Tom Brady should have a mustache and Planned Parenthood should be defunded

Remember this face

Tom Brady’s suspension is important to me. It’s not about the integrity of the game, though it is a little bit. It’s not about professional honesty, though it is a little of that too. Mostly, it’s because I’m Colts fan and I’ve always hated the Patriots. It’s stupid, but it’s sports.

Defunding Planned Parenthood is also important to me. Not because they are potentially breaking the law by bringing in a profit from the sale of “fetal tissue” (that’s the official complaint), though that would also tick me off. Not because Planned Parenthood screens for Breast Cancer (latest Planned Parenthood marketing angle), since when is Planned Parenthood all about saving women from breast-cancer?  I want Planned Parenthood shoved deep into a bureaucrat’s aluminum file cabinet because Planned Parenthood provides dirty sex-ed classes to teenagers, invites pregnant mothers in for a consultation, persuades these mothers to have their own flesh and blood offspring murdered at the chilly latex-covered hands of a “doctor”, and then sells the tiny body parts of children who were only months away from their first laugh, nearly six months away from cutting their first tooth, and within a year of taking their first step.  Anything that gets between the fetus and that fetus’s first smile, first step, first anything deserves a bleak, painful place in hell.

Let these children smile

The dictionary definition of a fetus is an unborn human baby older than 8 weeks. Even though a human baby is not a fetus prior to 8 weeks, it is still a human baby. Human babies are adorable. Sometimes they look like little apes when they’re born. Some are born looking like Gollum. But you can’t survive the ordeal of being born without a few temporary scars. The wrinkles fade, and the swelling resides. Chubby cheeks, dainty limbs, eyes full of wonder, and a body that can be cradled in one’s palm.  

In the wake of this war of Public Opinion, I wish that all people of good will would ignore this rubbish about the legality of Planned Parenthood’s profits.I also wish the NFL’s suspension of Tom Brady didn’t hinge on the fairness of their procedure. Planned Parenthood is a murderous organization. Tom Brady is a sleazy cheater who should wear a creepy mustache.  There is nothing else to say about either issue.

Everything will one day be as it should be.

 

Talking Bodies, Life, and Humans

So, let’s talk bodies

Tove Lo’s song “Talking Body” has been annoying me on the radio for a short while now, and I’ve decided to do something about it. I’d never heard of the Swedish singer, Tove Lo, before today. I hadn’t heard her single Talking Body till a few months ago. I’ll confess, it’s an incredibly catchy song. Every time it plays on the radio, though, my conscience won’t shut up till I turn the dial. The song’s tune is fun. The song’s message is abhorrent! 

For propriety sake, I’ll limit myself to quoting one line of the song. The others are too lustful, too vulgar for my blog. Maybe not other blogs, but I run a clean, though slightly judgmental blog. However, I will link that one line to the full song–the clean american radio version. Please don’t watch the music video. If you do, it’s on your conscience.

“Bodies. Let’s use them up til every little piece is gone”

You read it right. If we’re going to talk about bodies, Tove Lo is going to talk about them like this, and she does throughout the whole song. I believe we’re all at liberty to hold our own opinions. As a discriminating bigot, I also believe that everyone should be free to speak their mind. Tove Lo has spoken her mind, now I’d like to speak mine.

