The Past Becomes the Future

This is the center of three piers at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Here is where I was introduced to the pleasures of troopship travel.

Prior to arriving, we had spent four hours on a ferry from Camp Stoneman in Pittsburg. When the ferry reached Mason, the tugs parked it on one side of the pier, and we debarked (a new term learned then) and assembled in the shed where we waited until the ferry had been emptied.

Then we were lined up by number and marched aboard a troopship parked on the other side of the pier. The entire process from Stoneman to our bunks in Compartment C and then a walk up a couple of gangways (’nother new term) for an idle stroll around the main deck took about seven hours.

In mid-afternoon, I felt the ship move almost imperceptibly, and then I noticed the gap of water between the side of the ship and the pier widen. Shortly, the tugs began to slide the ship backwards until it cleared the end of the pier. Then just as slowly, the tugs swung the bow of the ship around until it pointed at the Golden Gate Bridge. Soon, the tugs dropped away and the ship was on its own, heading toward the open sea beyond the orange span.

As the ship moved toward the Bridge, I walked along the deck so that I could look up at it as we slid below. And then I walked aft and leaned on the rail, watching the Bridge grow smaller and smaller until at least it disappeared.

I remember clearly at that moment the tears in my eyes and the terrible thought that I would never again see my family. The brains of 18-year old males are at one and the same time adventurous, amorous, and loaded with trepidation and high emotion.

Call it luck or the hand of God as you choose, but two years later I sailed under the bridge, into the bay, and joked over the rail with the tug sailors who shouted up at us that San Francisco women would take our money. “Stay out of the bars,” they said.

Fortunately, I was on my way to a discharge at Parks in Pleasanton and freedom at last. I had no time for an interlude with the San Francisco ladies. The feeling of euphoria is difficult to resurrect now, but suffice to say, I could have walked on water at the thought of relaxing for a few months before deciding on my future.

Mason is still there, much in its original form. It’s been turned over to the city and serves some interesting purposes such as an arena for fashion shows, which are nice if you are into that sort of thing but which serve no useful purpose unless you consider skeletal women in grotesque clothes disjointedly walking to the end of a runway, whirling around, and returning, a valuable purpose.

When I think about inane activities like this, which aren’t restricted to San Francisco, by the way, I am often confounded by the utter self-absorption that has given rise to a culture and an entire economic industry based on a transitory act of physical indulgence. Foreplay by any other name is still foreplay.

But I have more unsettling thoughts. I wonder if my brief time in uniform contributed in any way to the vital national defense of the United States. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret my service.

But the nearest I ever came to combat and either heroism or cowardice was sitting in the passenger seat of a car across the street from a bus station in Oakland watching two United States Marines do their level best to beat the living hell out of a single sailor who more than held his own.

Despite my constant calls then for fairness and equity, I Cheneyed out. I deferred to the sailor. I remained in the safety of the car. I rationalized my failure by convincing myself that the sailor could more than take care of himself, and then suddenly, before I could think further, the fight ended and the combatants faded into the darkness.

Someone had called the police, and the fighters hadn’t yet sunk into a state of absolute, unmerciful degradation. They heard the siren. They were after all United States servicemen. They didn’t want to kill each other. Did they?

Today, I still hide the cowardice of that time and place by blathering about fairness and equity. Two on one is patently unfair, I proudly proclaim, as if I would never be a disinterested bystander when someone is in need. Deep inside, though, I know my own reluctance.

I am your classic, patriotic All American, a man without an American flag lapel pin, a condition I justify neatly with a classic degree of political cowardice by pointing out that I do not wear shirts or coats with lapels, and I have no intention of having an American flag tattooed on my forehead.

Besides–and we all know this, right?–a symbol isn’t a gauge of reality. Or, as someone wrote once upon a time, “The map is not the territory.” For those who say they will not vote for Barack because he doesn’t wear an American flag lapel pin, I say fine and dandy. Don’t vote for him. I would hazard a guess that he prefers only intelligent people in the booths on election day anyway.

