I received an email which I found offensive but not for the reasons you might think. The email was an initiative to block a vote on gay marriage. What I find offensive here is not that target of the email directly but a more far reaching target that such a email attacks.
First of all
Each side has the right to express their opinions. It is the method and not the subject that is offensive. If we all want equal rights, we should all be able to respect equal rights. Again I am not talking about the topic of gay marriage. I am talking the topic of circumventing the right to vote for or against gay marriage. It is effect telling people that they should not for the right or the opportunity to express their opinion through the right to vote.
Fundamentals of the constitution violated
The constitution sets up the guidelines. These guidelines led to these particular initiative achieving the status of public vote. By requesting to have the initiative removed from the ballot the right of both pro and con camps are being violated together. What this third party is saying is ,”We don’t want you to have the right to have a say on this matter.”
The reason
Plainly the only reason is cowardice. History teaches us that only cowards rule in society by infringing on the rights of others. This counter initiative is the unquestionably rooted in a dictatorship and not a democracy. Thus is a fueled by fear.
Why?
Simply because these people fear losing. Actually the maneuver is counterproductive at best. The efforts here should not be exerted on blocking the initiative but instead defeating it on election day. I for one would be and am offended someone would ask me to support them in circumventing someone else’s constitutional right to vote. If we could undermine this vote with this method whats to stop a major election from being undermined in the future? This effort no matter how you look at is all about one person forcing themselves, will and their opinion on every and anyone who stand before them. Isn’t that exactly what a dictatorship does? Why don’t we just haul off anyone who is gay friendly to concentration camps and stamp their foreheads with derogatives? If you want to sway me with your opinion don’t ever ask me to take away the very same rights our descendants and children in the armed forces are fighting for. If you feel secure in your opinion then you will address it the forum that is our birthright. If you have to seek alternative methods than I have to question the validity of your opinion. That is my right as an American. Maybe I can best put my opinion on this way. Unless you do not believe in yourself and your ideals then in the words of FDR,”All you have to fear is fear itself.” Let the voters express their voices. Stop trying to take the route of oppression. In the end as history is well documented it will not stand the test of time.
I love the sport of football. It has been in my blood as long as I remember. Kevin Everett is a 26 year old man who loves football. He even lived the dream of making it to the NFL and a player for The New York Buffalo Bills. His dream took a twist which seemingly turned his life into a nightmare. A year later the young man looks to turn his dream into something more.
The event
On September 7th, 2007 while trying to make a routine tackle on special teams, Kevin collided heltmet to helmet with an opposing player. He lay motionless. Team doctors using a new procedure which probably saved his life assisted in getting him to the hospital. He suffered a dislocation fracture of the spinal column. Prognosis was he would never walk again.
A year later
Kevin walks but is still rehabbing. He lives in pain everyday. Yet, with the same mindset he used to make it to the NFL, he as started the Kevin Everett Foundation with the goal in his own words, “”If somebody needs a ramp or a wheelchair or equipment at their home to do exercises, that’s what I want to supply them with.”
Life choices
You can go and live life with what you have or your can spend your life think about how it could be better. The difference is you. These are your thoughts the you use to make this difference. It may not be easy at first. Think of Kevin Everett every day is a battle to get his body to respond. The more you do the easier it gets. As always the choice is yours.
Thousands of people are in contact through the net and it’s social communities. Rarely are they venturing past that computer screen. Commonly I hear more and more that is the extent of many people’s interactions with other people. Red lights beaconing here folks.
How social is social?
I belong to MySpace and Facebook. I have not so small communities in each. I have met and maintain contact with about one hundred of my “friends.” Many call me at home from time to time. This summer I will be meeting more. You see for me if there is no person to person contact there is no social. Emails are electronic letters. IM’s are a step closer but not true interpersonal. You can’t make eye contact or see true reactive body language on a monitor.
Bridging the gap
Yes, you have to be selective. No you don’t have to be reclusive. A behaviorial study performed in the 50’s by B.F. Skinner showed the damage the lack of true interpersonal contact will do to a person’s social skills. People are made to be touchy feely. If we don’t begin to bridge the gap then we will solve one major social problem . Extinction does wonders toward curing over population of a species.
You have a situation where you question your first instinctive impulses. The important step becomes not what you do but why you do what you do. That clarity can be the difference between a positive or negative outcome. Looking at the diverse processes they have a common thread
Your emotional impulse
People who react on emotional impulses only are people you will find with a history of instability throughout their lives. Many times they will reject rational thought and behaviors because “they go with their emotions.” This comes about through self-doubt in one’s own ability to breakdown and access life situations. It also is it’s own safe mode. If the reaction is indeed wrong blame falls on the outside trigger for the emotional reaction not the person themselves. Defining yourself as a person who goes with their emotions displaces personal responsibility for your reactions.
