Requiem by John Updike

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”

For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

This poem was published posthumously in John Updike's final collection of poetry composed during his last decade of life and compiled in its closing weeks. He was 67.

The U.S. Military: A Camouflaged Social Safety Net

A recent article in the New York Times noted that the U.S. military is exceeding its recruitment targets by a significant margins due, in large part, to the poor state of the economy. Although the high levels of violence in Afghanistan and Iraq had been deterring many from enlisting, the reported conditions on the ground there have improved while the economy has worsened.

Even at the nadir of their recruiting efforts, recruiters were still able to find individuals in isolated and economically-depressed areas in an attempt to fill their quotas. One way of looking at the newly upbeat situation for recruiters is that this pool of economically-disadvantaged individuals has grown while Obama's promise to draw down troops in Iraq makes combat duty less likely.

The unemployment rate now stands at 7.2% and the military certainly is a steady job. And they have great health benefits! Not only that, the military provides money for college, although only about half of all soldiers use their G.I. Bill benefits. It also gives many recruits, who tend to be from lower-income rural communities, the chance to experience the shopping malls of the world. Clearly, that bubble of security has been popped by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and soldiers in today's "all-volunteer force" face the prospect of being ordered into combat.

None of this is to denigrate the service of those who join for other-than-altruistic reasons. In general, people like to do well in their jobs and the military is simply another arena of work, although one is less likely to face life-threatening situations in a civilian job. A person should not have to risk their life for a steady job.

Essentially, the military functions as a social safety net and--when the vaunted free market fails us--the military's ranks swell with those unable or unwilling to subsist on the meager benefits offered by the other parts of America's frayed social safety net. In most cases, enlistees benefit more than they pay.

But, when the cost outweighs the benefit, it can be fatal.


NOTE: After I had published this post, I can across an abstract of a study that supports my main argument. It was nice to find a corroborating study but the title was a little close for comfort. It's so hard to be original these days.

Helicoptering into History, or, Goodbye, Mr. Bush

The Inauguration of Barack Obama

Today marks a historic moment when America has stretched itself toward its ideals, although they still are yet to be fully grasped and realized.

Barack Obama, now the 44th President of the United States, took the oath of office today, the first African American to do so, swearing to protect and defend the Constitution in which African Americans are designated as counting for 3/5ths of a person. This is not to say that no progress has been made but there is still some distance to go...

People have expressed high levels of confidence in Obama's ability to be a good President, which is remarkable in itself, and his accession to the Presidency is historic, regardless of how well he governs. America is currently facing a lot of problems but I think Obama considers them challenges that can be overcome, if we recognize that we're all in this together.

In his speech, President Obama carefully reframed the debate about the nature and purpose of government:

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.

And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

This conception of government is effective and one that clearly conveys that it is the role of the U.S. government to "provide for the general Welfare" of its people. Its size should not matter if it is fulfilling this Constitutional obligation. The crises that the U.S. is facing offers opportunity to inculcate this discourse of government, which could change the contours of the American political debate.

Obama's emphasis on accountability should resonate with an American public that has been manipulated by the duplicitous public assertions of the Bush Administration about decisions made clandestinely, like the case for the Iraq war.

Accountability could also be demanded retroactively, don't you think?

Bush's Last Minute - Jan. 20, 2009 - 9:04am PST

To be honest, I found those "Bush's Last Day" bumper stickers somewhat annoying so I am glad that they will now disappear from gift shops. Those embittered enough to actually put them on their cars while likely keep them there for far too long.

A litany of egregious actions by the Bush Administration should follow but I'm looking ahead. That is not to say their consequences remain to be dealt with.

The spurious and self-destructive 'War on Terror' will continue, for example.

Death Avers...

The internet is littered with the remains of too many abandoned blogs. Maybe the bloggers moved on to bigger and better things but most likely they did not. Although I'll be busy for a while, I do not intend for this blog to join the ranks of the former but posts will be less frequent.

Frosty the Snowman: Melting as Mortality

On the day after Christmas, I was looking at the snow out the window above the kitchen sink and singing Christmas songs to myself. As I was singing 'Frosty the Snowman,' my wife asked my why I was singing it so mournfully.

