On Edward Snowden, Gezi Park, and the American Constitution

*

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.^[1}

(The Constitution of the United States of America, The First Amendment)

When the Constitution was thus perfected and established, a new form of government was created, but it was neither speculative nor experimental as to the principles on which it was based. If they were true principles, as they were, the government founded upon them was destined to a life and an influence that would continue while the liberties it was intended to preserve should be valued by the human family. Those liberties had been wrung from reluctant monarchs in many contests, in many countries, and were grouped into creeds and established in ordinances sealed with blood, in many great struggles of the people. They were not new to the people. They were consecrated theories, but no government had been previously established for the great purpose of their preservation and enforcement. That which was experimental in our plan of government was the question whether democratic rule could be so organized and conducted that it would not degenerate into license and result in the tyranny of absolutism, without saving to the people the power so often found necessary of repressing or destroying their enemy, when he was found in the person of a single despot.

(John T. Morgan.  Introduction to Democracy in America by Alexis de Toqueville)

*

I have been following, for a few weeks now,

the demand for an equal voice

being made by a segment of the Turkish population.

Having lived in Turkey for four years,

I have my own feelings and opinions about this.  

In fact, this is what I posted

on my personal Facebook page a week ago

about this:

I think it is very important for the Western world to understand why the problems in the Islamic world are our problems, too. And problems in Turkey should concern us a lot. Yes, I lived in Turkey, for four years, and there I met some of the most gracious people in the world. One of the skills I have admired in Turks is their ability to straddle two worlds . . . to live in the margins, so to speak, and to do it graciously and with integrity. They live in a country that is in both Asia and Europe; indeed, Istanbul is probably the only city in the world that straddles two continents. Geopolitically, they are at the crossroads between the Islamic world and the Judeo-Christian world. When I was living there (1999-2003) the Turks took that role very seriously. Right after 9/11, the Turkish government made attempts to host meetings of world leaders from both sides of the divide; in fact, the crossroads city of Istanbul was the site of such gatherings, and the Turks acted as moderators and translators, between the West and the East, between the secular world and the Islamic world. This is the role that Turkey can and must assume, and this is why they are a very important ally to all of us.

The current Prime Minister, Erdoğan, assumed office during my final year there, and every time I have returned since 2003, I have noticed more rigidity. Specifically, I have been back to Turkey four times since I moved back to the States, and yes, each time I've noticed an increased imposition of a more repressive Islamic state. The second last time I was there, in 2008, when I went to visit the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, I was wearing long pants, sandals and a short sleeved t-shirt, but I had brought my own scarf to cover my shoulders and head, which I always do when entering a mosque. I was taken aside by two men, who gave me about four pieces of cloth, and they demanded that I cover myself completely. That would have never happened in 1999, or 2003. . . I noticed them doing this to many foreign women. When I was there in 2012, I was armed and ready with plenty of scarves whenever I went into a historic mosque.

The founding rector of Başkent University, where I worked in Ankara, Prof Dr. Mehmet Haberal (who is also an internationally known surgeon), is still in jail; he was placed there because of his supposed involvement in Ergenekon, "an alleged clandestine, secularist ultra-nationalist organization in Turkey with possible ties to members of the country's military and security forces." (see wikipedia entry on Ergenekon). It appears that academics, media people, or anyone who poses a threat to the current government ends up being accused of being part of Ergenekon. I'm certain my Turkish friends could correct me on this, and I hope they do.

I tell you these things because I think they may help exemplify how Turkey has changed and is changing. The protesters are indeed demanding more than a park, and Erdoğan's belittlement of their demands is symptomatic of a pathological denial.

The most important thing to remember, though, is that Islam itself is not the offender. It is a beautiful religion when practiced purely, as are the other two monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity.

My thoughts, prayers, and supports go out to all my friends in Turkey, as they seek to have their voices heard.

*

I really can't say any more about that here.  My feelings remain the same.

But in the world I live in today, Turkey has been eclipsed by

another story, where someone has dared to practice free speech,

in the land where free speech was the first right

granted by the Constitution:

It is very difficult for me to not make a connection between these two 

news stories, and to see how the first illustrates

the possible outcome of the second.

When I moved to Turkey, I felt there was a fundamental

difference between the U.S.A and Turkey,

and that difference lay in the Constitution of the United States.

