Watch that last step...

I see John Boehner tumbling into a dark, bottomless crevasse, and saying to himself on the way down, “Wow...that is such a relief...”

So I’m standing in the kitchen making my daily bread (something I started doing back when I couldn’t get out to buy bread, and discovered that I enjoy) when I hear on the news that John Boehner is stepping down as Speaker of the House of Representatives; not just that, but he’s leaving the House entirely at the end of his term.

And a thought occurs to me: is he just stepping down, or did he suddenly realize that he was falling and decided to acknowledge it?

It's no secret that Congress is a mess. The obstructionism from the right, while aimed at Obama, has done its damage to the Speaker as well, even if Boehner himself has been a big part of most of it. Where Boehner has tried to make deals and move government along (albeit very, very slowly) he has often had these efforts torpedoed by his harder-right “colleagues” in the House. It is to Boehner’s discredit that he so often caved in to the hard right, but let’s be serious: Given the situation in the House, what else could he have done?

It should be noted that Congress and the House under Boehner has been the least productive Congress in U. S. history, and for the first part of Boehner’s tenure things weren’t much better in the Senate, despite a thin Democratic majority in the Senate. Since the Republicans gained their own thin majority in the Senate, it’s gotten worse. Boehner has even been forced to court Democratic support for some of the things he felt he had to do (not always getting it) to the anger of the hard right wing of his party.

You can’t blame Boehner for all of the failures of the Republican Congress, or even of just the Republican House, but he was their leader for all of its recent history and he can’t escape the blame. Time and time again Boehner has led the government to the precipice, and while he may or may not have intended to lead them over the edge (and I’m thinking that in most cases it was not) any efforts to save them at the last minute were undone by the hoards of “teapartiers” pushing from behind.

(We’re back to that old “fiscal cliff” metaphor that I really thought we were done with, but which I suppose will never entirely leave us.)

In truth, I see more of the same for the Republican Party and the Congress...but honestly, I think that they’d have that with or without Boehner.

What it comes down to is that now the Republicans in the House have to choose a new leader to fail to lead them; a new Fred Astaire to lead them in a grand tap-dance through a minefield. Someone willing to take over the job that John Boehner could never do. Now it’s time for someone else to fail; this person will face the same no-compromise hardliners that bedeviled Boehner’s Speakership, and said new Speaker’s only hope for leaving less of a black legacy that Boehner would be putting a Republican in the White House in 2016.

I do not wish him luck.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

I just can’t leave nonsense unchallenged...

Just because your religious beliefs defy all logic and reason, that’s no excuse to try to explain them with a bad metaphor.

“You and I are part of the colony of heaven. Right now, we may reside here on earth, but our passport indicates that our citizenship is in heaven. We are on the earth, but not of the earth.” 
Allen R. Hunt, Confessions of a Mega Church Pastor

I think this quote is nonsense, and one of my many character flaws is that I can seldom just let nonsense stand unassailed. So I assailed it.

I had my choice of several obvious lines of attack; its total lack of logic, the absurd metaphor of the Divine Passport, his definition of “citizenship”; I was truly spoiled for choice. I rejected all of them, and instead chose a direct frontal assault...what if it were true?

Of course I don’t believe a word of what Allen Hunt had to say about this, what with it being unsupported and unsupportable, unproven and unprovable, entirely hypothetical but nevertheless acceptable as fact by many, but let’s go ahead and hypothesize for a bit...what if it weren’t? What if the world we know was merely a heavenly colony? And what if that colony were used as the British used their colonies, as nearly all colonies have been used; for the benefit of the homeland and with little regard for that colony’s welfare?

That wouldn’t say much for the homeland. I observe that this particular colony isn’t terribly well managed; not managed at all, really. The homeland has left its authority in the hands of those who too often become bullies, forcing their will onto others by the authority granted in regulations that are old and outdated.

Perhaps it’s time for a revolution against that authority. If not directly against heavenly authority, then certainly against the bullies that claim to wield that authority. Perhaps it’s time to admit that we don’t need the homeland anymore. Perhaps it’s a time for rebels.

Of course, like most poorly crafted metaphors this one starts to fall apart under close scrutiny. Perhaps a better metaphor for the relation between the mortal and the divine would be a child making sand castles on the beach. The child labors long over creations of sand and water, but when the time comes to go inside for supper these creations are left to be washed away on the incoming tide.

Or perhaps our Creator is more like a maker of fine blown-glass figurines, who might find delight in their creations and might cherish each one. But perhaps not; perhaps God is a glass-blower who’s unsatisfied with their creations and tosses their rejects into the trash...which brings up the question, are we the “keepers” put on the shelves or is this whole world of ours just God’s trash-bin?

A more pantheistic metaphor occurs to me. What if our Creator is one among many laboring on an assembly line, one whose work is yet to be judged by our Creator’s own supervisor (and who can say what that judgment might be?). In this scenario, our Creator might have no more interest in his creations than to be sure that they meet a minimum standard, and would know that final judgment is out of their hands; and once the assembly line has moved on then the Creator’s work is done and they would take no more notice of us, no more interest in us.

(Of course, that’s all unsupported, unsupportable, unproven, unprovable, purely hypothetical and nonsensical. But what good is philosophy if we can’t ponder the ridiculous once in a while?)

My point is that you can easily find a religious metaphor to match whatever beliefs you happen to hold, no matter how many absurdities you need to explain away; there’s no excuse for deciding on a crappy metaphor. I don’t think Allen R. Hunt ever learned that.

The problem with religious metaphors is that you’re usually trying to connect something ordinary and reasonable with something extraordinary and nonsensical in order to make the nonsensical less so. And if you’re trying to make your religious beliefs sound reasonable, selecting a bad metaphor certainly won’t help.

And if you don’t want to view your particular beliefs as nonsensical (and lets face it, who does?), consider:

No matter what divine being you choose to believe in (or not), most of the population of the world thinks your full of shit. If you consider the whole world rather than the little corner you inhabit, then no matter what your beliefs are, you’re in a religious minority.

Maybe you should stop behaving as if your religion were anything special.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Divine Imperfection

Did gods create humanity to fulfill some divine purpose that we ourselves can only guess at, or did we create gods to explain the things that were beyond our understanding?

This is entirely my opinion, and I realize that people of deep religious convictions may find it offensive. I can’t help that, nor can I change what I believe. Nor would I. Faith is a tricky thing, and any time you challenge someone else’s you’re tap-dancing in a mine field. If you object to what I believe, I’m sorry but that makes no difference to me. If you object to my expressing such thoughts, fuck you.

In the beginning there was imperfection.

From the first moment that we, as a species, became aware of the world we lived in, it was obvious that it was full of imperfections. The world we found ourselves in was imperfectly suited to support us, and we ourselves were far from being perfectly suited to live in it.

