I always have a hard time keeping left and right apart. I always have to think is left liberal or conservative, or is right conservative or wrong? Well I just gave away my pneumonic. And here is the moral argument that I would put forth, the political argument seems to be in between the two of them most of the time.
Throughout history all of the great spiritual messengers have carried the same message, treat others as you would want to be treated. This goes for everyone from Confuscious, Buddha, Jesus, Muhamad, and everyone else. Most of the religions advocate taking care of the needy. In fact Religions like Islam require it. There's a quote somewhere, and I am going to paraphrase it that says a great society is not measure by how wealthy its people are but how well it takes care of its poor. All this being said is that in American society, everything gets tainted by money in American politics. I guess the split in the parties started with the Depression and FDR and the way Democrats spent money to recover from the Depression. It seems to me that the Democrat party has held on to that since then as the way to fix things. The last great periods of spending being the presedency of LBJ. When there's a problem Democrats feel morally inclined to solve it by providing a material solution, and that typically has meant spending money.
Republicans on the other hand work a different way. It has been since Teddy Roosevelt that there has been a great Republican of the old ways, one that worked to champion anti slavery and national parks. Modern Republicans are conservative based. That means, keeping their money by cutting taxes. Sure there was a tax cut under JFK that worked. It was limited with a smaller debt. Today 14% or more of the national budget is used to pay of the national debt. That's 7 trillion dollars in debt. The only truly lasting legacy of Reaganomics is the debt under which we pay 14% of our taxes per year. So why is Ronald Reagan such a hero?
The type of person that would be inclined to forgo the difficulties and hard work, by creating a temporarily stimulated economic environment that just creates debt, is a person who chooses immediate pleasure of delayed gratification. It is a person who sees an opportunity to make money now and fails to see the repercussions of that poor decision. It is generally a person who also has money to make money with.
Have you noticed that I haven't mentioned that these people think about others when they think about politics. That's because they don't. The focuse is on their own wallets. Which is, quite frankly, ok with me, but let's call it what it is, pure unadulterated selfishness and greed. That is not morality according to the greats. But after all this was a discourse on politics.
murder, kidnapping, history and the persistence of racism in Sussex County/ the Patty Cannon gang
It is with wonder sometimes, how what I may see as my faults sometimes bring me great insight at such serendipitous times. I was watching television, something I probably do too much of, when Maryland public TV aired its show about History detectives. This show had a segment that tracked down the authenticity of a landmark sign in front of a house on the line between Maryland and Delaware, where a gang of white people kidnapped free black people from Sussex County and then sold them into slavery in the South.
The house was actually in Maryland. The kidnappings took place in Sussex county. Some of the black people eventually regained their freedom and then told their stories when they reached Philadelphia. The leader of the gang, Patty Cannon, was arrested for murder. There were remains of bodies found on the property. She died in jail before she stood trial.
Here are some counterpoints that are interesting. Kidnapping of course was illegal, but a black person was not allowed to testify against a white person in court. As well this wasn't the only gang that operated, recapturing free black people and reselling them into slavery. Kind of interesting that the underground railroad ran up through Maryland and even had a stop or two in Delaware as well, further north though. The trains ran both ways apparently.
Now back to more modern times. I am thinking now of a family I know that lives not so far from that parcel of land where the gang operated. I would consider it almost the same basic area. In fact the area is called Johnson crossroads, one of the gang members family name's. The family I know now, could accurately be described as conservative, loyally aligned to the right. It is not hard to remember insults or derogatory comments about Americans of African descent, that I have heard. There is an assumption that is very common amongst the natives that if a person is white, then they do harbor the same mental attitudes against african Americans. There is no consideration that a white man might think differently. The attitude is held as a truth instead of just an attitude.
People have all kinds of faults and prejudice against race is certainly one of the most common in the world, not just here where I am. Spiritually I don't believe in holding a prejudice against someone based on their race or based on their prejudice.
Back to the subject at hand. This particular family I have brought up, has lived in Sussex County and the region for generations at least back to the American revolution.
So, here is a first hand account that subversively the same attitudes of the early 1800s are the same attitudes of the same people in the same places 200 years later.
panty lines, nationalism, and ultra-conservative rednecks
It was in the parking lot of the Food Lion that i saw a middle age woman with deep cutting panty lines beneath a pair of blue jeans. Now it seems remarkable to me in itself that there were panty lines while she was wearing jeans, but the lines were deep, cutting off circulation, causing bruises deep. She also wore a spiral, frizzy perm with hairsprayed bangs that sorta stood up. Sound familiar? Like leave it in the 80s with the bad memories familiar. Before I start sounding like a gay man with a fashion fetish, I bring this up for a point.