Such a hallowed document.

But while there, I began to suspect that it was beginning to become

hollow.

In Fall of 2002, I was teaching a course

on American Social and Political Systems.

This, in itself, is kind of funny, because that is not at all

my area of expertise.  However,

our American historian had skipped town,

and I was told to teach this course.

I insisted that I couldn't.

"You're American, aren't you?"

they said,

"you can teach this course."

I decided to base the course on the Bill of Rights,

and to have my students analyze the

different constitutional amendments,

in terms of their historical context and

the ideology they promoted.

While I was doing this,

the war drums were beginning to sound.

Although the then current American president

was claiming that an invasion of Iraq was

the last alternative 

to his aggressive rhetoric towards Saddam Hussein,

anyone who took a trip down to 

the Eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey

saw the U.S. war ships that were already anchored  in the Mediterranean,

waiting for that last alternative.

My students were very upset about the impending attack.

One day, they told me that they were certain

that George W. Bush would just call for

an invasion,

and I, in my naivete said:

"He can't do that.  We have a system of checks and balances in our Constitution

that require that he get permission from both Houses of Congress

before he does that."

My students laughed at me and said:

"Constitutions can be changed."

I insisted that wouldn't happen.

Well, we know what happened then:

(Notably, another political slight of hand happened

in Turkey when Erdoğan came to power,)

*

Since the 1920's, the Turkish Republic has been based upon

a truckload of reforms ushered in by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

It is quite overwhelming to read the litany of reforms

that he ushered in, in the course of a 

1927 speech that lasted about five days,

called "Nutuk," but often

now referred to as "The Great Speech."

In this speech he declared all of the reforms that would usher inhis new Republic,

among them was freedom of the individual.

Turkey's attempts, ever since then, to maintain this Western-style nation have been frought

with turmoil, because these reforms, which were all enacted,

were layered upon an Islamic Empire that also housed the Caliph of the Islamic World.

(Regretably, one of Atatürk's reforms was to get rid of the Caliph,

which, in my humble opinion,

was not a political choice that he had the right to make.)

Atatürk's reforms, then, were very much an experiment,

which was not without flaws,

but it was an experiment none-the-less,

and a Great One too.

Perhaps what we are witnessing in Turkey is either

an attempt to prolong and strengthen the democratic experiment

he ushered in.

Or perhaps it is an indication of how long

such an experiment can last

in a culture where the historical precedent is for something else.

*

In the meantime,

in the U.S.A.,

my heart goes out to Edward Snowden.

Edward Snowden has practiced

freedom of speech,

and dared to give 

freedom of information

to all Americans.

It is true; some may claim him a traitor,

and our government,

like the Turkish government,

may use their power over public discourse

to frame him as such.

Some may claim him a hero,

a man who is testing the extent to which

the American Experiment

is still valid.

His voice may be the first

among many voices

to demand our own

freedom of speech,

and privacy.

Others may think him mad.

He is painfully logical and honest,

and placidly so,

as he talks of his decision,

in the same way a madman

may painfully, logically, even honestly,

rationalize a crime.

But honestly,

I love him for it.

Edward Snowden knows he will become a cultural icon

for doing what he has done,

and for admitting that he did it.

The question is,

and the question we must all face in the U.S.A.,

politicians and citizens alike,

is:

what will he represent?

I dare say, 

the United States Constitution

demands that we make the right choice

about how history will write

about Edward Snowden.

zaman

Looking for America . . . .

It's painful to me,

how long I go without writing here.

I didn't even get in a post-election entry.

But every day my mind and spirit aches for the time

to sit and write,

even the simplest line,

a bad attempt at poetry.

Of course, I'm happy of the outcome,

but like some aging troubadours,

I wonder if we can still do it,

still fulfill the dream. . . 

. . . and so we dream. . . 

dream on . . . 

Vanity Sizing and the American Psyche

( from: madisonbootcamps )

Sometime between 1999 and 2004, a miracle happened to me: 

I shrank.

In 1999, before I moved from the U.S.A. to Turkey,

I went to the doctor, and weighed in at around 148 pounds,

 5' 10" tall.

When I went to the mall to buy some pants for my move,

I bought a size 12.  I have wide hips.

