same folks they grew up with? How do they view the fact that the world has changed all around them? Do they begrudge it? Are they in denial? Did their perspective change, or did they just become muted and repressed? I am not being glib here. I really want to know.

If a person comes from a poor background and works her way up to the upper-class, does she still carry a place in her heart for the poor working folks she left behind, or does she dismiss them as indolent, unworthy creatures, to be despised and avoided? Gated communities are full of the nouveau riche that move there with the express purpose of achieving such segregation. Did she grow up with a perspective that she was living among, but superior to her neighbors on her block, or did she just adopt that attitude later? Does it all depend upon the perspective she acquired as a child, or her experiences later in life, or both? These are also serious questions.

And how about the old riche, like 3/4ths of our politicians in Washington? Were they raised with a noblesse oblige perspective like the Kennedys or did Mater and Pater inject the perspective of survival of the fittest into their veins? And did any of the experiences that they had later in life, change that perspective, or were all their experiences carefully scripted to reinforce the original? Again, serious questions, especially given the fact that those in the upper crust have so much control over the few crumbs that get scattered for the rest of us. Will they, can they ever change?

One of my daughters, the Sociologist, forced me to read a really long article from the New York Times. She implied that the article might be too sociologically complicated for a mere attorney to comprehend, but what I did manage to glean from it was that most people believe that they have the ability to fulfill the American dream of wealth/happiness/etc. and keep on believing it, long after it is patently evident that they are never going to get there. It is their perspective that they are on the road to success, or have succeeded already, despite undeniable empirical evidence that the upper 2% is becoming richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is being squished into a life of indentured servitude. That tells me that some perspectives don’t change, even after a kick in the crotch.

And what about religious perspectives, the other subject that I am not allowed to talk about? Isn’t that all perspective? If you were raised Jewish, you may have fooled around with the goyishe boys at Brandeis University, but you still usually ended up marrying a nice Jewish boy, right? And some of you don’t have to imagine the look of abject I might as well just kill myself now disappointment in your mother’s eyes if you did differently. Is that really more than just perspective? Do you really believe that God told you personally to repopulate the world with only those directly descended from the original tribes of Israel? And, if you do believe that, where does that belief come from?

I have been to Dachau and I will never forget…ever. But it really scares me that some ultra-orthodox  Jews practice an eerily familiar superiority of the races kind of thing. Why am I so afraid? Partly, because it is my perspective that organized religion, and especially any organized religion at the fringes, no matter how old or widespread or allegedly legitimized by even the most strident of efforts at maintaining ethnic purity, is the single most dangerous evil that we have in this world today. I also take offense at the hubris, which goes hand in hand with making any club exclusive.

It has always been my perspective that evangelists keep bugging you to join their club, but you have to obey all of their rules, (which they assure you came straight from God) or you are condemned to burn in Hell or Los Angeles, or the dentist’s office, or somewhere else where you really, really don’t want to be. We history buffs know that Christians in general, have committed more genocide and heinous acts in general than Osama and all the Muslims put together. But nowadays, certain Evangelicals for Islam who recently learned from the CIA and the IRA how to blow up stuff, are mondo-motivated to catch up with the Gentiles on the atrocity stats.

And have you ever tried changing the perspective of a radical religious…anybody? Talk about perspective! I’m thinking full-body tattoo, more like. We got radical Christians, like The Reverend Terry Jones, burning the Koran, just to piss off the radical Muslims in Afghanistan, who don’t really need another excuse to blow up other human beings, and these particular nut-jobs are sublimating their real desire to blow up the radical Zionists in Israel, who actually invented modern terrorism and have perfected it into an art form. How does one sit down at a table and deal with the perspectives of these paranoid psychotics and get them to just stop killing innocents, much less to come to any kind of understanding? I will accept all serious ideas, however improbable.

And then you have my own totally biased perspective on just about everything. I have no clue if I am right or righteous, or totally full of cacada (my mother’s bastardized Italian). And come to think of it, my perspectives on the above issues have not changed much since I was a child. I have more letters next to my name, use bigger words to rationalize my perspective and get stats to support my perspective from The Google, but I have not become any less pigheadedly opinionated. If anything, I have become more so, now that I can vent my perspective on this blog.

I will leave you with this final thought: “Some say, to be truly free, you must first free yourself from all perspective…others say that losing all perspective just makes you truly dead.”  Depends upon your perspective, I guess.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Can’t Be a Progressive Anymore

The truth is that it is just getting too hard. It takes so much energy to withstand the daily disappointment in the awful stuff my fellow human beings are doing to other human beings over money and God, in that order. I am losing the heart and strength it takes to take philosophical arms against a sea of the incomprehensibly shallow, evil crud that oozes from the pores of the politicians in power, and am losing focus on that light at the end of a seemingly endless tunnel, replacing it with a dim outlook for the future. I don’t know if I can keep drinking the unpalatable brew of angst mixed with hope that it takes to be a pro-defense, pro-labor, socialistic, atheistic, tree-hugging, pro-choice/pro-gay, anti-gun, human rights, lefty kinda guy anymore. And I’m thinking about joining the other side, because, frankly, I’m just tired of thinking about it and the enormity of it all really depresses me.