In spite of this (perhaps because of it) we have always sought the approval of our deities, beings whose purposes and desires we can only really guess at, beings that we are required to obey nonetheless, beings which may not even exist save in our own minds. We looked around at the world that was trying to kill us and imagined beings that gave us a purpose for being in it, a purpose that we readily admitted that we were incapable of understanding.

There’s a problem with this. We like to believe that our deities are perfect beings, and that we are but pale imitations if that perfection. (Christianity works this way, anyway.) But if we are the creations of perfect beings, shouldn’t we also be perfect? Is a perfect being capable of shoddy workmanship?

That’s an interesting question, and leads to several others. Could we have created our perfect deities, when we ourselves are so clearly imperfect? Clearly not, and that might seem to argue in favor of the existence of a divine creator or creators, but it begs the other obvious question: Are perfect beings capable of creating imperfection? If they and their works are perfect, then how can anything they create be anything less than perfect? And if their works are imperfect, doesn’t that argue against their being perfect? Doesn’t that argue against the very concept of divine perfection?

The usual argument used to get around this dilemma is the “God-works-in-mysterious-ways” argument; the idea that divine purposes are so far beyond our understanding that we shouldn’t even try to comprehend them, but meekly accept their divine wisdom unquestioningly. This idea has the advantage of being impossible to logically argue against; neither can it be logically supported.

One way that the “God-created-all” hypothesis appears to work is if you discard the notion of divine perfection. You can still claim that God (or whatever/whoever) exists, you can even claim a divine creation, but you can’t claim that your god or gods are perfect. That, or you have to abandon “God-created-all” and accept a divinity separate from creation, and the very idea of such a thing is anathema to most people who accept the god hypothesis. Such thinking leads to a more convoluted theology then most people can accept, in any case.

These are difficult concepts that require serious thought, and humanity as a whole has never been terribly keen on too much thinking. We usually create divinities to manage the difficult bits for us, and we never worry because that’s the deity’s job and we just trust that they’re doing it.

If I’m right about that, then our “perfect beings” can be no more perfect than we are. We are forever creating gods that are merely reflections of ourselves, with all of our weaknesses intact; then we give them the responsibility of controlling the aspects of our world, indeed of our very lives, over which we have neither understanding nor control.

I find it ironic that humanity would create divine intermediaries of perfect wisdom and understanding; personifications of concepts that we knew were beyond our own imperfect understanding. It was inevitable that these constructs would possess all the foibles, faults, and inconsistencies that humanity itself is plagued by.

This, then, is the question: Did we, being imperfect beings, create for ourselves divine beings just as flawed, or did flawed deities create us in their own imperfect image? I can only answer that for me: I think that we are imperfect beings seeking perfection that we can never find in ourselves, so we imagine that perfection in beings that exist only in our imaginations. In other words, we are imperfection forever in search of a perfection that we can never understand, about which we can only hypothesize.

None of which really matters. Such beings as we might imagine would be neither more nor less worthy of reverence than we ourselves. Perhaps when we go looking for a powerful being to explain something we cannot understand, the first place we should look is in a mirror. And while we’re at it, it might be a good idea to turn the mirror over to see what’s behind the reflection.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Eternity...what a concept...

Why are we even bothering to talk about “eternity” when we can’t possibly understand the concept?

Eternity is an interesting concept, but little more than a concept. It is our way of referring to a state of being other than the one in which we are now living, and as such is unknowable so why are we even bothering to talk about it?

It’s easy to define this eternal state as one in which we live forever, since one of the obviously true qualities of our existence (as we know it) is its impermanence. The problem is this: How do we accurately define something of which we, as living beings, cannot ourselves have any knowledge?

Shakespeare called death “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns...” and I think he got it right, never mind that it comes from a play with a ghost in a speaking role. I think that, like Hamlet’s father, our ghosts are dredged up from our memories and their actual existence is contradicted by our own reason.

Since we can only speculate about the nature of any state of being other than the one in which we’re living, let’s speculate. Here’s another way to look at eternity. 

Imagine for a moment that what we call “eternity” is simply a state of being in which linear time and temporal relationships do not exist. Eternal beings would see all of existence as happening at once, though “at once” is an entirely linear concept that such eternal beings as I speculate upon could only speculate upon.

These eternal beings would have no native concepts of, nor use for, “before” or “after.” If they possess a finite existence, as we would define such, they would only perceive the part of it that they themselves, individually (assuming that they even possessed a concept of “individuality”) are able to experience. I doubt that they would be able to discuss it other than conceptually, or hypothetically, as I am discussing “eternity” now.

In such a reality, “eternity” would be a state which is neither finite nor infinite, indeed these two concepts would have no meaning in this context. In our perception, existence has a beginning, a middle, and an end; but the eternal being would simply see all things as simply being, having none of these linear points to define them. This is not to say that the eternal being lives forever, but simply to say that concepts such as forever, indeed the ideas of beginning, middle, and end, would have no meaning to the eternal being. As we would perceive them, eternal beings may have finite lives or infinite ones; it would not matter. The eternal being would perceive all things as simply being, all occurrences as just happening. “Before” and “after” would have no meaning to a being that perceived time in this fashion, neither would “beginning” or “end, “now” or “later,” indeed “if” and “then” (as in the familiar argument “If this, then that”) would represent concepts of which the eternal being would be unable to conceive.

Would we even be able to perceive such beings? Would they be able to perceive us? I wouldn’t even speculate on the answers to either of those questions.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut conceived of a race he called the Tralfamadorians who perceive time differently than we do. One Tralfamadorian used a metaphor to describe the Human perception of time to his fellow Tralfamadorians; he compared humans to someone strapped to a moving railcar, wearing a helmet with a permanently fixed (and narrow) viewpoint that only allowed its wearer to perceive the rest of the world as the railcar rushed through it.

Vonnegut was using this Tralfamadorian view of our perception to give the reader an idea of Tralfamadorian perception, and I can think of no better way to describe my own hypothetical eternal beings’ perception of time.

Imagine yourself strapped to that railcar, unable to move or even turn your head, with your vision restricted by a hole in the front of a helmet you cannot remove. Imagine that your entire existence has been that railcar, moving through a landscape that you can only perceive through a small opening that always faces forward. Imagine that the railcar was moving when you were born, has been moving all of your life and will (in all probability) still be moving when you die.

You may have memories of what has passed before the opening, however imperfect they may be, but you can only see what’s right in front of you, and can only speculate on what’s to come. Anything you know, or think you know, about the universe must come through that narrow opening.

As to the nature of the universe that you can’t actually see through that opening, you can only hypothesize. Even if someone is standing beside you on the railcar, unencumbered by the restrictive helmet and eagerly describing the world rushing by, your understanding of their description can only be interpreted according to what you know of the universe, perceived from your limited and restricted viewpoint.

Let’s say that the railcar goes by mountain range, but you are unable to see it because it isn’t in the direction you’re facing. The observer on the car with you may describe it to you, but you've never seen a mountain; without any frame of reference how will you understand what they’re telling you? And if they use a phrase like, “The Earth rises up into the sky!” just how exactly will you interpret that? Levitation, perhaps?

Now let’s say that the observer is dishonest. He might describe fanciful landscapes that cannot possibly exist, and try to excite your belief in them, or he may describe a dull, featureless, barren plan and tell you to never mind the world to either side, that what’s tight in front of you is the best of all possible worlds and you should be content with it.

One other possibility that you might not have considered: Suppose that you yourself couldn’t see the observer? How would you know that they weren’t strapped to the railcar themselves, their vision restricted by an immovable helmet like yours? How can you ever be sure that their vision isn’t as restricted, or even more restricted, than yours? How can you even be sure that they’re looking at the same things you are?

In this case, it comes down to their ability to convince you of their vision. Which you can never check. You have to take it on faith.

Here you have a choice. You can accept what you’re told about the universe, or you can reject it; you can choose to believe it or not.

On a larger scale, you can accept the world either as you see it or as it’s presented to you (it really doesn’t matter which, as long as your own vision is restricted), or you can free yourself from what restricts you. What you’ve been told about the world may prepare you for the world you find once free, or it may not. You can’t possibly know. But just imagine...if you had lived your whole life strapped to that railcar, what wonders might you find once free of your fetters?

So...
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,
You're off the Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So...get on your way! 

 - Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

(One final literary observation: It should be noted that Vonnegut’s “Tralfafadorians” appeared in several of his novels, and that each time their philosophy, their science, their perception of time, even their physicality were altered, sometimes radically, to meet the author’s dramatic requirements of the moment. This in itself is a rather Tralfamadorian concept.)

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.


William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act III, scene I  (No Fear Shakespeare)

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five   (Wikipedia)
Slaughterhouse-Five at amazon.com   
“Tralfamador” on Wikipedia

Sr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!  (Full text without illustrations)
Oh, the Places You'll Go! at amazon.com

The Dukes, at hazard...

I thought I was finished with this topic, but stupid memes like the one below keep being posted, and as you know I have trouble ignoring a stupid meme...

This has appeared several times in my Facebook feed:

One thing I’d like to point out to the fool that made this meme:

The Nazis on Hogan’s Heroes were NEVER the good guys. Never. They may have worn the Nazi swastika, and were generally portrayed as clowns (which the Nazis certainly weren’t) but they were NEVER portrayed as heroes.

Nazis were always buffoons in Hogan’s Heroes. Werner Klemperer, who played Col. Klink (and whose family fled Germany in 1935), even had that in his contract. But clowns or not, they were always the antagonists...the bad guys.

Bo, Luke, and Daisy Duke were not played as buffoons or bad guys; they were the “good ol’ boys” that you were supposed to like, supposed to want to be, supposed to lust after. And they proudly displayed the Rebel flag, a symbol that many of us have come to realize symbolizes hate and repression. (Some of us have always thought that.)

Look at it this way. If a television show were produced today that used Nazi imagery in the same way as The Dukes of Hazzard used Confederate imagery, in a modern (non-historical) setting and proudly displayed by the show’s protagonists, you wouldn’t expect that show to remain on the air over commercial stations, would you? You’d expect that show to disappear from commercial broadcast TV, to be relegated to late-night public access cable with the rest of the broadcasting lunatic fringe.

Don’t you think that TV networks have every right, even every responsibility, to respond to changing public opinion? After all, their livelihood is at stake. They have to respond to a changing market.

(All of which begs the point that the technology exists to remove the Confederate flag from the Dukes’ car, electronically. Hell, if every bare boob in Showgirls can be covered by an electronic brazier for commercial TV broadcast, the roof of the General Lee can be electronically painted a solid orange. If the demand to do it is there, the technology is certainly up to it. If you’d still object, either to the removal of the flag or the continued broadcast of the show, then I have to question what is is that you’re really objecting to.)

Perception of the imagery of the Confederate flag has changed in recent years, drastically so over the last few weeks. Whether or not that flag means bigotry to you, it means bigotry to many Americas today, if not in fact most. It’s time for all of us to recognize that many Americans see the Confederate flag as a symbol of hate and oppression.

As to any comparison between The Dukes of Hazzard and Hogan’s Heroes, you’re being silly and holding yourself up for ridicule. Which I am happy to provide.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

The Myth of an Integrated Confederate Army

Did black solders wear gray? Rarely. Very rarely.
So rarely that you could say that they really didn't.

(I will admit that I’m publishing this just as interest in the matter in hand appears to be waning. The research took a while, as did the writing—it’s one of the longest blog posts I’ve written—and then I sat on it for more than a day trying to decide whether to delete it or not. If you’re reading this, then obviously I decided to publish it. If you don’t want to read any more about this, then don’t freakin’ read it!)

One argument I keep hearing in support of the continued display of the Confederate flag goes something like this: “It CAN’T be a racist flag, because there were blacks fighting for the Confederacy!” The argument claims that as many as 30,000 African-Americans might have fought for the Confederacy...a number that, according to my research, is a wild and grotesque exaggeration based on speculation, innuendo, and/or fantasy.

I had originally intended to write an article refuting this argument, but in researching the matter I discovered that there were many articles covering this same issue, and my writing another would be redundant. So instead of writing yet another article on a well-covered subject, I’m just going to provide links to the best such articles that I found on-line, and anyone who wishes to find articles of the other opinion is welcome to use Google, same as I did.

But be warned, you’re going to have a bit of trouble finding anything that qualifies as evidence in support of this pro-Rebel Flag allegation. (Unless you’re willing to count anecdotal evidence, which no serious academic would; myself, I feel that any argument that begins, “Well, I heard...” or “They say...” isn’t worth a damn, and is so close to being an admission of failure to find or even look for evidence that said argument can be given no credence.)

But if you want to make such an argument, go ahead. If you think you can find some authoritative evidence in support of it, I’d love to see some.  But I recommend that you read these articles first, if for no other reason than to see what you’re up against. Please be aware that you’re going to be arguing against (as far as I could determine from my own research) nearly the entire body of evidence and serious scholarship on this subject.

Good luck. I mean that...good luck. If you find any actual evidence or serious scholarship that I missed, I would love to see it.

(I should also note that this is intended to be my last word on the subject, save for responses to any public comments on this article or my research for it. Please see the note at the end of this article.)


Articles on the Near Myth of African-American Confederate Solders:

These links each go to a selected article on the subject. Each listing includes a brief extract from the article.