The width of my hips was always a bit of an issue with me,

and as a younger woman I did stupid things to slenderize,

but then I decided that I had to accept that

my bone structure can't be changed.

And that was that: size 12 pants,

size 10 dress.

A comfortable, but slightly tall

Medium.

Out the door, I carried clothes made of real cotton

that I still own.

And then I moved away.

In Turkey, I did not shrink,

I remained the same size,

and my skin became paler.

But the first time I bought clothes back in the States,

about a year later,

I was amazed that I was buying

size 10 pants.

A few months later, in the USA, I was a comfortable

size 8, and by 2003 or so

I actually bought a size 6 pants in the USA.

I wish I could show them to you,

but they were really flimsy and feel apart.

America, you see, is the land of miracles:
as long as I was buying my clothes in the States,
I was shrinking.

I could ignore the scale, 

which hadn't budged,

nor had a shrunk in any other proportion.

It was all perception, after all.

I was shrinking.

The closet proclaimed it to me defiantly,
on every tag declaring my new size:

my ass was narrower,

my boobs more modest,  my waist

wasting away.

( from: listxsadist )

Well, if I wanted to be delusional,

I could believe that, but

I've never been one to favor

that frame of mind.

I prefer

the raw, cold truth,

even if it means acknowledging

things like my increasing varicosities.
In the end, I feel it makes life

a little easier.
At the time,

I suspected that there was a conspiracy afoot

to maintain America's delusion

that they weren't getting fatter,

and this morning as I woke up again

to my trusty radio, 

I heard a story that confirmed 

precisely what I had been thinking.

(photo and story at 

NPR )

Vanity sizing:

the latest, greatest

American tall tale,

designed to keep the clothes

moving off the racks.
This is what one of the women said
on the radio, in her lilting, lovely
Indian accent.
When Americans kept getting fatter,
and the sizes remained the same,
well,
the clothes stopped selling.
The clothing industry, then,
came up with this brilliant idea:
make a size 6 bigger, and
make a size 6 a size 00,
and lead the consumer to believe
they were still as svelte as a model,
even if they no longer fit
into normal-sized movie theatre seats.

I guess the statement that put me over the edge, though,
was this:
the interviewer asked the woman
with the lilting, lovely Indian accent
if this was ethical:
aren't we lying to the public?
And she replied:
It's not really a lie,
if the public wants to be lied to.

Ah, indeed, the logic of it sent my mind reeling,
because,
because
among other things, I thought:
is this the attitude that the rest of the world  has
about the average American?
That we are complacent, stupid, fat people
in denial about what we really are?

And then I thought:
yes, of course.  That is what the world thinks of us.
I've lived abroad;
I've traveled a lot;
I've seen the attitude towards Americans change,
and that change began when the American public
voted George W. Bush into office
a second time.

It's not really a lie,
if the public wants to be lied to.

( from nmnnewsandviews )


Just minutes before this story,
on NPR this morning,
I had listened to a speech from Mitt Romney,
given in Ohio.  Mitt Romney, declaring
that he will make more jobs, trim down the government,
and be a better international face for America ~ ~ ~

It's not really a lie,
if the public wants to be lied to.

It's the logic of the cheating lover
as he hands his spouse some flowers
and tells her that he loves her
before slipping off to see his concubine ~ ~ ~

It's not really a lie,
if the person wants to be lied to.

It's the logic of the boss,
who gives his employees a modest raise,
telling them that he would love to give them more,
but the firm is struggling so much,
and then buys himself a new private Leer jet ~ ~ ~

not really a lie. . . 
they wanted to be lied to. . . 

In the story about Mitt Romney they interviewed
a woman in rural Ohio,
who I'll bet is a size 6 or maybe even a 4,
and she said her only gripe with Mitt Romney is that
he isn't coming down harder on President Obama:

He should be saying it more like it is, and saying it loud,
she said,
Romney's been too polite;
he should not be so polite to Obama!

In other words, she would like to hear Mitt Romney screaming
that Barack Obama has done nothing for America,
that the woes of America are Obama's fault,
that Obama was born in Timbuktu,
that his mother wasn't a white woman from the mid-west,
. . . . .
She wants to hear it again and again,
and she wants to hear it screamed loud and long,
because she wants to be lied to,
because that will help her confirm her own beliefs
that a smart black man should not remain
in the highest office in the nation.

