OBAMA AND THE PERFECT ECONOMY

My daughter, Sweetness, is in Chicago visiting her father. This is a normal occurrence as she goes for a month in the summer then the winter every year. However, as each year goes by, unlike I had originally imaged, it becomes harder for me and I miss her more. I like watching her grow up and enjoy encouraging the struggles as she tries to figure out who she is and what this world is about to embark upon is all about.

Lately, though, I am worried. I think it is our job as parents to prepare our offspring to live in the world that is and not what is should be by providing them with the tools (rounded education that enriches, builds, and challenges them cognitively as well as emotionally) and social resources (through connections with extended family, friends and community connections) to survive and hopefully thrive in the world facing them (and based on a decent interpretation of the current reality and now the way it once existed or should exist). I make the clear, strong distinction because many of my middle-class friends believe that their job is to simply protect their kids from the scary bits so that the child is not harmed. Those folks look for pedophiles around every schoolyard or harm chemical in every food source. I think they miss the point-you can’t know all the dangers nor should someone spend their lives in a bubble with a shotgun at the door for the next horrific event. I think a parent can and should give the child the skills necessary to face the horrific event, if not to anticipate it and avoid it in the first place and you cannot do that in a bubble. But I digress, . . .

I am worried though about what I consider the other role we have as parents-that of creating an environment that is safe for our kids. I am not worried that I haven’t done my part to make it a better place-I think working these 25+ years with inner city youth and their families/kinfolk (note: the euphemism used in grant writing for poor Black/lLatino folk) covers that sufficiently. But I think our efforts to keep pedophiles away, put rubber mats underneath playground equipment, recall faulty baby cribs, and demand all children be vaccinated may have missed the point somehow. We Americans (and maybe we Westerners in general) always seem to miss the bigger picture as we get caught up in our “red/blue State” ideologies and our insistence there is only one correct way to see and live in the world. Insistence on certainties breeds tunnel vision. Granddaddy (my father) always said of people like that that what they are really saying to you while you’re trying to point out either an error in their logic or flaw in their thinking, “My mind’s made up; don’t confuse me with facts!”

Below is a portion of email exchanges between my daughter and myself. As she gets closer to entering adulthood, I worry more about the world I am leaving to walk into. It’s not the national debt our children will inherit that bothers me (I’m not sure if that could have been helped. To me it was a matter of do you want them to starve as children and grow up weakened with diminished capacity or have them face future problems coming from a time where they at least had the sustenance to fight the future battle-in other words, starving children don’t grow up to be healthy adults even if they grow up to a health environment). What bothers me is our insistence on lying to them about how the world really works.
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(The follow excerpts have portions edited or removed to help the reader follow the content and the privacy/enhance the safety of a minor.)
-----Original Message-----
From: Sweetness
To: THE MOMMY
Sent: Sat, Aug 7, 2010 12:04 am
Subject: Lunch!
FINALLY! WHOO! Someone is going to do something about these horrible and nutrition-less lunches they keep trying to force on us at school. Check out this article on what the Obama administration is doing.
http://www.aolhealth.com/2010/08/06/school-lunches-may-have-to-meet-new-nutrition-standards/?icid=main|main|dl3|link5|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolhealth.com%2F2010%2F08%2F06%2Fschool-lunches-may-have-to-meet-new-nutrition-standards%2F
Sweetness
From: THE MOMMY
To: Sweetness
Sent: Sat, Aug 7, 2010 6:05 am
Subject: Re: Lunch!
I heard about this on NPR, I think.
THE MOMMY
From: Sweetness
To: THE MOMMY
From: Sweetness
Sent: Sat, Aug 7, 2010 1:48 pm
Subject: Re: Lunch!
Cool. We're making progress.
Sweetness
To: Sweetness
From: THE MOMMY
Sent: Sat, Aug 7, 2010 6:14 pm
Subject: Re: Lunch!
Maybe by the time your kids go to school, the junior chefs from Morimoto's restaurant will be serving sushi as the Friday lunch special!
Ya know, Obama may not get reelected but I really think over time folks are going to look back at these little things, like health care reform, changes to the credit card and financial laws, and new regulations around school lunches and see that it ain't always the big things (like fixing the economy) that make a president a good president. Unfortunately, by then it will be too late. During President Roosevelt's time, presidents could make huge changes to things that impacted everyone. The world in many ways was smaller then and thus easier to control. Not so much now. It isn't as if Obama doesn't want to fix the economy but he and (from what I'm hearing) the best of minds just don't know what to do because too much is out of their hands. In many ways, it is out of everyone's hands. We have introduced so many factors that those factors have independently run amuck, like nanobytes out of some sci-fi television series.
Maybe too the thought that anyone had control (or gained it) was a 20th Century idea whose time has come to an end. I've told folks repeatedly who ask me, "Did all these psychological diseases exist before now." No, they didn't have to. Maybe your generation needs to enter this version of modernity with the notion that conquering the world isn't the idea but learning how to live within its ebbs and flows is. Maybe you guys will not see "doing better than your parents" as making more money or having more things but a concept attached to other things that are less tangible or flamboyant.
I think you should spend some time overseas in countries that have been around a while, been through some things. Although they certainly have their flaws and I cannot speak from experience having never been there, it seems to me some European countries like Germany and Portugal have figured a few things out and become more settled to the idea that one does not have to control everything. When you make some things better or "more perfect", that pursuit of perfection often has unintended results which negatively impact other often unrelated areas. It’s kinda like the long list of side effects which accompany even the best, lifesaving medications. I’m not sure, like the saying goes, "everything has its price" but maybe it’s more like "everything is connected" and those connections must be considered before we joyfully shout, "That's fabulous!" whenever the new cool product, latest medical cure, or new discovery comes around.
THE MOMMY