I’ve selected three links from the first page of results of a Google search; (I Googled, did african americans serve as confederate soldiers? and restricted myself to the first page of 14.5 million results) these pages are representative of what I found. If you question my conclusions or my research, please feel free to do your own and reach you own conclusions. And please let me know what they are, and be prepared to defend them.

The Civil War Gazette – “Did blacks fight in combat for the Confederacy?” March 2008

From the article: “In short, if one sticks solely to the historical record for primary evidence of the black soldier picking up arms and fighting for the South, one can only conclude that the support for such a claim is scanty at best – merely anecdotal – and entirely unsubstantiated at worst. Instead of the widely claimed and purported number of 30,000 fighting black soldiers for the Confederacy, an honest look at the historical record leads one to the conclusion that as little as under a hundred to as many as several hundred blacks may have actually engaged in combat for the South during the Civil War by actually carrying and discharging a weapon. How to interpret that evidence – or lack thereof – is left to the professional and armchair historians to debate.”

Military History Now – “Black in Gray – Did Some African Americans Really Fight for the Confederacy?” June 2012

From the article: “‘But, where’s the proof?’ academics invariably ask. Professional historians maintain that despite the persistent claims, there is virtually zero compelling evidence showing that thousands of blacks took up arms against the very people who fought to set them free, willingly or otherwise.”

The Washington Post – “The myth of the black Confederates” October 2010

From the article: “As a matter of fact, one of Jefferson Davis’s generals did advise him to emancipate and arm slaves at the start of the war. But Davis vehemently rejected that advice. It ‘would revolt and disgust the whole South,’ he snapped. During the first few years of the war, some others repeated this suggestion. Each time, Richmond slapped it down. Not only would no slaves be enlisted; no one who was not certifiably white, whether slave or free, would be permitted to become a Confederate soldier.”

Teachinghistory.org – “Black Confederates” (undated)

From the article: “...the acute resistance of Confederates to arming blacks is understandable. Putting muskets in the hands of enslaved African Americans presented more than simply a concrete threat—embracing the notion that blacks could serve as soldiers in the same fashion as whites threatened deeply-held Southern ideas of race-based honor and masculinity. As Confederate Secretary of State Robert Toombs put it, ‘The day the army of Virginia allows a negro regiment to enter their lines as soldiers, they will be degraded, ruined, and disgraced.’”


“But there was that one article...”

The closest I came to a scholarly dissent came from Harvard historian John Stauffer, who concluded that as least 3,000 Negro troops may have carried arms for the South. This is the highest number I have found in anything approaching a properly researched paper, but how closely it approaches actual scholarship is somewhat debatable. Much of the evidence he cites crosses the line into “anecdotal evidence” territory. For example, he cites a quote from Frederic Douglas as evidence in support of his conclusions, a quote in which Douglas claimed to have heard that some people had seen armed, black Confederate solders at First Bull Run. It should be noted that Douglass never claimed to have seen these himself, and that such testimony is presented entirely without supporting evidence. Stauffer may see this as proper evidence, but no other scholar whose works I have consulted seems to think so; indeed, where the other cited articles mention Stauffer at all it is to refute his claims and/or contest his evidence.

Still, in the interest of fairness:

Harvard Gazette – “Black Confederates” September 2011

(I could not find a direct link to Stauffer’s paper—this link goes to an article on Stauffer’s paper at the Harvard Gazette—and for that reason I am not posting a quote.)


In Conclusion...

I am not a scholar or an academic, nor do I pretend to be, and I really don’t have much of an education. (College dropout, me.) But I respect academics, both the study and the student, and I wish everyone would approach this sort of discussion in a scholarly fashion. I have tried to do that here, and please note that I did not try to author a paper on the subject (though that was originally my intention) but have instead laid out my research and it is up to you, the reader (as it always is, ultimately) to judge its value.

If you’re miffed that I haven’t included many articles of an opposing viewpoint, it’s because (and I do regret this) I wasn’t able to find more than a single dissenting article that met even the most basic evidentiary standards (Stauffer), and even that one had evidentiary problems. Perhaps some of you will fare better.

In any case, my work here is done so now it’s time for me to ride off into the sunset. Happy trails.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expresses here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.


PLEASE NOTE: Articles like this have gotten me into trouble in the past, and I don’t expect that this one will be any different. In particular, they have spawned angry responses from people on the right (some of them old and valued friends) via private email, which limits my responses to private email. Frankly, I find the necessity of defending my reasoning or my writing privately to be tedious, and I’m not willing to do it again; I’m going to ask that any response you wish to make be made publicly, either through my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/michael.rosecrans.5) or through the "Post a Comment" link below. I am no longer wiling to provide responses by private email; in fact, I am not even going to read your comments unless they are made on a public forum. I have gone to the trouble of posting my thoughts publicly...please do me the courtesy of responding in the same fashion. - MSR

“I know you are, but what am I?”

How to lose the “I’m not racist!” argument.



This meme has been appearing on Facebook of late...

I don’t know who made it, or who originally posted it, but there’s a serious flaw in their argument.

Let’s define “racist” first. Quoth dictionary.com:

“1. a person who believes in racism, the doctrine that one's own racial group is superior or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.

“2. of or like racists or racism.”

If you’re the one making the argument as stated in the meme, then your point only makes any sense if you accept the Confederate flag as a banner that represents the white race. (At least, I assume you mean the white race...I seriously doubt that Eskimos or Australian Aborigines are lining up to claim Confederate sympathies.)

Think about it...you’re calling me racist, but how can I be racist against a symbol that does not represent a particular race?

If you’re not claiming that the flag represents the white race, then I would ask you this: Just which race is it representing? Because if you’re not claiming that the Confederate flag represents a particular race, then you cannot claim that opposing the display of that flag is at all racist.

The argument then falls apart. You cannot claim that opposition to the Confederate flag is racist unless you assert that the Confederate flag itself asserts a racist ideal, that said flag represents one race to the exclusion of others. In other words, you can’t use this argument to call me a racist and say that the Confederate flag isn’t racist without exposing yourself as a racist and admitting that the flag represents a racist ideal.

Or, to put it more simply, you cannot claim that the flag isn’t racist without asserting that the flag is racist.

Obviously, making such a claim is self-defeating. The sad truth is that this sort of argument is defeated just by the effort of making that argument.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Selective History

In 1862, redefining marriage apparently wasn’t so big a concern for conservatives.

Sometimes I set out to write a quick meme and the damned thing gets away from me. This is one of those times. Once I realized that it was going to be just too long to publish as a meme, I abandoned brevity and wrote a blog post. Enjoy. Or don't.

I’m hearing an awful lot about Conservatives being upset (and downright rebellious) over the recent Supreme Court ruling that makes same-sex marriage legal in the entire United States. It seems that American conservatives don’t think that the Supreme Court, or the U.S. Constitution, should take precedence over the Bible.