It's not really a lie
if you want to be lied to.

And if she and all the rest of working or
middle class G.O.P. America want to believe
that a wealthy millionaire businessman
really cares for her goodwill,
she can and she will,
as she sits in front of her 48" wide
flat screen TV,
watching the Simpsons,
which she feels comes closest to being like reality to her,
and eating burgers and chips,
in her size 6 jeans.


. . . not really a lie . . . 

(Oh, Romney assures us,
don't worry; we'll still have
Medicare . . . )

Vanity sizing, in the end,
sums up what is wrong with America.
And we hear about vanity sizing,
but still nothing is done about it.
Because we want to be lied to.
Because the truth might mean
that we have to do something about it.

( from runsleeprinserepeat )

I guess there's one good thing we can say about this:
as long as people are still lying,
the world will not end
anytime soon.

Or else that's what we want to believe.


Hamlet: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet. What's the news?
Rosencrantz: None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.
Hamlet: Then is doomsday near.

( Hamlet II:ii )

Antietum: Bloody Road

I woke up this morning to a story on NPR about

The Battle of Antietum, which occurred

September 17, 1862.

As I listened, my mind began to compose

some loose lines and contemplations:

(picture from NPR website; entire story at the link.)

~*~

(tablewarefare)

Antietum --

your innocent lands

still recall the

men whose blood you drank 

when they collided, driven by devotion to each

his own's belief in personal liberty:

Some, believing in freedom to all,

                               no matter their color

                                        or vessel for arriving

                                                     on America's shores.

Some, believing that the dark and enslaved

                                     were less than men,

                                                       and, as such,

                                                   deserved to remain so as they served

                                                  the economy of tobacco.

                                                          Oh,

Antietum --

two forces clashed in a 

Bloody Road, each force driven

by his own idea,

a whisper,

a thought.

Thousands lost

their lives; the idea

of equality ruled,

and history turned

towards liberation.

(from: old-picture.com )

So sad we no longer care

for history.   So sad

we no longer require

our youth to learn

to embody the lessons

of our heredity.  Instead,

we barely teach them

to get by; we teach to take a test,

then hurry home filled

with forgetfulness, anticipating

for the next episode of Jersey Shore,

or the next gossipy tweet.

( from: blogofshame )

History cannot be tweeted,

but history MUST be known,

as we stand today on the brink

of another ideological fissure,

right now embodied in

a battle over who should run

this land:

a Black Man

or

a Mormon;

a Son of Slaves and Idealistic Liberals,

or

a Son of Those Who Believe America is

The Promised Land.

But what promise is this?

Where guns are hidden and

(from National Park Service )

divisions are bitter,

the Bloody Road may be

just beyond the bend.

Our history can tell us how

to avoid it, and recent memory

of murdered diplomat,

a murder driven by 

insensitivity

to detail can stand 

as omen.

We have 

no time to lose;

the only answer is to restore

our public memory,

and with it, our ability to choose, 

and our integrity.

Garbage Bin Women (Living in the 3rd World America)

~ ~

Prelude:

My cat Pişi

(who has her own blog, by the way)

came home from me when I returned to the States

after living for four years in Turkey.

Pişi was born in the streets of Ankara.

While I did not remove her from the streets,

I adopted her when the people who snatched her out of the streets

moved on.  As you can see, Pişi moved on with me, and now,

at the ripe old age of fourteen, lives comfortably

in the U.S.A.

She's pretty, eh?  The thing with Pişi, though, is that

she's deaf.  I won't tell that story here, but you can go elsewhere

and read it.  She's also a little bipolar.  She can turn on you when you least expect it,

and when she turns on you, she turns into the wild cat she was born to be.

She's downright nasty, and fights to kill. 

She's the kind of cat who has a little skull and bones drawn on her file

at the Vet's office.  The last time we had her there, even the vet

was afraid of her.  They covered her with a heavy towel, and gave her

her rabies shot, and she was like a wild cat.  They told me never to bring her back.

I believe Pişi is going blind.  I'm really afraid that if she goes blind, she will become wild again.

