For Fathers Day, I wanted to take my son to see “Inside Out,” a new animated movie by Pixar, but he ended up seeing “The Wolfpack” instead — a film about a whole different style of fathering altogether. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDbqcMfUdlI
But I still wanna go see “Inside Out”. Its main plot revolves around meeting some of the various emotions that live inside of our brains, such as “Anger” and “Sadness”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MC3XuMvsDI
But according to a book I’m currently reading by anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, one of our most important human emotions is trust. I wish that Pixar had introduced us to “Trust” as well.
“If a small baby doesn’t feel that it can trust, specifically that it can trust having some modicum of control over its own situation, then it might even die,” to paraphrase Bateson. Along with the ability to learn to walk and talk and develop teeth, apparently babies also need to learn to develop trust too — and if they don’t, life can become unbearable for them. And we adults also need to learn to meet “Trust” as well.
But how in the world do we actually go about meeting this actual “Trust” person ourselves? We do it by putting ourselves into trusting situations and then taking careful notes on who passes our trust tests — and who fails.
For instance, would you ever trust a mother who, like that bizarre mom in “Game of Thrones,” stood by and watched her own daughter getting burned at the stake — only protesting when it was obviously Too Late?
And would you ever trust a government that continually sells out “We the people” to Wall Street and War Street at every chance that it gets? When it comes to trusting our government’s current warriors and cavaliers in DC, I would much sooner trust Lebron James and Seth Curry. http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/30876-focus-climate-change-is-a-crisis-we-can-only-solve-together
If you were an African-American, who would you trust? Would you trust your local trigger-happy police? Would you trust the haters who demand that the Confederate flag, clearly used by them as a symbol of racism, be flown over your state capitol? http://gawker.com/unarmed-people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999-2014-1666672349 According at a recent civil rights report published in China, “Cops killing African-Americans is practically a norm in the US”. And then also add no jobs, sub-par schools and extensive social ostracization to that toxic mix. Trust results from all this? Highly unlikely.
Will Americans ever again be able trust our mainstream media to tell the truth after WikiLeaks just exposed that Saudi Arabia has been slipping them payola for years now in order to get the MSM to leave the House of Saud’s name out of the news, including but not limited to its major role in such events as 9-11, the war on Iraq and creating ISIS — as well as the celebration of its 100th beheading this year? https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/press
Would you ever be able to trust Congress and Obama again after they worked so hard to shove that horrendous TTP trade agreement down our throats like some porn movie featurette — just to make corporate billionaires get even richer than they are right now? http://www.thenation.com/article/206409/damage
How can we possibly trust Monsanto after it has blatantly chosen profits from GMO-bred Frankenstein plants and animals over us — like we were some orphan step-child they are forced to put up with?
And how can we even think about ever trusting Israel, our government’s major ally in the Middle East, when all that the neo-colonialists who run Israel with an iron hand want to do is to stir up trouble in the region so that we taxpayers can come to their rescue? I was in Sweida, in Syria, last year and, trust me, the Syrians trust President Assad a lot more than they trust ISIS’s BFF Israel. http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrian-druze-fighting-israeli-backed-al-qaeda/5455651
And what about our very own Supreme Court? Anton Scalia? We are supposed to actually trust this man? Hardly. Not after he gleefully sold out American voters in favor of huge corporations with regard to Citizens United. Seth and Lebron have much better judgment than Scalia does. Heck, even Curry’s two-year-old daughter would have better judgment than that.
Trusting that climate change isn’t really real, are we? Good luck with that one. With American war hawks all practically wetting their pants at a chance to attack Russia through Ukraine, and with Turkey, the Saudis, Israel and the US neo-colonialists just dying to do to Syria and Yemen what they did to Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq, then there is only one thing we can truly trust in here — that “war” is gonna release so much carbon dioxide that it’s gonna cause climate change on steroids. And that we’re soon gonna meet a whole new kind of “I can’t breathe.” http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2015/06/22/nato-russia-collision-ahead/
And can we even trust the Rule of Law here in America? Or the FBI or the IRS or even the freaking building codes after that balcony in a relatively new building here in Berkeley just fell down?
Modern American government has no transparency these days. No one knows where our money goes. The CIA is a black hole and so is the Pentagon, NSA, NATO, Congress, etc. And who even knows what the White House is up to, let alone the Federal Reserve. Countries that have no transparency are clearly on the road to dictatorship — and who the freak can trust dictators? Talk about your lack of control! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biNGtrIqWRQ
The moral here? That Americans also need to develop trust in their government if we are ever going to grow up and “meet Trust” in ourselves. And our government needs to start acting a hecka lot more trustworthy too.
PS: And speaking of books (Don’t you just love to read!), I’d like to recommend one. Along with all the usual murder mysteries that I love such as “Last of the Independents” and “As the Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust,” my summer reading also includes a book called “Chief Complaint: A Country Doctor’s Tales of Life in Galilee”.