Your search for opinions
This has several levels of what really amount to avoidance of liability for your actions. The source of your gathered information becomes an out for blame if your decision is proven to be faulty. You also have the option to keep searching to find a collaborating opinion with a course of action you want to take but know is not grounded in honesty. In fact you know it merits more doubt than validity. With the second option most seek that opinion intentionally withholding information in order to sway that opinion toward the one you are seeking.
In conclusion
Self doubt isn’t always a tool for finding the correct course. It is just as readily used to conjure false self-justification. More times than not it is based in trying to transfer accountability of your actions on to someone or something else. In the vernacular it is generally called seeking a cop out. Something to think about when situational self doubt is presented to you by someone else.
On of my favorite sports movies is North Dallas Forty. Basically a fictionalized version of the football social world. As much as it was sensationalized it was rooted in truth. The story based on a thinly vieled book by Peter Gent about his days in the National Football League. The team portrayed was obviously the Dallas Cowboys later to be known as America’s Team.
Let’s reminisce
In 1972 a high school football time went on the state records of an undefeated season and a three year record of being undefeated. In preseason, an incident took place where one night a drunken rampage took out half the team’s practice equipment left on the field. It was team members venting and celebrating the end of the two a days. Rumored to be involved was the teams starting running back. All the others resigned from the team but strangely not one spoke about the incident. The running back played on. The team to go on to achieve this record fielded no fewer than two players over the age of eligibility that season.
The NFL today
Roger Goodell has championed a new age of accountibility for his professional league. Since the inception of the new league policies hardly a week goes by a player doesn’t make headlines for one sort of conduct problem or another. More and more multiple infractions by a player are taking place. The Dallas Cowboy themselves have turned into the Bad Boy Reform School. The team fielded for the year 2008 eight will have no fewer than two multiple offenders and one or more well documented head cases problem children.
History is in stone
The high school championship team of the ’70’s was no isolated incident. The only thing that has changed is the ability to cover up incidences as well as in the past. Many cite the advent of the knowledge hungry Internet. The answer to has the sports world changed is simply “Not Yet.” It just has become so much more open to the 21st century scrutiny in the quest to know everything.
. The compliments you give are more powerful than you would ever imagine. Generally thought of as a moral and esteem booster you bestow on others, they pack a more universal punch. Meaningful compliments are reciprocal in what they give.
Go ahead try just one
Give a compliment and close your eyes. How do you feel? You feel good don’t you? That wasn’t your intention was it. You gave a compliment so it was meant to make someone else feel good. Yet, you do as well. You feel good about yourself for the simple reason you did the same for another person. You cannot give a true meaningful compliment without making your own self-esteem strong. It is an impossibility not to do.
Positive thoughts as a tool
That is a known fact. Sharing the positive builds a bridge of companionship. It’s a useful tool on many levels. I used it to disarm a person I have contempt for. It undermines their capacity for animosity. It actually disrupts their inner system of beliefs that the contempt grows from. I do this because I can’t work with people that make me feel that way. So, I use compliments to grow the bridge that connects gaps in would could become an unmanageable situation. My contempt doesn’t actually go away. But I now have a better interpersonal relationship than if I just gave into that contempt. And yes, we both feel better about it.
For a long stretch during the last few years I would do a search for information and find a very common problem. The top searches in many of the catagories returned false leads. You know this problem because for a while this type of results dominated the Google results. This was the power of SEO put into effect by our good friends the spammers and scammers. It was a frustrating and annoying waste of time. I talked to a lot of people about this and found many were really ticked off about what was going on. I am sure you were as well.
A real world companion
Stores began this campaign of advertising outrageous sales prices on products in great demand. What would happen is people would get there to find the product at the sale price was sold out even as soon as minutes after the store opened. Why? Someone came up with the idea that making a only a small number of the product available at price to sucker people into the store. What eventually happened became huge public relations and soon legal nightmares for the stores. This was deemed to be false advertising and companies were required to advertise quantity limitations.
Another real world experience
Used car dealers in the sixties and seventies were advertising cars at ridiculously low prices. While the ads stated certain information the pictures were not of the cars in the sales program. This was considered the classic bait and switch. Now advertisers are by law required to specify the all the details of the cars included in the sale. They also have to state if the car pictured is part of the advertised sale. This they get around by using wording that indicates loosely all cars pictured may not be part of the sales program
Truth in advertising taken a step farther
In recent months in my MySpace blog another form of advertising has come up. The funny part it is the advertisers and not the attracted surfers that are complaining. Now you have to understand all information and pictures your post are an advertisement of yourself. People are complaining that they are having a hard time with people joining their page communities. The plainly spell out just looking for friends only, etc. Yet, constantly they have a constant problem with people trying to cross over the plainly stated line. I forgot to mention the other part of their self advertising campaign, sensual or sexually charged pictures. When on MySpace it’s the pictures that are listed in the search prominently. They are the enticement to get the surfer to click and check out the site. More precisely a form of the bait and switch advertising that has been outlawed.