Not because she wants to hurt me, but because she will feel her  power is gone,

and all she can do to protect herself, when she has lost the control of her major senses,

will be to attack.  It will be her last attempt to control and have power.

She is a very powerful presence.   She is the dominant cat in my house.
I treat her with love and respect, and hope that when she reaches
a point where she can't see, she remembers that, and gives that
back to me.

*

from: gpbtelevision

As I said in my last entry, I believe

we are living in Post-First World America;

we are living in America in decline.

It's not that we are being replaced by 

another greater power.  We are being replaced

by our own child:

a global, profit-driven economy

that at its best emulates 

the values America has represented 

for several centuries:

freedom of speech (via the internet)

freedom of belief

equality of gender and race

openness,

honesty

and a basic belief 

in the goodness of humanity.

In the meantime, though,

our power has waned,

our workforce has been emasculated,

our trust in authority, evaporated.

My students are so scarred from the abuse

they have suffered at the hands

of frustrated, equally scarred parents,

of a misguided education system,

of an entertainment world

that promotes instant gratification.

. . . .

from: unrealitymag 

This nation is ill,

and every now and then something happens

that is a glaring symptom of the depth of our illness:

Yesterday, in Niagara Falls, New York,

a five year old girl was found dead, in a garbage bag.
She was murdered by a teenaged boy,
who killed her with his bare hands,
then got a friend to help him dispose
of her body.

And dispose they did,
just like, in 2008, in a young woman was found,
folded in half, stuffed in a garbage bag
and then put out in the trash.
At first, the police ruled her death "accidental,"
the result of an overdose.  They claimed that
she had turned to prostitution to maintain her very
expensive drug habit, and put the the story away.
But everyone knows (and I've written of this before)
that no one who dies accidentally then climbs into
a garbage bag and puts themselves in a garbage bin.
A more recent autopsy has found this woman was strangled,
in a violent rape.
Her murderer has yet to be found.

I do not mean to claim that the same person
is responsible for both of these sad, sad, sad murders.
They have the guilty young boy who committed this week's
crime.  The look in his eyes chills me.

I cannot help but feel that there is a tragic
similarity between these crimes
that ends up being a glaring symptom
of the sickness that permeates America today.

Whoever put these women into garbage bags,
then into garbage cans clearly had no feeling
towards their fellow humans.  They treated them
like something to use,
then throw away.
Those killers
are not human either -- for one reason or another,
they have been led to a point where they
are like cornered animals, like my cat
trapped in a bag, and they are killing
irrationally.  Like wounded wild animals,
they practice whatever potential for power or strength
they have left, and they tend to take it out
against the powerless, the weak, those who
make them feel stronger than they really feel.

No, they should not be forgiven,
but when something like this happens
more than once, I think it's time
for us to consider what this says about us,
the U.S. of A.

Land of the Free.
Home of the Brave.



I'm not sure what the answer is,
though I heard a good idea
at a meeting I went to last week:

it's time for us to create an Adult Culture
in America and in the world
that is kind, compassionate,
wise, human --
true role models for our young,
as we move from a stratified globe
of multiple worlds,
to a single globe
where every individual is respected,
and no one
is put out
in the trash.

from artinwetlands

Surviving Third World America, Part One: Grain Elevators

Now, before I get started, I have to admit:

I have never read Arianna Huffington's book

on Third World America, though perhaps I should.

It's just my own private, personal interpretation

that I now impart: 

The U.S.A. is rapidly becoming 

a former First World Country.

I really believe that.

And as we plummet, we're becoming

the 21st Century Wild West,

most recently embodied by the armed laid-off worker

who killed his former boss in broad daylight.

It used to be, if there was to be

a dual, that both parties got a weapon.

But no, not in Third World, Wild West America.

Why are so many people going crazy?

Because so many of us have experienced so much wealth 

that we really don't know how to handle it

when it's suddenly gone.

That is, unless you live in an American city

that's been suffering recession longer than the rest of the country.

And that's where the title of this entry comes in,

because

I do.

O.K., I'll finally admit it:

I live in #2:

Buffalo, New York.

No, I wasn't born here,

(remember, I was born over 400 years ago,

in Greece, and have lived in countless places

since then) but right now,

I live in Buffalo.

And like so many other places, Buffalo

is a state of mind,

and for several years after I moved here

it was a state 

of mind

that I desperately wanted to leave.