This opens the whole issue of the Bible not being a part of U.S. law or American government, but let’s leave that alone for now. There’s another point I want to make.

One of the arguments often made against same-sex marriage is that will lead to such evils as polygamy. So just for grins and giggles, I looked up “polygamy” on Wikipedia. This led me (not surprisingly) to an article on Mormonism and polygamy. One of the things I learned there:

“For over 60 years, the LDS Church and the United States were at odds over the issue (of polygamy): the church defended the practice as a matter of religious freedom, while the federal government aggressively sought to eradicate it, consistent with prevailing public opinion. ... In 1862, the United States Congress passed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, which prohibited plural marriage in the territories. ... In 1879, in Reynolds v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Morrill Act, stating: ‘Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinion, they may with practices.’”

(Wikipedia, Mormonism and Polygamy)

The meaning of this decision is clear, and was clearly stated: No law can govern your morality, but laws can, and should, govern your actions.

That law was passed more than 160 years ago. The Supreme Court decided on the matter in the late 1870s. That’s as far back as the legal fiction of marriage = one man + one woman can be traced. That’s where it was codified into law. Obviously, in 1862 marriage was legally redefined to disallow polygamy, and this was done despite numerous references to polygamy being practiced in the Bible. This concept was upheld by the Supreme Court, and was fully in keeping with the desires of both liberal and conservative elements in American society. American society was just fine with allowing religious belief to be contained by secular law.

So what the hell are conservatives so damned upset about now? What is so different about how marriage was redefined in the 19th Century by a decision of the Supreme Court, a decision that conservatives were just fine with, and how marriage was redefined by the Supreme Court last week, a decision that has conservatives throwing a collective tantrum that would be unworthy of anyone over four years old? What is it that has conservatives all over America going batshit insane?

Oh...right. Gays.

Perhaps the apparent inconsistency of changing conservative attitudes on redefining marriage can all be put down to the fact that conservatives simply don’t want to treat gays like regular human beings, and are willing to go so far as to alter their basic beliefs to keep that from happening. Is their dislike of homosexuality really that strong?

Why am I bothering to ask? Of course it is. After all, most of them feel that they have a firm religious basis for their prejudice against homosexual practices because such things are flat-out prohibited in the book of Leviticus (just like eating pork or lobster, or perverting justice by showing favoritism to either the rich or the poor, or giving your children to be sacrificed to Moloch).

But this brings us back to the point that that Supreme Court made in the 1879; that law cannot endorse or oppose morality.

The Bible shouldn’t be used as the basis for secular law. We shouldn’t expect our laws to try to regulate what any of us consider good or evil, or expect anyone’s religious belief to regulate anyone else’s behavior. The Supreme court shouldn’t regulate morality, and was never intended to. It is wrong to oppose the rulings of the Supreme Court just because you think that such rulings might offend your religious sensibilities.

Perhaps this explains why the Supreme Court has always been strangely silent on the subject of sacrificing your children to Moloch.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine an if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.


Wikipedia on Polygamy (and Mormonism) 

Wikipedia on Reynolds v. United States

76 things banned in Leviticus

The Perception of Certainty: Ayn Rand Reconsidered. (Or maybe just considered...)

The universe doesn’t deal in absolutes, but that’s the only currency that Ayn Rand ever accepted.

I don’t trust certainty.

The person who never questions their position has never truly looked at it from any other angle, and is locked into a single point of view. Such a person views their certainty as the foundations of all that they believe, or in their view all that is, and perceives any attack on said certainty not just as an attack upon themselves but as an attack against all reality and reason.

Perhaps this is why I have never given any credence to Ayn Rand. Her perception of her own philosophical correctness was absolute; she believed that the assumptions that formed the basis of her own beliefs were so correct that no assault on them could be tolerated; that any who would do so were obviously evil.

Ayn Rand, if you’ve never read her works (The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are her best known), had a philosophy she called “Objectivism” which she described thus: "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." Atlas Shrugged was perhaps the ultimate expression of this philosophy. Whether or not you accept these philosophical points depends on whether you can accept man/humanity as intrinsically heroic (I can’t), whether you can accept happiness as the only worthwhile goal in life (I don’t) and personal achievement as the highest goal one can aspire to (a concept that I entirely reject). She also had an ego; she described herself once as "the most creative thinker alive". She wasn’t.

I have always believed that wisdom was where you found it; that even the most vile and reprehensible of characters might know something of value and have something to teach. But I was never able to look into Ayn Rand’s writing and find any wisdom there, even though philosophically I am certain that there must be some to be found. Perhaps that’s because I could never get past her absolute certainty in her opinions (and opinions they are, despite her certainty of them).

And perhaps it’s a flaw in my own character that prevents me from giving Ayn Rand her due.  Perhaps it’s my own distrust of her certainty that keeps me from paying any heed to her philosophy. I would find it regrettable if any bit of wisdom encased in her writing escaped me because I couldn’t stomach her work. Just the same, I do not believe that there’s enough of value there to justify my abandoning my profound dislike/distrust of Ayn Rand.

In the end, I think that it’s her perception of certainty that I have always distrusted most, and perhaps that’s because of my own distrust of Ayn Rand’s perceived certainty.

When one finds perceived certainty, one should always themselves perceive doubt. That’s my philosophy, anyway; I doubt that Ayn Rand would agree.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.


Wikipedia on Ayn Rand

Now, who was I supposed to vote for again?

UPDATED 6/1/2015 - See the bottom of this article.

You say you aren't sure who to support for our next President? join the freakin' club, pal. 

Once again, we in the U.S. face national elections next year. Actually, a year and a half from now: November 2016 to be exact. It still seems like such a long way off...

Once again, the Republican party faces a plethora (a record plethora this year) of contenders, all hoping to out-conservative each other in order to gain their party's nomination, and said person will then face the difficult task of trying to plausibly deny all of the far-right claptrap they were more than willing to spew in the primaries; all in order to appeal to a more centrist electorate than they had to pander to for the nomination. That strategy isn't likely to end well...remember Mitt Romney?

On the Democratic side, things are a bit trickier.

For months, years even, it has been almost universally assumed that the Democratic candidate would be Hillary Clinton (and indeed at this point it still looks that way). It looked as if the Democratic primaries would be little more than a formality, existing only to rubber-stamp her candidacy. But now she has a challenger, and a serious contender at that; Bernie Sanders.

(I should note that, at this point, Elizabeth Warren is still in the definitely-will-not-run category, which is a damned shame since she is someone I could support unreservedly. I, like many others, still hope she'll change her mind. But time for that is running short.)