• Wrong! Wrong! Very Very Wrong! As if the world didn’t have enough problems amid poverty, pornography, and politics, we are presented with one more dangerous concept. My body is just a toy, or a tool, or a lump of flesh that allows me to experience stuff. The notion is primeval with sin itself, the justification for slavery and prostitution. It had always been these things, but till I heard this song, it never seemed so prevalent.
• It’s Wrong Because no person should ever be treated as an object. Society almost universally accepts the theory that it is wrong to treat other people as objects. Most people with a conscience object to the porn industry, to human trafficking, and most definitely to slavery. But you know how slavery begins? It begins with the notion that our own body is something to be used, something to be played with, something to be sold. The road to freedom is not the idea that only I can use my body, but instead the idea that no one, not even me, has the right to use my body.
• Talking Body has spreads the idea that bodies are just objects, property, things to be desired, things to be enjoyed. Objects deserve no dignity. Property is sold for profit. If my body is just a toy, isn’t every body? Answer yes and follow that road to the end. You won’t like where you end up. In a world where bodies are objects, slavery is not a crime. Old school logicians call this reductio ad absurdum. Unfortunately, we do live in a world where bodies are objects, and absurd accepted, not merely tolerated. Until we learn that our bodies are not our own, slavery will never become a thing of the past.
• Life is a strange thing. We think that its ours. It’s not. That is why we can’t own a body, ours or another’s. Prideful independence is the first domino. It set in motion the harmful tendencies which create our damaged world. My body is not mine to give or mine to take. Our world won’t tolerate that sentence, because it reeks of humility and obedience.
• Humans are the masters of their own fate, but not of their own life. I challenge any human being to show me proof that life is a gift they decided to give to themselves. We lucked into existence. Being human, having life, having bodies is a responsibility forced upon us. There is no choice. It was never something any of us hoped for or feared. There are two responses to this brutal reality: Gratitude or Denial. Gratitude accepts the duty to care for this gift of life. Denial chooses to ignore the absurdly obvious fact that no man can make himself a body.
• So if we’re talking bodies, let’s not lie and say that they are ours to do with as we please. Our dramatically complex legal system has already hammered out clear guidelines for ownership. Let’s just say that law favors the landlord. And in legal terms, we are more like renters, or borrowers. We are legal possessors; we are not the owners. There is a big difference. An owner can damage his property without facing charges. When it comes time to return the keys, we will pay for all the damage we have done to ourselves.

Will I listen to the song again? (writer bows hid head and sighs) Just as certainly as I’ll listen to the radio again. The song will play, my conscience will again remind me that the song’s message is perverted. And all of a sudden, the song will serve as a reminder me that my body is not my own to use; it was given to me to take care of.

 

Slavery under the Rainbow: Defense of the Confederate Flag

Yeah…I can taste it now.

Rainbows traditionally meant that God would stop flooding people to death. Skittles used to run an ad, encouraging views to “taste the rainbow”. These days, the rainbows is no longer linked to its scientific counterpart, water, and marketing firms will never again encourage clients to taste rainbows. Symbols change over time. What was once a sign of God’s oath, is the standard of the LGBT community. This new symbol was recently validated by the supreme court, and later by the white house. It’s time to dust of the stars and bars and revive an old symbol of traditional american values. 

I don’t mean slavery! I would never propose enslaving gays and lesbians. What good would that do. I can do my own hair, thank you. I mean traditional american values: independence, self-determination, the Fourth of July!

After the confederacy surrendered, the Federal government promptly went to work creating a new class of slaves: ideological slaves, Americans forced into the cultivation of consumerism and a system of selfish morals. There is an ever-growing population of Americans born into a two-party mind-set, bound by the notion that they will either be ruled by a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat. Government by the people and for the people has perished. All that is left is a government of the people, meaning that the people are the object, not the subject of government.

While some believe that Virginia’s choice to join the confederacy was moved by an evil will to keep slaves, they are wrong. Virginia watched the southern states declare independence. Virginia waited to see how the federal government would deal with these states. And when the rights of states were suppressed beneath the heavy boots of Union soldiers, Virginia hoisted the flag which would eventually become known as the Confederate flag. While it is true that the confederate states maintained slavery during the civil war, it is equally true that the north also maintained slavery. Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation was a measure of war freeing only the slaves in the south. Lincoln, the lawyer, recognized that the current constitution prevented him from imposing the freedom of slaves upon Union states. 

The confederate flag, or more precisely, the flag of the army of northern Virginia, is a symbol of self-determination, of government by the people and for the people, of the spirit of the constitution. As with rainbows, there have been many meanings applied to this symbol. Where symbols are concerned I’m a purest. I look into the sky after a storm and choose to see God’s promise to never again flush humanity out of existence. When I see the Confederate flag I don’t see under-educated white supremacists yearning for the return of slavery. I see the freedom to make my own choices.

