Soapbox

    "It's not right when the police tell you to run- just run away. Run where? You don't really know- where is 'safe'?"

   This is the real terror of an act of terrorism like the Boston Marathon bombings. Is it over? Am I running away from danger, or toward another bomb? Maybe people with guns are lying in wait!  This is the kind of fear that can scar the psyche. It's not only the terror of what just happened, but the helplessness of not knowing what the proper course of action is right now.
   I can tell you what the proper course is not. It is not to turn this tragedy into  a suit of clothes for your favorite political or religious paper doll.
    The day of an attack, the day after, is not the day to make statements about who you think is probably responsible, based not on facts from the scene, but on the way x, y and z fit in your world view. It is natural to try to fit the puzzle pieces together immediately, even when they've just been dumped out of the box and 90% of them are still upside down. Aha, this piece must go here! See how it has that little knob part sticking out?
   Yeah… all the pieces have a little knob sticking out, Ace. Just take a breath. I know you feel safer when you have some answers we all do! We all grasp desperately for answers to provide us solid ground when the sand shifts. But try to remember that fake answers offer only fake security.
 
   Let me just say that if, when you hear that there has been a bombing- or a shooting, or some other attack, and there are terrible injuries, if your first thoughts aren't oh dear god  I hope everyone is alright! and Was anyone I know there? or  Is there any way I can help? then you need to seek therapy. If your first thought is Oh, I bet it was those _____'s (fill in favorite group you hate and assume are out to get you) then you have a serious compassion deficiency, and, ex post facto, you are actually contributing to the climate of terror.
    And if your first thought is "How can I use this event to further my career/ political agenda? then you are probably (but no, not exclusively) a commentator, or frequent interview subject for FOX News.

   When the New York Post began trumpeting shortly after the Boston bombing that police had a Saudi suspect in custody, most of the people who took up this refrain were people eager to blame at least an outsider, ideally a Muslim, for anything evil that happens. For example, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, who passed on this stupid rumor, probably because he wanted it to be true and didn't so much care if it wasn't. Well, it's much easier to slam the closet door than to look under our own beds for the monsters. After the Oklahoma city bombing, a lot of people who claimed to know what they were talking about were SURE that it was Arab terrorists who were responsible, and had all sorts of 'proof' based on upside down puzzle-pieces that had little knobby ends on them… you know, the way Arabs/communists/fundamentalists/etc. always do.
    A guy actually asked the governor of Massachusetts in his terse and somber press conference if this  whole thing was a 'false flag' operation of the government, designed to terrorize the people and provide an opportunity to take way our civil liberties.  I can only imagie how he felt when asked this. Casualty counts were still coming in, the police and ATF were still trying to determine if there were other unexploded bombs lurking in the city. And then some yahoo asks him if the government (which includes him) killed these people on purpose.
    When you do not allow your world view to become clouded by facts,  then everything, Every Thing that happens is a puzzle piece that fits perfectly into that world view. Well, it fits if you  jam it in really hard and bend up a few corners and never even try to turn it over to see the picture on the other side. Just ignore the fact that there were no loudspeakers telling people to be calm right before the bombs went off as you claim there were, and that simple human decency dictates that while a few people might be evil and go crazy, no government is going get it  together to fake the murder of 20 school children and hire actors to portray grieving parents and traumatized police officers , or set off a bomb in a crown of spectators and kill an 8 year old child just as a pretext to take away your guns. Ignore all that- and it all fits perfectly!!
    Bill O'Reilly,  firm in his dedication to making this attack somehow the fault of the people and groups he is paid to hate, complained that President Obama, in his brief statement 3 hours after the bombing, " called the attack a tragedy. It was not."  
     Without getting into how tragic this all must seem to the people who lost their legs yesterday, it is depressing to find him still so single-minded in his pursuit of the "Obama as the root of all bad things' agenda that he could not think of anything more informative, more helpful, more comforting or hopeful to contribute to America in her time of insecurity and fear than to attack the word 'tragedy'.