I'm not going to go into brief, but inevitably way to long, bios of Clinton and Sanders; there are web sites for that (check the links at the bottom of this article). I will say that I think Clinton more likely to eventually win a national election than Sanders, but that I find myself politically more in agreement with Sanders.

I am going to admit that I'm a bit disappointing (not much, but a bit) with Clinton's campaigning of late; I don't think she's doing enough of it. Clinton has been campaigning like the nomination is hers to lose, which in fairness it is, but so far her strategy has been primarily defensive and (in my opinion) not aggressive enough.

Sanders, on the other hand, has come out with both guns blazing, attacking the established power structures in banking, business, and politics with gusto. Hillary needs to do more of that.

And that's what Bernie Sanders brings to the table...passion. The sort of passion that Clinton's campaign has been lacking. I am hoping that the presence in the race of a hard-core unashamed Liberal like him will restore some needed passion to Hillary Clinton's campaign specifically and to the Democratic party as a whole.

Frankly, I am hoping to see a more aggressive campaign from Hillary Clinton.

Since I had decided to hold off on supporting a candidate until after the primaries (not that it matters at all in the scheme of things who I favor) I wasn't openly supporting Bernie Sanders because the eventual candidate might be (probably would be) Hillary Clinton, and I would likely be supporting her in the election. An if that's the way things break, I still will. But Bernie has been actively saying things that I very much agree with, while Hillary Clinton...well, not so much. Hillary needs to learn, and the sooner the better, that she has not been anointed and she needs to stop behaving as if she were, and she really needs to make sure that the nation hears her message. Now.

Eventually, it will all come down to the two major party candidates and I will almost certainly support, and campaign for, the more progressive of the two. I feel confident in predicting that that will be the Democratic candidate. Beyond that, I am not willing, at this point, to predict a damned thing. If Bernie Sanders can shake up the Democratic status quo (and by that I mean Hillary Clinton) and get Hillary out actively campaigning--and keep her from drifting too far to the right, which I can definitely see as a possibility--then I'm going to go ahead and risk looking like a total Bernie Sanders supporter, because even if he's not the eventual candidate of the Democrats his candidacy can only help the party. And, I believe, the nation.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.


A direct comparison between Bernie Sanders an Hillary Clinton: http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/compare/35-40/Bernie-Sanders-vs-Hillary-Clinton

Bernie Sanders' website: https://berniesanders.com/

Hillary Clinton's website: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/

UPDATE: When I logged on to publish this just now and went to Facebook to post a link to my page, I read that former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley (D) had thrown his hat into the ring. Frankly, I know little about him, other than that he sings and plays guitar in a rock band that I have never heard. I can't say this changes my article, so I see no reason to change anything. I will say that I think that a broader Democratic field at this stage benefits everyone, and that I am happy that the Democratic party will now be forced to have actual debates. That, too, is a good thing.

Martin O’Malley Announces Presidential Campaign, Pushing Image of Vitality (New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/us/politics/martin-omalley-presidential-campaign-2016.html?_r=0

Why I'm always making fun of "Spirit Science"

...and by the way, I really hate that name...

A Facebook entity calling itself “Spirit Science” (I’m sure someone thought that was clever) has been creating memes lately that I have taken great delight in mocking. This meme of theirs appeared yesterday.

I lampooned it, as you can clearly see...but then I thought twice about posting it. After all, I’ve been doing that sort of thing fairly regularly lately, calling “Spirit Science” to task for essentially doing what I do every day...pretending wisdom. Perhaps, I thought, it’s time to cut them a little slack.

But the truth is that the “Spirit Science” meme factory annoys me, and for several reasons.

First, I rather object to the name “Spirit Science”, not just because it’s oxymoronic but because it’s annoying in the same way that someone yammering on and on about balancing your aura with the right combination of crystals, herbal tea and traditional Tibetan chanting is annoying.

Second, their lame platitudes (and trust me, I know lame) are formulaic and easily lampooned, and not terribly original.

Third, spouting pseudo-philosophical bullshit on Facebook is my turf. I was here first.

Of course, they’re always welcome to put a shot over my bow if they wish; I am easily as lampoon-able as they are. But I rather think that these people (I have no idea who “they” are) think themselves above that sort of thing, and above paying the likes of me any attention in any case.

But I have no such pretensions. I am more than happy play the shit-flinging monkey at their tea party.

Well, someone has to do it…

The Blues Viking

The thoughts expressed here are mine an if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

   

Previous mangled memes from Spirit Science as "improved" by me:

"The Water Babies" by Charles Kingsley...reconsidered

A fairytale that requires a bit more thought than Mother Goose

“Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyls: but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.”
- Reverend Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies, 1863

The Water Babies is a children’s novel by Reverend Charles Kingsley, written in the 1860s, and it was my mother’s favorite book when she was a girl. I remember her reading it to me before I could read it myself. I do not know what became of the copy she had; I wish I did. It was a very popular book in its day, but less so now. (I’ll talk about the reasons tor that in a bit.)

The book was a rebuke of child labor, and espoused a progressive view on other social issues of the time. It is also a strong rejection of scientific as well as social orthodoxy. The book took a stand in favor of science over dogma, and supported Darwin’s Origin of Species, still much debated at the time.

But there’s another aspect to this book, one that it’s not so easy to praise; it’s rather racist. There are passages in the novel that are anti-just-about-everyone-that-isn’t-white-and-British.  Specifically, there are passages that are anti-Semitic, anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, anti-black and anti-American. This is probably why the book, so popular in its day, isn’t quite so well regarded now.

Is it possible to admire such a novel now? Well, yes and no. On one hand, yes, it should be possible to regard such a book in the same way we regard the works of H. P. Lovecraft, who was a brilliantly imaginative writer whose works are still widely read despite the man’s (and often his fiction’s) racism.

On the other hand, no.  The standard “excuse” given for authors like Lovecraft and Kingsley is that they were men of their time, and that their time was one in which their kind of casual racism was common, even normal. This excuse doesn’t stand close scrutiny when you remember that there were great men and women of the same era that rejected such thinking. A great many such, and many of them were raised in the same environments of casual racism as those who retained that racism all their lives.

There’s another aspect that should be considered: The Water Babies is a children’s novel. I’m not a parent but if I were I might be more than a bit hesitant to expose my children to this sort of casual racism. But the other side of that coin is the fact that I myself was exposed to this novel at a young age and I did not become much of a racist. I was raised in such a “casually racist” environment without myself succumbing to that kind of thinking (much).

I should also note that I am an admirer of the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Though of the man himself, not so much.

It’s possible to respect, even love, a person without accepting what that person stands for. This is something that my own father never understood. He always thought that by rejecting his values, I was rejecting him. And, though these may be unrelated, I believe that it was primarily his rejection of my values that led to his rejection of me (which happened long before we’d stopped talking).

(If you think that last paragraph was a bit too personal, tough shit. Books, to me, are very personal.)

For all that it’s a children’s novel, The Water Babies is not a simple book and never was. Its author is no less of an enigma; Reverend Kingsly wrote with a profound regard for science belied by his own racism, a strong social consciousness that nevertheless existed within a framework of a racially stratified world view.  His casual acceptance of the racial conventions of his day could perhaps be forgiven if not for the thousands of men and women willing to risk all, even their lives, to change those same conventions.

It isn’t necessary to reject the works of a Kingsley (or a Lovecraft) because you reject what they believed. Nor is it necessary to reject an entire novel because there’s something in it (or even quite a lot of something) that offends your sensibilities. We are thinking beings (most of us, anyway) and can think about what we read, understand where the author was coming from, and judge the merit of the work without judging the work based on its author. Or vice versa.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are my own and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

The Redistribution of Wealth

“You keep using that phrase…I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The other day (not for the first time, or the last) I was “accused” of being a Socialist, and of being anti-American by supporting the redistribution of wealth.

Let me be clear: on some issues I am definitely socialist, on others not so much, and on some downright conservative (not many of the later, I’ll grant).  I make no denial of any of that. But as for me being un-American, I find this accusation so repugnant that I’m not going to go into it here…those of you who know me can draw your own conclusions.

That leaves the matter of my support of “redistribution of wealth”; this I have to deny.

What I find amusing is that those who throw around the phrase “redistribution of wealth” either do not realize their error or are being deliberately disingenuous, when the truth is this: “Redistribution of wealth,” as Inigo Montoya might have said, does not mean what you think it means.

The redistribution of wealth is real and tangible, but it is not a progress from the pockets of the wealthy to the hands of the poor. Quite the reverse. We live in an America where the rich get richer, the powerful get powerfuller (or something), the middle class disappears into the ranks of the poor, and the poor get the short end of the stick shoved up their asses.

(I may not be a total Socialist, but I must admit that I often sound like one.)

The real redistribution of wealth flows the other way, from the pockets of the less fortunate to the bank accounts of the wealthy. In recent decades, the rich have continually seen their wealth (or rather, their share of the wealth of America) increase while the poor have seen theirs diminish. There now exists a gap between the two wider than ever before, and its growing every day. This is the real redistribution of wealth; not some abstract theoretical (and vaguely threatening) term but the actual movement of capital from the needy to the greedy.

So, as it happens, I am not in favor of the redistribution of wealth. Far from it. But I would be in favor of the re-redistribution of wealth, flowing the other way until something more equitable is achieved.

I don’t think that makes me a Socialist, but if it does I will wear that badge proudly.

The Blues Viking
The thoughts expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Groundhog Day, reconsidered

There’s a classic movie called Groundhog Day that I’m sure you’ve seen. With Groundhog Day fast approaching (have you done your Groundhog Day shopping?) I thought that the movie was worth another look.

You probably know the story, but forgive me if I recapitulate: In the movie, Bill Murray plays a vain, ego-maniacal weatherman stuck in Punxsutawney, PA after their traditional Groundhog Day festival (due to inclement weather that he failed to predict). He is somewhere he doesn’t want to be, surrounded by people he doesn’t like and doesn’t want to get to know. I’m sure we can all relate to that.

But here’s the plot’s main gimmick: He goes to sleep on the night of February Second and wakes up the next morning…on February Second. He has all of Groundhog Day, which for him was fairly miserable the first time, to live over again.

And every morning thereafter, it’s still Groundhog Day. Every morning he wakes up and it’s February Second. Every day he has to see the same people, live through the same events, face the same blizzard that keeps him in Punxsutawney forever and/or a day.

His reaction is predictable, and predictably narcissistic. He can only define what’s happening to him in terms of how it affects him. Eventually he realizes that his actions will have no long-term consequences…he can do whatever he likes and never have to face the end results of said actions. As he puts it, “I am God…well, a god.”

But these “god-like” abilities aren’t enough for long, as he comes to realize that there are some things that he just can’t have no matter how many times he reaches for them. He becomes suicidal, and tries various creative ways to end his life. Without success…every morning still wakes up in the same bed to the same song playing on the radio (I got You, Babe by Sonny & Cher) in a town where the weather is always the same (miserable), the people are all the same (boring), the theater is always playing the same movie (Heidi) and the TV station runs the same episode of Jeopardy for all eternity.

Then one February Second he stumbles over a homeless man he’s been stumbling over for months (years?) of February Seconds and hardly noticing, and he buys him a meal. When the homeless man later dies he assumes the responsibility of saving the man’s life.

He can’t. No matter what he does, no matter how hard or how often he tries, the old man dies on February second.

As he comes to realize that there are some things that he cannot do, he starts to focus his life toward changing the things that he can. There are other lives that can be saved in Punxsutawney, other people that he can help in many different ways. And that’s where his life begins to change, though stuck seemingly forever on the second day of February.

This is when he makes what I think is his greatest discovery; that learning is his salvation, that learning will never be repetitive if he never stops learning. Every day becomes a new challenge, even when it’s all the same day.

He begins to improve himself. He makes use of the city’s library and becomes a voracious reader. He takes a piano lesson…the same lesson every day, but starting from a slightly more advanced position each time. Eventually he becomes a good jazz pianist. (I can only speculate how long that took; certainly years of February Seconds.)

And for years of February Seconds, he gave of himself to the community that he could never leave. Whenever a life was in danger, he was there. Whenever anyone needed help, with a flat tire or a personal crisis, he was there.  As often as necessary, because tomorrow they’d face the same difficulties, the same crises, and the one man who knew it would always happen would be the only man that could help.

He didn’t do it for personal gain, since any gain or recognition would never carry over to the next day because, in his world, there really wasn’t a next day. I remember him berating one boy he’d just saved (for the x-thousandth time) saying “You have never thanked me!”

He wasn’t doing it to be thanked. He was doing it just to do it. To make a difference in someone's life even if that person would never remember what he had done for them.

And eventually he came to a February Second that was perfect. He’d helped as many people as he could, saved as many lives as he could, made as many friends as he could, and managed to win the heart of a woman who, on February First, had hated his guts. And when he woke up the next morning, it really was the next morning—February Third—and he was in the arms of that woman.

(Please forgive me if my memory of the film is inaccurate in spots; it's been years since I've watched it.)

OK, so what have we learned?

Well, you should have learned that your life cannot advance unless you advance. Or something.

I was due to be born on Groundhog Day, but I was born the day after. (The joke I’ve always told is that I poked my head out, saw my shadow and went back in.) In recent years, this has not been a happy time for me; my late mother’s birthday has just passed, my late brother died at the end of January and his funeral was on a February Second. I haven’t felt like celebrating my birthday for years; at this time of year I tend to think about death.