A woman who appeared to be about 40 years old. She must have been dressing herself and buying her own clothes for decades now. How long does it take to figure out one's own body? It's not that everyone can learn aesthetics like an art school student. It takes very little though to notice what she missed. But is it a total lack of education? Did her mother wear a beehive until 1990?
Take into consideration the area where this ocurred, Sussex county, Delaware. A predominantly conservative, and that's a euphamism, area. I've noticed that other ideas persist in the face of reason among the natives here as well. When I say natives I mean those that have been born and raised here. I live here and have for a while, but am not a native. There are many land and home owners, wealthy home owners in the are, who don't live here permanently. Some of the ideas that persist that I mean to mention are blind nationalism - quite different than patriotism - and other things like racism.
To clear some points hear and in the interest of full disclosure, all though I do think that as far as the political parties are concerned, I see the Democrat side is more motivated by obvious morality and the Republican side is motivated by obvious selfishness, shortsightedness, and the need for immediate gratification and personal gain at the cost of others. (More on this theory in another blog)... That being said, I don't particlularly think that being liberal or conservative as they are these days is a good idea. The way of the middle and intelligent is the only real way that I see that makes much sense. So that's my political alignment. Now back to the ideas at hand...
This woman provided an excellent example all be it a humorous and frightful one of the persistence of delinquent and outrightful harmful ideas in a conservative, undereducated, white dominated area. Let's start with the idea of what would appear to be a socioeconomic and racially different area that has more of a reputation for its social problems, and let's compare some issues. I'm talking about comparing the stereotypical inner city (read poor black projects) with the white dominated rural county that I'm talking about. City projects are famous for single mothers, AIDS, drugs and other social ills. But just look at some statistics about Delaware. I'll let you find your own. Delaware is one of the worst states when it comes to teen pregnancies, and AIDS rates, and there is only one inner city in Delaware and it is relatively small. I would extrapolate from this that the problem extends beyond the city into the suburbs and the rural areas where it is very common to see single young girls and women of all ages with children. This is not to comment on that as a social problem. It is just to raise it as a more of a fact in the area being discussed.
It is a fact that to take away the right to have a gun, it would take a constitutional ammendment. Yet, I have heard raging discussions, time and time again that "they want to take our guns away". Despite the obvious next to immpossibility of this actually happening because it requires a constitutional ammenedment, who is "they", and where did any political leader ever say that? Another time someone said he had a gun he picked up "just in case he had to use it" that he didn't register or have a receipt for and he could get rid of. Someone else said he thought that David Koresh and the Davidians, if they killed their children, did the right thing. Do you see a pattern here? Sound like NRA party line mixed with some paranoid schizophrenia? It does to me.
So here it is, a mix of a lack of education, with a lack of exposure to other people and cultures (wait to you hear the racist comments), mixed with perverted ultraconservative isolated unchecked immoral religion that allows a persistent, overwhelmingly ingrained pattern of negative behavior, morality, and attitude that just lets these people walk around without even thinking about how bad they are dressed.
lying on the beach today with a woman/do something for your loved ones, no matter how little
I was lying on the beach today with a woman who had her breasts exposed. Too bad she was near death. Too bad she was 75 and fat. It's amazing how little things like proper social dress code doesn't matter when someone is close to dying, or has died, or just might die. There were thousands of other people on the beach as well as us. No one seemed to care.
There was a young boy about 11 or 12 years old about 10 feet behind me. I wonder if he was thinking about the woman's breast, or was he thinking that he was seeing someone die. I never saw anything like that when I was that young. I never saw anyone dying that close to me. I barely even saw dead bodies, just a few funerals and a motorcycle accident from the school bus. But that was 100 yards away. I never saw anything like that until I was 24 or 25 (not the breasts, the death and dying part). I'm sure he'll have a girlfriend or mess around with girls in a few years, and he'll see the nice breasts that he's supposed to see. He certainly was on a richer $ection of beach. Maybe an older girl will make a man out of him and he'll be one of the lucky boys. There's so few stories like that. I remember every one I've been told. It makes me wonder if any of this will affect him at all. Will he go back to his 7th grade class and say, "On my summer vacation I saw...it looked like that show..."? I wonder if his dad, who I think was sitting with him, will try and talk with him about it. "Son, those people did everything they could for her..."
Then there's the people who all they have left are the little shreds of social propriety. They want to comb their hair before anyone sees them, or they spend the last 5 minutes before we arrive, dressing their nearly dead loved one. It's important to do something for your loved ones, no matter how little. It will give you peace someday.
Me, I liked talking to the young female lifeguard in her blue lifeguard bikini. She was young and healthy and very fit. When I was 12 I would have that about that woman's breast. "Should I look?... Should I look away?... Am I bad for looking?... Should I go over there and cover her up?" I was never taught clearly anything in my life, as far as morality. I learned that on my own later on, after much suffering.
