A Lott of Logic

Who woulda thought that Bush would pull a Clinton? Gearing down at the end of his presidency he's trying to boost his legacy by approaching the Israeli-Palestinian issue. No matter that through the last seven years he has supported Israel and dissed Palestine. I wonder how Rush is characterizing this since he demonized Clinton for trying the same thing at the end?

And it's finally been made public: the neocons, it turns out, plan to keep fifty thousand troops in Iraq, retain control of oil reserves, and encourage the investment of foreign capital, especially American, in Iraq. We've been saying that since the invasion and they've been denying it. Now that they get honest is there any consequence for their dishonesty?

But that's not what I'm writing about tonight.

All of a sudden Trent Lott, being the second-ranking Republican after more than thirty years inside the Beltway, steps down with no explanation other than he listened to a sermon on Sunday from Ecclesiastes ('To every thing there is a season...') and decided it was time to go. Now, call me cynical, but that's a bit thin. My BS meter spiked when I heard about it.

A coworker remarked on Lott leaving. I told her it was probably because he was close to getting caught for something and was skating before it came out. Thinking later, maybe he did get caught, the scandal was too tight to get out of, and he bowed to upper management telling him to get the hell out of Dodge and they wouldn't let the truth out.

Either way, such a powerful man leaving like that points to the oft-voiced allegation of corruption. If the scandal goes that high in the food chain then it's too close to the top to not have had the top involved, or at least aware of it. To not doubt is irresponsible if we are to preserve the good name of our nation. Where is investigative journalism anymore?

And to give such a thin excuse, using a Godly reason to cover his ass! How it rankles. How low we have sunk. I wonder how God will deal with him when the time comes?

Rather than get indignant and even angry about such things I'll just shake my head slowly. What can we do with such people? We're better than that.

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From the Shooting Sunset dictionary:

Death (n): 1. a misunderstood transaction. 2. quittin’ time before one is ready to clock out. 3. being fired from life.

Questions

If the United States instituted a surge in Iraq, doesn't that make the US insurgents?

The news in last the few days is that the amount of violence in Bagdhad has decreased. One independent news source (foreign, of course) reported a steady amount elsewhere in the country. The spin machine is trying to say that the surge is working. As several have noted, one month of decreased violence in one city out of five years of war does not a trend make. Also, has anybody considered that the other side may have pulled back in order to lull us into a false sense that things are going right? Are they too stupid to not have any psychological acumen?

Has anybody also noticed that the number of American military deaths in Iraq has now surpassed the number of deaths in the WTC attacks? And the estimates are that more than a million Iraqis have died since we attacked them. When do we say that we're even? At what point do we back off the fight and say that it isn't worth carrying on? Unitl every terrorist is dead? That's an impossible number. Until all Iraqis are dead? That's ridiculous. Until Bush and Cheney are satisfied? Who volunteers to keep dying for that agenda?

I've long thought that since Bush and Cheney are so interested in the outcome of Iraq that we should just ship them over there, let them play their war games (not with the US military; they'd have to contract with private armies NOT at US taxpayer expense), put somebody else in the White House, and get on with our country. Bush for President of Iraq!

Some say I'm cynical. Am I? Nah. Just frustrated.

That bile out of the way, let me say that in this season of thankfulness there is much to be thankful for. That there are jobs and income and some level of comfort for most of us, more comfortable than we often stop to think about. There are so many good people in the world who go unrecognized in the day to day sensational media, political gaming, and daytime TV sniping at each other. The world is a rather beautiful place once we slow down, take a look, and overcome our stereotypes long enough to notice that this tree is an interesting shape with reasons for all its oddities, that this bird is a marvel of flight engineering and color selection, that this person has a story, too, and it is just as important and interesting as mine. Most of all, despite everything we hear and see every day, Love continues to be a strong force, obvious and subtle, that keeps everything moving forward in the world, keeps everything growing toward its potential, and makes it worth it to witness and be a part of this whole planet full of people and other beings, sentient and unaware, without which we may as well say that Hell is indeed here on Earth. Keep the spirit going, my friends.

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From the Shooting Sunset dictionary:

Car (n): a mechanical assemblage designed to extend the range of human inactivity.

Bush Psychology

In case you've wondered why I have such a hard time with how the Bush administration runs the country, it goes like this: my degrees are in psychology. Going back to Psych 101, here are some theories and their relations to the administration.

In Freud's psychoanalytic theory we have the id, ego, and superego. The id is the childish, self-centered state where we want things our way without compromise. The ego is the rational adult mind; without the superego state anything can be rationalized. The superego, then, is necessary as the moral regulator of both the id and ego to keep them from stretching too far outside the bounds of reality.

