U.S. is #1 for all the wrong things

For the record, DEMs and liberals do NOT want open borders. Immigration reform? Yes. Security? Yes. Walls? Fences? Where needed? If effective, sure. 21st century solutions? Duh. Of course. Anyone heard of lasers, drone cameras, motion detectors? How about we install those damn motion detecting flood lights people install on their houses? Install some of those camera doorbells. How about turning the problem into a solution?

Mass numbers of people want to come here to work and support their families. They are willing to do literally anything, just like immigrants of the past. Just like unemployed men and women of the Great Depression. Many even want to serve in the armed forces. You’re telling me we can’t figure this out? Of course we could if many of our leaders really cared. But their compassion doesn’t extend beyond their noses and their bank accounts and their desperate clinging to power.

The country that has done so many great things, solved so many difficult problems, defeated so many foes, can’t figure this out?

Make America a great problem-solving innovative nation again.

Right now we’re skilled at blaming, complaining, lying, demonizing, oppressing, suppressing, glorifying, deifying, worshipping, brainwashing, dividing, manipulating, stealing, scapegoating, propagandizing, gaslighting, incarcerating ....

These are not the pillars of greatness. These are not the wheels of advancement. These are not catalysts for opportunity. These are the ingredients of disgrace, desperation and decline.

Wrestling With Racism

By Tom Hagy 

Preparing for the usual humiliation of the naked weigh-in at a wrestling tournament in 1974, the 250-pound referee would not let me on the scale until I cut my hair. I told him I’d like to see if I managed to get down to 132 lbs before I hacked at my wig with a pair of dull gunked-up tape scissors. He refused. I asked again. Again he refused. 

Keep in mind. I’d spent a week eating nothing, spitting, inducing vomiting, sitting in trash bags in a steam room and practicing with a teammate who didn’t shower because he thought his stink gave him an edge over his hygienic competitors. He wasn’t wrong.  

Your long-haired blogger at 17. 

Also keep in mind, I am debating nude with a moose. The moose was in a striped shirt. The moose was being what would later be called a “dick.” A dozen or so people, teammates and coaches, looked on, probably bored or thinking about their next meal or warm robes, since it wasn’t like I was an olympic hopeful. I wrestled for the hell of it. Killing time until someone noticed my drumming talents and made me a millionaire. 

I now regret telling the ref to fuck himself, I really do, but in my defense I was what later would be diagnosed as “hangry.”   

Now. As a father of a daughter who worked very hard to grow dreadlocks I can appreciate not wanting to cut them. But I also know the strict rules of collegiate wrestling. (The photo of me at 17 displays rule-breaking hair. I had just narrowly defeated a black wrestler whose hair was regulation and whose skills were only marginally worse than my own. Afterwards we shared a couple oranges and wrestling banter, then we went on to evade any collegiate wrestling scholarships.)

In the case of New Jersey wrestler Andrew Johnson, the worst crime against him was naming him Andrew Johnson. Thanks, mom. Was Richard Nixon not available? 

Beyond that the story has to be the dumbest yet to somehow rise to one of a civil rights violation allegation in recent memory. First, his dreads were short. By my eye short enough to wrestle. Second, he could have worn a hair cover. Third, if hair is too long any ref will ask anyone to cut it or, apparently, wear a hair-containing cover. (I guess these were not available in 1974, but I’m sure a bathing cap would have given me an edge. One with ducks and daisies.) Fourth, they chopped away at his dreads like they were poisonous weeds. Fifth, white kids have dreads. Sixth, you may refuse to wrestle. It’s no picnic anyway. Seventh, it is very possible the ref was a jackass or even a racist. He might even be a drummer. But none of those things was on display here. 

This was not a hate crime. This was not racism. 

The ref should have done his job sooner. The kid should have worn the hair covering. The coach should have made the kid trim the locks or put on the damn hair cover. The parents should have encouraged the hair cover for safety reasons. The press should have yawned. The governor should have said WTF are you bothering me with this shit for. 

This is not was not the subject of MLK’s dream. This wasn’t Selma. This was stupidity on everyone’s part. We have enough actual racism that does actual harm to waste energy on something so ... well, nothing. 

You've Got Satisfaction. Lucky You.

When you’re so satisfied with your place in your country that you’re willing to throw your fellow citizens under the bus to stay there, then you really don’t deserve all that it has afforded you and all it can still be.

Since our founding, America has been great for some. 

It’s been a horrific nightmare for others. 

But we always aspired to be better. Right now we’re going backwards. 

If you include compassion in greatness, we’re not. We’re pricks. 

If you consider prideful ignorance a resource, then we are the richest nation on earth. 

If you value civility and fairness, we are rabid. 

And some of us, I assume, are good people. 

And some of us are heroes even though we were captured. 

And some of us are calling bullshit on our asterisk president and his asterisk enablers and his asterisk judges, policies, laws, and facts. 

And many of us will remember those who were complicit or held the coats of those who sullied this nation for their own financial or egoistic gains. 

And many of us will vote. #VOTE

God

Whether we believe in God is not the question. 

The question is whether we should act like there is. 

And whether He is more like the Jesus we hear about, or that angry son of a gun in the Old Testament. 

Let's be good people, do good work, and love one another. 

If you do it because God tells you to, and I do it because I think it's right, it doesn't mean we should pull each other's ears. Unless that's a sign of affection in your zip code. 

Oh, hello ...

Patsy Delined

If you refuse to see or accept any of the ugliness of America, that doesn't make you a patriot. That makes you a patsy.

In the War Between the Left and the Right, I Root for the Militantly Moderate

By Tom Hagy

Response New York Times Op-Ed 
"Why Gun Culture Is So Strong in Rural America"
By Robert Leonard, March 16, 2018

In his piece, Mr. Leonard suggested urban liberals need to better understand rural conservatives when it comes to guns. He posits that the latter believe any gun control is bad, while liberals want to abolish the Second Amendment. I won't comment on the idea that it is up to urban liberals to better understand rural conservatives. Well, guess I just did. I would rather see everyone everywhere try to look beyond their noses and try to understand everyone else everywhere else. But I also would like a movie star's smile. I do not.

While I probably end up in the same place as Mr. Leonard when it comes to firearms, the larger problem on display in his piece is that too much of the country no longer values compromise or listening. Too many sit in the comfort of their bubbles yacking away without looking into the eyes of the person they are debating, choosing the intellectual laziness that brings them to labeling "others" as untamed warriors from another almost certainly cannibalistic tribe. Mr. Leonard rightly points out that the sides most often can't fathom that to some extent they are both right and both wrong. Somehow admitting you're wrong -- or unshackling yourself from the perceived safety of your one-dimensional conclusions -- is like admitting that, when no one is looking, you kick puppies.

I have lived in both universes -- rural and urban -- and grew up with guns, too. I too, as a young man, waged war on diminutive forest creatures. I see the middle path so clearly I DO struggle to understand those who refuse to even let themselves think about it. A problem with our current discourse has been it's "Live Free with Guns or Die" versus "Abolish the Second Amendment." And nothing happens.

That's changing.

Finally.

From what I can see the kids -- fed up from our inaction and the deaths of 17 kids and adults in Parkland, Fla. -- are taking over this debate. What they want is militantly moderate. And that's what we need more than anything. For my money, I love compromise. It's the surest way that everyone gets to be just a little miserable. Just how it should be. Rooting for the kids. They are on the right path, and something tells me they intend to stay on it.