But, unlike many Buffalonians,

I happen to have a job here, in a field

that it's hard to find a job in.

And it just so happens that Buffalo, NY

is a pretty good place to live

if you happen to have a job. 

There's lots of reasons for that, but perhaps

one of the most intriguing reasons is because,

only 100 years ago,

Buffalo was a very desirable city to live in,

and plenty of people did,

and  because of that, plenty of very famous architects did work here.

Much of it still stands:

Indeed, it's very easy to find a very nice house in Buffalo,

and live very frugally.

Now, I'm not here to convince you to move to Buffalo,

but I will say, it has grown on me.

I've learned to cross country ski

and bike, both of which

are very good ways to get around this city.

And I've been discovering that many of the secrets

of surviving, and living in

Third World America

might be answered right here.

Rather than blast you with a ton of stuff right away,

I'm going to focus on one feature at a time,

and tonight I'm slightly in awe of this:

The Grain Elevator.

Buffalo has plenty of abandoned grain elevators,

because they were actually invented here, in 1843,

by a fellow named Joseph Dart.

At that time, Buffalo was centrally located 

between the midwest

and the water ways that could bring products to the east.

This produced a need for a place to store grain, in particular,

while it was waiting to be shipped; thus, this behemoth.

And they were used continually, as the city grew, thanks 

to the Erie Canal, 

and continued to be used, a little beyond that thoroughfare's demise.

But when I moved here, I found, they just stood empty,

as they had been standing for years:

huge, hulking structures,

ghosts of an industry long gone, like the mines of 

Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, 

the work these monsters housed,

and the workers too,

are gone, long gone, and the buildings left to rot.

~ ~

Now, one of the many admirable qualities Buffalonians have

at a level much higher than the residents of other dead cities,

is a strong sense of historical pride,

and some very bull-headed local grass roots preservation organizations.

I'll write later about some of the preservation work they're doing in this town,

because it's quite remarkable.  Remember,

I've lived in lots of places, and the way this city rallies to restore itself

is pretty admirable.  Well, one of the historical fascinations among

Buffalonians is these grain elevators.  Some of them (the one above, in fact,

photographed by me about a year ago) have been destroyed,

but several have become sites of exploration.  Tours go through them now, 

and last night I witnessed an amazing thing:

a performance in a grain elevator.

My admiration was won a few years ago by an innovative theatre group called

Torn Space, and they got the job of mounting this show,

which included dancers pirouetting above from wires in the high, 

echoing, empty storage chambers,

to Beckettian monologues

to classical minimalism

(all photos from The Buffalo News )

It was, quite simply, transformative.  And when we all walked out,

to watch videos by different artists projected on the largest screen I've ever experienced,

nearly everyone there was seeing this structure

no longer as an eyesore, but rather

as a place of potential.

Knowing Buffalo, they'll keep using the grain elevators this way,

making them another exclusive hang-out spot 

for their abundance of gritty artists and performers and musicians

and cool wanna-be's from the suburbs.

This is, I would say, one of the coolest ways to 

survive Third World America:

turn it into an avant-garde art venue.

Oh, and by the way, did I tell you admission was free?

Maybe it won't be the next time,

but the flame has been lit

and there will be

a next time.

Natalie Merchant, remedy for madness

 

 

 

 

. . . as I pass through my days,

that float by in a haze

I wonder who's truly crazy --

is it the man with the coal black eyes

who can see into my heart and 

tear it in two

or is it the politicians

and the businessmen

and the generals

and the mediamen

who don't give me credit

for having a heart?

 

 

If your heart, too,

is hurting with the pain

of our planet so ravaged,

and with the pain of the farce

of our current electoral charades,

and with the pain of people gone mad

in Syria, Afghanistan, and Manhattan,

I've found something that may help ease it:

listen on, listen on ---

 

 

 

Dear Karen Klein, Please Retire

via bullyingproject

I'm writing this off of the top of my head, so it may be messy,

but today I saw some of the video of the bullying that occurred

on a school bus in Rome, NY  (outside Rochester), and I felt the need

to write something about it, and post it, if only to join in the outrage

against it.

Now if you haven't seen the video, 

and you feel like being sickened,

go on YouTube;

it seems to have gone so viral

that people are reposting it 

for the attention it brings.  