It’s ironic that our democratic “pro-choice” federal government, continues to support policies which are decidedly against choice. The freedom to chose implies the ability to chose wrongly as well as to chose rightly. Is it pro-choice to deny states a choice? In the constitution it was clearly outlined that “choice” always fell to the individual states. The Federal Government was essentially denied the ability to make “choices” for the states. Wasn’t that the whole point of the Revolutionary War?

The Federal Government has become a new George III, passing down laws — “choices” — upon an unrepresented people. Unlike George III, who passed laws which were remotely his right to pass, Federal Government has gone into the deeply philosophical business of defining words. Marriage has never, in all the history of the world, ever meant anything other than the union of a man and a woman. Perverse sexual relations, illicit sexual relations, unnatural sexual relations have also been around for quite a long time, and never have they been granted the unique privilege of marriage. It was understood that the sacredness of marriage was intimately bound to the process of procreation. Leave it to the great and liberating 21st century to keep the bathwater, but throw out the baby.

Americans face a dangerous slavery of ideas where we may not be obliged to till the soil and labor under the sun, but where we must work against our conscience and labor under the illusion of freedom. A new flag has recently been raised in our capitol. It is a symbol of oppression and slavery. How the rainbow ever came to mean that, I’ll never understand. America is once again a nation of slavery, slavery under the rainbow.  

 

I’m Dad

Father’s Day is nothing at all like Mother’s Day. On Mother’s Day, mothers get their nails done. On Father’s Day, fathers are expected to keep hammering nails. I’m not complaining. This was my first father’s day. I had a blast. My 10 month old son was every 20 odd pounds of a 10 month old. My pregnant wife was exactly what pregnant wives are–what are they? And I was Dad.

Mothers deserve a heck of a lot more pampering on their day than Fathers on their’s. Mothers gave birth, while many fathers sat on the hospital room couch watching football. Mothers have to nurse newborn children every two hours, fathers and their babies fall asleep on rocking chairs. Mothers across the world deserve a day of chocolate ice cream and manicures, and fathers are more than willing to pay for it.

What do dads do anyway? I’ll tell you what we do. We wake up everyday before sunrise and go to work. We commute, some of us great distances, not because we like the drive, but because we want our family living in a good neighborhood. We listen to our boss, or we live with the constant pressure and responsibility of being our own boss. Dads seldom have the freedom to thoroughly pursue their dreams because they are obliged to put dinner on the table and clothes in the washing machine. They dedicate their mind and heart to the happiness of their wives and their children, because nothing matters more to them.

Society often asserts that fatherhood is a responsibility and burden that men should put off for later in life. I’ll tell society now that men don’t have the energy later in life to deal with the responsibilities and burdens of fatherhood. There is nothing more demanding than having to wake up at 4:20 am because the baby is crying, and not be able to go back to sleep because you leave for work at 5:45. Nothing taxes you more than using up all your mental, physical, emotional reserves during the work day, and arriving home to a teething child. That’s fatherhood. It’s beautiful; exhausting, but beautiful.Fatherhood is a divine gift; it makes us like God: Father. It’s also a divine responsibility; it demands that we become like God: Justice, Mercy, and Love.

This morning, I don’t remember why, but I went outside. I was carrying my son. My neighbor wished me a happy father’s day. I wished the same to him. He responded, “But isn’t it worth it.”

When I wake up at 4:20 to get my screaming son, his eyes light up when he sees me. Because I’m Dad.

When I leave for work, my son follows me to the door. He cries once I shut the door, because I’m Dad.

When I get home tired and worn out, my son, diaper sagging to the ground, waddles to the door to wrestle with me because I’m Dad. I’m Dad, and it’s totally worth it.

Although it is father’s day, my son is crying, my pregnant wife is being a pregnant wife, and I feel like my soul had been drained from my body…I couldn’t be a happier person. My crying son is well-fed, fully clothed, and pooping with proper constancy and consistency. My pregnant wife craves pickles and whipped cream, so she has them. And I’m Dad.

