Violence as Entertainment

There is more to the problem of gun violence, particularly as it tragically takes place in American schools, than is being mentioned in the commentaries I have seen. I refer to the constant flow of violence put forth by the entertainment/video game industries.

I agree that we need legislative action to control the proliferation of all guns, particularly of handguns and of so-called assault weapons and their kin. We need enforceable background checks on all gun sales, and bans on weapons no civilian should ever need.

I also agree that we need to address mental health issues and the challenges to identifying and treating all who suffer mentally. Adequate and appropriate funding is a critical matter that is always a tough sell, but perhaps it will get a more sympathetic hearing if we can sustain our concern about what happened yesterday for more than a week. I do worry, however, about the present administration getting too deeply into questions of what constitutes mental illness, given the history of oppressive governments accusing their adversaries of being mentally ill so they can lock them up or render them powerless in some other way.

What I have not seen or heard is much discussion of the cultural context in which these shootings continue to take place. That context is a society that seems to celebrate violence and bloodshed as a means to fame and perhaps even to fortune. This is something we do not wish to face, and that I expect my liberal friends to try to deny.

For example, watch the promotions for television shows and films. How many of them focus on violence, even if they do not celebrate it? Many graphically portray bloodshed, while many others seem to sanitize it by showing no blood at all, leaving what it really looked like to viewers’ eager imaginations. Producers and directors know what sells, and violence sells very well indeed.

What little I know about video games strikes me much the same way. I’ve watched people play games in which their guns mow down victims one after another. It adds up to a numerical score, a score that in real life is a human score.

Unless parents/guardians keep it from them, very young children are often exposed to all of this, and they grow up with it.

In addition, popular music can seem to make violence okay, and cruel words directed against others – emanating from the Web to the White House – teach the young that it is okay to use the vilest hurtful language when you don't like or even know someone. Children grow up in a cultural continuum of violence and bloodshed and some of them – too many of them – one day engage in it themselves.

Don’t tell me it’s always been so. Yes, we listened to radio programs and saw movies and played games of “cops and robbers” and “cowboys and Indians,” but I do not think many of us were so totally immersed in that play that we forget who we and the other person really were. I doubt that any of the kids I played those games with and watched those movies with ever imagined firing a gun into a crowd of faceless strangers just because we were angry at the world. And if that thought did go through our heads, we immediately heard in our conscience the voice of a parent or preacher warning us that murdering anyone for any reason was just plain wrong.

Perhaps that’s the heart of the problem: so many voices, the commercially successful voices, yell violence at us, but the calming voices of preachers, parents, and principals are either not heard at all or are discounted as coming from dated authority figures, sounds from a long-forgotten age. Ours is the age of me and mine; why can’t I do what I want to do when I want to do it, even at the cost of another’s life?

Who wants to take on the mighty entertainment industry that foists violence upon us because we make it profitable for it to do so? The first amendment rightly puts this job beyond the making of laws, and there are not enough mental health professionals in the world to help all of that industry’s unwitting victims. What surprises me is that few seem to dare talk about this aspect of violence in our society. Until that happens, it is unlikely that we will stop the flow of blood in our schools and on our streets.

American Justice on ICE

The way we see things often determines the stories we remember and tell. Those remembered and repeated stories in turn often influence the way we see things. Consider, for example, the stories presidents tell.

In his State of the Union address President Donald Trump chose to tell the story of an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent who bravely arrests and sends back home bad gang members who are in this country illegally. It is the kind of story Mr. Trump tells over and over, so often that he apparently really believes it is the only ICE agent story that is true.

To drive his point home he introduced the grieving parents of children who had been killed by bad gang members who were in this country illegally.

One might think that the only murders committed in the USA are at the hands of bad gang members who are in this country illegally. It is no surprise that Mr. Trump did not put on display the grieving family of one of the tens of thousands of Americans killed every year by good old, true blue, born-in-the-USA Americans. Because if he does not hear, tell, and internalize that story, it will be as if it never happened. It will not stand in the way of the conclusion he wants us to make.

Here are three more stories of undocumented people living among us which Mr. Trump might have told…

1) A Kansas chemistry professor who has been in the US for some 30 years, who has three children and a cleaner police record that most people reading this blog, was picked up as he took one of his kids to school, and is being detained 150 miles from his home. Apparently ICE hopes to send him back to Bangladesh. Yes, he is “in this country illegally,” but by all accounts he is neither a gang member, nor all that bad.

2) In Youngstown, OH, over the past couple of months there has unfolded the story of a businessman, also in this country for decades illegally but by all accounts an otherwise decent man – a family man and respected in his community – now sent back in Jordan.