But I keep hoping that each year will be different, that I will see life in the middle of winter, that I will be able to do something other than mourn for what I have lost. I think that’s why I wrote this missive about a movie that is generally regarded as not much more than a comedy, albeit a good one, and that I think deserves to be given more consideration. Perhaps I am looking for February Third to dawn with hope this year.

So did it work?

I don’t know. Ask me on February Fourth.

The Blues Viking
The thoughts expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

The Mathematics of Diabetes

I have been trying to sleep for over an hour, and it’s just not happening. The problem is math. Or rather, I have a mathematical problem. Or rather, Meijer’s (where I fill my prescriptions) has the mathematical problem and thus I have a problem with Meijer’s.

Ok, so here’s the problem. I keep running out of insulin. Specifically, I kept running out of Lantus (one of the two types of insulin I take daily). This wasn’t such a problem when I could just go to the Allegiance Diabetes Center for another vial, which I have had to do more often than I like (blaming my own carelessness for any shortfall I experienced) but since the Diabetes Center is now closed, I am forced to rely on the Meijer’s pharmacist(s).

But being short (often way short) has been happening regularly, so for the last month I have carefully monitored my intake of insulin. What I found has not made me happy.

OK, this is where the boring math comes in, so please stay with me.

Lantus comes in 10 mL (milliliter) vials, and each mL equals 100 units per mL. I’m supposedly prescribed insulin for a 90-day period. They give me three vials at a time. 10 mL x 100 units per mL = 1,000 units per vial. With me so far?

My dosage is 36 units twice a day, or 72 units total per day. For one month I would need 72 x 30 units, or 2,160 units per month. For three months I would need 6,480 units.

I am given three vials, a total of 3,000 units.. Less than half of what I need.

Does anyone besides me see a problem with this?

In part, I am to blame. The print on the vials is too small to easily read even with my glasses, so I didn’t bother. Instead, I trusted the pharmacist(s) at Meijer’s (I’d be a bit surprised if they had more than one) to know what they’re about. But apparently they don’t.

My own damn fault for trusting a trained professional.

Tomorrow I hope to be able to get a ride to Meijer’s, where I will lay my case before them and ask for satisfaction. And if I don’t get it, I imagine they’ll hear me yelling all the way out to the Cascades.

Which, coincidentally, is very near where the Diabetes Center once served the needs of Jackson County’s growing number of diabetics—since closed for committing the unpardonable sin of not being profitable. (Heath care is, unfortunately, no longer about taking care of people’s health.)

It is to the memory of the Allegiance Diabetes Center and the service they provided that I dedicate this rant.

I’m going back to bed now.

The Blues Viking
The ideas here expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

"Moore, Moore, Moore..."

“My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren't heroes. And invaders r worse” - Michael Moore’s actual tweet

This week filmmaker and Liberal icon Michael Moore made an unguarded and ill-thought-out comment on Twitter (alert the media…someone on Twitter made an unguarded and ill-thought-out comment!) but the content of Moore’s tweet does not (quite) support the vehemence that has been directed toward him.

I have to agree that he didn't think very far ahead, and I can't (and don't) agree with his opinions on snipers, either ethically or historically. But whether I'm on his side or not, he deserves to have his side heard. Whether it's rejected or not is another matter, and personally I think that his side sounds like bad damage control, but it deserves to be heard.

The problem with "social media" (Facebook, Twitter, Instawhateverthefuck, et al, but in this case Twitter) is that its immediacy tempts people to type without thinking about the consequences of what they're saying. I think that's what happened here; I think better impulse control would have served Moore well.

I should point out that regardless of you're opinion of Moore (or mine, for that matter) he is a brilliant filmmaker, witty and unflinching in the face of whatever foes he chooses as his targets. That he also chooses to have his opinions shaped by family tragedy is something that most of us have done. But he should learn to think a bit before he tweets. And a bit of research into what snipers actually do would not go amiss.

Over all, while what he actually said probably had to do with Kyle/American Sniper the actual tweet wasn't specific, and I'm willing to give Moore a bit of the benefit of the doubt--but he doesn't get all of it. Moore stands somewhat diminished in my eyes.

Well, he could stand to be diminished a bit.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.


One more thing...Referring to the quoted text below, I object to Moore's characterization of James Earl Ray (Martin Luther King's murderer) as a "sniper". He was an assassin. 

Michael Moore's comments on his original comment: 

A lot has been said about Michael Moore's remarks about "American Sniper". I thought it might be informative to hear what Moore himself had to say about the controversy. His opinions are *his*, and not necessarily mine.- MSR

Michael Moore
January 18 at 10:14pm · 

Lots of talk about snipers this weekend (the holiday weekend of a great man, killed by a sniper), so I thought I'd weigh in with what I was raised to believe about snipers. My dad was in the First Marine Division in the South Pacific in World War II. His brother, my uncle, Lawrence Moore, was an Army paratrooper and was killed by a Japanese sniper 70 years ago next month. My dad always said, "Snipers are cowards. They don't believe in a fair fight. Like someone coming up from behind you and coldcocking you. Just isn't right. It's cowardly to shoot a person in the back. Only a coward will shoot someone who can't shoot back."

So I sent out this tweet today: https://twitter.com/mmflint/status/556914094406926336

And then I sent this: https://twitter.com/mmflint/status/556988226486169600

But Deadline Hollywood and the Hollywood Reporter turned that into stories about how I don't like Clint Eastwood's new film, "American Sniper." I didn't say a word about "American Sniper" in my tweets. 

But here's what Deadline Hollywood posted (note how they changed "snipers" to "shooters" in their headline): http://deadline.com/…/michael-moore-american-sniper-oscars…/

Hollywood Reporter has since corrected their story: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/…/michael-moore-blasts-ame…

If they wanted to know my opinion of "American Sniper" (and I have one), why not ask me?

So here's what I think about "American Sniper":

Awesome performance from Bradley Cooper. One of the best of the year. Great editing. Costumes, hair, makeup superb!
Oh... and too bad Clint gets Vietnam and Iraq confused in his storytelling. And that he has his characters calling Iraqis "savages" throughout the film. But there is also anti-war sentiment expressed in the movie. And there's a touching ending as the main character is remembered after being gunned down by a fellow American vet with PTSD who was given a gun at a gun range back home in Texas -- and then used it to kill the man who called himself the 'America Sniper'.

Also, best movie trailer and TV ads of the year. 

Most of us were taught the story of Jesse James and that the scoundrel wasn't James (who was a criminal who killed people) but rather the sniper who shot him in the back. I think most Americans don't think snipers are heroes. 

Hopefully not on this weekend when we remember that man in Memphis, Tennessee, who was killed by a sniper's bullet.