Santa Claus

I spilled this deep, heart-felt disclosure about my childhood back a few months ago while participating in a writing seminar.  Now that 'Tis the Season..., why not share it with my readers here?

            Growing up in a big family on a tiny farm in the early nineteen fifties, I was aware at a very early age that we were poor; more aware after starting school at the age of six and mingling with children of the not-so-poor.  My parents struggled to manage the bare necessities of life.  My mother could seemingly extract from thin air the ingredients for meals that kept us from starvation.  Because of her hard work, minding the huge garden we had each summer and then putting up hundreds of jars of produce in the fall, our table was never quite bare.  But it was never abundantly filled either.  This amazing woman also made clothes for her many children by cutting up flour sacks and creating garments, by hand-stitching as well as using a finicky treadle-type sewing machine.  Extremely few items ever came into our house through monetary purchases.  Money was almost non-existent.

          My reason for believing in Santa Claus until I was almost eight years old probably was a direct result of my acute awareness of our poverty.  Anything Santa brought was free!  No scarce dollars had to be pulled from the meager family budget to spend for these yearly gifts.  When an older brother picked on me for still believing in Santa upon the delivery of a beautiful new sled for my seventh Christmas, I fought with him and cried angrily and pitifully.  In truth, I wanted to fight the world that had deceived me, and my own parents who aided and abetted the cruel world, promoting the fat man in the red suit who did not exist.  I recall with absolute clarity the feeling of utter disbelief in the new truth, followed by utter despair.  The unfairness of life became a sudden crushing weight on my developing psyche as my family sacrificed to buy gifts for me. 

          That unfairness and my deeply ingrained hatred of deception have contributed to every step in the formation of who I am.  To this day, no single experience surpasses “The Santa Lie” for its impact on my view of the world. 

Today, my adult(!) psyche is developed (or at least aged) to the point that I can see the many fat men in red suits at this season and not fly into a rage.  A few times, back around 1990, I even donned the prescribed attire and became the jolly fat man myself.  Why not?  It was just another acting gig.  I had pimped myself out to corporate America for hundreds of spokesman jobs; how could Christmas and its idiocy be any worse?  It really wasn't a hard job and the smiles brought to most faces when the red suit and fluffy white beard entered the room, well, in some ways it made everything okay.  But I still hate the bastard called Santa!

Nowadays, being an actual senior (jolly old elf) citizen, currently with a scruffy white beard which will probably never be fluffy, I can be more myself without catering to so many others and their craziness.  Oh sure, I have to endure some fools who might become real estate clients, but I can draw some limits around the amount I am willing to prostitute myself for their business.  I am also a little more adept now at deflecting rank prejudice and nasty comments without having to completely offend the offenders.  Strange how society requires us to be magicians and dancers (or prancers and vixens) in order to survive.

But being able to keep some personal perspective on the Santa BS doesn't mean it is easy to overcome the hateful image.  What it may be doing to others, especially young, impressionable minds, bothers me a great deal.  I have to keep reminding myself that I have known many well-balanced, well-adjusted folks who simply blew off the whole big lie with aplomb, and apparently did so at a very early age.  Their psyches were obviously not as whacked out as was mine.  So probably not everyone gets the brunt of the bad joke as a huge slap in the face as it was for me.  Good!  But I still can't see why humans continue to force total foolishness onto their beautiful children who are sponges for learning and deserve actual information to be available instead of the BS.

Would it not be truly magnificent for all parents to drop the whole sham and readily explain to their small children that "Here is a special gift from Mommy and Daddy?"  Why would anyone choose to take no credit for giving a child something of value or something that is known to be what the child wants?  In my estimation, the concept is a sinister head-start program to prepare a fresh new mind for the bigger lie ahead: that a loving holy father, a god, a supreme being is surely there also to give abundantly throughout life.

In a world that is heavily besieged by corruption, deception, stealing, hating, abusing and generally destroying much of the good that life has to offer, why start our own beautiful children on their road with a giant (but pretty and insidious) lie?  Maybe I am wrong on this whole thing.  Perhaps it has always been used as a vaccination against all the crap life can throw at us.  We find out our own parents lied to us for as long as we were gullible enough to believe them, so it would be smart to distrust the world and prepare to protect ourselves from it.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger?  Is that the mentality we are seeing in play here with Santa?


DEC. 31  HAPPY NEW YEAR!  New post coming tomorrow. 