    Look. There are people whose job it is to sift through information, to listen to tips and rumors and speculation in order to try to  discover who did this. But that is not what we need to do today.
  Think of all the people who turned and ran into the smoke and flames and blood. They didn't do it to stand over the  injured and shout "Oh my God, I bet Muslims/ white supremicists/ the CIA  did this to you!!" They actually offered assistance, or supported others who did. When America is injured, we need to offer asssistance, not speculation. And for 99% of us, our job today is to take a deep breath, to offer support where we can, to unite as a people and to move forward- cautious, perhaps, but not fearful and not blaming out of fear.
    Yes, there are monsters under the bed. They have always been there. They thrive in darkness. And so it is our task to keep the light of truth and basic human kindness shining when we are faced with monsters. Because when it's hard to know which way is safe, all we can do is stay strong, patient, reasoned and hopeful.

I miss the stars.
We gave them away, here in the city,
traded Andromeda for 24 hour Walmarts
and their moon-scape parking lots,
offered up the best of  Milky Way, like Manhattan,
for a few worthless trinkets of neon.

In the country, you can't get midnight movies or 2 AM chicken nuggets
but you have the Pleiades
and the stars will dance for you all night long.
I think I could live in a cabin on the side of a mountain
with no news but the morning clouds’ weather report
and the crow's warning,
tend my garden by day and at night
watch it get well and truly dark,
sit on my porch and catch the all-night sky parade,
featuring the the high-def soundtrack of the cosmos.

The rocks and hills show no sign now.
The trees look the same, greening joyfully into spring.
The wind that gathers does not tear at them, yet-
large bones, after all, are the last to break.

So it's easy for us to pretend that it's over
and we have all moved on,
washed the wound, healed, started again clean.
But the butterflies of Fukushima know what we will not see.

They crawl from their silken wombs still damp with impossibility
to unfurl antennae bent and blind,
wings, in colors unrecognizable, are curled and incomplete
unable to long support their wobbling, jagged flight;
as lacey as our own torn hearts.

We sturdy caterpillars still stump along our leaves,
up and down,
as if we can maintain  forever  this state of  heedless consumption, 
plumply indifferent to the future yet
carrying within us the embers of the bonfire.

Life in transition is always the most vulnerable,
ever the first to be blown off course by the gathering storm.
The desert dust smells of olive trees seeking deep for water
but the stillborn of Fallujah taste the difference in the wind.
Making no more sound than falling butterflies
they  emerge from their cocoons the color of heartache
twisted and blue, limbs fused, single eye weeping,
wearing their hearts outside their chests,
so thoroughly are they broken
silent mouths speaking a truth
which we turn up to TV set and try not to hear.

Butterflies and babies are the unwitting canaries
in the coal mine of human stupidity,
tiny monsters wrought of a monstrous power and arrogance
blinded by blind desires, twisted and melted into the new reality
of life on an earth in the midst of a terrifying internal metamorphosis,
answering the anti-biological imperative of teratogenic technology.
We, blind as the butterflies, refuse to see it, continue to devour- everything
as they scream their warning into the silent spring.

    I once read an account of a girl in Saudi Arabia, in her early teens, who was gang-raped by her brother and his friends. They were at her house having a party and she was upstairs, trying to study. The party grew very loud and she went downstairs to ask them to quiet down a little and was brutally attacked.
    There was a trial, and in due course she was sentenced to be stoned to death. SHE was. For the crime of tempting these poor young men. I mean, that harlot, what else could they do when she came walking in with her flannel pajamas on and asked them to turn the music down? Her indecency caused them to lose control and forced them into this act.

    In America, thank God, we don't stone our young rape victims… with actual stones. We use twitter, text messages, blogs and the national news. We hurl our hate until they bleed.

    It is only the latest case, but the recent verdict in the Steubenville rape trial is a perfect example. If you listen to the press and read the accounts on many blogs, those poor boys were victimized by a drunk 16 year old harlot who ruined their bright futures by forcing them to assault her. No one denies it happened (they took pictures! that's how bright they are!) and no one even claims she said yes. Their entire defense, the reason half the community was outraged that she would file charges against these football star heros?
She didn't say no.
   See, she was drunk. Very drunk (and possibly drugged as well, but the police lied and told her they couldn't test for that, so we'll never know for sure) and apparently, in America, if you are female and you wear short skirts or tight blouses and you drink, then you want sex. With anyone.
    Drunk = yes.  Insensiate = yes.
   Well it must, to judge from the "she should have known better!"  and 'she was clearly asking for it" commentary.

