Mona asks: Do Elections Matter?

A draft I forgot to publish after the 2012 Presidential Election...

Like Jimmy on Seinfeld, Mona is in the mirror, transforming her first person experience of reality into a subtly skewed third person narrative. It's safe to do so on Election Day, when wild expectations of political change have been doused by unexpected Democrat voter turnout, anticipated Democrat voter fraud, or worse yet, just being on the wrong side of history...again.

In case you didn't know, Mona is a Republican. Mostly because Mona is no longer a Democrat. Mona started out a starry-eyed Liberal. She subscribed to Mother Jones, hung dewy-eyed sayings like "war is not healthy for children and other living things" in her bedroom window, rejected the intellectual challenges to her thinking as so much parental nonsense. It's easy to be an angry, poorly informed non-conformist when you're sixteen. It's a privilege to be an angry, college-educated feminist when you're twenty-one. Maybe slightly unusual to be a wandering doubt-filled expatriate at twenty-five. Mona tried on "humanism" over her Catholic upbringing. Swore she'd never be a mother. Even voted for Jimmy Carter, once.

Mona woke up when she found herself on the wrong side of Checkpoint Charlie in East Berlin "in the chilly hours and minutes, of uncertainty..."  Mona thought twice when she cut short her excursion to the Moroccan Casbah because she was wearing shorts.  But Mona went fully-fledged Republican when she held her first fledging.  How can you risk the future when it rests so sweetly in your arms?

Elections do matter.  

Update:  Nearly seven years into Obama's Hope and Change.  A second mid-term election with a big Republican win!  Is Mona any wiser, any happier?  Mona's slightly wiser, and in her wisdom she is handing in her Republican affiliation card.  The Republicans have been a big disappointment to Mona.  Happier?  With every passing minute of every hour of every day, Mona is happier.  You see, Mona is a Conservative.  And Conservatives are just built that way!

Don't Call Me a Right-Wing Extremist!

A blog from a couple of years ago that I forgot to publish...

"Silence is the virtue of fools." Sir Francis Bacon

Have I been practicing the virtue of fools? Keeping mum, putting a lid on it, zipping it to find some peace? No more, La Giaconda roars, no more!

My mind is percolating, brewing up a deep dark sludge of fury and frustration. What has me steamed these days is that apparently I'm a right-wing extremist! My thinking on everything from Ft. Hood to health care to climate change, has somehow moved me from Republican mainstream at the start of this decade to just this side of Tim McVeigh in the age of Obama. Have I been radicalized, or has someone stolen the political center?

Look, I don't mind letting your freak flag fly, but don't call me a Right Wing Extremist! It marginalizes me and that's no way to treat a lady.

Thoughts on Jumping out of an Airplane

I used to think I could do anything.  Starting with baby steps, of course.  No roller coaster too high, no motorcycle too fast.  Move to New York City, not far enough.  Move to West Berlin, that’s better.  How about Rio de Janeiro?  Those baby steps take me to a dozen different countries and the world is my oyster!

Then there are the baby steps of my first born.  Now I’m responsible for another life, and then a second and a third!  I’m a wife and a mother and I no longer indulge my wanderlust or my need for speed or much else beyond making sure I can get out of bed in the morning and do the best job I can to keep these beautiful blessings healthy, strong, and wiser than me.  

Soon a roller coaster makes my heart pound too fast and do I really want to get in the lake and swim with stuff I can’t see?  Get a good night’s sleep, eat right, don’t drink too much, set a good example.  In a couple of years I earn the title Fun Hater from my daughter and I’m proud of it!

Except my children are grown up now and my eldest thinks it would be fun for me to go skydiving.  Right. Conversation forgotten until this summer when we drive to North Carolina to visit and a plan is afoot to get me to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.  

I’m under the impression we’re going to a car show, and as directed I’m wearing good sneakers so I can stand around for awhile.  I don’t see this coming until we drive into a parking lot in Raeford, NC, and I notice an airplane out in the field next to a sign for the “Golden Knights,” and it suddenly occurs to me I’ve been set up!  My son opens up my car door and I don’t know what to say except, “You aren’t going to make me do this, are you?”