In the administration Bush is the id, Cheney is the ego, and intellectuals around the nation and the world are the superego.

Then we go to the theory of locus of control. In this theory a person is motivated and regulated either by external things (outside the person) or internal things (inside, natch). In reality every person has a blend of the two, with varying degrees of one or the other. People who are externally motivated tend to see the world as a dangerous place that needs to be tamed to ensure security for the self. People who are internally motivated tend to see a vast universe inside that needs to be mastered. In theory the most desirable mix is to be mostly internally motivated, with enough of an external motivation to account for realistic things that are outside one's control. The mastery of the inner self gives one resources to deal with external situations.

Bush and Co. display a continual fear of the external world that needs to be tamed. They are too far into the external locus of control to be healthy.

Though there could be more theories to review I'll only give one more. In the Object Relations school of psychology we come across a concept called introjection. This means that one is capable of manipulating others to treat one in a certain way that gives one permission to either claim victimization or substantiate revenge. Generally one is unaware of this dynamic even when exercising it.

Bush seems to have no concept that fighting terrorists breeds resentment that prompts them to recruit more terrorists. It also engages them in a King of the Mountain fight, giving them worldwide press and thus legitimacy (at least to themselves), which gives them the motivation and energy to pursue their extreme agendas.

By these three examples alone we find that Bush is a childish, insecure bully who picks fights and doesn't understand that his fighting encourages others. Cheney sits in the background with less obvious though just as strong fears, rationalizing everything without any seeming awareness that what he's doing is wrong according to constitutional, international, and religious law. The intellectuals have spoken out for years trying to get their attention. But there is not enough support in the public because there has been a successful campaign to not think for oneself and to only guarantee one's inclusion in the herd (rejection, in our caveman side, is ultimately deadly) by going along with the official line.

This is a taste of why I have trouble with the way the administration runs things. It is beyond me how many psychologists support Bush.

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From Shooting Sunset's Tao:

A foolish man tells the clouds that it should not snow today. It is like trying to push a river back upstream.

The wise man appreciates the beauty of snow.

Overtreatment

I heard a comment on the radio yesterday that part of the problem with healthcare costs is that we have overtreatment in medicine in America. In essence, every little complaint is taken seriously and treated. It becomes overtreatment when the complaints are minor or even nonexistent. I should note up front that there are legitimate illnesses and disorders, and courses of treatment for them.

In town we have a university hospital where doctors are being educated and trained. If you enter the door with the tiniest complaint you will have a phalanx of doctors -- teachers, residents, and students -- investigate the complaint. It seems natural in that setting. But I also have clients who are on disability, used to The System taking care of them, lots of time on their hands, few social skills, and the ingredients are right for them to make trip after trip to medical appointments. They come up with complaints that I wouldn't bother about for myself. And it costs the taxpayers.

My daughter has braces on her teeth right now. I've survived this half century without straight teeth. But up against an oral surgeon who sees imperfection and an ex-wife who doesn't discriminate well on her own, I'm paying for braces. I will always wonder if my daughter's teeth were as bad as they were made out to be, or if the horrific possible scenarios would really have played out. Wondering about the difference between possibility and probability makes the world of medicine look kind of silly because they (and pharmaceuticals) let us know there are all kinds of terrible things that could happen. What if I questioned how likely it was that they would happen?

Did you know that the better you get at stress management the fewer medical problems you're likely to have? If that's true, why don't we ever hear about it as a method to reduce healthcare costs? Because the psychology lobby ain't spit compared to the pharmaceutical lobby. They need for us to be sick in order to guarantee profits.

I've wondered many times how much all this happens in my field, counseling. I've denied treatment after assessing people before, saying that they don't have much of a problem and not wanting to spend tax and insurance dollars unnecessarily or waste the client's time or mine, and despite having to deal with the occasional probation or parole officer who ordered them to enter treatment Or Else, the clients have been really surprised that I've not recommended treatment. Sometimes I look at clients and think, 'Where's the problem? You have enough inner gumption to handle what you're complaining about.' It's long been recognized that there is a population of 'worried well' in our culture, people who are psychologically sound but just a little anxious about something. But it's fashionable to enter treatment, or to believe that a 'professional' knows better how to handle things. How did we get along without shrinks a couple of centuries ago?