    Hey, guys, let me ask you a question. If you invite someone you work with into your home for dinner and before they leave they steal your wallet, television and computer- do the police, the media and your neighbors say "Well what did you think would happen when you let them come in? Can you blame the guy for assuming that you *wanted* him to have your flat-screen TV when you made him stroganoff? Are you sure you didn't say he could have it and then regret it the next day when you wanted to watch the game?"
   And when (if) they charge your former friend the burglar, does his defense attorney sift through your dishwasher and recycling bin and say "Your honor, he had a beer with dinner!!! No wonder my client thought those items were his to take!"

   So can we just get one thing straight? Clothes are not 'asking for it'. Flirting is not 'asking for it'. Dancing with a guy at a bar, or walking to your car alone or having sex with some other man last night– none of these things are 'asking for it'. The only thing that is 'asking for it' is  actually asking for it!!

   Despite the best efforts of some of the community (who were appalled that she would threaten their testosterone-ruled status quo) and her fellow party-goers (who thought it was hysterically funny that this unconscious girl was getting assaulted)  a 'guilty' verdict was handed down. The media gravely informed us of this solemn occasion and practically wept for these poor young men, whose once-bright futures had been brutally cut short by this tragic event, which would label them 'sex offenders' for life and possibly end their dreams of college.
   No one mourned for the victim and the dreams she had which may now be ended. Reviled, labeled a slut and a liar who set out to destroy the football dreams of an entire community simply because 'When you wake up drunk and naked, you have to come up with some excuse to tell your parents!" and -Oops!- mentioned by name in the national media… no one wondered how the rape, let alone the trial, will affect her future.
    Will her family have to move to escape the harassment and  threats of violence? Will her father have to take a lower-paying job somewhere else and be unable to provide her with money for college? Will she become withdrawn, afraid to go to parties or even be in crowds for fear of what might happen to her there? Will she suffer insomnia and depression, realizing that for the rest of her life she will be 'that rape girl"?

   This is a sad story without a happy ending for anyone, but let's be quite clear on this: if those young men's futures have been ruined, they were ruined the moment they committed rape, NOT because they have been held accountable for their crime.

    There are so many depressing tales to tell here. There is the story of a society that is dangerously unconcerned about underage drinking, the story of the 'haves' (in this case the football community) and the 'have nots', the dangers of social media  and the insane need to broadcast your cruelty, racism or even criminal behavior to the world. (Police combed through literally thousands of  calls, text messages and tweets sent by kids at the party about the incident- but not ONE of them contacted the police)
    It's the tale of a nation where a United States congressman testifies that women frequently lie and say they were raped as an excuse to get an abortion, another agrees that 'some girls rape easy' and others feel we need to differentiate between 'forcible' rape and… the other kind.
   And the bizarre, tragic story of a society that seems to believe that its young women are nothing but sexual receptacles for men so weak that they cannot reasonably be expected to control themselves if an inebriated girl in a short skirt smiles at them.
 

UPDATE: the defense attorney for one of the young men in this case has announced his intention to appeal the verdict on the grounds that his 16 year old client is young and his brain is 'not fully formed'. Therefor it is unreasonable to label him a sex offender for something he did with an unformed brain.

    There is indeed some science behind the idea that for all their bodies may look mature, the highest reasoning abilities of teenagers are not yet fully formed. But I have two thoughts on this claim.
       ~We try 16 year olds as adults all the time, and sentence them to life in prison. I'm not saying I completely agree with this, but if 'fully formed' doesn't carry water there, why should it here?
       ~This young man clearly believes himself mature enough to drive a car, to drink alcohol (despite society telling him he is not yet ready) and to have sex. But he wants us to believe that he is not 'fully formed' enough to know that he should not assault an unconscious girl? Really? Because concepts like respect and boundaries and understanding what assault is are such incredibly high reasoning skills that he shouldn't be expected to have them yet?

   Yeah, try again. If this society is willing to swallow the premise that our 16 year old girls are mature enough to be held responsible for being 'teases' or 'sluts' but boys  are not mature enough to understand basic respect for other people, then America needs to stop letting her young men go out without a leash.

    Ladies and gentlemen, former Governor Mike Huckabee wants you to know that if you are poor and you contract a treatable but costly condition… you should just die. Now  he's not honest enough to actually admit it, but that is the clear logical conclusion to his scenario.