I wonder if the 4,000 plus American men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan would be wearing lapel pins if they were alive. My guess is that some would and some would not.

I also wonder if those men and women once believed in fairness and equity. Did they think it unfair for two to pick on one? Did they believe they had an obligation to help those in need?

Would they come to the aid of an abused child or an abused spouse? Or would they, in their sheer elation and euphoria at the joy of life, choose to look another way? To create justifications? To attend fashion shows at Fort Mason where men once sailed off to give their lives so that those very inanities could thrive?

Barack Obama is at this moment like the sailor I witnessed withstanding an almost overwhelming attack by two United States Marines. I have no doubt that he will not fade into the night. He will remain in the arena. He doesn’t need a lapel pin.

Help Prevent Child Abuse

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

About 3,000,000 cases of child abuse are reported annually in America. Between 97 and 100 thousand of those cases involve children under the age of two.

The types of child abuse are many.
• Physical abuse of all kinds
• Sexual abuse
• Abandonment
• Constant criticisms
• Absentee parent or parents
• Exposure to drug or alcohol use
• Failure to provide adequate nutrition, clothing, shelter, or schooling

A majority of children who suffer abuse grow up to be abusive parents. Abuse is a vicious cycle.

A large number of abuse victims also end up as alcoholics, drug addicts, and prison inmates. I once taught night classes at a prison. Almost every inmate in my classes had been sentenced for a drug or alcohol-related crime and most had been the victims of abuse as children.

Educating adults seems to be an effective method of reducing the incidences of child abuse if a child abuser can be reached, but oddly those who most need education and counseling do not respond to advertising campaigns for the simple reason that most don’t read newspapers or watch educational programs. Public service announcements are also largely ineffective in attracting potential counseling clients.

Moreover, almost all child abusers will deny that their actions rise to the level of abuse, and without observing someone actually attack a child, counselors operate at a disadvantage in investigating child abuse cases.

Even those who understand the impact of their actions are often too ashamed to seek help.

How can an ordinary citizen do his or her part in reducing child abuse? Very little, it seems. In our litigious society, we run the risk of contending with a lawsuit, or worse, a physical attack if the abuser learns our identity or even suspects it.

Perhaps the best we can do is serve as an example within our communities by treating our own children, and all children with whom we come into contact, gently and with the respect they deserve as human beings.

Children are like tiny mimes. They emulate our behaviors, our facial expressions, our reactions to them. If we lose our temper and strike our child or constantly demean it, the child will emulate those behaviors for most of its life. We can save them from a life of unhappiness by acting appropriately.

Or maybe we can make a difference if we volunteer with a child abuse agency. Here is a starting point if you wish to help a child.

Pain don’t hurt …

…especially when you inflict it on someone else…

“This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you, son.”

Whop! Bam! Bang! Wham! Pow! Awop-bop-a-loo-mop alop bom bom! Tutti Fruitti Aw Ruti!

“I’ll be good, daddy! I’ll be good!”

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson, son.”

“Yes, Daddy, I have learned my lesson. I want to grow up to be just like you. (Sotto Voce: I’m going to beat the crap out if my kid, too).

“That’s a good boy.”

This is a scenario that plays out every day all over America. Little kids have the crap beaten out of them by very large adults. Think of a 180 pound male “spanking” a 40 pound child. The kid doesn’t have a chance.

Check this article on the Contra Costa Times for the views and experiences of Alamo resident Jordan Riak, a retired school teacher, who has waged a 30-year fight against spanking in schools and in homes. His common sense approach: reward acceptable behavior but do not reward unacceptable behavior. Kids are smarter than border collies, but they are also somewhat like Pavlov’s Dog. They learn to associate stimuli with imminent reward fairly quickly through a “conditioned response.”

Sure, I spanked my children. That’s no excuse for me to continue or for anyone to emulate me. But somewhere along the line, perhaps through the invisible hand of common sense, a light bulb went off. I thought about Pavlov and British philosopher Jeremy Bentham who described Britain’s Common Law as Dog Law.

He wrote, “When your dog does anything you want to break him of, you wait till he does it, and then beat him for it.”