Another fault in the field of psychology is that many minor aberrations and eccentricities of yesteryear are now being called disorders, which suggests that they need treatment. Haven't adolescents and teens always had problems with adjustment to social roles and responsibilities? That's part of the path they tread. But now we list several 'adjustment disorders' in the diagnostic manual, Big Pharma comes up with a pill to address it, and kids are doped up through the period when they're supposed to be establishing an identity, learning to cope with society, and strengthening their character. Hm. What are the long-term individual and social effects of blunting their development?

Speaking of Big Pharma and overtreatment, a few years back they came up with a medication to address influenza. They promise that if you take the medicine you'll begin to notice a reduction in symptoms in 36 to 72 hours. Tell me: how long does the flu usually last? That people swallowed that one without question attests to a herd mentality without critical thinking, another of my common rants.

I haven't heard the term 'defensive medicine' in a long time, but this contributes to the rise in healthcare costs and sometimes gets ridiculous. It's the doctor testing for all possibilities for the CYA phenomenon. This brings in the glut of lawyers we are visited by, and between the two there is a lot of unnecessary treatment performed.

What is lost is a lot of common sense, a refusal to accept imperfection and other realities, a doubt of your own better judgment about what's happening with your body, and higher costs all around. Is there a chance that sanity can be restored as we get more and more specialized, compartmentalized, and litigious so that the forest is lost in the trees?

Kindergarten 101

One of the lessons of Kindergarten was that we learned to share, right?

What is at the bottom of the problem between black people and white people in the United States? It’s that the white people don’t want to share power with the blacks. The attitude is so strong that after a war and continuous legislation over the last 150 years to make things equal there is still a power differential between blacks and whites.

Why are the whites so reluctant to share power? What are they – I should say we – so afraid of?

Despite scientific evidence that proves there is at best an infinitesimal genetic difference between black and white – race is considered more an environmental adaptation than genetic difference anymore, -- despite the example of many fine black people who have contributed to the progress, safety, and well-being of our great nation, despite the example of Harold Washingtons who are able to suppress centuries of resentment and are able to treat blacks and whites fairly, we still have the power differential.

There is probably a fear, a legitimate fear, that if blacks were granted power there would be many who would try to take too much, to make up for generations and generations of maltreatment and suppression. Some would. It’s probably why so many white folk have such a hard time with rap music: it glorifies symbols of power that the black people have been denied throughout their history in this nation. Unfortunately it is often angry, and the symbols are base things like brutal language, sexual dominance, and money-grubbing. It revels in the pure exercise of power – guns and purchasing power and such – without much regard for the sanctity of life and spirit, but I suppose it should be expected when a people have been told for centuries that they’re not valuable and have been treated as expendable.

Black people have been demonized in our nation as dirty, smelly, uneducated, and violent. Some fit the description, some don’t. Some white folk fit the description, some don’t. But the point is, what is the need to demonize a people? It is the apparently very human need, borne of insecurity, to feel better about oneself and to retain the tentative grasp on power one has. This is the most basic reason for not sharing power: one fears the loss of control and possible resulting harm.

The solution, then, is contained in the description: if insecurity is the problem then security needs to be instilled. This would be a two-part effort, and both need simultaneous cultivation. One part is individual security for both blacks and whites, and the other is collective security for all. And it’s not a matter of sharing money or other symbols of power; it’s the power that comes from the cultivation of mature spirit, instilling principles of responsibility, trust, respect, and so forth. Heck, Boy Scouts learn to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Are adults able to learn such things? We need strong, capable, fair, loving leaders to guide us. Guidance is key; shouting, demanding, and legislating haven't solved the problem.

Should we engage in this task there will be little need to demonize foreign Islamists, gooks, wops, krauts, or any other national, religious, or ethnic group while we turn the scope on ourselves and work at healing within. Until we learn to share equitably we haven’t graduated from Kindergarten and have no business pretending to be a world leader.

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from the Shooting Sunset dictionary:

Moustache (n): the worst part of blowing one's nose.

Stressing Fibromyalgia

Stress is stored in the muscles of the neck, back, and shoulders. That's what we learned in psychology class. That's what masseuses get paid for.

Going through a pamphlet the other day about fibromyalgia, it said that the cause of the condition is unknown. Later in the pamphlet it said that fibromyalgia has no psychological cause.

So which is it? How do they know there's no psychological cause if they don't know what causes it?

Until we notice that the pamphlet is put out by a pharmaceutical company. Even without knowing what causes it they have a pill that treats it. Backward science. Or clever marketing.