You get what you pay for
As I said the person complaining in the end is the one who is doing the self advertising. The person uses sex to lure in visitors and keep people around. They communicate sex in their messages. Then they complain their visitors are stepping over the line. I am going to go to the extreme here. Think about a rape trial which the victim has to prove this was an invited attack. Will the above information including pictures in hand sway a jury toward the victim’s account or the rapist’s account? Does this sound harsh to you or does it sound like a real conundrum where the advertiser has undermined themselves?
Every Memorial Day politicians and when there is a a war on protesters take the opportunity to encroach on the real meaning of the day. It is about honoring those who fought to for the rest of us to maintain the principles of the American way of life. To employ the day as an opportunity to do otherwise is an insult and disservice.
The sad truth
Too often the meaning of the day is ignored. There will be many political speeches and other rallies pressed forward to promote other agendas. This kind of behavior is a slap in the face to those this Memorial Day is meant to honor. And these events will be performed under the false shield of “isn’t this one of the rights and freedoms we are in celebration of?”
Something to think about
Would you be comfortable sitting at your son or daughter’s wedding reception listening to a best man’s toast extolling sexual experiences with the bride? Should a Rabbi during a Bar Mitzvah give a speech about why your kid doesn’t have a chance to be a real man in this world? Could you sit through a commencement address where you the graduate are being called a loser in waiting? Would it be okay if at your own birthday party all the guests told you, they really didn’t want to be there? These are all inappropriate and hurtful behaviors for the occasions. They are not acceptable for you. Neither should political banter, protests and other advancement of personal agendas be acceptable on Memorial Day.
Memorial Day should be honored and preserved
Politicians should be silenced and protesters should stay home. Right or wrong this day is not about them. It is about those who have fought and the loss of life that has taken place so that you and I to have a right to live a life of freedom on American soil. It is not a day for politics. It is not a day for personal agendas. It is a day to honor and say thank you to those who made this day possible for you and I to celebrate in freedom as citizens of The United States Of America. Tomorrow you may go back to pursuing your agendas as is your right. Let the soldiers and their families have their day. This is the only cause or agenda that should be put forth in celebration of your Memorial Day.
With permission I reprinting the following posted by The Tigeress Returns Roar Baby Roar from Myspace. This is in respect to a perspective most of us overlook on this day.
Beyond Celebrating The Day
On Memorial Day it is not about us who sit home safely at our computers. It is not about a sale at Kohls or Macys. It is not about swilling beer and gorging your face at a barbecue. It is about remembering the fallen and those who have served in the service of our country.
Most people have or know of someone who has given service or paid the price so that we can live in freedom. The price may not have only been a life, it may have been a limb, physical or mental health in some way. Today is not just for remembering those who are still able to march in parades. It is for those who will never be able to and are forgotten. They sit at home. The are confined in hospitals. Some roam the streets homeless. These people seem to be ignored or by some regarded as a nuisance. They are paying the price so you can have your parade and barbecues and swill that beer. They deserve to be remembered too.
Someone wrote me stating that love was unattainable and true happiness is a myth. Someone’s got to get the name and date on that memo because it certainly didn’t come my way. Now those of you who know my romantic (or should I say morantic) history might think I believe otherwise. Not true.
There are choices
In my May 19 MySpace Blog a contributor touched on about falling in love and falling out of love and whether or not you had a choice. Indeed you do. Have you ever seen someone tell you they didn’t like a person because they had or lack certain traits then would up with that person’s personality clone or worse? Why is it some marriages work and others don’t? It does boil down to choices made by one or both parties. And the first choice is whether or not you want to recognize you have those choices.
An interesting concept
If you are attracted to someone it is your choice whether or not to follow up on that attraction. If you do it is your choice to grow it into something more. And finally it is your choice to put in the effort to keep nurturing that “something more.” With each step comes the opportunity and whether not to pursue it is your choice. In love you make your own luck more than you might think. You just have to be aware the choices are yours.
You have experience this before. You stop whatever it is you are doing for a second and begin to feel like you are ship without a rudder. You begin to question where you are in life. You might even question if your life itself has meaning. You may even wonder it ever did.
The art of centering
You can become lost in the cosmic scope of things or you can center yourself on your life as it is. It is easy to get be overwhelmed by the is this all there is sensation. The answer is simple. It doesn’t have to be. Then comes the choices. Should you make changes? If so what kind of change should it be?
Tough change choices
There two kinds of roads to take. While neither is easy, one is taken more than the other. The real hard road is to work what you have with the goal toward improvement. You have the power to make it more meaningful. You can make it that greatest thing in your life. The effort will be immense. The rewards indescribable. The less hard is the cut and run road. Because it appears to offer that clean slate many walk this road. It is a common path in a mid-life crisis. In the long term many who take this way out often wind up back at that same intersection of Improvement Way or Cut and Run Drive. Simple because while you took another road you never changed your direction. As I always say the choices are yours.