Apparently, this is to be my 60th birthday present.  There is some coaxing, a bit of prodding, a couple of hours to think about it while we wait for our turn on the manifest.  I am terrified.  But of what?  Not of getting hurt, because I really don’t think that’s going to happen.  I’ve locked up some part of me in a place so small, I can’t even name what the fear is but it’s BIG!  I’m scared of being scared.  

Time to suit up, finally.  A 24-year-old man named Jesse explains to me we will be attached to each other at four different points.  This will be his 6th jump today.  When we exit the plane, I should tilt my head back, keep my elbows in, and bend my knees with my heels tucked into his butt. I feel like “dead woman walking” as we board the small propeller plane along with a dozen others, all young men except my husband who has graciously agreed to accompany me for his first high altitude jump.  

Inside the aircraft there’s an atmosphere of high adrenaline and excitement.  We’re arranged on bench seats along the walls.  I have trouble buckling my seat belt, which seems pretty silly to me.  The plane ascends rather slowly, and it’s cold up here.  About five minutes up a few fellows move over to the door, crank it open like a window shade, and unceremoniously exit the plane for a low-altitude jump.  I’m sickened by the thought of them tumbling out the door.  Am I really going to do this? 

The door is closed again and we continue to ascend, higher and higher, over fourteen thousand feet up, two and a half miles above the ground.  I can barely look out the window, but I know there’s no turning back now.  I’ve made up my mind.  I sit on Jesse’s lap and he tethers us together at the four points.  The door of the aircraft is being raised again.  I look back over my shoulder at my husband.  Now Jesse and I are shuffling toward the exit and we’re crouched at the door and I squeeze my eyes shut.  I can do this, but I can’t look.

I feel a tremendous drop in my stomach and the air is rushing around me.  I open my eyes, because I’m not going to miss another second of this.  The sky is huge and bright and blue and I’m part of it.  Jesse taps me on my shoulder and I loosen my grip on the chest straps, open up my arms and unbend my knees. I’m flying!  Looking around me I see other divers in the air but I feel wonderfully alone.  Below me, Louie, who jumped out at the same time so he could video me, is descending fast, faster, until he’s a black spider against the huge white cloud below.  Time feels unimportant.  I know soon we’ll be passing through that cloud.  What will it feel like?  

Before I can imagine it, we’re through it and Jesse has pulled the chute.  There’s a big uplifting movement as our speed slows and now we’re floating, tourists in the sky.  The world below us is grand, fields and roads and little lakes stretching for miles.  I’m in no hurry to land.  I want to savor every moment of this experience.  I’m chatting with Jesse about how my son is with the 82nd Airborne and dropped into Normandy in France this past D-Day.  I’m mom again, but I’m someone else as well.  

I can see the airport we started out from and as directed I pike at the waist, raise my legs and we land standing up. Jesse releases me to collect the chute.  My son and his girlfriend are running toward me. I’m so happy, so very happy!  Now my husband has landed and we gather together for a picture. My son is proud of me, and I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself as well. When I tell him I closed my eyes when we exited the aircraft, he says I had a night jump. I like that!  For the next 48 hours, I’m smiling, my heart is light and I know something in me will never be the same.

Why it Sucks to Be White: Racism in the Obamanation

Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it's dark.  ~Zen Proverb

When I look in the mirror, I do not see a racist.   I grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood, went to an integrated high school, and send my own kids to a school acclaimed for its 150+ nationalities.‡  Yet I find myself brooding on the issue that has risen to public debate this past week in a series of recent events: Representative Joe Wilson's outburst at President Obama's address to Congress, the 9/12 March on Washington, Kanye West's gaffe at the MTV Video Music Awards, and the beating Monday morning of a white student by black students on an Illinois school bus.  These events and the public reaction to them leave me wondering: what does it mean to be a racist? Am I standing in my own shadow and wondering why it's dark? Are we all racists in the Obamanation?