Has anybody noticed that the treatment advertised for a range of maladies from headaches to heart disease to acid reflux is always pharmaceutical? I've seen a commercial for an antacid that says pretty blatantly, "You can't change the amount of stress in your life," so you may as well buy their product. People are swallowing more than the antacids by believing such dreck.

Because you can change the stress in your life. You can make decisions about what you involve yourself in and how much, you have the ability (and the right) to say no to things that would be negative for you, you can take charge and not let the kids and their activities run your life... There is a multitude of things you can do to change the stress level in your life.

The pharmaceutical industry doesn't want you to know this. If everybody started handling stress better then their profits would plummit.

I have a series of lectures that I've done for years on handling stress better through physical (diet, exercise, rest), mental (decision-making, logic), emotional (regulation, positive uses of), and spiritual (beliefs, practices) means. While nowhere near perfect, I use these things myself and almost never get sick, almost never see a doctor, don't feel that my life is commanded by every force around me, don't get stressed out, and can handle most any situation I'm in. My daughter commented a couple of weeks ago, "Dad, you're in good shape. A lot of people your age are getting old."

Big Pharma would shudder to hear it.

Backing Off The Brink

Today I had an experience that has become somewhat common to me in the last seven years. Listening to independent talk radio I heard another litany of deceptions that the Bush administration and those who support it are perpetrating. In a moment of frustration I felt like throwing my hands in the air and crying, “We’ve been exposing these things for years now! There aren’t drug-soaked hippies demanding that we get out of Vietnam anymore…we have nonprofit corporations, independent media, and protest media populated with very intelligent and hardworking people striving against the Bush agenda but the neocon machine goes on. It’s not working!”

It’s at times like this that I have to stop listening to the radio for a while. The helpless frustration has nowhere to go, and if I feed it, it only grows bigger.

Yet there’s a part of me that can’t give up. Giving in is tantamount to giving tacit permission for them to continue. So what to do?

Well, if the emotion gets intolerable but the principle needs to be held to then the emotion must go. I must become a dispassionate participant holding together the principles of democracy that remain. But I can’t afford to become one of those cold fish who can recite endless statistics with no give in any area; a computer can do that. I guess I just have to contain myself, not let passion overwhelm my purpose, not give in to the Dark Side but calmly allow positive creation to push and guide me.

The facts are abundantly obvious. The Bush camp started wars for a reason: it benefits them. They lie about intentions and operations for a reason: they get away with it and it benefits them. They enact policy that detracts from the common good for a reason: it benefits them. They take away others’ freedoms in order to increase their own. The consolidation of power is everything. Profit is more important than benevolence. People who get in the way – be it politics, protests, or the unfortunate soul who happens to be where the bomb lands – are expendable.

The Bush doctrine has proved that greed is a strong motivating force. They have also proved that greed doesn’t have a limit. No longer content to wait until international treaties bring them higher yields, they have resorted to merely attacking and taking as they wish, and richly reward those who build the machines and support the effort to accomplish it.

A part of me wants to think that God will deal with their souls justly and there’s nothing stronger I can do, and then wait for it to happen, but even if that is the final outcome for them individually it does nothing to protect and preserve the nations that they are raping and pillaging along the way. Including our own.

And so I must continue to write, and to let people know where I stand and what I see. I have to do whatever is necessary for me to not give in to hopelessness, and if the swamp is up to my neck and slogging through is tedious and so very slow, then I must keep moving at whatever pace I can. To stand in the muck and cry doesn't get anybody anywhere.

Lacrimosa

It has ever been the error of humankind that we have allowed men who see about them competition, threat, and enemies to become leaders. Men who are driven to survive by whatever means, men who are too desperate for security that the rule of law is a hindrance, men who will conquer anything but themselves. These are men who invest in the suppression of opposition, who inwardly quail at the spectre of defeat and outwardly boast of nation or gods or symbols of power. In the mad pursuit of power, never enough power, these men have lied, rationalized, cheated, schemed, impoverished others while enriching themselves, and killed attempting to retain the heady rush of hormonal satisfaction. In the holy mantle of demigods they rule, convinced of their rightness and righteousness while cloaking an eternally vast emptiness and fear of the dark even to their own awareness. Such pitiful and dangerous men!

Were that we could widely acknowledge and recognize maturity of spirit, that we could accept Love as stronger than fear, and more desirable. Were that we could promote those of this magnitude to the position of teachers of humankind, and ask of them to lead us. Oh, that we could value cooperation over competition, commonality over boundary, creation over destruction, service over dominance!

For until then we shall have the petty, fearful slaves of power arresting, suppressing, and killing those of great spirit. It need not be so.