“Chief Complaint” is a wonderful compilation of what small-town life was like in Palestine both before and after Israeli neo-colonialists killed off thousands of Palestinians, forced a million of them off their land, seized their property and lost their trust. It’s a delightful read, a true anthropology of what village life was and is like for Palestinians in Galilee — with all its warts and merits included. http://justworldbooks.com/chief-complaint/
Photo is of me and Ghost back in 1963, back when I still had a little bit of trust left (as much trust as a Beatnik could have that is — after Hiroshima, HUAC and the beginnings of Vietnam where my neighbor’s son was an “adviser” even back then)
Zen and the Art of Microaggressions
[Trigger Warning: The following column may contain words, phrases, and/or topics that readers may find unsettling and upsetting. If not; then the columnist isn’t doing his job correctly and must apologize.]
If the latest example of Berkeley Liberal thinking, which is called “micro aggression” is retroactively applied to Lenny Bruce’s most famous quotes, he wouldn’t be considered just a criminal but he would be regarded as an equal of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial defendants. When the President of the United States recently used the n-bomb, he did not issue a trigger warning and consequently the Republicans became incensed. Their righteous indignation over the use of that word came perilously close to apoplexy.
It seems as if some political commentators do not want a lively discussion about various contentious topics but would rather have a verbal equivalent of the de facto Christmas truce that occurred at Christmas in 1914. Is neutralizing debate a liberal or conservative tactic? Is it an example of microaggression to even ask that question? If so who would approve such behavior other than Lenny Bruce and others from the Golden Age of Sick humor?
If Lenny Bruce were still alive today could he get away with asking this question: “Are the members of the United State Supreme Court acting like drama queens with their coy moves to postpone the announcement of their decisions for the most contentious cases from this year?”
If the conservatively owned mainstream media is satisfied with the Justices shenanigans, who outside the Berkeley city limits will object?
The mainstream media was spared the trouble of taking an in-depth look at the Berkeley Balcony tragedy that occurred early on June 16 because on June 17 a mass shooting occurred and the new media immediately switch the country’s focus of attention to the mass murder story.
The gun manufacturing industry was spared another round of the gun control debate when the news commentators immediately directed the nation’s attention to the Confederate flag issue. The power of political activism was underlined by the fact that several national merchandise chains quickly announced they were suspending the sale of Confederate flags.
Meanwhile, in Berkeley, while the elite of the journalism industry were in town to cover the aftermath of the balcony tragedy, a report by the Berkeley Police Review Commission was released. It immediately was criticized by local citizens for not accurately describing the police conduct on the evening of December 6, 2014 which had sparked the investigation.
It was asserted by some zealous observers to be a “cover-up” or what the kids would call “a white wash job.” Is that a subtle way of saying that only honkies try to lie their way out of a nasty predicament?
KCBS news radio reported on Tuesday of this week that in the aftermath of the six student deaths in the balcony tragedy, no police investigation regarding possible criminal conduct was being conducted. The lawyers and the inevitable lawsuits would be the method for providing justice for the deaths.
On Thursday, the Alameda County District Attorney, Nancy O’Malley, announced that her office would be conducting a criminal investigation, which might produce manslaughter indictments.
Meanwhile, teachers were realizing that they had to provide students with “Trigger warnings,” if their lectures contained any words, phrases, or topic which might cause emotional distress to the students in the audience.
If these criteria for conduct by teachers were retroactively applied to some of the “teach-ins” spawned by the Vietnam War, wouldn’t many of the teachers have lost their jobs?
The item at the center of the microagressions storm was a Washington Post article written by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh. It should be available via a quick Google News search.
The mainstream media seems to prefer focusing on soap opera news that prominently features sexual hanky-panky. The saga of the prison employee whose sex life caused extensive speculation on the cable news networks was getting more media attention in the USA than was any detailed analysis of the events in the Middle East. It even spilled over onto the network morning show interview of her husband. By Wednesday of this week Getty & Armstrong were asserting that the prison guard had been unfaithful to her husband with a number in triple digits needed for accuracy.
The fans of the Oakland Warriors had to wait forty years for their team to win the championship. The team owners can’t wait for a chance to get a better deal from a different city to move and thereby increase the value of their team.
The new Bay Bridge seems to be a textbook example of the old political wisdom: Build in haste, repent at leisure.
The World’s Laziest Journalist has predicted that the Justices would rule that it was unconstitutional and realize that our batting average number will be seriously affected by the inaccurate prediction.
This weekend the response of the paid commentators who work for mass media owned by wealthy conservative moguls should provide a very high level of entertainment because they might provide opinions that should require a strong trigger warning.
Will the media issue calls for patriots to calmly accept the ruling or will they try to stir up rancor and discontent? The weekend TV shows called “gab fests” may be highly charged and contentious and should be very entertaining this weekend.
Note: Next week’s column will be posted on Thursday due to the long holiday weekend.
In his autobiography, “How to talk dirty and influence people,” Lenny Bruce provided (on page 21) the essence of the cable news addict’s philosophy: “I loved this because I wasn’t as afraid of being killed in battle as I was of being bored.”
Now the disk jockey will play the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Did you ever have to make up your mind?,” Waylon Jennings theme from the Dukes of Hazzard,” and AC/DC’s “Jailbreak.” We have to go do a Google map search to find out where Thunder Road is. Have a “good ole boy never meanin’ no harm” type week.