Obama’s Skippy, Self Fools, and (of course) TORCHWOOD

Why did Obama apologize for what most colored folk feel about the incident with Professor Gates? Was this an event where two egos clashed and the one with the power won out? You bet yah! Did the cop act “stupidly”? You bet yah! Is this a race and class issue? You bet yah! White folks are overly sensitive about something they otherwise don’t care about. They want racism to go away but continue to do the same things over and over to reconfirm its existence. Then colored folk find reasons to confirm white folks’ stereotypes, the rates of crime, drug use, and fatherless homes. I long ago gave up on trying teach white folk how to act and I am about to give up on colored folk too-there is just too much investment in being foolish and trifling on both sides. The only difference is that one side has more power than the other, so their stupidity causes more trouble and pain. Obama shouldn’t have apologized but stood by his friend and demanded that other police officers not fall back all the time on their badge whenever they feel they have been disrespected. I don’t need to respect you. I just need to obey the law and I make the laws, not you. Enough said.

Speaking of fools, when did we Americans become so cruel and selfish? Since this economic downturn, particularly starting with the problems in the housing market, and now with the health care debate, I am astonished by the words coming out of people’s mouths. “I’m not paying for somebody else’s stupidity” or “I am not going to pay more taxes to cover some lazy person’s health insurance”. It is amazing how little we want to invest in each other and the country as a whole but the second our piece of the pie is threatened, we’ve got rights and lots of ‘em. Sad. The rise in evangelical orthodoxy across most of the monotheistic religions has not only closed people’s minds to questioning but increased they member’s belief that they might as well save G-d the trouble and punish “wrongdoers” for him. Please. My great-grandmother used to say, “If you’re focused on your own salvation, you ain’t got time for somebody else’s.” What makes the naysayer’s comments particularly foolish is that they deny people the right to make stupid decisions and guarantees that when they do, no one will give a shit and the society will allow them to wallow in their own shit. It also denies that they, the religiously righteous, have ever or will ever do anything wrong – something in direct contradiction to the example set by many of their fallen leadership. So if you will excuse me, I have to complete doing something stupid in hopes that maybe someone with boots and the corresponding straps will leave instructions on how to pull them up. Enough said.

Torchwood – what can I say? Although John Barrowman as Captain Jack is clearly a hotty, Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto Jones steals each scene between himself and Jack in Season 3’s Children of Earth. I am impressed by the maturity of the writers. Instead of two gay or bisexual characters, they allow a character to fall in love not based on a defined set of criteria-Ianto isn’t gay or bisexual. He just loves Jack (Ianto says to his sister, “It’s not men. It’s him. It’s only him”). I hate to tell my politicos in the LBGT movement but love doesn’t need a gender and gender is only politics because we make it. In the ideal world I’m building, love doesn’t need a purpose just a direction. I would like to see more writing of this type, where the love isn’t to fulfil some stupid (there’s that word again!) propped up fantasy created from the propaganda Disney movie ticker taping through our skulls but from real life where people fall in love with who they fall in love with, just ‘cuz. Enough said there too.