3) And then there is the woman, the mother of four children, now being given sanctuary in a church just a few miles away to try to keep her from being sent back to her native Mexico.

What if President Trump had had the courage to tell those stories to those assembled in the House chamber and to the world? What if he had effusively praised the courage of heavily-armed ICE agents arresting, detaining, and deporting people such as they apparently are? One dares hope the entire chamber would have sat on its hands.

How hard is it to tell the difference? Two people are in the US illegally, and have been for years. One is raising a family, contributing to our economy and culture, and earning the respect of respectable people around them. The other is a thuggish gang member willing to kill a stranger without a second thought. How hard would it be to distinguish between the two? It’s the kind of discrimination between good and bad that is apparently too subtle for ICE under the thumb of Donald Trump.

I have resisted calling the kind of America Donald Trump’s ascendency is creating, “Nazi,” or its agents, “Gestapo.” But now I see it: all Jews were arrested, detailed, and sent to the camps because the Nazis were incapable of distinguishing between Jew and Jew. Now, Gestapo-like, all who “are in this country illegally” are being arrested, detained, and deported because an illegal is an illegal. Who is next? What category, what class, what kind of person is next?

One good thing may come out of this horror. Perhaps there are enough members of congress who still have hearts that some legislation can be passed to create a more humane way of dealing with the undocumented among us. Maybe Congress will have to give the President his damned wall in order to get the job done, I don’t know. But let’s do what is fair and just before the generous compassion that we Americans show at our best is completely torn out of us.

In the meantime, is there no room for mercy in the Trump administration’s enforcement of our immigration laws?

About Trump’s Military Parade

It’s hard to believe that our president is so impressed by what the French do that he wants to do it over here. In any case, Congress should deny all funding for any “military parade” down Pennsylvania Avenue, or anywhere.
The day tanks and missles roll down the streets of Washngtin is the day we kiss America goodbye.

My new word for today: Snollygoster

Today's "A Word a Day" Website introduced me to a word about which I can only wonder why I haven't heard it before. Do not stop at reading its meaning. The notes are very important.

Why isn't "snollygoster" in almost every political news story?

BTW, do not expect me to tell you what "talknophical assumnacy" is. Google it, and decide for yourself!

MEANING:

noun: A shrewd, unprincipled person. 

ETYMOLOGY:

Of uncertain origin, perhaps an alteration of snallygaster, a mythical creature said to prey on poultry and children, possibly from Pennsylvania Dutch schnelle geeschter, from German schnell (quick) + Geist (spirit). Earliest documented use: 1846. 

NOTES:

According to a Georgia editor, “A snollygoster is a fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform, or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force of monumental talknophical assumnacy.”

Singing Praises of the (Mostly) Unsung Singers

Here’s to the singers – and to all the musicians – whose Grammy wins on Sunday were barely mentioned and hardly noticed . . . and to the Grammy nominees whose also-ran status received even less attention.

(I know you are there because the Crossing, a choir dedicated to “new” music, and of which our daughter is a member, won the Grammy for Best Choral Performance. Most folks no doubt missed the announcement. And I do not begrudge any singer or group their Grammy (way to go, Bruno!). I am used to loving genres of music that receive relatively little public attention. I’ve been this way since I can remember. If it’s a problem, I own it.)

Anyway, here’s to all the Grammy-nominated and Grammy-receiving musicians who work hard at their craft, even if they receive little media attention and small financial rewards. They do it because they love what they do, and wouldn’t and couldn’t think of doing anything else.

Here’s to the musicians who have invested tens of thousands of dollars and untold years in learning and honing their gifts and skills, have become marvelously proficient at what they do, and are lucky to get a line or two of free publicity.

Here’s to the singers and instrumentalists who put together and promote their own acts and groups without the help of staff or agents in order to be heard by small but appreciative audiences.

Here’s to the many musicians whose lives are often every bit as interesting and even quirky as those pictured on the cover of Rolling Stone, and who are quite happy never to be there.

Here’s to the artists who patiently teach students their craft and their love of that craft, passing on the secrets of bringing complex and challenging scores to life.

Here’s to the generous donors and faithful audiences who keep groups like the Crossing afloat because they love their music and believe it must be heard.

Here’s to all musicians whose art speaks to contemporary social and political issues, forcing us look at realities around us we may not choose to see. (Pop stars are not the only musicians who do that.)

Here’s to every musician who puts his or her financial life together one song at a time, one gig at a time, one check and one bill at a time. May those who really have something to offer be able to make a living at it. May their artistic dreams be encouraged by fair tax laws and the availability of affordable health care.