    This week Huckabee compared trying to obtain health insurance to cover a pre-existing condition to going to State Farm a week after your house burned down and asking to buy a policy. If you ask to purchase insurance after you learn you have cancer and are faced with treatment costs you cannot afford, the genial Reverend Huck says that's just like trying to insure your car after you total it. And that's crazy, right? That's Entitlement with a capital "E"! And so….

  And so- what? His fawning FOX News interviewers,  awed by his sagacity and amused by his wit just left it there, but I want to someone to ask him- "…and so- what, governor? In America, the land of the free, a nation of incredible wealth– what should happen next to this human being, who has apparently burned to the ground?" 
    How does this track? If you wreck your car and have no insurance to fix it, I suppose, worst case scenario, you can always just do without a car and bum a ride from a friend or ride the bus. If you develop diabetes and have no insurance… there is no long-term health care equivalent to riding the bus. You can't really bum a friend's glucometer or drop by the ER for daily treatments for a buck-fifty.
    And so… what? You should just grow sicker and sicker, and even die without treatment? Sucks to be you, but you're no better than a wrecked Ford, pal.  I mean you were stupid enough not to buy health insurance — on your $9/hr Walmart salary. Yes, only stupidity- and a desire to eat- would ever prevent a person from buying your own insurance!  If you were that foolish, spending money on luxuries like rent and electricity- don't expect the insurance company to have to pay for your foolishness!
   Just die already.

   This is wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. First of all,  we actually require people to have car insurance, and home-owners insurance, which prevents these scenarios, but hey- why ruin a good analogy with realism, right?  Mike Huckabee wrongly blames rising health costs on insurance companies having to cover pre-existing conditions, which is just not the case. There are many reason for rising costs, and one of them is the fact that so many people lack health insurance and cannot get routine, preventative care. One of them is not people with pre-existing conditions who can no longer be denied coverage.
   The scenario Huckabee presents is far from the usual situation, either. Sure there are people who could buy insurance but don't- until they are diagnosed with cancer. But for millions of Americans, the story is not like that at all. By and large, people want  health insurance. People want to be able to go to the doctor when they get sick without sweating bullets over how much it will cost! But it's not always possible to get, and it's not always possible to keep.
    When you change jobs, anything you were being treated for under your old plan is now a pre-existing condition.
    Suppose you have a job and insurance, and you and your husband decide to start a family… and right after you learn that you're expecting,  you lose your job.  That baby you were so excited about 2 months ago when you went to the doctor?  It's now a pre-existing condition! Just like a burned down house. Mike Huckabee thinks it's ridiculous for you to ask your new employer's insurance to pay for your foolishness!
   Yes, this man, who is SO concerned about the health of every damn egg in your body that  he doesn't even want you to be allowed to take birth control pills- just in case what doctors say won't happen, happens and it prevents a fertilized zygot from implanting in your womb… this same man would rather you go without health care during your pregnancy than require an insurance company to  offer you a policy. How's that for family values!

   Of course, if confronted about this dichotomy, he'd probably offer some 'bootstrap'  hogwash about personal responsibility and it's not your insurance company's fault that you had sex, so you need to suck it up and pay out of your own pocket. I mean heavens, he's not actually saying you should die, he's just saying…uh… What?  Be required to pay much, much more for an insurance policy? 
   But the reality is that unless you forgo electricity, or gas for your car, or eating… paying hospital delivery bills out of pocket or carrying much higher premiums (as 'punishment' for being so 'reckless' ) just isn't a possiblity for many people! I don't know what he thinks the working people of America are spending their money on instead of health insurance, (Bingo?) but trust me, for a lot of folks- it's food and rent!!

     And for our hypothetical cancer man? Gee, maybe his church can hold a bake sale to raise money for his chemo. Ok, ok- a thousand bake sales.
     This, to me, is the very definition of "entitlement": believing that because you have easy access to affordable health insurance, anyone who doesn't have it must be stupid, or lazy, and deserves to…. just die, if that's what it comes to. He doesn't want you to die, but in the name of fairness and the free market, it's a sacrifice he's willing to make.
    Heartless. Utterly without compassion. And definitely NOT pro-life, Mr. Huckabee. No, not even a little bit.