 

G.K. Chesterton, Francis, and Francis: 3 Quotes

Recent controversy over the challenging encyclical of Pope Francis has taken the discussion on the Climate Crisis hostage. I’m not too interested in the Climate Crisis. I save on water and electricity because I also like to save money. I’m not a glutton. There are spheres of influence. The Climate is not a sphere that I influence. However, I recognize that this debate has politicians confused. Presidential candidates thought they had a death grip on the catholic vote. I don’t care much for Presidential candidates because one of them inevitably becomes president and screws up the country. I don’t worry myself about politicians either. CATHOLICS. I care about Catholics. I care about Christians. I care about humans. But I care about Catholics more. And I care about the my Catholic Church very much. That is why I’d like to offer chunks of Chesterton’s wisdom to shed light on the perspective of Pope Francis’s recent encyclical Laudato Si, chunks of wisdom from said document, and chunks of wisdom from St Francis himself.

Chesterton wrote a book about St Francis

Three quotes from Chesterton

“St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man.”

“Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds. As a matter of individual belief, I should of course express it by saying they are not sufficiently catholic to be Catholic.”

“Another and quite different stream of spiritual inspiration derives largely from him; all that reforming energy of medieval and modern times that goes to the burden of Deus est Deus Pauperum. His abstract ardor for human beings was in a multitude of just medieval laws against the pride and cruelty of riches; it is to-day behind much that is loosely called Christian Socialist and can more correctly be called Catholic Democrat.”

Pope Francis looks to shape his pontificate after the charismatic life of St Francis

Three quotes from Pope Francis

“A sense of deep communion with the rest of nature cannot be real if our hearts lack tenderness, compassion and concern for our fellow human beings. It is clearly inconsistent to combat trafficking in endangered species while remaining completely indifferent to human trafficking, unconcerned about the poor, or undertaking to destroy another human being deemed unwanted.”

“We are always capable of going out of ourselves towards the other. Unless we do this, other creatures will not be recognized for their true worth; we are unconcerned about caring for things for the sake of others; we fail to set limits on ourselves in order to avoid the suffering of others or the deterioration of our surroundings. Disinterested concern for others, and the rejection of every form of self-centeredness and self-absorption, are essential if we truly wish to care for our brothers and sisters and for the natural environment. These attitudes also attune us to the moral imperative of assessing the impact of our every action and personal decision on the world around us. If we can overcome individualism, we will truly be able to develop a different lifestyle and bring about significant changes in society.”

“In calling to mind the figure of Saint Francis of Assisi, we come to realize that a healthy relationship with creation is one dimension of overall personal conversion, which entails the recognition of our errors, sins, faults and failures, and leads to heartfelt repentance and desire to change.”

Three quotes from St Francis:

“If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

“Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.”

 

A Little Wisdom from the Little Prince

The was once a little prince from Asteroid B612. He grew tired of his little planet and the companionship of a needy nameless flower. He set out on a journey, visiting other planets in the vicinity. On one planet there was a king
, on another there was a drunk, on yet another there was a man of exceeding vanity. Another planet was inhabited by a man of affairs preoccupied with counting the stars. On each planet lived a specimen accentuating the absurdities of life. But I’d like to draw your attention to a planet with a street lamp, one solitary street lamp.

The little prince visited a small planet with barely enough room for a street lamp and its lamplighter. There were no streets to light, no pedestrians to guide, just a street lamp and its lamplighter.

Upon his arrival the inquisitive little prince wondered why the lamplighter lit the extinguished the lamp even though no one needed its light. To the lamplighter it was plain and simple: it was the law. He was required to light the lamp at dusk and extinguish it at dawn. Because the tiny planet spun about so rapidly, the lamplighter seldom rested. Dusk and dawn were thirty seconds apart. Every minute was a day, every hour was two months. It was the law and the law had to be carried out, no matter how ridiculous it may seem.

The little prince saw in the lamplighter something beautiful and sad. Very much like the king, the drunk, the businessman, and the vain man, the lamplighter belabored himself for nothing. Unlike the king, the drunk, the businessman, and the vain man, the lamplighter created a delicate thing of beauty each night. And a thing of beauty was itself worth something.