Clear as Black and White

** Note added at bottom - March 6, 2012

This will begin as an extension of the previous post but will reach to the ugliest evils of ignorance.

THINK about this!

Years ago I heard someone say, "You don't know what you don't know."

Now there's a genius line.  That's what I snarkily thought at the moment, but the expression has stuck with me for probably forty years or more.  And it is actually rather profound.  The easily tossed out comment sounds silly and pointless to repeat.  But the meaning is enormous.  And overlooked.

Extreme case: a man said he was going to become an inventor.  When asked what kind of things he might invent, he said he planned to write to the U.S. Patent Office and obtain a list of all the things that had not yet been invented; then he could choose.  A brilliant example of ignorance!

There are millions of matters in life about which I know nothing.  If asked about any one of them, typically I am honest and simply admit I don't know.  After a previously unheard-of matter is discussed with me and I find it interesting enough to study further, I can then say "Yes, I know about that."  I can also then form an opinion about the matter, can decide whether I agree with what others are saying about it or whether it should consume any more of my time.

This life-long desire to know has driven me to read a lot and to ask questions when I felt someone might help to educate me.  Far from perfect in this pursuit of knowledge, I have some experiences seared into my memory of the times I piped up without knowing whereof I spoke.  We've all heard others do this and we disrespect them for it.  Most of us can recall making noises that revealed our ignorance.  Trouble is, we sometimes pick up ideas or misinformation by hearing what others think, and their opinions may be completely faulty.  Opinions are quickly set in minds and repeated with abandon, even if the individual speaking out is still in ignorance.  

Someone who is a close enough acquaintance I almost consider him a friend, actually spoke out recently at a dinner party, with several other acquaintances present, and said, "Obama has sure made a mess of things."  And several of the other more-or-less friends around the table jovially agreed with him and expressed hope that our sitting president would be beaten in the next election.

As much as I try to remain neutral, as much as I repudiate confrontation, there are times a person of integrity is required to step into the fray.  The void in intelliget conversation must at times be bridged by anyone who can speak clearly about simple facts.  That doesn't mean I assume it's up to me; I don't actually look for chances to be the voice of reason.  Truth be told, I prefer to extricate myself from such situations without comment, maintaining my neutrality.  This time, while sitting at a dinner table, still early in the meal, a gracious exit was not reasonably easy to pull off.  Therefore, I spoke up.  My response to these people was kept as calm as possible, even though I typically flare a little in the face of ignorance being flaunted as fact or logic.

My approach was as brief as practical, essentially kept to three (compound) questions:  1.) Did the destruction of the U.S. economy happen overnight or did it take the eight years of the previous administration?  2.) Were the policies that led to economic destruction put upon us by President Obama or were they well ensconced during the failed administration that catered to Wall Street?  And 3.) How many years would it take any one of us to dig us all out of the pit into which our country was forced by those failed policies? 

Later I inserted the quick last question to the group who all seemed to be spouting the typical ignorant thought that we needed somebody - just anybody - to beat Obama in the next election.  My question, which could not be answered, was, "Who do you see on the political horizon who can solve our economic woes at all, even if given two terms to do it?"

The dinner conversation topic got changed.

As I often point out, I am a political Independent.  My lack of confidence in any political party and usually, any politician, is profound.  To look today at a Romney, a Gingrich, a Blah-Blah-Blah or any of the several inept pretenders to the presidency, is profoundly frightening.  Frightening because who knows what can happen?  It was a confused and obviously disturbed electorate (plus a Supreme Court ruling) that placed an ignorant and destructive man into the high office in 2000, and it was a completely unconscious or masochistic electorate that allowed him to return in 2004 after we all could see the clear evidence that he was destroying our nation's integrity.  These same (well-meaning, perhaps) fellow citizens are the people who will go to the polls in 2012, and the dangers that lurk there are the cause of my discomfort.

Even if you are a fan of Fox News, you surely can't be missing the unbelievable display of incompetence on the part the many candidates.  Not one of them shows any capacity to govern, and not one of them will stand up against big money and corporate greed.  Their own personal greed is no doubt involved.  In fact, all photos of the Republican candidates should be shown with $ symbols for eyes; that appears to be the guiding force for all.  (Perhaps not for Ron Paul; his guiding force is a bit unclear.)  Yet some people whom I know personally would rather see another ignoramus in the highest office of our land, even if it means he will be another puppet of Wall Street.  If you are in the upper reaches of the 99% and are not yet feeling as beaten down as most of us, just keep flattering the rich and electing their puppets.  Eventually, when our democracy is completely gone, you may awake to the fact that you were as meaningless to the super rich as are the rest of us.  Would it not be better for yourself and all of us to wake up sooner?

And when we are finally a Plutocracy in fact, there will be no voting.  99% of us won't count.

Hopefully you will take time to THINK before voting for just anybody in order to unseat Obama.  At the very least, we have today an intelligent man at our helm.  And by all appearances, he cares about helping the people at least as much as helping himself.  Whether he can steer us as a country, while having to struggle with a recalcitrant congress at every step, to finally attain a new state of national integrity and economic prosperity is anybody's guess.  Only time will tell, and the time may not be given him because of the ever-present ignorance.

And something else: racism.  That's right, I strongly suspect racism is at the deep-seated core of many of the criticisms of our president.  I personally hear the small (sometimes blatant) tones of residual racial prejudice right here in my own neighborhood.  People can vehemently deny that anti-black sentiments play any part in their criticisms of our president, but I am not convinced.  I wonder whether many people know themselves deeply.  A man who slips while talking with me about the changes in our community, spilling a revelation of his fear that blacks are going to take over, is not a man who can look at our mixed-race chief executive and squelch a desire for an all-white replacement.  Perhaps it's unconscious on their part, but it's clear that racism is being practiced among my neighbors.  (I'm confident this small community is a tiny microcosm of our national society.)  Even a few of those who might have voted three years ago for Obama (maybe only because they were more anti-Palin or more prejudiced against females than against someone of mixed race), are now hopeful that some white guy can step in and solve our problems.  Fat chance!  It was despicable white guys who ran us into the ditch, and it will take more than a simple new white face in the White House to help us recover.  I maintain my support for intelligence as the key to any possible recovery.

Please don't point to Herman Cain as some kind of proof I am wrong about the racism.  His was never a candidacy to be taken seriously by anyone other than the powerful tycoons behind his bid, apparently seeing him as the ultimate in simple puppetry.  Even with this ugly prospect, I half hoped the zany, fractured GOP would nominate him.  At least I could have been less concerned about a potential defeat of Obama.  A man who couldn't speak to anything outside of his narrow business experience would never(!) have a chance to push aside an incumbant who is ten times more intelligent and only half as black!  The (!) is evidence that even as I write this, I cannot shake my fear of the ignorance!

The biggest concern about the racism factor is that it can be completely subliminal.  Many folks who believe themselves to be utterly unaffected by race in any matter can suddenly find no reason for a tug in one direction as opposed to another, unless the ugly old twinge of racial discrimination might be at the root of the question.  I often check myself to see whether any of my own motives are colored by color.  An interesting article by Dafna Linzer published in The Washington Post and in the online news commentary, ProPublica, shows that racial overtones had crept into the process of presidential pardons.  Officials claimed total surprise at the findings and could not see how the numbers could have shown such a disparity.  No one mentioned subliminal racism as a cause, but it almost certainly was.  Short of being in our DNA, racism is about as deeply entrenched in our subconscious as any human tendency outside of survival and sex drives.

Please, when it comes to elections, check your own racism quotient just to be sure of your own motives; and please don't cast an ignorant vote for another incompetent candidate who will take us closer to our demise.

And following this post, we will avoid the subject of politics for a while.  After all, Christmas is coming!

** Update NOTE:  Mar. 6, 2012  -  A study just completed announced today that black students are three times more likely than their white peers to be suspended or expelled.  Probably just a meaningless coincidence!  The news of this came at the very same time as the news that a Colorado court has ruled that students may carry guns on campus.  Our nation is so advanced and our citizens all socially aware; we are so totally healthy in our practices.  And racism no longer exists!  Aren't we grand?!

Ignore Ants

Today the tiny group of the very wealthy, those now generally called "the 1%," are in a position particularly estranged from the common man on the street (or at home with no job, or standing in the park with others protesting our current mess), and quite possibly cannot see the rest of us at all.  To those extremely wealthy folks in their ivory towers, we of the 99% are too far below to even be in view; we are simply the ants of society - going about our mundane business, crawling over obstacles as best we can, struggling to bring home some tiny morsel to help us survive.  The super-rich are quite removed from the common man.  They hardly know about our survival plight, and except for Warren Buffett and possibly one or two others of great character, they prefer to ignore us.  Ignore ants can be their simple mantra; we are nothing to them.

But now some few of the vaunted rich are having to deal with the ants that have begun to spoil their picnic.  Oh, it isn't actually possible to affect them substantially, but it is not as easy at the moment for them to completely ignore the ants.

What amazes me today, where I reside among quasi intelligent folks, is that many of the less destitute ants in our society are superficially separating themselves from the rest of the 99% and appear to be cultivating a kinship to the 1% in some kind of wishful thinking, I suppose.  Or just bone-headed NON-thinking is more likely.  Some who are comfortable, in that they no longer need to struggle mightily to survive, want to see themselves as part of the upper crust of society and can no longer identify with the low-life types who are not so fortunate.  Many (perhaps most) of today's low-lifes have merely the bad luck of bad timing to thank for their condition of near poverty.  Only a few of the more fortunate among us can admit (or even realize) that they were the beneficiaries of some dumb luck along the way, the timing that fell just right for them to become comfortable while others continued to struggle.  Some of these folks have become the self-righteous ants who can look down upon the poor ants and try to ignore them.  But the vantage point these people hold, being only a notch or two above the dirt-poor, does not allow them to completely ignore the ants, it allows them only to feel superior.  Having to deal each day with all those others, the destitute and maybe ragged and ugly ants, keeps the slightly successful ants from being actually capable of completely ignoring them in the manner the 1% can.  So they end up just sounding smug and hateful.

A person of generally good demeanor, possessing a passion for life and pleased to be part of his society, can become involved in matters he might not have foreseen.  For example, thousands of society's ants are gathering in cities all around our struggling nation to participate in the Occupy movement.  Who are these folks who can take the time and effort to do this and feel it is the right thing to do?  Most are those who are out of work, looking into the face of poverty, seeing their chance of ever attaining part of The American Dream completely crumbling before them.

Who are the people criticizing these ne'r-do-wells, these thugs, these law-breakers (I hear these ugly slurs daily) who are causing disruption to our way of life?  Well, in most cases, the cruel critics are people who might themselves be in the Occupy groups but for the timing.  A neighbor in my community who is a senior citizen, living well in his paid-for home, enjoying his Social Security every month along with his larger monthly income from a solid pension he paid into during his good years of employment, somehow can look upon those protesters with disdain.  And but for the timing, but for his good luck, he could easily be one of them himself.  He'd prefer to think he is better than that, that he would never be such a rebel or lawless punk.  He simply refuses to mentally put himself into someone else's shoes for a moment.  Yet had he not met with the good fortune, the dumb luck, many years ago, he could easily have been marching with his fellow trouble-makers and living outside in the elements under the watchful eye of armed police, looking like a lawless mob on the newscasts, getting no respect from the comfortable ants of his society.  Odds are fairly strong that his own father would have been one of the dirty and miserable law-breakers among the great throngs of desperate marchers in the nineteen-thirties.

Any one of us who is less destitute than those marching in America's cities to call attention to the vast inequality of our financial system, should at least have a little empathy.  The protesters are there for the rest of us who are too comfortable, too afraid, too blind regarding the inequality or just too lazy to be there ourselves.

As to looking down on these ants of society, trying to assume the lofty position of that tiny 1% in our views of the Occupy crowd, it doesn't work for us comfortable ants.  When we try to ignore ants, it reveals a condition with a slightly different pronunciation.  Try putting the emphasis on the "ig" and see how it expresses that condition.  Trying to ignore ants makes us guilty of simple ignor-ants.  Ignorance is the proper spelling. 

We who are the luckier of the 99% are still in this mess with the unlucky; we still owe them our respect when they try to improve the world for us all.  Those who refuse to accept this simple fact and who look down upon and belittle the Occupy movement are not somehow raising themselves above the throngs of the abused; they are still being abused themselves.  They just aren't yet feeling the worst of the punishment being doled out by the Wall Street system.  Folks who have been successful enough that they are not yet desperate are still far from approaching membership in that small group of the filthy rich.  They are willfully choosing to live in filthy ignorance!  And the horrifying prospect of all this lies in the willful ignorance that will guide these folks when they step into a voting booth.

[Here's an interesting further word-play irony:  the comfortable ants are sneering at the down-trodden ants who are willing to march in protest on behalf of ALL ants.  Disrespecting the protest ants.  That's right - many who feel superior to the protest ants are themselves protestants!  And it's not all just the emphasis on syllables - it's the emphasis on character.  Odd little twist, is it not?]