The Only Thing We Have To Fear

I let my daughter get away with a great many things.

Chocolate bars for breakfast. Endless hours on her iPad. I don't ask her to dress herself or feed the cats or any of myriad things someone her age could be doing. I take her to school every day, kiss her on the head, tell her I love her, and head off to work.

With a sense of foreboding.

I try very hard not to fight with her, but inevitably, when I put my foot down, there are heated exchanges. I let them cool off, then I apologize profusely.

I do all this for one simple reason: I don't want her last thought of me to be a negative one.

Oh no, it's not that I have cancer, or I'm planning on running off an leaving my family.

No. It's much darker.

74 school shootings in the time since the Sandy Hook Massacre have left me with the foreboding feeling that one day, I will drop her off... and that will be it.

My parents never had this worry. Their parents never did. And so on. But I... I live with the thought, brought more prominently forward in my mind every day. The thought that my nation, the one I am so proud of, has gone so far off the rails that hundreds of thousands of people have access to military-grade weaponry and ammunition, and when the pressure of their torment reaches a fever pitch, they will wander into my daughter's school and kill her.

What does that say about us? What has our nation become that the almost daily reports of people wandering into schools and malls and military bases and shooting themselves and others does nothing to bring our collective blood to a boil? What does it say, that we throw up our hands and continue to let legislators backed by the fear-monger, gun-worshiping groups in this land run the show?

It says we are in trouble. Unless we DO SOMETHING. NOW.

Worth In The World Of Surety

No one likes the idea of a soldier failing to do his duty. We imbue soldiers with an aura of respectability and integrity that is straight out of a WWII Hollywood propaganda film. We overlook their foibles and failures until they are lain at our doorstep and then we wonder how someone like that could be in the military. The uncomfortable truth often leaves us to simply ignore them once their duty is done, as if they will magically fade back into the soil on which so many bled and died.

I don't know what to make of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, but I do know this: he did something I was unable to do, myself, in joining the Army and fighting in Afghanistan. Whatever personal flaws or failings he showed, he was there, he fought, and wrestled with what he was being asked to do, just as we wrestled with the war as it dragged on and on and on. His was a more personal interest than ours, for he stood in the teeth of the gale, and he saw the ruin it brought. We could only look from afar, knowing it all to be ill-conceived, but seemingly powerless to stop it.

The fact is, most of those now agitating for his head have not now, nor have ever had, the courage of their convictions enough to enlist to defend their home. They flail about, spouting the terms "duty" and "honor" like they are intimately familiar with them, when, in fact, they scarcely throw a glance in their direction at any time. They are willing to pound the pulpit to defend Constitutional rights, but cannot spare the time or their offspring when the hard, warm work of defending them is called for.

And the one chord I don't hear? If his compatriots were worried that he was a little "off," if they thought he might endanger the unit, why didn't they raise the issue with their CO? If they did, why didn't the CO take the concerns seriously enough to order Bergdahl out of the combat zone? If there's someone in your unit you don't fully trust, then why are they there? Maybe he wasn't cut out for combat duty. Maybe he was suffering the slow onset of PTSD. In any event, the road goes both ways, and if he failed his unit by his actions, they failed him by their inaction. But let us not pass judgment until all the facts are known, not just those spouted into a microphone.

Ultimately, that is what this is all about: conjecture and the need of some in our nation to be right. Not right in terms of factual accuracy, but in having their view validated as being the only true one. They see Bergdahl as they want to see him from moment-to-moment; before his release, they agitated just as strongly for that release as they do now to have him hanged. In fact, embarrassingly, many are having to try and cover up the tracks of their advocacy for his release, as if the hypocrisy were so easily erased in an age where, once something hits the Internet, it never goes away. Five years of vehement calls for action on Sgt. Bergdahl's behalf cannot now mysteriously vanish from time or consciousness. The hypocrisy is written and it is done.

The story of Bowe Bergdahl brings us face-to-face with the reality that now surrounds us - a vocal, energized minority in this nation wish nothing more than drag America back against the current of time to an era where things were black-and-white, where ignorant surety trumped change, where many set their heels in the face of change and pulled hard on the reins, hoping desperately to retard our progress as a nation. Their numbers continue to diminish over time, but we allow their voices to drown out those of us of more reasonable nature. We cede the field to them, allow them to impugn and denigrate everyone from our President and First Lady down to the poorest Americans, scooping up so many in between.

We stain a nation by leaving this whirlwind of inchoate rage to tear through the heart of it. We are a better people than these few who spew venom and bluster, whose words and precepts damn them as narrow-minded, foolish, and clownish. America, which prides itself on its place in the world, should not be allowed to devolve into the mire of ignorance because a fraction of us cannot tolerate change. This moment, and how we choose to deal with a single American soldier, may very well mark a page in a history book, where either it is written that we cast off the past and embraced the future fully, or the greatest experiment in democracy in the last three centuries finally came to an ignominious end. It is up to us to write that history for the better.

"War" On Christmas

It's kind of hard to imagine a more idiotic idea.

I'm willing to bet that if you drive or walk through any area in and around your home, you will see windows ablaze with candles, trees festooned with lights, inflatable Santas, candy cane decorations attached to light poles, and a massive panoply of other signs that it is Christmastime. I'm certain if you tune to your favorite radio station, you will hear at least a handful of Christmas carols, in every genre of music imaginable. Every store will be swathed in exhortations to come inside and fulfill your holiday shopping list.

So to anyone ringing the klaxon to rouse the troops to do battle for the soul of Christmas, I have two words for you:

Bah! Humbug!

I hasten to believe that most people who shriek affirmations about the death of Christmas are simply parrots, squawking out timeworn phrases and a liturgy of offenses toward the holiday which is meant to signify the birth of Jesus Christ. I say signify, because we have no idea when Christ was born. Even our whole means of numbering years is based on the false assumption that would could know exactly what year the Christian Savior was born in.

The holiday, Christmas, is a fabrication, built by the early Roman Catholic Church to coincide with the pagan rituals of the Winter Solstice, to imbue the season with more of God's power. It was a not-so-subtle attempt to nullify the strength of other belief systems, and make it seem like it was God's will all along that there be a celebration at this time of year. As centuries passed and Catholicism spread, the trappings of other belief systems and other societies became enfolded within the aegis of Christmas, leading to the holiday we see today.

Except the holiday we see today is a bastardization of the true spirit and intent of the original holiday. And no, it is not the secular, First Amendment rights waving crowd that has done this, but the ordinary person, by losing contact with the ideas behind Christmas. It is ironic that in 1965, one of the most beloved Christmas TV specials, "A Charlie Brown Christmas," bemoaned the commercialization of the holiday and the loss of focus on its meaning. Almost 50 years later, and the same special rings as true now as it did then.

If there's truly a "War" on Christmas, it is fought by those who use it to their own ends, to settle political scores, to weaken the separation of Church & State, to promote Christianity over any other religious belief system. It is the proselytizers and profiteers who have declared war on the holiday, not those of us who would see each and every one of us celebrate -- or not -- it in their own way. Christmas has become an economic engine, a religious meat-grinder, a political cause célèbre, for those who are less interested in its meaning and more interested in the leverage it can afford them.

Nowhere is that more self-evident than with the subset of the season's political propaganda, the "Keep Christ in Christmas" movement, engineered to be the modern version of the bony finger of Dickens' Ghost of Future Yet to Come. This popular screed may be seen on the bumpers of cars in the parking lots of big box retail stores the day after Thanksgiving, as people swarm and surge forward to secure the consumer goods which are the "reason for the season." It is seen in popular media, as we are told that by forbearing Christ on his sacred day we are somehow bad people; right after, we are told that the President, the poor, the Liberals, and the immigrants are responsible for our pitiful lot in life, and they should be shunned and smacked down.

The fact is: Christ is not part of the Christmas we know it now. The Christ born in Bethlehem eschewed wealth, spoke of peace and justice, and most importantly, implored us to help those less fortunate than themselves. While many find Christmas an excuse to perform the charity that they cannot be bothered with the other 364 days a year, the whole lesson of Christ's birth and eventual death is lost to them. They see Christmas and its trappings as meaning, in and of itself, never stepping too far away from the comfort of their preconceived notions. Anyone who does not share their view is branded a traitor.

The other fact of import, which those who holler so maddeningly about the "War" on Christmas often ignore, is that Christmas is only one small facet of Christ's life. Christ should not be confined to Christmas, anymore than to Easter. The idea the young Jewish rabbi promoted was that we must do good work among the people every day, not just when it is convenient or useful. The stories of the New Testament tell us of a man who preached the gospel of love and compassion, and expected his followers not to preach, but to do. There is no better way to honor the birth of Christ, his life, or his death, than to follow in his footsteps, spreading love and charity wherever we go. Christ must not be kept in Christmas, but in our hearts.

So when the phrase "War on Christmas" passes someones lips, assume they are confused, show them compassion, and turn their rhetorical swords into charitable plowshares. If we show them, by example, the true meaning of Christmas, perhaps they will tire of the fight.

Madiba Smiles

When the jailer whistles
Madiba smiles

When the child plays
Madiba smiles

When enemies embrace
Madiba smiles

When sunshine touches his face
Madiba smiles

When Madiba smiles
The world smiles with him

11/22/1963

It did not last
That sunny day
The clouds came
Dimming hearts
A hero felled
By the arcs
Of copper gnats
Buzzing through the air
With furious energy
And murderous intent
The harbingers of a madman
Who made everyone
Know his name
By shooting the lights out
Placing a loving wife
And two beautiful children
In the dark
Along with a nation