Here’s to every hard-working and dedicated music creator, professional and amateur, who will never come close to a Grammy, but who keeps on doing what they do for the shear joy of it.

Here’s to the (largely) unsung singers and instrumentalists who are numbered among the 2018 Grammy nominees and winners, but about whom the general public heard not a pianissimo. Your contributions to music, to art, and to our cultural health and happiness are far beyond the recognition you usually receive.

Here’s to all of you. Thank you.

For the Birds

Birds are eating us out of house and feeder these days.

Frigid winds slice across frozen, snow-covered ground. Feather-weight bodies require enormous resources to rise and to remain aloft. My birds must survive this desperate winter to breed, to sing, to be happy come spring.

I love watching my birds fly between the fir trees and their feeder. Some linger a while, eating slowly, others stay only a few seconds. They have different eating patterns and habits, and they trade time at the trough in ways only they understand. The smaller finches and even the cardinals stand on the lip of the feeder; woodpeckers hang by their feet from it and poke their beaks over its edge; doves scour the ground for what’s been dropped.

Sometimes I regret ever starting my birds down this path with me. If I’d never begun feeding them they wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t keep swooping out of the trees, taking dead aim at my ancient, green plastic feeder. A feeder that has only survived these two decades (or more, I can’t remember) because squirrels cannot climb around the poop-covered, green plastic baffle that keeps them from chewing it into oblivion.

I bundle up, daily, to trek out to retrieve the empty feeder. I maintain a path cleared through the snow across our creaky deck (when will one of its old boards give way?). I lift the feeder down, carry it into the garage. I bend over what started out as a 35-pound bag of Oiled Black Sunflower Seeds. It loses weight as I scoop its dark contents into the feeder. One day it will be light enough to carry it to the feeder instead of my carrying the feeder to it. That’s one trip, not two, across my small estate. Always calculating the easiest way to do a job.

When I walk out to refill my feeder I sometimes look right and left into neighbors’ yards to pick up any sign that I am not alone in my feeding project. I see no such sign, which does not mean that they are not similarly involved with our feathered neighbors. I judge no one on this matter, and trust that somewhere on our street a human neighbor feeds the birds, and most likely deer and other wild things as well.

But I really do not mind if I am the only one. I take no particular credit for my act of kindness toward nature. It costs a little money to feed my birds, but the claim that they “are eating us out of house and feeder” is hype. To get your attention (“Is Dean at risk of losing his home in order to feed mere birds?” No, he is not.).

But they do deserve my paltry generosity, do they not? Their ancestors were here long before we humans invaded their woods.

Songs for the ages?

A front page sidebar in Wednesday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer alerted readers to the following piece on cleveland.com, the PD’s digital news outlet:

40 greatest pop songs from 2000 to today

Music writer Troy L. Smith picks the pop songs that have defined the 21st century – the ones that have stood the test of time. See his list at cleveland.com/entertainment.

What? Only 18 years into the 21st century Troy Smith knows the songs that have defined it?

The 21st century has hardly begun, and it’s been defined already by commercially-driven songs, even as many as 40 of them? I guess other things could define this present century – wars, climate collapse, famine, ethnic cleansing, particularly despicable political figures; or, hopefully, justice, fairness, acceptance, peace, plenty, particularly noble political figures, etc – but glitzy, tabloid-grabbing pop songs? I can’t imagine an entire century being defined by a few songs of any genre.

What? “They’ve stood the test of time?”

Heck, they can’t be more than teenagers, many of them not even shaving yet! How can they even begin to lay claim to “standing the test of time?” What time? Whose time? I’m nearly 75 years old, and I don’t claim to have stood the test of time, and I know for certain that I hadn’t stood that test when I was 18.

Danny Boy, Auld Lang Syne, the songs of Frank Schubert and George Gershwin, even the Beatles’ songs . . . they are only a few of the songs that have stood, or at least are standing, the test of time. You can name dozens and dozens more, of all genres.

I’m not claiming that there are no good or worthy songs that will stand time’s test among Troy Smith’s 40, but I do question the claims of the writer of the Plain Dealer’s breathless words. I question them because I think they underline a dangerous misunderstanding of our present importance and of the importance of pop culture in a society enamored by ephemeral tastes, fads, and trends. They also point to our short attention spans, our impatience with sustained discussion and consideration, our eagerness to move on to “the next big thing.”

Time’s test takes . . . time. Significantly more time than these songs have had to prove themselves, even in the carefully-managed world of pop culture.