Let's start with Joe Wilson's indiscretion, the "You lie!" outburst prompted by President Obama's health care speech. I admit I was sympathetic to Wilson's reaction, having launched an "No way!" remark of my own at Obama's assurance that his plan would not add a dime to the national deficit, and a "Are you kidding?" to his calculation that the plan could be paid for by identifying waste, fraud and abuse in the current system.  I believe government-run healthcare will result in inferior, rationed care for all, including the millions of illegal immigrants who currently live in the U.S.  I don't see anything in Obama's plan that addresses escalating healthcare costs, and I question the notion that the moral stature of America can be measured by the provision or lack thereof of universal healthcare. 

It didn't take long for many in the media to characterize Wilson's eruption as evidence of his racism.  Maureen Dowd went so far as to suggest that what Wilson was really saying was, "You lie, boy!", concluding that Wilson, like the outspoken attendees at this summer's town hall meetings, just can't accept that America has a black president. Joe Wilson, under pressure from his Republican colleagues, admitted his outburst was inappropriate to the occasion and its surroundings, and it warranted the apology offered to and accepted by President Obama. But a leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus, James Clyburn, insisted on a pound of flesh, urging the House to censure Wilson for the egregious breach of decorum.  What's wrong with this picture? The Congressional Black Caucus, because they are black, gets to attribute racist motivation to a congressman's words. Words that spoken by a white man mean more than if they had been spoken by a black man.  By throwing their considerable moral weight, earned by virtue of their race, behind the rebuke, they succeeded in turning partisan wrangling into hate speech. Am I the only one confounded here?

Then there's the March on Washington by thousands of Americans concerned with the policies and priorities of the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration.  Much discussion followed the event regarding the size and racial makeup of the crowd. I can tell you as a participant that it was big and predominantly, but not entirely, white. I joined the 9/12 protest to demonstrate my opposition to unchecked spending in a time of ballooning deficits.  I found myself among people of all ages, incomes and situations, brought together by our increasing alienation from the Washington powers that be.  Was that anger and opposition bred of racism?  Interestingly, the event peacefully shared the mall with the NCNW (National Council of Negro Women) Black Family Reunion, an event in its 24th year that "celebrates the enduring strengths and traditional values of the African American family."  That event was well attended and almost entirely black.  The Washington Post contrasted the black reunion's themes of family and healing with the crass rancor of the conservative protestors, and quoted a reunion goer as saying that many of Obama's critics are motivated by race and don't even know what they are protesting.  Does the media have the temerity to ask if there's anything inherently racist about an annual Black Family Reunion on the Washington Mall?

Fast forward a day, and we have the story of black rapper Kanye West intruding upon the acceptance speech of award-winning white country singer Taylor Swift, declaring that while Swift may well be talented, Beyoncé had the best video and should have been the winner. Kanye had at least one glass of cognac in him, so alcohol may have had a part in his brashness, but was that all that was behind his impertinence?  We all recall Kanye's accusation that "President Bush doesn't care about black people" at a Hurricane Katrina Relief concert. But perhaps more telling is the music selection Kanye sang with Jay-Z and Rihanna after his spiritless apology on the Jay Leno Show on Monday night.  The three hip-hop artists, dressed in black leather, Kanye and Jay-Z in dark glasses, Rihanna's eyes veiled in gauzy black, performed "Run This Town". Jay-Z raps about Roc Nation, pledge your allegiance, get your fatigues on, all black everything, black cards, blacks cars, all black everything, Jay-Z is the new black caesar. Kanye's contribution is less political, mostly a lamentation on how tough it is to be a superstar having women throw themselves at him all the time. Rihanna concludes the song with an answer to the question, "Who's gon run this town tonight?" with "We gon run this town tonight."  If we're to believe the posturing of hip-hop artists, it seems that the next logical step in the civil rights movement is a black nation.