The lamplighter was faithful in executing his simple task. From dawn to desk he was hard at it, never wavering in his duty. But he was lazy. He lacked invention. He followed the manual, performed his duties like a robot. The magic of human imagination was lacking.

In the faithful character of the lamplighter we have the plight of America. We are keeping the lamp lit, but the interior fire is sputtering. We are faithful to the law, but the zeal that emboldened our forefathers to confront the British Empire drifts away like the smoke of a dying fire.

 

Free Book!

God Does Laugh is up for grabs. Starting next week, God Does Laugh will be offered to Kindle owners for free. Readers with Amazon Prime can purchase the paperback copy at a discounted price. Enjoy refreshing humor, spiritual insight, and profoundly human experiences all at once and for free. The offer begins next Friday, September 19th.

 

Life of Trebor Fairwell Exposed!

God Does Laugh, Trebor Fairwell’s second novel is now available for sale on Amazon. It’s a great addition to you library. I assure you that none of your friends will have read this new work (great gift idea). This book will also gracefully fill unused shelf space with remarkable elegance. Follow the link below to add it to your Amazon Cart. If you don’t plan on buying it now, at least it will be there when Christmas comes around.

The book offers a challenging, but humorous perspective of the spiritual life and the decisions we all face as humans. Young men and women dealing with the stress of vocational discernment will find a companion for the journey. Souls well established in their calling will here themes from their own lives echoed in refreshing new tones.

God Does Laugh: A life interrupted: Trebor Fairwell: 9781500622329: Amazon.com: Books.

 

Public Execution: It’s Here

We’re scared to do it to our own criminals. ISIS had no qualms about doing it to an innocent Journalist whose great crimes were his nationality and his camera. What does it mean when a religiously fanatic organization publicly executes an innocent man simply to make a point? In the feudal age it would mean as much as a declaration of war. The lord was obliged by the very nature of the feudal arrangement to protect his subjects from foreign harm. The nature of democracy is not very different, the people use their pooled resources to defend themselves. The nature of a republic is perhaps more similar, since there is a leadership granted the responsibility to coördinate those resources, allowing for a quicker response to threat. What is the meaning of the public execution of James Foley? ISIS has declared war on America. When a nation has declared war on you, you can’t look the other way while the enemy tosses grenades at you.

A little to the left (no pun intended)

The situation tests our nation’s integrity, its republic, democratic principles. Because of the pact made between citizen and government, a nation founded on republican and democratic principles has an equal responsibility toward each and every citizen to respond to the threat of an organization willing to capture and publicly execute these citizens.

The nature of this response may very, but it should be a response of force swift and definitive. Taking a vacation and playing golf are not adequate responses. Sitting back and watching your country fall to pieces is equally inadequate. As easy as it is to criticize the president’s hands-off foreign policy, the people of a democratic republic have their own duties to fulfill. America belongs to Americans. It is childish to quickly pass the blame to the “grown-ups”. America can only be screwed up if “We the People” screwed it up. And we’ve screwed it up on all levels.

1. Birth: The United States of America once gave birth to the rough and rugged frontiersmen, to the troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy, and to generations of risk-taking innovators and mold-breaking inventors. Today the United States hardly gives birth. Seriously! The replacement rate is 2.1 births per woman. Anything short of that indicates a dying breed. Since 2008, America is not only giving birth to heroes and geniuses, she is failing to sustain her population. In 1911, women gave birth to an average of three children. As of 2014, American women are averaging 1.86 children. We need each woman in the US to have an additional 15% of a child to keep our country from becoming a ruin. There are a few obvious culprits here: Abortion, contraception, and Homosexual Unions. I’ll go out on a limb here and assume we can all see how abortion and contraception might reduce the birth rate. I’d like to assume we can all deduce the impact of Homosexual Unions, but I won’t. I’d rather say it out right. Homosexual Unions don’t create kids. This is especially true of gay couples. Before you rant about failed leadership, consider you’re own contribution to this great nation.
2. Education: We, the people, haven’t only failed to bring new life to an aging nation. We fail to educate the few who survive the womb. The education system worked, once. It’s a joke now. Skeptics can just go sit outside the steps of an average American High School and listen to the language of those young impressionable minds. Sure they’re reading Shakespeare in Literature Class, but they can hardly piece a sentence together without inserting something vulgar. I guarantee, or I hope their teachers haven’t taught them this habit. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation studied more than 3,000 classrooms and found that more than 60% were competently managed. That itself is not flattering. If you only have on child, there is a 40% chance that child will land in madhouse. What’s worse, the study found that only 20% of these classrooms were taught to ambitiously engage the material and apply their own reasoning to topics of discussion–20% of a shrinking population taught to think on their own! We’ve come to want quantity over quality. Rather than challenge students, we lower the bar, making it easier for everyone to pass over it…and possibly make their way into politics. I tell my students this all the time. People shouldn’t just trust the government to provide education. Get your own education. Educate yourself! Go to class, listen to talks, take tests…that’s not education. Education is a mutual relationship instigated by the student who seeks out a teacher.
3. Parenting: Along the same lines as education, parenting habits have changed. A cartoonist once illustrated this change cleverly, showing two frames. In the first, frame parents holding an exam marked with a large F stood behind the teacher. Parents and teacher are shown shouting at the student. The caption reads “1950”. The second frame shows the parents standing behind their child. The father has his arms crossed. The mother is shoving a failed exam in the teacher’s face as the student sits complacently in a chair. The caption reads “2010”.  When parents only have one child, they’ve only got one investment in the future. There is a tendency to be soft. But there is also a tendency to have ridiculously high expectations. The blend of these two inclinations lead a parent to imagine that their child has already achieved perfection and can never be at fault. We used to tell our children to suck it up and be a man. Today we call the principle and threaten to withdraw funding unless the boy who punched little Johnny in the face is expelled. What’s ironic is that Johnny isn’t innocent, soft, or confused about his gender identity. Johnny is a mischievous boy who has learned how to play the system. Maybe he did get punched in the face, but maybe he deserved it (yes, among boys that is a possibility; I dare say that among girls it is also a possibility). My experience with students would lead me to believe that Johnny knew how his parents would react and even wanted to have the other boy expelled. And I’d wager that was a talent Johnny learned at home from his parents. Kids probably learn the least at school. They learn more from the internet and TV than they do at school. But they learn even more from their parents. Language, vices, habits, mannerisms, attitude: they’re all picked up at home and at an early age.
4. Opportunity:  It would be satire to call America the land of Opportunity. It would be more honest to call it the land of Extortion. We used to offer opportunity, because we used to be a kind nation. We used to care about the poor and oppressed. We used to pool our collective resources to help a neighbor. But we kicked that habit good and hard. The only opportunity most Americans really care about is their own opportunities. I still don’t think we’re a selfish nation. The number of kindhearted people I’ve met on the street astounds me. I’ve come up short of cash when eating out and I’ve had complete strangers cover the whole cost of my meal. The national heart is still as good as gold, but the instinct of survival can turn the tamest pet into a beast. What we have lost as a nation is the notion of collective sacrifice for a good cause. Colleges need to make a profit in addition to paying a staff which is supposed to care about their students. Why should they allow students to amass enormous student loans in order to achieve a degree which may never get them a job? Why do business require a degree for entry-level positions when they don’t expect new employees to creatively apply their education to the job? It’s because industry doesn’t believe in opportunity. Industry believes in money.
5. Economy: America has definitely screwed up here. We once had the advantage of being pioneers whose economy system was bargaining. You can’t beat the bargain system. I’ll give you my cow if you give me a pig. You didn’t need a job to create cash, you needed a skill to grow things you could trade. Sooner or later we had enough gold and silver to go around that people just traded precious metals. Then we decided to leave the metal at home and write IOU’s. The government decided to sanction IOU’s, issuing official paperback money which was meant to signify a quantity of goods owed. In the 30’s FDR decided to get rid of the gold standard forever dooming America to confusion about the monetary value of anything. No wonder prices fluctuate so easily when the worth of a dollar bill isn’t nailed down. Now we have a government which practically determines the worth of a dollar and at the same time exists in a state of perpetually worsening debt. Just as children learn from parents, so do civilians often learn from their civil leaders. Our nation has been plagued by poor financial leadership, the nation has been led straight into debt. The only way out is for change to happen from the bottom up. The people with the money won’t give money to those without money. Those without money need to discover ways to make their own.
6. Healthcare: As bad as we are at conceiving life, Americans have tried their hardest to sustain and prolong it. But we go about it all wrong. There’s the famous joke about Americans. We’re the only place a person orders a Big Mac, Large Fries, and a Diet Coke. Of course the irony is that the Diet Coke is a joke when it’s on the tray beside a greasy burger and genetically engineered potato slices saturated with lard. Americans grow up between the extremes of obesity and anorexia. We fail to settle down somewhere healthy in the middle. On TV, Medical professionals push weight-loss pills, liposuction, carb-free diets, gluten-free diets, protein-free diets, dairy-free diets, and it all gets so convoluted that people careless attempt them all in no order and with no discrimination. Americans throw themselves into the arms of fitness regimens until they are run ragged, then they sit down to eat a tub of ice cream before going to bed. We complain about Healthcare reform because it’s too slow, too quick, or too much. Healthcare reform starts at home. Work out! Remind yourself that humans were designed to live off of oxygen, not cigarette smoke. Take a shower. Brush your teeth. Use Deodorant. Trim your nails. Everything your mother should have taught you. Hygiene has its reasons.
7. Art: Art is just as important to a culture as economy. In many ways art directs culture, and in other ways art will indicate the direction a culture has already taken. I sincerely hope that contemporary art is not an indication of the direction our culture has already taken, but I fear it is. Lets take an obvious example: music. The Billboard top hit of 1960 was Theme From A Summer Place. A classically romantic song about a couple finding comfort in each other’s presence. The 1970 top hit was Simon and Garfunkel’s famous Bridge Over Troubled Waters. There is a fairly common rumor that this song is about shooting heroine. Not true. The misinterpreted line “Sail on, Silver girl” doesn’t refer to the needle of a syringe, but instead to the artist’s girlfriend/to-be-wife who’d found a few grey hairs. The song tells the story of a man comforting a woman, being her strength and rock. The 80’s were weird, we all know that. The Top hit of 1980 was a song by Blondie, Call me. It’s about a prostitute. Yeah.
   

   Mmm! Ain’t that pretty!

   At this point perhaps art was trying to direct the culture. Wilson Phillips took the 1990 top spot with Hold On. The song is directed to a person who has allowed herself to become enchained in a painful situation that she is reluctant to leave. In many ways, that was the 90’s. If the 90’s was a girl, the 80’s was her abusive boyfriend. The Y2K chart topper was Faith Hill’s Breath. It’s like one of those cheap romantic paperbacks, only as a song. It is sensual and vivid. And to round it out, in 2010, we have Ke$ha: Tik Tok. Intro the YOLO generation. A girl is going clubbing and she’s drunk. Has art failed? Only because Americans fail to make good art look good. Among most healthy, sane, rational Americans there is a sense of resignation to mediocrity. I’m not even thinking about Evangelical Grassroots student film projects, I’m talking about well-established and well-meaning production companies like the Hallmark channel.

I’ll limit myself to these seven areas where America has shot itself in the foot. Even though there is room for legitimate outrage when the President of a democratic republic remains on vacation when his constituents (the American people) are being kidnapped and publicly executed, the first reaction should be one of self-evaluation. There has already been a public execution of the American character, and it was the people of American who tied the noose. We sleep in the beds we’ve made. It’s time to get out of bed.

 

Transgender teen (PROBLEM!!!) told she can’t come to school as girl

Forgive me in advance for being blunt, this whole article will be blunt. I really do feel bad for all those teenagers who are now confused about their gender, however many there are. This is probably a widespread epidemic that touches the lives of countless youths, and I’m just too insensitive and cold to realize it. To all those frustrated teenagers, I’m sorry. Your parents didn’t know what they were doing.