Criminal justice

For 22 years, as a deputy Colorado State Public Defender, I fought against a heartless machine that dehumanized my clients, looked the other way, when cops, prosecutors, and allegedly “expert” witnesses lied with impunity, screwed my clients, (whether they deserved it or not), and gave my kind zero respect for doing twice the work, at half the pay of my counterparts in private practice. And the news stories you hear about prosecutors being paid extra to win at any cost are true. Also true is the fact that cops and prosecutors and expert witnesses for the state lie and lie more often than you ought to feel comfortable about. I’ve seen all this up close and personal. But they are rewarded for their exercises in political expediency by being granted increasingly greater power over average citizens like you and me and, as a progressive, I just can’t stand to read about yet another cop who beat an innocent bystander into a coma or worse. As average citizens, you and I are powerless to stop this kind of thing from happening and it hurts too much to think about it anymore.

My counterparts on the right believe that all cops, prosecutors, judges are god-like and all of the accused and their attorneys are evil and inhuman. Simple jerk of the knee and I’m done. I can do that. Gimme a good lawyer joke over reality any day. If they are arrested, they must be guilty. End of story. And if a few innocent human beings are caged or killed to further a politician’s career, she now has my vote. I’ll even put her Lawn Order sign on my lawn.

Unions

My Dad was the Regional Director for the National Labor Relations Board and told me about how big business was out to discredit the unions since before Nixon was elected. And it worked. Gradually, the image of unions was transformed by the Chamber of Commerce, et. al. from an organization that represented decent pay, pensions, and working conditions for the middle class, to a mafia that represented a bunch of indolent slobs who sat around getting paid for doing nothing.. And all it took was lots of money, a few years of constant propaganda, and a few bad union apples for them to use as examples. My dad saw it coming over 40 years ago and now we have Tea/GOP elected officials who are trying to indenture us into a new and improved version of the 1920’s, robber baron era. The same Tea/GOP politicians are also attempting to completely rewrite history, so that young people will never know what unions actually did for the middle class. But thinking about this just makes my blood boil, and I get so tired when I see this kind of crap in the news every day. I mean these little sheisas aren’t even good liars and 20% of the country actually buy the snake oil they are selling.

But if I just keep telling myself that what is good for big business, must be good for me and the rest of the country, then my blood cools a bit. And when the stock market hits another record high, I can feel all fuzzy and secure, even though the middle class and I don’t have any extra money to actually invest in the market. And from there, it is just a small step to ignore that my income has flat-lined, while CEOs of companies that I bailed out with my tax dollars are raking in record bonuses. I can still buy a car on credit and my house will be paid off, maybe, in 20 years or so. If I quit stressing about how much we are getting screwed right under our noses I can spend more time playing with one of my i-things.

Socialized Medicine

Why should I care if people die so health insurance company CEOs and stockholders can make a bigger profit? If I had the money to invest (which I don’t…), I could buy that third home in the mountains, rather than worrying about how some snot-nosed kid I don’t even know is going to get his vaccinations. But first I gotta quit caring that the aforementioned kid’s parents can’t afford health insurance. If I can get over that hump, like the Tea/GOP politicians and health insurance companies already have, then it only stands to reason that I can quit caring about the kid as well. I mean, I don’t even know his name, and if he gets sick and then dies from one of those staff infections that are so common in emergency rooms, that’s one less kid for me to worry about not having enough to eat, because his family can’t pay the bills despite the three jobs that they have, or are out on the street because the unemployment checks stopped coming, so the Tea/GOP could give the money to the rich for storage in the Cayman Islands.

Just today, I had to read about The Chair of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan, who is introducing a bill which will privatize Medicare and give a stipend to those over 65, so that they can go out and try to find a private insurance company that will give them a policy. For those of us who actually think about those three words in the same sentence (privatization and insurance companies) our initial laughter is replaced by red-faced furor over that very idea. If you remember my post of January 21, 2011, you will remember how much Rep. Paul Ryan took from the hedge fund/investment firms/financial industries. And what a return on their investment they will get if Rep. Ryan and the Tea/GOP are successful!

But, to paraphrase The Gipper, “there I go thinking again!” It is so much more doable, if I regard health care as a privilege for the few, rather than a human right for all. I could still win the lottery, and so have a better chance than anyone else in the middle class of getting decent health care when needed. Don’t think about that the fact that the Tea/GOP platitudes against universal health care are absolute rubbish, and that health care is a complicated issue which requires government intervention. The Tea/GOP mantra is really so much easier to remember than the actual truth and, as long as you say it really loud without thinking about the words, there is almost, kind of a certain Zen to it.

 Deathpanelsforgrannyrationingjobkillingsocialistcommunistkeepyourgovernmenthandsoffofmymedicare! Just one long string of tripe I have to memorize, instead of all that painful caring about my fellow human being stuff. Then my headache over the unconscionable actions of the whole unholy health insurance/Tea/GOP alliance begins to fade into oblivion along with my morals and sense of decency. No aspirin required!

God

I have tried to live my life by following what I thought was the path of Jesus and damn, it’s hard! He got crucified and I am begging to see why. Jesus allegedly hated the wealthy and powerful because they picked on the poor and the meek, but money and power are now worshipped over everything else. Jesus was said to have hated intolerance but we’ve got Christians like the Reverend Jim Jones packing heat and burning the Koran down in Gainesville. Jesus supposedly hated organized churches, but now we have only slightly fewer churches than Starbucks, and they represent almost every denomination, from polygamists to alien (and I don’t mean Cantonese) worship. And each of them are the only true religion. And each one has a slightly different book that is the only true word of God.

I always thought that Jesus said the hand-waving, loud-mouthed, sanctimonious, church-goers were all a bunch of phonies, but churches have grown into big thriving mega-businesses now, despite the lawsuits against the Vatican. When I used to think about it (which was a lot), I concluded that organized religion was indeed the opiate of the masses and reasoned that they all could not possibly be the only true religion. I thought about all of the hateful, unspeakable atrocities that were, and are now, being committed by religious humans in the name of their only true God and wondered why a kid should be stoned to death for yelling at her parents, marrying for love, or eating shrimp.

But there is so much…safety and security when you suspend your disbelief and just accept whatever mumbo-jumbo the guy in the $1,600 suit is bullying from his pulpit. Does it really matter if the text is garbage? The masses don’t need actual sense. What they need is the opiate part to feel good and I am beginning to see their point.

The Environment

This one’s easy. I just have to switch from an “all for one and one for all” mentality to one of “survival of the fittest.” It is more simple and natural, and requires no tiresome sense of common decency or altruism whatsoever. Why should I waste time fretting over radioactivity in the water, mercury in fish, or pesticides in milk, when it is almost guaranteed that a certain small percentage of the population will probably prove able to tolerate those substances? They will probably survive, and our race will continue in one form or another. And I just have to take it on  faith (after copious doses of the opium that I will buy at cost from my new only true religion) that the free market business-people will stop poisoning the air, water, and food, when there are no people left to buy their stuff. This a low-to-no-stress, win-win, kinda way of looking at it, I think…if I could just stop thinking about what the world will look like in 100 years. Hell, I won’t be around, so why should I care. Let my grandkids deal.

Abortion/The Gay

It is hard not to think about all of the MEN who insist on telling other men and women who they don’t even know what they can do in the privacy of their own lives. It seems grossly unfair that these men, like Newt Gingrich, screw around on their wives, get a divorce, and then repeat as needed, but it’s against the sanctity of marriage, for two guys to faithfully commit to each other for life.

If I keep thinking about it, these MEN strike me as a bunch of perverts, like voyeurs, or weenie-danglers, or those churchy guys in the 17^th Century, who used to get off on burning women at the stake. And, again, it is only when I use up my ebbing supply of disposable energy to think, that it also strikes me as perverse, when these Christians (again, mostly men) preach that it is okay to shoot someone in the head for aborting a fetus that was placed in a woman’s body by a rapist.. These are usually the same  Christians who think it’s okay for the government to kill people for killing people.

I am not sure if there is enough opium in Afghanistan to dope me into ignoring these  scurvy bastards or their contradictions. Come to think of it (there I go again!), in Afghanistan, it is perfectly acceptable for MEN to bugger little boys, and murder their wives and daughters for disobedient behavior, and our nation-building efforts will help them to continue this age-old tradition. Maybe opium is not the way to go after all. A pre-frontal lobotomy, maybe?

Guns

I have written on this subject before and will not bore you again, Suffice it to say that I am growing too tired to fret over the fact that here is one gun for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. and that tens of thousands of human beings are killed by hot flying lead in this country every year, just so Wayne La Pierre can sing Happiness is a Warm Gun, before he goes to bed in his bunker in Bertesgarten. I look good in a brown shirt as well as the next guy. If I can just learn to aim with something bigger than a girly, 9mm, I’ll be all set. After lots of target practice, I can just replace my knowledge about the obvious connection between hand guns and hand-gun deaths, with irrational fears of unseen, colored, illegal immigrants, invading my castle and raping my cattle or chattel, or something, I believe that I will be in the right frame of mind to join the NRA. Then can I stop kvetching and begin a love affair with my own personal penis-extender.

Human Rights?

I think I may have unintentionally covered this area already. If I no longer believe that human beings have the right to  a decent wage, privacy, clean air, water, food, health, protection from gun violence and rule by theocracy, doesn’t that just about cover human rights? Human rights, human schmites! With my new found sense of…not thinking, feeling, or caring about anyone except those exactly like me, the words human rights, will begin to sound vaguely threatening, like communismsocialismathiesmrealism. Like the idea of unions, human rights is just an idea created by tree-hugging liberals who think too damned much and, as I say, I am about done thinking, because it’s too damned hard.

The ignorant, stupid, mean-spirited people seem to be the happiest, at least when they are around other ignorant, stupid, mean-spirited people, and I’ll bet that there are lots of these folks around that I can hang with, if I can just chuck the progressive albatross and become ignorant, stupid, and mean-spirited. Then I can close my eyes, completely clear my mind, and picture myself content with what is happening to my country.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo