SOCIAL MEDIA HAS A BAD REPUTATION

For the last few years the social media world has exploded with negative, hate filled, venomous attacks on all types of people. It is generally acceptable for people to disagree and even to argue their point vehemently but the rhetoric recently has been downright hostile, if not violent.

I use social media every day. I use Facebook primarily to keep in contact with many people I worked with years ago. From the time I retired to now I have seen many of them get new jobs, find a spouse, have a child, and have a child go to high school, college and beyond. Sadly I have also seen some of the nicest people pass away.

My experience with FB has been incredible and I believe had it not been for such a platform I would have completely lost touch with all  these folks years ago and that would have been my loss.

Occasionally I wanted to say something philosophical or even to a lesser degree political and I have posted my thoughts on FB. I am generally met with some agreement and some disagreement. But these postings for me are minimal and not at all important compared to what I experience with my old buddies from work.


I also use Twitter but I use it for a completely different reason. I hardly, if ever, post anything on Twitter. What I have done is to curate people I respect. People who are opinionated, connected to worlds I am not connected to and for the most part, are not at all rabid political mouth pieces.  Journalists are my favorite connections because they are involved in many worlds I am interested in, read many other periodicals I don't read and their postings often include links to material I would not normally be aware of. I have read many books that have come out of postings by many of the people I follow. Because of Twitter I am exposed to some of the most interesting writing, postings, theories and philosophies that would otherwise be unavailable to me.


Finally I have subscribed to, or have been offered, for free, why I don't know, many sites that are, for the most part devoted to humor. Not humor at someones expense but just plain funny things; cartoons, jokes, anecdotes and comedians. I laugh out loud every single day of my life and I do so multiple times every day. Can anyone think of any reason why that is not an incredible gift?

My point. Social media is vastly more about information that can be enlightening, educational, humorous and inspiring than it is about hate filled retribution, name calling and self righteous polemics.

Social media has gotten a bad name and reputation for many well deserved reasons but the negativity surrounding it as a platform is not the complete story. If we look for what interests us, what motivates us and what inspires us, it is all out there for our use, whenever we want it. That is the good side of social media. It needs to be said from time to time

MY MEETING AS THE PRESIDENT

Were I to be president for a day here is what I would do.

I would invite every television network with an audience of more than 1 million citizens to attend a meeting at the white house. The subject of the meeting would be terrorism.

When assembled I would ask them for a commitment that whenever there is a terrorist event anywhere in the world they agree to report the incident in exactly the same way.

Just the details. The location, the presumed casualties, the method, the source and any other pertinent information that might give citizens information related to travel restrictions, warnings or suggestions.

Beyond that I would ask them to promise the news would never be reported in more detail. No faces of the perpetrators, no scenes of the bloodshed, no connections to every other terrorist incident that has occurred in the last decade, no on air talking heads, no experts telling us about more intended targets and once the vital stats are in then it goes off the air completely, one-day coverage only, NO VIDEO.

There are two things going on with terrorist activities. One, is what they do and how they do it, is terrifying everyone in this, and other peace seeking countries, and two, it gives the terrorists exactly what they want, publicity, coverage and home grown bragging rights.

If they see the news and it includes a spoken only announcement, with no video, of two bombings in Saudi Arabia, for example, at two different mosques, with an estimated number of people killed and wounded, period, they might not be so interested in continuing these horrible activities. There would be no one to know anything more about what they are up to. They would become faceless, nameless and above all else voiceless.

Terrorists need a vehicle to continue the fear their reign of terror infects in us all. Since they cannot kill everyone in the world, although that is probably their intensions, the idea of killing, death, terrorism and fear are their weapons of choice but they need media coverage in order to intensify the horror and immediacy of their activities.

Our national media only assists them in their messaging and gives them the coverage they could never afford to buy.  Profiles of the attackers, photographs and video of their lives before they detonate, where they come from, information about their families, their travel history, age, background and any other pertinent data media can uncover. It is a full profile of someone who is so invisible before they committed the crime they are probably not even known by the people living next door to them. Now they are international superstars, but only to the very worst people in the world. And, it is only because we gave them the voice.

We are told to go on with our lives, given all the stats about how it is just as likely we can step on a turtle and die as it is to die from a terrorist attack but those messages are a total waste of time. We go to airports, movie theaters, ball games etc and never go there without constant reminders of the terror lurking in the dark. We are afraid and that is exactly the place these people want us to be.

Do we really need our media to further our fear with the images of death, bloodshed, destruction and chaos just before we go to sleep or to Disney Land?

ON THE LOSS OF A DOG

Christmas was going well. Lots of text messages with videos of the grandkids opening presents and lots of laughs on both sides of the family phone calls.

I took a moment to check on my Face Book friends and discovered a dear friend lost her dog.  The reason was a rare form of canine cancer, not treatable and not expected. I was devastated. I called her at the first moment I could and cried along with her because I know the depth of the feelings one goes to when they lose a dog.

I started to think about losing the several dogs throughout my life and how hard it was to absorb each one. I know losing a dog is the downside of having a dog. Everyone who has ever had a dog knows it is a price we will pay, but never plans for it and is devastated when it occurs.

Why is it? Why is it so hard? We always hear how having a dog in our life is the closest thing to having unconditional love. Maybe that is it. We will lose that love.  While I do agree, I also think it might be the reverse that makes a dog so special. It is the ability we have to give them “our” unconditional love, to love them with no restraints.

The idea of giving of ourselves to anyone is a very hard. Giving unconditionally is next to impossible. If we love someone and they disappoint us, it is hard to live with. If we buy something and it does not live up to expectations we are disappointed. Whatever we do and whoever we are with, to give ourselves unconditionally can be emotionally difficult. Unconditional means accepting an abnormal sense of vulnerability and none of us wants to be that out of control. We need, or we feel we need, at all times, to be protective of ourselves, especially our emotional selves.

Feelings are the true media to our life experiences. Feelings, good and bad, are what make us conscious of being alive. But we rarely allow ourselves to go too deeply into any of our emotions. We feel the need to protect ourselves from the disappointments, the failures, the risks and the potential emptiness. We hesitate trusting too many people. The more we isolate ourselves from real disappointment the better will be the outcome.

But what exactly is the full range of emotions? How high can they go, how deep? I think the range is incalculable. We do feel the highs of an emotion and love the sense of joy it gives us.  But if the height of the emotions we willingly go to means we will have to go to a corresponding depth then maybe we need to recalibrate our willingness to go to any excess at all.   Maybe the best course of action is to stay close to the line of emotional normalcy. Feel good about things, but not too good. Maybe then the feelings we have to endure on the downside might not be all that bad. At least we can hope so. 

I think this is where illegal drugs come in. Drugs keep us away from the depths of despair, give us a false sense of emotional high and simply keep us on an emotionally flat line so we can avoid really feeling anything, up or down. Drugs are artificial emotional leveling devices.  They breed a false sense of emotional normalcy without having to live with the consequences of honest, drug free feelings.

Which brings me back to dogs. Here is the true description of unconditional. We can and do love our dogs “unconditionally”. We accept the dog for what he or she is. Correspondingly she accepts us unconditionally for who we are. We don’t judge our dogs. They never judge us. They are not jealous, envious, or competitive and expect very little from us. They are unaware of our faults and accept us for whatever we give them.

If we are up, so is the dog. If we are down the dog comforts us. If we want to play, so will the dog. The dog will make us laugh, and allow us to feel joy just by watching what they do from one minute to the next. The dog does not get mad at us, does not hurt us, holds no grudges and does not have a mean bone in its body. With our dog we can simply let ourselves go and give everything we have to the dog.

As humans we love music, films, theater, books and most creative diversions because they are pathways into our emotions, safe pathways. They thrill us, scare us, and make us laugh and cry. We can feel retribution, success, jealousy, fear and anger. But all of the feelings we have are responsibility free. Nothing we felt was a result of anything we did. We experience emotions that are without consequence. We leave the theater, the playhouse, turn off the turntable with a sated emotional experience.  It is so much more preferable than actually being in a position where we experience those emotions as a result of our own actions.  That would be almost unbearable.

Not so with a dog. We love them.  We know we are all in. We hold nothing back. We protect nothing of ourselves with our dogs. We give them everything we are and expect nothing back. We don’t judge them from one day to another on how they speak to us. There is no tone of voice, no bad moods, no depression, only happiness. 

What a glorious feeling it is to be a human with a capacity to love, to give, to share and to feel the beauty of our emotions when in full bloom. Unfortunately as humans we constructed a world where we have to protect ourselves from giving those gifts too freely and unconditionally because of how we treat each other. We must protect ourselves or we might suffer. There is a huge risk in going all in on something or someone with no way back. Not with a dog.

Who is the loser when the gift of giving is such a rewarding human feeling but has to be monitored lest we go too far and have to pay an emotional price? US.

The gift of giving is the greatest gift we possess. The thought of giving ourselves unconditionally is so seductive yet seemingly so alien that it is one of our real life dichotomies.

Not so with our dogs. We give to them without ever thinking about it. It is the gift of giving that is so seductive.  . We are sharing ourselves with our dogs. They see us, accept us and love us in return.  

I think that is why it is so hard to lose a dog. When they go a part of ourselves goes with them, the part we love most about ourselves.  Will we ever be able to let ourselves go again? Will we ever feel the shared love again? I don’t know for sure but what I do know is we will never go deeper into the depths of despair as we do when we lose our dog.

     

MY NEW RESOLUTION

I have been quite dark for the past year. By dark I mean I have not posted much and simply watched as the world passed by. This has been a volatile world and one that begs for commentary and, of course, commentary is everywhere, but it has not been from me.  I intend to change that.

The focus of what I write will be on words: I like words. I like what they say and mean and how they are misinterpreted. I will focus on many words that I feel are no longer part of our everyday life and need to be if we are to continue to be a first class country. Here are a few examples: Sacrifice, responsibility, accountability, arrogance, hypocrisy, evolution, love, respect, empathy, greed, corruption. This is a good start. Some of the words will be presented in ways that one could count me as angry, with an axe to grind, a failure of using the words on my own behalf. But, they would be wrong. Yes I am angry. I am disappointed and I feel like so many others do, who are unaccounted for in the vote, the opinion polls and the direction we are taking as a country and as a society.

We are, or have become, crass. We bloviate, we lie, we use rhetoric as the truth, we are uncaring and we are selfish. A new word that has gotten a lot of traction this year is entitled. Where does anyone get the sense that they are entitled to something others are not. If what they have they earned, good for them. But does that success need to be at the expense of others who did not achieve such success? I say no. But that sentiment is out there and is becoming more pervasive as more people, even those without their own earned success feel entitled based on their gender, location, color, education etc. These are attributes and characteristics that are earned and in many cases are biologically given. They are not excuses nor reasons for feelings of superiority or rights of oppression over others.

I will also endeavor to cover the institutions that we all live with. They include all forms of government from DC to the local level, regulators, business organizations, Wall Street, religions and the IRS.

There is much to write about and I will get to it as soon and as often as I can. Please join me in sharing your commentary as I hope it will be you who I hope to represent on these pages.

Have a nice holiday and I will see you after Christmas.

FOLLOWING THE RULES

Like most people I have been following the news surrounding the controversy over Tom Brady and the New England Patriots football team regarding the use of deflated footballs used in the AFC league championship game.

The discussion all week has gone back and forth about whether it is really cheating, followed by should there be a penalty, and if there is to be one, how big.

What shocks me most is the casual attitude many people have today concerning a clear case of cheating. One argument is there is cheating going on in other sports and, in this case, how bad was it?  We are confronted with steroids, pain medications and other artificial substances that theoretically give one athlete an edge over another. If cheating is to be tolerated at any level why have rules in the first place. If we accept one form of cheating why not accept them all?

The strength and appeal of all sport is its unpredictable outcome coupled with the competitive skills and psychological preparedness of one team versus another.  We all know we feel emotionally better one day versus another and while everything seems to work on those days, there are those other days where the reverse occurs. If one team uses drugs to alter mood it easily gives them an unequal advantage. Is that not cheating? If one team changes the tools of the game, such as the ball pressure, or spit on a baseball without the other team knowing it, is that also not cheating?

Cheating is cheating but it appears far too many people rationalize cheating when it is in their best interest.

There is however one sport that continues to rely on rules, where it’s participants follows them to the letter and hold everyone else accountable. That sport is golf.  

Why are rules in golf important, because everyone plays by them and expects everyone else to do the same?  More so every player is responsible to the entire field of players for any rule violation that takes place. It is the responsibility of every player to notify their competitors of any rules violation and ask them to accept the penalty. As a player we all know that anywhere on the course whether we can see it or not everyone is following the same rules because everyone on the course is essentially a rules official.  

If you play golf with people who cheat, you see it and don’t report it to the officials, you are harming the rest of the field of players. If you play with people who know the rules and still cheat then you can be assured they do so in other areas of their life. Don’t play them in a match and, for sure, don’t play them for money.     

Golf is an emotional game. Feel good and you may play above your ability, feel not so good and you may drop down a stroke or two.  You have to accept which player in you shows up each time you play. You still have to abide by the rules and cannot alter your mood through any artificial device.

Most golfers call violations of the rules on them selves when they make a mistake and for those who don’t there are other playing partners prepared to do so.

Take one of the easiest and seemingly least offensive rules to break: moving the ball. True moving a ball gives the player a better opportunity but measure the actual distance and it is marginal so why make such a deal out of it? Simple: When you control where the ball lies, your confidence goes up. Hitting it becomes far easier than when you have no control over where it lies. Moving a ball before hitting it is one of the most sacrosanct rules in the game. Every player knows it and every player abides by it.

I doubt it is any different when a quarterback alters the weight of a football, especially when their competitors don’t know about it.  The QB does.

This is what rules are about. The game of golf is a game played by millions of people around the world and the same rules exist for all of them. It is a beautiful thing to play a sport that has such integrity. To meet total strangers anywhere in the world, tee it up and know we will play an honest game, follow the same rules and compete on an equal footing. 

The rules of the game make it competitive, honest and true.

Other sports are demeaning themselves by accepting the corrosive elements of cheating. Eventually every sport that does not stand up for integrity in their game will eventually lose their base and their game will decline in value. 

RIGHT TO LIFE

Right to Life advocates have a valid point. They believe life begins at conception. The idea of abortion is anathema to them.  But women who are considering an abortion don't want to be pregnant and by proxy probably don't want a child.

So the debate comes down to should a woman not wanting to be a parent or a parent again bring a child into the world that will, no doubt, be unwanted.  Therein lies the problem. The child. A child not wanted from birth most likely will not be raised by a loving, supportive two parent family. The child will know this instinctively at first and intellectually as it grows up. That child will more likely get involved in drugs, gangs, fail to finish high school and, quite possibly, end up in prison. The likelihood that child will find a job, get married, raise a family, pay taxes and generally be a good neighbor and citizen are practically zero. If anything they will learn early in life how to game the system. How to get welfare, food stamps, government assistance and not work or pay taxes. They will also quite possibly have children of their own without any sense of responsibility and only continue to exacerbate the circle of unwanted pregnancies and children.

Now, that unwanted child, as a possible ward of the state, is openly and harshly criticized by the very same people who insisted they be brought to life. The complaints are always the same. Why don't "these people" get jobs, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become productive members of society? Easy questions to ask but difficult to answer. When the odds are as stacked against someone raised in a hostile, non loving environment are as intense as they are for many of these young people we are naive to think they have the tools to be solid members of society.

It is quite OK to profess a right to life position but those who do have to understand the consequence of their opinion and be prepared to support the child later in its life when the benefits of birth have eluded them for their entire life. Right to Life should include right to a fair and equal opportunity life.

JAIL FOR SENATORS

When is enough enough?  The Republicans have tried to scuttle the Affordable Care Act over 50 times always with the knowledge that if they did their actions would be vetoed. Added to their waste of time is they have no alternative plan.  Zero. They haven't had a plan since President Obama was elected

Next, they go to the Supreme Court, that third republican party, that is possibly going to over turn the act due to a misunderstanding in the language that in reality is absolutely no misunderstanding. If the Republicans are successful millions of Americans will be out of insurance and will have no coverage. Who will take care of their issues? Not the Republicans because they, again, have zero ideas of what to do.

Next, they invite the Israel president to speak to a joint session of Congress. In my opinion that invitation should be viewed as treason. Why invite him? To make the president look bad. Why? because he is black. t
The Israel president was a backer of the Iraq war we entered into under false pretenses. That has resulted in ISIS. Aren't we happy about that move?

And now? 47 Senators, all Republicans write a letter to Iran invalidating the nuclear negotiations with Iran. Fortunately the Iranians sent a letter back explaining the US constitution to these Republican morons. He also mentioned that the negotiations are with 5 countries not just the United States. And the president can make a deal, without oversight from the lame ducks in congress.

We have to get over ourselves and start doing the things we did in the past that made us great.

Right now we look like fools and act worse.