Which brings me to the most miserable of events in the last few days. The beating of a white student at the hands of black students on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois.†  The video is reminiscent of Rodney King's beating at the hands of white cops, but don't look for its frequent showing on network news.  This kid gets wailed on for being in the wrong seat at the wrong time, and fellow students are either participants cheering them on, or listless spectators afraid they might be next.  As the mother of a high school student, I can tell you this made me mad. Not just at the bus driver who did nothing, but at the police spokesman who retracted his first statement that the beating was racially motivated.  Is a racially motivated crime not plausible when perpetrated by black youths?

And so I ask myself: Are we all racists in the Obamanation? When my children were babies, I was completely sure of their innate goodness. But if "to live is to be slowly born*," then it is our experiences that make us what we are, and who we become is shaped by what we have suffered and by what we suffer upon others. As a mother I have endeavored to choose my words and model my behavior for the good of my children. It has been my job to raise them to be fair, open-minded, citizens. It has also been my goal to make them critical thinkers, quick to challenge and unafraid to argue.  But experience marks us, for good or for evil.

Soon after the presidential election, my oldest son stopped by a 7-11. Several black youths, around his own age, said to him: “Sucks to be white, doesn’t it?”  It does, in fact, suck to be white, if any criticism you make of the current administration is labeled racist, if a grassroots protest of fiscal policies is reduced to racism.  And on the flip side, a black artist’s behavior is labeled bad form, but never challenged as being racially motivated.  And the despicable actions of black youth against a white kid are not called what they clearly were, racist. 

After the election, some declared America a post-racial country. In fact, in the Obamanation, we're all racists, and it sucks to be white.

‡ J.E.B. Stuart High School, Falls Church, VA

†http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5jeY5ow3sg

*Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942

http://digg.com/d314eTZ

Remembering 9/11 is Medicine for What Divides Us

September 11, 2009.  

Rain complicates the already difficult DC area traffic.  It could be just another September day, but on this day the memories urge me to stop and reflect.  

We all remember where we were that morning.  I was in my kitchen watching the Today show. Just six miles from the Pentagon, I heard American Airlines flight 11 fly low overhead and felt the rumble of its impact.  I was aware that the first and second planes had hit the twin towers in New York City, and now, even closer to home, another attack.  Fear edged out confusion. What was next?  

You wouldn't think it would be easy to forget how eight years ago our world came apart. The images of fire high in the sky splitting a steel tower in half.  The panic in the voices of passengers on Flight 93, telling their loved ones goodbye.  The blurred smudge in a photo, undeniably a man or woman, launched to their death from the breach of a burning inferno high in the sky.  The smoldering gash in the side of the Pentagon where catastrophe consumed an entire aircraft and its 92 passengers and crew members.  Still I must dig deep to recover the sense of panic that I kept at bay in the waking hours after 9/11. The dread and anxiety that surfaced at night when the drone of fighter jets circled the skies overhead.  

Over these eight years, our memories have dimmed.  At first, we were compelled to look, and then we were persuaded to look away. By some consensus the public was not privy to, it was determined we should not dwell on the horror of that day.  We should not be consumed by hatred or motivated by anger, or act upon a desire for revenge.  We should not be goaded into responding to an unprovoked attack without proper thought and consideration.  When it became known that Islamic jihadists were behind the attacks, we were told that we were not fighting Islam, but only its most extreme fringe.  

But over the intervening years, it is not just our memories that have faded.  It is our nation's commitment in the days afterward to our common interest, our shared grief and the solidarity we found with each other in the days afterward.  When I remember the horror of 9/11, I also remember how the arms length that we maintain between ourselves and those who are different from us was somehow lessened.  I remember how the guard we hold up to defend ourselves from unspoken accusations of racism or intolerance was let down just enough to sense that we were all of us Americans.  And it was worth coming together to stop the horror that had visited us from threatening us again.  

Now our grief has waned and the accord that bridged the political, racial and cultural divisions among us has dissipated.  Our urgency has been replaced with war fatigue and our shared clarity of purpose has been undermined by doubt and recriminations.  Some turned on our president, "Bush lied and thousands died!" and others shouted, "Un-american!"  When we looked away from the images of terror, we forgot the enemy that brought that terror to us. And we forgot that we were one nation, indivisible.  We turned on each other, feeding the flame of partisan disagreements until today they burn like a firestorm, nearly out of control and bringing some to ask, "Is America coming apart?" 

I choose to remember that day, in prayer and remembrance of thousands of innocent lives lost. I remember not only the strangers, but two high school friends, grown up, married and with two small children of their own.  I remember Leslie Whittington and Charlie Falkenberg, and Dana and Zoe Falkenberg, a family that was and then was no more.  I choose to remember the fear that fed the pit in my stomach, the anxiety that kept me awake at night, and the justified anger that underscored my support of President Bush's war on terrorism.  

I also remember that when we were down, we came together.  I pray that union will be stronger than our current divisiveness.  Maybe we need to remember 9/11 and who the real enemy is.

[digg=http://digg.com/political_opinion/Remembering_9_11_is_Medicine_for_What_Divides_Us]

What I Learned on my Summer Vacation

Inside the Beltway, we eat and sleep politics.

Everyone has an opinion and it may not be yours, but we don't mind talking about what we think matters.  For me, I admit it's more than an interest, it's a bit of an obsession.  I read the Washington Post and the Washington Times in the morning, listen to talk radio off and on during the day, watch the evening news on a couple of different networks, and end the day switching through the cable news outlets.  My bookmark tab is full of websites where I can read through stories before they make it to radio, TV or newspapers.  On my bedside table, Mark Levine's Liberty and Tyranny shares space with one of Oprah's Book Club selections.  All in all, I consider myself pretty well informed.  And I have an opinion about what's going on in the country and in the world.

But for the last few days, I've been a fish out of water.  I just got back from visiting family who live about a half hour outside Salt Lake City. And I can report that politics is just not spoken in Park City, Utah. Your latest triathlon results, your next cycling trip, this weekend's climb, last season's snowfall, which trail you just hiked, what road you'd recommend for motor biking. These are the topics that make up conversations among the people I met.  Who are these fit and energized people?  Not the ski bums you might expect, extending their adolescence into adulthood in a winter resort town.  These are 30 and 40 and 50 year old marketing experts, health care administrators and providers, public utility managers, corporate CEO's, insurance agents, graphic artists, commercial and residential construction builders, middle school teachers and education specialists.  

Most of all, these are people who just want to have fun and have figured out how to do it daily. I must admit I'm in awe of their energy, their muscled calves and their commitment to recycling. Still, I'm glad to be home and I can't wait to catch up with my more politically inspired friends. Something might have happened while I was out having fun!

Is the Obamajoker image funny?

When I first saw this image last week, I was delighted.  I pasted it on my Facebook page with the comment "Someone has it nailed!", hoping to provoke a bit of commentary. None. Seems none of my Facebook friends wanted to touch this with a ten-foot pole. 

 

A few days later, I read that some people were offended by the picture.  After all, it shows Obama in white face, referencing the disparaging reality of our collective past, when black men appeared on stage in white face, caricaturing themselves so as to be more acceptable, less threatening, than unmasked black men. Frankly, that hadn't occurred to me.  I saw Obama as the joker.  Batman's nemesis. Heath Ledger's undoing.  The Wild Card in the political deck.

I liked it because it echoed the image of Obama that became so ubiquitous during the campaign -- the portrait not of a politican but of an earnest citizen, computer regenerated, redefining Hope in a single Super Man.  That image, the Obamicon image, has become a part of our collective American psyche. This image, the Obamajoker, takes the Obamicon image and sets it on its heels.

The Obamajoker is a challenge to Obama-mania.  The image asks, "Is he who you think he is?" The Obamajoker is not the purveyor of hope, but of socialism!  "Is this what you were hoping for?"  The Obamajoker gets under your skin, unsettles your stomach, makes you clench your jaw, maybe even haunts your dreams...  Is it funny?  Only if you think these are hilarious times. Only if you can't stop laughing as you watch what is best about America be legislated away in the name of change.

[digg=http://digg.com/political_opinion/Is_the_Obamajoker_image_funny]