He went on, “Under the CL system judges were guided by precedents, but these precedents were collected, at best, in obscure books which were frequently written in Latin and inaccessible to anyone except judges and lawyers…Such a law might be suitable for ‘those who neither know how to write, nor how to speak,’ that is to say ‘for brutes.’ Yet in England it was what passed for the rule of law.”

In other words, the Common Law system was “after the fact,” a system under which citizens did not know and were not informed of the law in advance. The system amounted to “beating the dog after the dog had done something that the master didn’t like.”

Bentham’s words sound like a perfect description of child rearing in America. A two-year old child may have an intelligent look in its eyes. But intelligence isn’t the same as knowledge. It isn’t the same as knowing the difference between right and wrong. And it isn’t the same as knowing in advance how an unpredictable parent will react.

Is spanking a child a form of child abuse? Some say yes, some no. My argument varies somewhat. The real abuse isn’t the pain of spanking but the lessons we teach our kids, the conditioned responses we instill in their immature brains. Violence is okay, son. Stop crying now and be a man.

One result of the lessons we teach is about 3,000,000 reported cases of child abuse every year in the U.S. Another is the uncounted number of times a more powerful spouse or domestic partner beats the weaker partner. Add about 20,000-30,000 murders a year in our country and you might begin to think that violence is the answer to all of our frustrations.

But then again, pain don’t hurt. Patrick Swayze done tole me so.

More Logic-tight thinking

Yesterday, we commended Bush for the encouragement he offered a young teen girl battling addiction by citing his own struggle and recovery as an example for her to emulate. We followed our comment with some examples of contradictory thinking on his part, thinking he seemed unable to understand exemplified skewed logic:

• His failure to address the 3,000,000 children who are victims of child abuse in America every year.
• The war in Iraq, which has taken parents from children here and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, today we learn that he has vetoed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a program that has received wide bi- partisan support in the Congress but doesn’t have enough support in the House to override a veto. Bush’s logic and it’s inevitable outcome:

• The Democratic bill would allow adults into the program.
• Expand the program to higher incomes.
• Raise taxes.
• Therefore: Children out in the cold.

Apparently his demands aren’t total deal killers, however. He’s more subtle than that. He merely made a classic strategic my-way-or-the-highway offer of compromise which could never be accomplished even if all sides agreed. His demand: all children eligible for the program must be located and enrolled. Then, adults and those in higher incomes can be covered.

Question: How can more than one million homeless children under the age of 18, who shift from place to place regularly, be located, identified, and recorded?

In the meantime, millions of children live without adequate medical care. How can this be in the world’s richest nation?

Because no one seems to grasp the utter disconnect between a public expression of encouragement to a teen and the high-powered machinations of politicians who are able to get up in the morning, look at themselves in the mirror, and head for a doctor’s office because they have a taxpayer-funded health care plan.

This is the holiday season. The least our “leaders” could do is deliver America’s children a Christmas present, or a Hanukkah present, or whatever label you prefer. A present without a label would also suffice.

The President’s alcohol addiction

Check this link for an ABC story headlined Bush: ‘I Doubt I’d be Standing Here if I Hadn’t Quit Drinking Whiskey.’

He goes on to say …”beer and wine and all that.” And he reveals that he quit drinking over 20 years ago cold turkey.

After I read Martha Radatz’s article, I thought about his remarks. The parallels between his story of alcohol abuse and mine, and millions of other Americans, are startling, even down to his reasons for leaving a self-destructive life style.

The difference is that none of us ever became President of the United States and never will. Even so, there is absolutely no question that our decisions improved the quality of life all around us.

Does Bush’s confession change my opinion of his presidency? No. The differences between someone’s private life and his or her capabilities and competence can be miles apart. In Bush’s case, he is a good man for having enhanced the lives of his own family and for instilling a ray of hope in a teen who confessed her struggle to break her addiction. The President, whether we admit it or not, whether we like him or not, showed great compassion toward this young girl.