I’m not that old, so I’m not allowed to talk about the good old days. So I’ll say this: twenty years ago, teenage girls got depressed because the popular girl said they were fat, and teenage boys got depressed because they were bullied. The depression seldom led to suicide, it gave new meaning to the term Goth, it sometimes got kids hooked on drugs, but most of the time depression passed. Lately, a new solution has been offered to the existentially
frustrated, hormone-crazy teens of today: Gender Swap!

How come I never thought of that when I was a teenager? Well, I guess I had to “use the facilities” on occasion. Without fail these trips to the bathroom positively reaffirmed my gender. It used to be that simple. Life was good! But apparently the human race has survived thousands of years on a false assumption. Gender isn’t determined by the gifts your mamma gave you, its determined by an emotional choice which everyone in the world should validate because it’s the right thing to do.

Seriously, you could be dating her…and then find out she’s a dude

If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I’m being sarcastic. I’d like to make that clear. I’d also like to make it clear that I disagree wholeheartedly with the notion that sexual identity is all in the mind. If gender is something determined by gut instinct, l want out! One day I’ll write a dystopian fantasy to illustrate the terrible consequences of such an awful idea, but not in this day and age. The book would never get published. Could you imagine such a world? Try it. Imagine yourself walking down the street and you see a pretty woman. You stop to ask her out on a date…well, minutes into the conversation you find out that she’s really a he with long hair and abnormally large pectoral muscles. You wade deeper into the conversation and you uncover that, even though she’s a man, she recently decided that she was a gay man and would like to exchange phone numbers. Wisely you would withhold your information and forget the experience ever happened. You see, following Kant’s principle of universal law, if everyone chose their gender by their gut instinct we’d have people who weren’t just bisexual, but dual-gender bisexual. It’s ridiculous. So why does even happen at all?

I recently read an article (Transgender teen told she can’t come to school as girl)about a poor transgender girl named Rachel and a straight boy named Brian. Last year Brian attended Thorne Middle School, was bullied and consequently depressed. He cried a lot, had fits of panic. This year Brian chose not to attend school, but Rachel did. And when Rachel showed up people freaked out! If Rachel was biologically female, she would probably have just taken a seat in the back of the classroom and been ignored. But Rachel wasn’t biologically female. Rachel was Brian’s alter-ego. After school, when Brian came home depressed, crying and emotional, he became Rachel. And Brian’s mom supported his decision.

This is what kids are getting!

It may surprise you that many people would call this proper parenting. There’s even a website that teaches parents how to properly raise a transgender child (Transparenthood). Months back I read an article written by a single mother who made sure her child was exposed to both masculine and feminine activities. This mother wanted her child (she even refused to label her child “son” or “daughter”) to freely explore her gender identity uninhibited by social, cultural, or even linguistic pressures. Pronouns were changed like diapers. Some days the child was “him”, other days the child was “her”. I wasn’t surprised, this is a crazy world full of crazy people with crazy ideas. Then I read the comments: endless praise of this mother’s wisdom, her keen insight and understanding. I couldn’t believe the fawning audience this article had.

And it happens quite frequently

So how did Brian become Rachel? I suspect it wasn’t all Brian’s doing. I feel sorry for Brian. I also feel sorry for Rachel. Brian had a shot at being happy, but Rachel has made it clear that Brian is gone. Now there is only Rachel, a girl in a growing man’s body. She’ll experience all the normal hormones of a teenage boy. She’ll be different from other girls, and she’s excluded herself from other boys. Not that long ago, this would have been called a psychological illness. In fact, during the Vietnam War several drafted celebrities had doctors render them unfit for action by declaring in a note that active duty would trigger their patients’ homosexual tendencies. Rachel may feel more at ease with her emotions today, and maybe tomorrow. But there will be days when she hears Brian calling out to her, begging for her to remove the mask and accept her true nature.