Tag Archives: politics

The Helped

I find myself spending too much time thinking about the world I will leave to my 13 year-old, Rachel. There seems to be a whole lot of bad news some days. Recently, the attacks in Belgium just seem to be latest senseless act of a growing set of desperate people who feel they are not being heard. The mayhem always has the violence porn industry in tow. I wonder if there is an antidote to the hopelessness, fear and impending doom Rachel sees every day.

Then I remember Fred.

Fred Rogers, that’s Mister Rogers to you and me, seemed to be the world’s ambassador to children. He delicately explained the world to us in all it’s wonder and all it’s chaos. He seemed to instinctively know what we needed. That sweater and those sneakers were our symbols of certainty, sanity and safety before we even knew what those words meant. He spoke our language in a steady voice which never stooped to condescension. I guess Mister Rogers learned well the story of Job in seminary because his patience seemed to be unlimited.

Do you remember how he told us we could think about a disaster?

He told us the story of his mom’s advice about how he could think about disaster and violence porn. She told him simply, “look for the helpers.” In our language, he told us faith and hope would be found in the “helpers.” He felt so strongly about his mom’s helper concept that he urged the violence porn industry not to edit those helpers from their porn.

Did you watch Mister Roger’s Neighborhood as a child?

I look for the helpers today. I find great solace in them today. I think Jesus would have been a helper. In spite of personal danger, these people run toward the fire. Many have no skills to bring to bear once they make it to the breach. They might be bricklayers, garbage men and window washers but, they try to help anyway. Knowing their only contribution might be human kindness, they are willing to give it. Their split-second decision is to love.

Do you know people like this?

In my recent spiritual spring cleaning, I have made a decision to look for the helpers. I have made a conscious decision to reduce the influence in my life of people who seem to take pleasure in violence porn. I want to replace those people with helpers as influences in my life. This is an endeavor for me and not a transformation. I have however found peace in the journey. It is not my nature to run toward the fires of this life but, there is peace there. I have to be honest here. It is not my nature to serve those I don’t feel worthy. I feel that there are people in my life who build fires in their’s every day. My nature is not to run toward those self-made fires.

Have you had your feet washed in a figurative or literal sense lately.

I think back to all those who washed my feet. There were times I did not deserve it. There were times I would not have washed my own feet. Helpers have been everywhere in my life. Those helpers came exactly when I needed them. Fortunately for me, they didn’t ask questions. Perhaps some of them once had the same done for them. Perhaps they washed out of gratitude. Perhaps they washed out of a longing for peace. Regardless, the affect on my life has been profound and lasting. I am grateful for the helpers, the foot-washers. They are the perfect antidote for the darkness which visits all of us. I pray that there are lots of helpers in Brussels. I pray that the children of Belgium get to see plenty of those helpers in action.

Picture Credit

George Washington for President

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The Sunday Morning Sermon

In case you haven’t noticed, this is a political season in America and I have to tell you, I am a little fed up. I am so tired of half-truths, spin and outright lies I am starting to feel sick when I turn on the news. Truth has somewhere, somehow died a slow and painful death and I am pretty sure I missed the funeral. Through it all however, I believe most of the ugliness, pettiness and divisiveness would be gone tomorrow if we agreed not to support people who lie.

I am sure you heard the candidate who told us most in the illegal Hispanic population were rapists and drug dealers.

That statement was more than crude and in my 53 years I have heard crude. It was more than racist, because I believe the statement would have made Bull Conner blush. It was more than insensitive, because I can not fathom the kind of dinner table questions Hispanic moms and dads had to answer. It was decidedly more than unchristian but, not for the reason you might think. It was more than cringe-worthy, in a season with a pretty high cringe-quotient.

It was a lie.

When did we begin to honor dishonesty? When did we start giving little Johnny a cookie when he told a whopper? “I am so proud of Johnny. He is a natural born liar.” When did we begin rewarding little Suzy when she copied her homework answers? “We are so proud of Suzy. She cheated her way to Valedictorian.” Do they give you a medal at WestPoint now for lying? “For meritorious and capricious lying, the Congressional Medal of Dishonor goes to…” Has the story of George Washington and the cherry tree been erased from our national memory? “I am not sure little Georgie has a future in politics. He just can’t tell a lie.”

We still have a zero-tolerance policy on the fib at our house. Should we change that? Have you?

So, why on earth are we considering liars for public office… I am not sure considering is strong enough, how about seeking? Yup, instead of disagreeing with the other side, whatever that is, we want our politicians to turn the other side into fire-breathing, hell-bent bonafide monsters. So if public office means a suspension of reality, then I hereby nominate Aslan for President. Peter would make a good Supreme Court Justice while we are at it. I am sure Justice Scalia would be proud of our choice. Of course neither of them would make very good liars.

Do you think Aslan the lion would ever win a political election in this country?

I understand how useful hyperbole and exaggeration can be at times. Those devices are extremely useful in comedy and storytelling. Sometimes, exaggeration is useful in education to help define cause and effect. There is a place for things not exactly true especially when the speaker eventually tells us the truth and explains the why a lie was useful.

Have you heard such an explanation this political season? Is the fault in our stars or in ourselves?

I think we made it this way. We have rewarded fiery speakers who tell us lies about our ideological opposites for too long. We love people who think like us. We especially love those who demonize our “enemies.” That may be the crux of our problem. Somehow, our fellow citizens have become enemies. People who think differently must be stopped. We can no longer agree to disagree. We want our politicians to label our ideological enemies as unpatriotic, greedy, weak or evil. Those labels have become the talisman of a true believer. When merely saying it is so loses its effectiveness, we want them to use a religious interpretation, shoddy statistics, science-for-hire, stereotypes, prejudice… to prove our point. Any form of the lie is ok, if it leaves our ideological enemies in a figurative bloody pulp in the gutter.

Have you seen people this season in more than a figurative bloody pulp?

If we don’t mind a lie and actually encourage it, then what is next? I think all things are possible including moving from the figurative to the literal. In a democracy, we must agree to disagree from time to time. As we learned in kindergarten, things don’t always go exactly as we desire. Kick-the-can fans have to play in the sandbox from time to time and we don’t get to verbally or literally beat-up the sandbox voters. The kick-the-can voters can opt to play by themselves but, in a democracy, the game is set by the majority. A kindergartener knows outlawing all community games, because we didn’t like the vote, is not an option either. Somehow a five year-old knows telling lies about the sandboxers won’t change anything for the better. They instinctively know what we seem to have forgotten. Without the sandboxers, they won’t have enough kids to play kick-the can and some of the sandboxers make excellent kick-the-can players.

Picture Credit

Our Better Angels

Leana’s Healing Miracle

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I listen to too much NPR. Interesting people stop me in my tracks. I listen to my local station, Sirius, On-line… I especially like the TED Radio Hour. TRH appeals to both my innate curiosity and my “short little attention span,” as Paul would say. I like some of the TED talks and TRH allows me to sort those without having to spend days watching YouTube. I find little satisfaction in short made-for-cable news stories these days and NPR, TED and others seem to do the trick.

Leana Wen seems to on to something in which I believe you might be interested.

Doctor Wen was enchanted with an idea a few years ago that also enchanted the good folks over at TED. With all the hubbub over being able to select your doctor, why not enhance the experience? In a nutshell, ole Doc Wen feels the patient would better served if the doctor they selected was something a little better than a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

A strange idea; before you get naked and discuss your sex life with someone, you might have some idea who that person might be. You know, what makes the person tick.

The ticking person in question is your doctor. Knowing if your doctor made twenty percent of her income from a particular drug company might have some bearing on your care, don’t you think? I have some experience with this last one. Once, I was changed from a blood pressure medicine which was working well without explanation. My friend who worked as a bookkeeper put the change in perfect focus later. She told me she hadn’t bought lunch in years. Turns out, the drug company which made my new drug bought extravagant lunches EVERY DAY for the whole office. I wonder to what largess my doctor was treated.

I wonder how my new drug compared to the old one in cost…nevermind, I have a pretty good idea.

Doctor Wen’s idea met with quick and universal condemnation from her peers. Her life was actually threatened. I will let you watch and weigh her assertions for yourself. Her assertions however, may speak volumes. In my experience, the louder the yell, the truer the arrow. The doctors and politicians who seem to hold the doctor-patient relationship in highest regard should welcome and celebrate her ideas. Sadly, many doctors seem to feel personally invaded as Doctor Wen tells the world the emperor has no clothes. Maybe they like a naked emperor and patients as long as they can hide behind their lab coats. I just wonder who else is in the coat with them.

Al Knows Best

Broken Cadillac

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I hope you can excuse me while I depart from my normal faire. I am having a crisis of, well, usefulness. Today I was confronted with people who cannot admit my chosen avocation is anything other than an unaffordable, silly, even criminal waste of resources. I find myself looking at their logic and trying to understand why I cannot see or understand their point of view. I find myself questioning my job, belief system and even my connection to my understanding of what God wants for me in my life.

This is a little longer than usual but, maybe it is a conversation we need to have.

It started as a pretty good day. I was able to do what I do best with a large part of the day. My favorite and most productive time at work is in the recon. No, not a camouflaged romp on a moonless night. This kind of romp allows me to bring my near twenty years of transportation engineering experience, those late nights of study at Clemson and some common sense to your service. Well, your service if you drive. In these romps my tools are a vehicle, a steno pad and my brain, well, my brain attached to my eyes. I ride a state route, look for defects and decide who should fix the problem, when the problem should be fixed and how the problem should be fixed. The when is very important because, as you probably know, we are in a perpetual state of underfunding at the DOT.

Underfunding you say? I heard you clear your throat, look away and wonder if those left-over steak tips in the refrigerator were still edible. Let me stop and tell you a story.

Your gramps was sittin around with grammy a few decades ago and decided his widget business might take off if he could drive a car instead of ridin Daisy, the horse, to the people buying his widgets. He might even sell a few over in Anywhereville and Podunk. It was a few days ride to those places and he might have a real advantage over his competition with some kind of automobile. He also though that he and grammy might even be able to put some of her fried pies in a basket and drive over to the levee for a picnic from time to time.

So grampaw went downtown and bought a Cadillac. Grammy had to dig pretty deep in the cookie jar to pay for the Caddy. She had to dig even further for the oil changes, tune ups and tires which followed. Well, after a while, grampaw had made so much selling his widgets to his new customers in Podunk that he and grammy were able to go to the beach for the first time since he stormed one in Normandy. Before long your daddy came along and he too used the Caddy. He used it to go over to Backwater University and get his BS degree in stuff and things. Your daddy’s degree was another first in your family’s history. He made a good living with that Caddy. He spent his hard-earned money to take care of your grampaw’s gift and was also able to take you to the beach when you were a kid.

A few years ago, he gave you the Caddy. It needed some work on the transmission but, you said the cost was too high. You justified this decision because you had seen the transmission mechanics taking coffee breaks that were too long. You didn’t change the oil because someone on TV told you it wasn’t necessary. They told you that you could save money on oil by using some kind of a fairy dust. You knew your dad and grampaw had conscientiously bought and changed the oil for years but, you liked the idea of something for nothing. Anyway, you had heard those oil change mechanics were sorry, lazy, overpriced. One morning you woke up and needed the Caddy to get to a work meeting over in Podunk. The Caddy smoked and missed. It quit half-way to Podunk. You got fired.

Did some of the story ring true for you? If it did, you are not a bad person. You are really like everybody else when it comes to roads and funding. As long as your road seems to work then you are ok. You don’t think too hard about roads and bridges. Because, after all, some people on the TV have told you road prices are somehow different from milk prices. Yes, I compared roads to milk. Ok, try this little thought experiment with me. If you were to walk into Wal-Mart and demand milk for 1992 prices what would happen? By the way, 1992 was the last time the gas tax was increased. Do you think Wal-Mart would call people who would take you away in a straight-jacket for a nice relaxing night in a rubber room for making that demand?

But, back to my day in the life…

I ate lunch at a fast food establishment known for taking perfectly healthy fish, adding batter and deep-frying anything approaching healthy out of it. By this time, I had four pages of road defects. Unfortunately, some of the defects will have to wait. The trick, art and science of it is which ones? That’s when you really need me. Which defects are the true “widow makers” like a four-inch pavement drop off and which are inconveniences. I guess I should add one more category. Which defects will cost you the most money in the long run if I don’t fix it today?

It was now time for a meeting about a kinda dangerous set intersections next to the interstate. Two nearby truck stops and series of increasingly busy intersecting roads had boogered the exit to the point the witches brew of trucks and cars had begun to boil over. The best way to fix it was to eliminate some of the crossing roads and combine those crossing roads into one with a traffic signal. I was meeting with the local mayor and some county officials. The big question on everyone’s mind was not if a series of very bad truck versus car accidents was about to happen, it was how we would pay for the improvements. I won’t bore you with the details but, we halved the baby.

I must tell you, I worry that the metaphor turns into a real live thing.

After a few more hours and a few more pages, I met with a DOT neighbor about a driveway. He wanted to build a set of storage buildings where an old set was removed by a tornado four or five years back. I wonder how many storage buildings… who could possibly rent all these things? Anyway, this citizen was upset that his driveway must be permitted and built to today’s rules. After explaining that we engineers were an odd sort and when we figured out building something a certain way killed people, we had a strange way of asking people not to build things that way anymore. I went on to explain the people of the great state of Alabama had spoken and they really felt their gas taxes shouldn’t pay for his new driveway which would kill fewer people. My logic apparently escaped him.

Did my logic make any sense to you? Should I make myself a tin-foil hat?

After a few minutes of the citizen snorting and flinging profanities about government bureaucracy, waste and inefficiency, I noticed he had an identity badge for a local utility. Trying another tack, I asked him if his utility, also a monopoly, didn’t have rules about attaching to their services. I then asked if they didn’t learn lessons and change rules from time to time. He conceded both points but, was unmoved by my logic. Somehow a utility was different from a state DOT. I tell you, the only difference I saw was that his pay and benefits were better. Of course he also had better equipment. He also got paid for his overtime… My utility bill has seen numerous increases since 1992 and sure my neighbors and I gripe for a day or two but, that griping doesn’t morph into some kind of philosophical almost religious vendetta against utility companies.

Just tell me, why is a utility rate hike any different from a gas tax increase?

Finally, on my way home, I got the call all transportation workers dread. There had been a fatality on one of my roads. I use the personal pronoun on purpose. When there are accidents, they are accidents on MY roads. I arrived on the scene to take my pictures and do my investigation just as they were removing the victim from the vehicle. Many times there are next of kin there to identify the body. Today was no exception. There is an emotional gravity placed on your shoulders as a transportation professional at these scenes which defies my written explanation.

The fairy dust didn’t work for this victim. The fairy dust didn’t work for more than 100 others today. I am tired of fairy dust. I want my concrete, asphalt, rocks and steel back. I want a group of dedicated professionals, operators and technicians who aren’t treated as pariahs to use those materials to take care of the Cadillac your grandfather gave you.