The thought had earlier crossed my mind about the Frosty's mortal melting but I wasn't consciously thinking of it just then. Although the song was written as a crass cash-in, the lyrics do convey the cruelty of self-aware mortality and how one [snow]man bravely confronts it.

Frosty the snowman knew
The sun was hot that day,
So he said, "Let's run and
We'll have some fun
Now before I melt away."

Down to the village,
With a broomstick in his hand,
Running here and there all
Around the square saying,
"Catch me if you can!"

In the above verses, it is clear that Frosty recognizes his finite lifespan and the conditions that will end it. Undeterred, he declares that he and the children should make the most of the time he has before he reaches his final melting-place. But he continues running...

He led them down the streets of town
Right to the traffic cop.
And he only paused a moment when
He heard him holler "Stop!"

For Frosty the snow man
Had to hurry on his way,
But he waved goodbye saying,
"Don't you cry, I'll be back again some day."

This reassurance to his companions reflects Frosty's apparent belief in reincarnation--a belief not shared by those who celebrate Christmas--but I may be overthinking this innocuous Christmas classic. That old silk hat could bestow its gift of life upon another snowman but would that really be Frosty?

Now, for the most melancholy refrain of all:

Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Look at Frosty go.
Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Over the hills of snow.

Sing it with me--sad and slow--for one whose time in the sun cost him his life.

Tyranny of the Right-Handed Majority

Institutional racism is an abstract idea but this concrete example illustrates how it operates to the benefit of some and the detriment of others.

From Shirley Better's Institutional Racism:

All of our social institutions--schools, the criminal justice system, banks, the workplace--have been created and recreated by white men. Thus, there is a natural fit between maleness and whiteness in all American institutions; white males easily succeed in a system invented for them and by them.

Recent challenges by women and people of color in the form of affirmative action edicts have pointed up the ultimate control by white males. Whites have special entitlements; however, only those with heightened sensitivity perceive themselves as privileged. Most Euro-Americans think of whiteness as the norm.

This unearned privilege equates with the advantages of being right handed. Pick up a pair of scissors, grab a door handle, or sit at a lunch counter. They are designed for "righties." But what right-handed person ever thought of himself as privileged? This unearned special status that permeates our society supports institutional racism.

Think about it. If you had the power to shape social institutions (as white men have and continue to do), would you not structure them to benefit those like you, making it more difficult for those not like you to succeed? Perhaps you are a better person than many of them were.

Both women and minorities were denied the right to vote for more than a century, for both groups. Women could not vote until 1920, less than 100 years ago, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally prohibited states from denying voting rights to African Americans, although the Fifteenth Amendment had supposedly already done so in 1870. White men have had the right to vote in the U.S. for twice as long as women and much longer than racial minorities, especially African Americans.

Along with the disenfranchisement of women and minorities during the formative years of the United States, the former were expected to be subject to their husbands--writ large in society as men in general--and the latter were owned by whites, treated as innately inferior and denied the means to obtain property themselves, which prohibited many African Americans from building wealth. Progress has been made but even equality of opportunity is still only nominal.

Inequities built up over several generations of legally-sanctioned discrimination were not solved by a few decades of affirmative action and many social institutions still work to the disadvantage of those whom they were not intended to benefit.

As with the right-handed, no intent is required for discrimination to work.

Of Fig Trees and Foment

The parable of the fig tree is among the stranger of Jesus' parables but this odd moment of divine capriciousness is both out of character and troubling in its implication that God's wrath can be turned on those undeserving of it.

The incident is recounted in the Gospels of both Matthew and Mark. In each version, Jesus curses a fig tree for not having any fruit on it and the tree withers, although in Mark the writer notes that "the time of figs was not yet." The tree was not in season so why would He expect there to be fruit?

His Father created the world in such a way that there are growing seasons but my concern is not that Christ did not know there would be no fruit. It is the capriciousness that He shows toward one of His Father's creations because of its inborn nature. The tree was functioning according to its purposeful design.

If you recognize the angry man in the photo above, you should appreciate that his sign is just as nonsensical with its actual wording and the fig tree analogy holds. Cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season is the same as condemning a person who is homosexual for who they are. It is wholly unreasonable.

And Jesus Christ himself never said a word about it.