But he’s a classic case of someone who has risen far above his Level of Incompetence. It’s unfortunate that his compassion hasn’t extended to the 3,000,000 or more children abused every year in our country. If only he would push for ironclad legislation to punish child abusers, our country could perhaps then be called “a compassionate country.”

And if only he would end this insane war in Iraq. Bush seems unable to escape logic-tight thinking. In the “logic tight compartment” thought mechanism we all learned about in Psych 101, everything is a subject in and unto itself. There are millions of dots, but none are ever connected. Reasoning thus occurs within a million tiny self-contained bubbles. This may help explain how a person can be kind in one case and cruel in another.

I sense that trait about Bush even as I commend his encouraging words to that young girl. Am I guilty of logic tight thinking? Maybe. But then again, I would hope an American president would possess more brains than me. God! I hope so. If not, we may be in for a bumpy ride.

What’s life all about without Zorro to kick around?

Well for one thing, there’s The Gabster.

Now that it’s all over but the vote counting and he has won an “overwhelming” victory with about 45,000 votes, or roughly 41% of the ballots tallied, he’s ready for the governor’s office and after that, who know?

The Presidency? Hollywood stardom? World renown and approbation? The first man to circle the Earth on an inflated ego? The first cuckolder on the moon? The universe is his oyster.

In the meantime, what? Who or what will we fixate on next?

The Texas Twerp’s disastrous foreign policies? Maybe. We’ll see.

Torture? Nothing to argue about. Torture is wrong. Waterboarding is torture. Waterboarding is wrong. Dianne Feinstein is wrong. See SFWillie’s Blog for the latest take on her.

Democratic gutlessness? Strong possibilities but….what else is new in politics?

David Copperfield’s techniques for picking up women? Exceptionally strong possibilities because he reportedly had a detailed plan to divert their boyfriends and husbands. Tie in with GN? Tempting.

RT? Not on the radar at this time. We’ll think about it when and if she emerges from the shadows. Let the poor kid move on with her life. Even more than el Gabo, she deserves an opportunity to lead a productive existence.

Looking back at the way things used to be? We prefer looking forward, although a few recollections now and then are definitely nice.

We’ll see. Time for a final decision later. Until then, we’ll continue to dream up ridiculous labels for Das Gabermeister. Let’s see, Japanese? Ilocano? Persian…? Limitless possibilities.

National Women’s Political Caucus SF

Women’s issues have always been one of our concerns because we are and have been surrounded by females since the earliest memories.

If you are like we are, most likely you were raised by a grandmother, mother, aunts galore, sisters, and several female pets.

In later life came a wife, daughters, a female feline, and a parrot. Each and every one of these has exerted a powerful influence on the lives and attitudes of those around them.

That observation isn’t meant to exclude male relatives. All of them worked industriously and we aspired to become exactly like them. And most of us did, but with an added element, an appreciation for women’s struggles to achieve social and political parity with men.

Perhaps that explains how I stumbled across a website for the National Women’s Political Caucus San Francisco.

The entire website should be of interest to anyone concerned about women’s rights, but one part struck me as particularly interesting.

On the FAQ page, I found this question: Why do we endorse only women?

The answer in part: “…women govern differently than men…elected women, regardless of their party or ideological affiliation, place a higher value and spend more time on issues impacting children and families.”

We’ve argued for years that America is a throw-away society. We discard used goods in a heartbeat, and immediately trade in a perfectly good used car for a new one for no reason other than a desire to show our affiliation with the cool crowd.

We also discard human beings, paramount among them innocent children. Over 3,000,000 cases of child abuse are reported in our country every year. And domestic abuse is pandemic with women as the prime targets in almost all cases. This speaks to an unparalleled degree of personal absorption over defenseless beings.

I find a good deal of humor when I observe politics. But the failure of our political system to assure the safety of our women and children is no laughing matter.

The National Women’s Political Caucus deserves mention for its efforts get our country on the right course.

Observation: In the not too distant past, boys wanted to be like the adult males in their lives. Today, adult males want to be like boys. Maybe this accounts for the explosion of adolescent males running our country.