I will not post that video on this blog.

Or you can read this story, from CNN 

The basic details are these:

Four or five middle schoolers on a school bus

taunted, swore at, jeered, made fun of, 

were absolutely nauseatingly awful

to a 68 year old woman named Karen Klein, 

who was on the bus as a monitor.

Someone took a video of it,

and posted the video on You Tube, and it "went viral."

I watched about 30 seconds of that video,

and it made me sick.  Now, the questions bound up in this video

and its "popularity" are many.  To begin, there's the horrifying question

of who raised kids who would act that way?  Yes, I will also blame the kids; I

like so many others who have commented on this, feel they should be

disciplined, severely.  But, as the saying goes: "the apple doesn't fall too

far from the tree."  I'll come back to this thought in a moment.

I also can't help but wonder who took the video?  That person

was sitting right next to the elderly victim, and the video captures

that woman's reaction: she cried; yes, she cried, as her assaulters

commented on her weight, her glasses, her ears (and then I stopped watching).

Why would someone want to capture that woman's reactions to this,

and then post it on YouTube?  Whatever the

motivation, as one You Tube commenter said,

the internet works fast, and no matter what the poster's intent,

within hours there were people all over the world responding to it with horror.

This included a blogger starting a collection to send this woman, Karen Klein,

on a trip.  I sure hope she just retires.

Now, bullying has been around for a very long time,

especially among children.  There's garden variety bullying,

I think, like my sister as a child teasing me because I was fat

(or so she said) or because I had a lazy eye.  That 

often comes from sibling rivalry.

But bullying has become such a huge issue

in the United States in particular.  A few months ago, just down

the road from Rochester, in Buffalo, NY,  a 14 year old boy

became famous because he committed suicide; he could no longer

tolerate the bullying against him. 

This caused a national campaign against bullying,

but did it make any difference?  

The common feeling about the Karen Klein case is that

these young people should be punished,

but would punishing these kids make any difference?

These kids have no respect for authority --

this woman was on the bus as a monitor,

and they attacked her, so punishing them might just

roll off them like water off a spaniel.

Furthermore, it's only a matter of hours before

their parents and other family members start

posting videos about how their poor, innocent child

is so misunderstood.   Which, let me say immediately,

is just a load of bullshit.  Those kids are perfectly understood

to be messed up.

I tend to think that whatever system

produced kids who felt it was ok to harass

an elder needs to be 

examined very carefully, and changed, immediately  --

and that includes calling to task their parents,

or anyone else who led these kids to feel

that they could gain popularity or respect

by harassing other human beings.

I do tend to feel parents are a huge part of

this sad equation of dysfunction: 

what I hear in these young peoples'

jeers are the jeers of an immature father or mother

who bullied their children with similar insults.

The U.S. education system is at fault, too:

it so wrapped up

in teaching kids to pass a test that it

isn't really paying attention to teaching

human dignity.

And then there's the entertainment industry:

the glorification of bullying and ridiculing through figures

such as Gordon Ramsey, Charlie Sheen, or even cartoon

characters (like those on Family Guy) who ridiculously

become models for human interaction.

The problem is very very deep, and it's only going to get worse

unless we all take responsibility for it now.

I'm going to have to teach some of these kids in university,

and I will say right here and now that it's already happening:

a year ago, I had a young woman in a university level English class

who took great delight in taunting me, calling me "stupid" in front of her peers,

and writing on her final course evaluation that I was just ugly

and she hated coming to class and looking at me.

Of course, she never did her classwork, and also

wasted precious class time by asking me, over and over again,

to repeat the requirements of any given assignment.

What gives me the chills is that she is now a year away

from graduation,

with an education degree no less. 

This type of behavior should not be validated

in any way, shape or form. They should not be allowed

to graduate from high school.

They should not be admitted into a college or university.

I'm not sure how to fix this system as quickly

as it needs to be fixed.  So I add my voice to the chorus

of online distress over Karen Klein's sad experience.

Perhaps shame, as this gets broadcast all over the world

by countless bloggers just like me, will be what it will take

for every person in this country to stop being preoccupied

with an election that is costing way too much already,

and put that money into teaching people how 

to be humane, and how

to live in the world.