The Color Purple

Today, people across the nation will be wearing various shades of purple, to show their solidarity with the LGBT community and to remember the recent deaths of six gay teens, who committed suicide due to bullying and/or through denigration by peers. We do this, not as a one-off moment, but as a resolution, that no teenager, gay or straight, deserves to be bullied for who and what they are. Hatred and fear can no longer be allowed to carry the day; Americans of good conscience must stand up, as one, and proclaim from every corner of the nation: "No person born to freedom and liberty shall have theirs infringed by anyone."

Know Your Rights

An interesting thing happened this morning: a candidate for public office was revealed to have a very incomplete knowledge of the Constitution. During a debate with her rival Chris Coons, Delaware Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell, darling of The Tea Party, was perplexed by the idea that the separation of Church and State was explicitly spelled out in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." It apparently came as something of a shock to her. She was further knocked off her game by a question about whether she would repeal the 14th, 16th, or 17th Amendments, confessing: "I'm sorry, I didn't bring my Constitution with me."

To be part of a party that claims the present administration is subverting the Constitution, and wanting desperately to "restore" it, wouldn't it be nice to know exactly what's in it?

A Real Pledge To America

The Republican Party revealed its “Pledge To America” to great fanfare, as if to say: “We've heard you, and here's what we're going to do.” Sadly, what they intend to do if the regain control of Congress, is to do more of the same that got them ousted four years ago, and which imperiled the country by allowing the recent economic collapse of two years ago. Having learned little from their most recent stint on the bench, their pledge is little more than window-dressing for a return to “trickle-down economics,” unsupported tax cuts, and the savaging of social programs and departments necessary to keep Americans safe. In addition, there will be the requisite attempts to undo the new health care law and find a way to outlaw abortion.

Somewhere in this mass of iniquity, there is a sincere desire to help America, though its execution leaves much to be desired. The problem comes, much as it does from the Democratic Party, in an adherence to the party line and an inflexibility born of partisanship. If every political issue is made into a two-sided debate, with neither side willing to compromise, and more importantly, no consideration of the needs of American citizens, then it can be said that our representative system of government no longer works as intended. George Washington, in his farewell speech to America at the end of his last term, counseled as much, warning of the dependency on political parties over sound individual judgment.

Social Networks

The conviviality and comradeship expressed in a human get-together cannot be simulated nor synthesized. It is a product of the multivariate social interaction of people with so many different points of view and experiences, that whatever commonality brings them together, the end result is a Brownian soup of interplay. Whatever we may be, as humans, we are a social species, starting with the act of parenthood, all the way up to the formation of nation-states. It is our interaction and interlocking that built the greatest works of humanity... and, occasionally, wrought our worst upheavals.

The world we live in now, a world our ancestors would no doubt find exhilarating and confounding, is a global village, where the barriers between continents are breached as easily as between localities. Our planet is girded by highways of earth, air, and sea; the rarest and most precious things, the greatest sites, the most palatable foods, are now close at hand, rather than longed for at titanic distances. Where we cannot go physically, we are not barred, flinging ourselves across wires and into the depths of space, to reach across the breadth of our home, touching others with words, and pictures, and sounds.

Even so, great gulfs remain, made not of stone or sand or tectonic stress, but human gall and greed.

Don't Think Pink

October is officially Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the United States, though it might be more accurately termed "Breast Cancer Exploitation Month." Pink is everywhere: ribbons, bumper stickers, T-shirts, water bottles, bracelets, charms, key chains, even on the shoes and gloves of NFL players. The profusion and panoply of pink-tinged items cannot help but catch the eye and assault the senses. One wonders, though, if the energies put into organizing this explosion of pink paraphernalia are wasted in the cause of awareness, reducing breast cancer to a Disney-esque parade. For as surely as the avalanche began, it became an Internet meme, perverted into something which had less to do with awareness of breast cancer, and more to do with frat boy frolics.

If we are going to talk about awareness of the prevalence and dangers behind breast cancer, let's look at the statistics: