My two-cents worth and then some. An online journal by LP Brown.

Browsing Category Opinion

My Opinion on topics

Entertaining Deep Thoughts

by on ·Food for Thought, Opinion, The Way I See It

“Quiet people have the loudest minds.” Stephen Hawking.

I read somewhere that the typical Pisces is extremely introspective. Don’t I know it. My brain seems to always be on hyperdrive, even when I’m sleeping in dreamland.

I contemplate everything. It baffles me that people spend hundreds of dollars on cut-out jeans simply because they are fashionable. And I wonder why birthdays are counted in years instead of days; especially since a day can sometimes seem like a lifetime. I humorously consider that someone who turns 50 on their birthday would be 18250 days old. Then, I imagine trying to fit those figures on a line on a form with only enough space for three digits.

Often my philosophy wavers between believing in predestination and the idea that we are all autonomous beings fueled by self-determination.

Some people ascribe to the doctrine that a Higher Power foreordains everything and that the script of our life is assigned when we are born. As we age, we think that we can control our destiny when we may not. What if we only believe that we have free will because part of the master plan is to let us think that we do?

Consider the epigraph The Appointment in Samarra. Are we always where we are supposed to be at any given time?

Another example. Say that a man is running late for an appointment. He rushes out of the building and anxiously tries to flag a taxi. A cab stops a couple of feet away from him. As he begins walking toward it, another man who had just approached the scene rudely rushes past the first man and hurries into the cab. The driver pulls off and proceeds on the green light into the intersection and is broadsided by a box truck that has run the light. Both the cab driver and passenger are badly injured. Was it predestination that the man from who the cab was stolen avoided the accident?

If someone commits suicide, was it predestined that the person would die that way, or was their free will, their intent to take control, the determining factor in when and how death would occur? Relevant to death, was euthanasia proponent Dr. Jack Kevorkian, an assigned architect of good or a force of evil? Everything is relative, isn’t it?

Do things unfurl in life the way they are supposed to, or is everything happenstance? Are our hopes, dreams, and plans already inbred or assigned to us before we are born, and do we merely follow the script once we are here?

I frequently consider how our thoughts, words, and actions, good or bad, sometimes have extensive reach. The things we say or do can benefit or harm others, often without our knowledge, subsequently a domino effect.

In these contemporary times, it seems that everything and everyone is interrelated far and wide. For example, random hookups that result in childbirths, artificial inseminations, and surrogacies make blood ties far-reaching. Consequently, brothers and sisters, cousins, and other blood relatives can unknowingly develop a physical or sexual love connection without knowing that they are related.

Occasionally, I entertain the idea that we, all of humankind, are on a universal chessboard. Depending on our social and economic status in life, we are the kings, queens, bishops, rooks, and pawns that provide entertainment for the omnipotent powers that be.

Sometimes I am inclined to agree with Shakespeare. Were he alive to paraphrase a line that he gave to Hamlet, he might say of my perpetual curiosity, “The lady doth overthink too much, methinks.”

4 Comments

Creeping Normalcy

by on ·Food for Thought, Opinion, The Way I See It

Is there such a thing as normal anymore?  Or is normalcy, like beauty – in the eye of the beholder? I often wonder about that.

It was easier to comprehend things when I was much younger (darn near a hundred years ago). It didn’t require a rocket scientist mentality or a Ph.D. in political correctness to determine what was normal and what wasn’t. Back then, we learned in school that two plus two equals four. Nowadays, even that is arguable. Ask a scientist or mathematician, and that person might tell you that two plus two doesn’t necessarily equal four. Then, they’ll go on to explain that significant figures and rounding could produce a different answer. For gosh sake, I am not delving any further into that. Anyone who wants additional information about the quandary of two plus two had best start doing their research.

The conversion from normalcy to the existing status quo sometimes annoys me. Things that once fit neatly into boxes now bulge and punch holes through the container. I like the way a friend of mine described the situation when we were discussing it recently. He said, “Society is on the downstroke. The best days are behind us.”

My favorite television show is The View. The women on the program are intelligent, courageous, and outspoken. They don’t give a flying squirrel whether the public agrees with what they say, nor do they hold back on voicing their opinion. Even when they have a co-host or guest on the show whose ideas I strongly disagree with, who I feel is teetering on the border of idiocy, I still respect that person’s right to voice their opinion.

Like The View’s co-hosts, I am not bothered by people’s judgment of my viewpoint. However, I am astute enough to know that there are times when it is prudent to be diplomatic instead of shooting from the hip. I feel sorry for people who are so afraid of expressing what they honestly think because they fear that being candid will make them look bad, biased, or bonkers in the eyes of their relatives or friends. So, they suppress their true feelings and deny what they are really thinking. Then, later they silently fume about what they wish they had said. Been there. Done that. Years ago. Ain’t doing it no mo’. (Okay, I got a bit carried away there. But isn’t that the freedom of journaling?)

Getting back to the topic. I miss the days when if I received an unexpected wedding invitation from an acquaintance who I didn’t know very well, I didn’t have to wonder if it would be a heterosexual or same-sex marriage. Of course, the gender of the partners will not determine whether or not I attend the wedding. I don’t care who weds who. But, the fact that I don’t care about the gender of the couple doesn’t stop me from wondering. With the growing trend of parents giving their children unisex names, guessing the gender of someone’s S.O. isn’t as easy as it used to be. For example, if a wedding invitation reads, “… joyfully invite you to the wedding of Blair and Blake” or “the honor of your presence is requested at the marriage of Casey and Hunter,” there may be cause for pause. Suppose I want to buy the couple a set of engraved coffee mugs or embroidered gift towels; in order not to commit a faux pas, I need to know whether to buy “His and Hers, His and His or Hers and Hers.”

And look at families. As I see it, there is no such thing anymore as a normal family. Okay, I suddenly sense that using the word normal will be like pouring rubbing alcohol on a bleeding, open wound in some folks. So let’s strike it. Perhaps, in this instance, traditional is a more acceptable word to use. Traditional families like I used to see on TV programs during my generation’s younger days. Families like Father Knows Best, The Partridge Family, Good Times, and even The Jeffersons are what I mean by traditional families. They used to be referred to as nuclear families. I wonder, is the term “nuclear family” taboo now, too?

Traditional or contemporary families are more on par with This is Us and  Modern Family.

When I was a child, I had friends who may have had one or two step-siblings living in their home. Aside from the step-siblings, the children in the house all had the same last name. (Sometimes the step-kids did, too.) According to a study by Cassandra Dorius, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, “One in five of all American moms have kids who have different birth fathers.” So, there could be as many as five or more children in today’s household, each carrying a different surname connected with their numerous baby daddies. I suspect that this is now considered normal; oops, I mean traditional.

Well, those are some of my thoughts about normalcy.

Dare I publish this? People might consider me unreasonable, narrow-minded, or biased; whatever adjective suits their fancy doesn’t faze me. But in judging me, I hope that they will acknowledge that I am sincere in expressing my beliefs and opinions. I refuse to cowardly straddle the line and pretend to be impartial when I have concrete feelings about something.

I’m sure that even my critics would agree that Charles Addams was on point when he wrote, “Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.” With that – I do agree.

 

2 Comments

Are Things Changing?

by on ·BLM, Justice, Law and Order, Opinion

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” — Angela Y. Davis

 

I cried. Yes, I admit I lost it and bawled like a baby whose pacifier had been snatched away. But mine were happy tears.

Until yesterday, when the verdict against Derek Chauvin was announced, I had not seen so much hugging, hi-fiving, and joyful weeping since Joe Biden was elected president. Telephone signals crisscrossed nationwide as friends and associates, many expressing stunned disbelief but euphoric gratification, phoned each other to confirm that what we heard was not a cruel joke or a bad dream. The track record of bad cops vs. Black Americans trapped in their web is common knowledge. How many Black people didn’t find it hard to believe their eyes and ears when Judge Peter Cahill said, “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty?” Say whaaat?

I wrote my first post about George Floyd on May 28, 2020, nearly a year ago. Although I have always maintained hope for justice for Mr. Floyd, honestly, I wasn’t expecting it, not even after a video circulated worldwide showed Chauvin kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck, and pressing the life out of him. I didn’t expect it even after Chauvin was fired and arrested and put on trial. I still have little faith in the so-called justice system. It has failed us so many times before until “Say Their Names” has become as much a rallying cry as Black Lives Matter. On Tuesday, my prayers and the prayers of millions of principled people – people of color and whites – everywhere were answered. My close friends and I collectively exhaled a sigh of relief, although disbelief still hovers in the shadows of the future like an ominous cloud as does Chauvin’s expected appeal.

During the days after Mr. Floyd’s murder and the following weeks, I refused to watch the video showing his demise. I just couldn’t. Whenever I knew that it was about to be shown, I’d mute the TV and look away until I thought the segment was over. In the months preceding the trial, when I thought of the tragic way in which the incapacitated man was murdered, in my mind, I would see the smirk on the killer cop’s face as he pressed his knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck. Today, I replace the image of that smirk with what I saw above the mask on Chauvin’s face after the verdict was read – deer in the headlight eyes. I imagine and hope that what was going through his mind was gut-wrenching fear; fear of a dire future.

I’ve learned of so many – too many – senseless murders-by-cop of black men and women during my lifetime. I hope that the Chauvin verdict will change bad policing in America.

I pray for Darnella Frazier, the teenager who courageously stood her ground and filmed Mr. Floyd’s murder. I also pray for all of those who testified against the rogue cop, especially the other police officers who – this time – ignored the blue wall, that informal code of silence among police officers, and did the right thing.

I know that before the verdict and even in its light, many organizations and some individual citizens continue calling for police abolition (replacing policing with other systems of public safety) or defunding the police. As I understand it, “defunding the police” does not (as some believe) mean doing away with the police. It means reducing police department budgets and reallocating or redistributing those funds toward essential social services.

I hope that Congress will pass H.R.7120 , the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, aka the George Floyd bill. Not only will the bill address systemic police misdeeds, among other things, but it will also create a national registry to compile data on complaints and records of police misconduct. Ideally, that registry will prevent bad cops who willingly leave or are fired from the police force in one city from relocating to another police force in a different town. The proposed ordinance is primarily intended to “hold law enforcement accountable for misconduct in court, improve transparency through data collection, and reform police training and policies.”

I don’t think that the majority of Americans are anti-police. I’m not. I know that there are good officers out there. We all are just sick and tired of bad cops using their badge and gun to get away with murder, literally. I agree with Michael Moore, who in his Podcast proposes that our country “abolish a sick and cruel system of policing and replace it with a humane and accountable system of Public Safety and Compassion.”

What right-minded person wouldn’t agree that this country’s law enforcement system needs massive change? Who would not like to believe that there truly is liberty and justice for all?

2 Comments

Take the Shot – or Not

by on ·Food for Thought, Health, Life and Death, Opinion, The Way I See It

This is a touchy subject, so Dear Journal, let’s keep this between you and me and my numerous blog readers.

I recently read an article written by Gene Weingarten, my favorite humor columnist at The Washington Post. He put a light spin on a serious subject, the COVID-19 inoculation process. As we know, health care workers, first responders, and people over 65 are among those who have first dibs on receiving the COVID vaccine. As a senior himself, he was indeed joking when he cited the priority arrangement as “some weird national system that seems to give preference to people who are already half dead.”

Before receiving his shot, Weingarten kidded about having “vaccine envy.” I do not. First of all, I hate getting shots. Just looking at a needle causes a full-blown anxiety attack. Secondly, I do not follow the crowd. If I do something, it’s because I want to do it, not because I feel persuaded by the CDC or universal acquiescence, or as some might call it, herd mentality. My rebuff was formed decades ago after reading Bad Blood by James H. Jones and studying other publications about the Tuskegee Study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service and the CDC. I was young and naïve when I learned that our government would betray the public trust by sponsoring something so hideous. Though I’ve since learned of other shady events that are said to have been orchestrated by the government throughout my lifetime, I have never been able to erase the mistrust planted by the Study. It settled in my mind the way a leech burrows under the skin and it stays there.

Confession aside, clarification required. I am not saying that I will never take the shot. That’s something else I’ve learned during my journey to seniority. Never say never. But I will say that you won’t see me cutting the line or concocting methods to cheat to get ahead of other people who fall into the most vulnerable category. I’ll wait.

If – I said IF – I get the shot, I’d prefer the Johnson & Johnson single dose. However, it is my understanding that people being vaccinated don’t get a preference. You take what they give you.

I have read reports of people having severe allergic reactions to the vaccine and of at least four people who died shortly after taking the shot, including a woman in California and a Florida doctor. As expected, the public was told that there is no apparent link to the shot and those deaths. That may be true. Maybe it was just their time. We are all going to go, sooner or later, one way or another.

Of course, numerous people have been inoculated or will be, who will suffer no ill effects at all. God bless ’em!

I’m not kidding when I say — I don’t do shots. I haven’t had a flu shot since I was in grade school; haven’t had the flu either. (She said knocking on wood.) My doctor’s suggestion that I get the pneumonia, shingles, and any other vaccines recommended for older adults has also fallen on deaf ears. Don’t think that I don’t know that I am as susceptible as anyone else to falling victim to any of the illnesses mentioned above and some that aren’t. I also know that getting coronavirus could land me in the hospital or worse yet, in the Big Sleep. A heart attack, aneurysm, car accident, even a nasty fall could also be fatal.

Anyone who takes the COVID vaccine, I say more power to them. Far be it for me to try and dissuade people from doing their thing. As I said, I never say never. I may take it one day.

Sorry to continue on what some would deem a morbid subject, but there is only one certainty in life, and it is death. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Longevity has its place.” Most people want to live as long as possible. Undoubtedly, some folks wish they could stay here indefinitely. The fact is, no matter how many precautions we take, whatever great physical shape we think we are in, or how many shots we take, it’s not our call. When the Almighty places a checkmark beside our name, calling foul or time out won’t mean a thing.

In the meantime, the best we can do is make the best of every moment we have. And if taking the shot gives reassurance, then, by all means, people take the shot.

0 Comments

Warriors for Justice

by on ·Law and Order, Lifestyle and Culture, Opinion, Politics, The Way I See It

The following post was written by Guest Author, David White.

Think 1955 in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. The murderers of Emmett Till are on trial, and everyone – everyone – black and white knows that the outcome of the case is a foregone conclusion. The prosecution team does the best they can. Till’s Uncle, poor Mose Wright, under immense life-threatening duress, identifies the culprits in front of the crowd in the courtroom, and the murderers still get off scot-free.

Fast forward to 2021, and put yourself in the House Managers’ position at the 2nd Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump. Imagine the demoralizing effect of knowing that you face a group of Senate jurors who are as intractable and oppositional as those in the Emmett Till case. The Managers did an excellent job. They certainly inspired me to want to do more to ensure that we preserve the ideals they so eloquently and fervently advocate.

Their opponent was the personification of autocratic nihilism, a man who would gleefully watch the destruction of the beautiful Capitol building, a structure erected with immeasurable toil, blood, and tears. A man who would encourage an insurrection because voters spoke and he could not find enough accomplices to help implement his devious plan to invalidate the election results and maintain power.

The word that perhaps best sums up what I witnessed from the former president’s defense would be “absurd.” Of course, when your client is the 45th president of the United States, you expect nothing other than absurdity.

Look at some of the imprudent and sometimes humourous outbursts from the trial (with a few personal interpolations).

“Mr. Chairman, the prosecution is being unfair, they’re bringing in evidence that implicates my client, and I feel that is prejudicial and so….uh, wrong”.

“Mr. Chairman, they’re using his words as reported by the media and as promulgated on social media platforms, and how can that be fair? After all, they’re only reports, and who would ever be prosecuted or found guilty on mere reports, even if they are his own words?”

“I declare ‘reports’ to be hearsay and inadmissible and totally unfair”.

“I say they should present their case without reports, without incendiary video, and simply go about fixing the pandemic and racial inequity.”

“Mr. Chairman, we reserve the right to imply that their presentation is fraudulent and hypocritical because we say it is.”

“And we reserve the right to present statements into evidence that are mere assertions and assert them as facts, because – the prosecution is partisan.”

“And we know they’re partisan because they identify as Democrats, except Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, the numerous other Republican congressmen and women who declared the trial valid along with the over 100 legal scholars of all political persuasions who determined my client was guilty of inciting insurrection. So, this whole trial should be declared a sham, and let’s all go home in the name of unity.”

“Oh, and by the way, the videos they showed with my client appearing to egg on those pre-meditated incursionists didn’t tell the whole story. They forgot the part, somewhere after about the tenth time he said fight, that he dropped in the word peacefully in a totally non-sarcastic manner. As we know, my client does not have a sarcastic, insincere bone in his body.”

“Since they can doctor up videos let me show you some totally out-of-context videos, for several minutes, of numerous Democrats, many of them in this chamber at this time, using the word ‘fight,’ which of course I will present in a nonpartisan manner because we on this side don’t believe this should be a partisan matter.”

“And while I’m at it, let me show some gratuitous videos of violent street incidences involving a lot of people of diversity with the implication that these are Black Lives Matter and Antifa members; not Trumpers acting violently, though not put in any contextual framework because – somehow this is really a trial about Antifa and BLM, and we really shouldn’t be partisan.”

“So, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman what I’m saying is, you can’t find that my client, who called those well-known violent thugs, racists, anti-semites and kooky conspiracy theorists to the Capitol for a ‘wild’ day as Congress was certifying the election that he legitimately loss, but which we don’t have to admit, guilty of incitement, just because he sent them there to fight like ‘you know what’  or they would lose their country.”

“Oh, one more thing, can you call a recess so that I can consult with the jurors as to how to go about assuring my client’s acquittal?”

I brought up the Till case to push back on this notion that I’ve been hearing from pundits that I generally respect, like Ari Melber and Joy Reid, that the House Managers were derelict by not demanding witnesses to “look those jurors in the eye” and tell them about the pain and suffering they’ve endured. Presenting witnesses may have produced more tearjerking drama, but in my opinion, it would not have brought more conviction votes from naysaying Senators who had already – over three days – seen proof of criminal acts.

Just as an affidavit, handwritten by Emmett Till and certified by God, would have been rejected by the Mississippi court, no truth or proof that anyone else could have provided in that Impeachment Trial would have swayed any of the Trump loyalists.  Furthermore, the trial would have descended further into their nihilistic trap and turned into a comedy of errors.

Lawyers for the Defense:  “Mr. Chairman, if they call this witness, I demand that Kamala Harris be called…VP Harris, are you now or have you ever been a member or associate of Antifa or BLM?”

House Managers: “Objection.”

Lawyers for the Defense:  “You can’t object. This isn’t a real court of law, and the chairman is not a real judge. Mr. Chairman, they are being unfair in not allowing me to question my witness as I see fit.” (Moments later) “The defense now calls Rep. Maxine Waters to the stand.”

Back to critiquing the trial, I loved how Chaplain Barry Black designed his opening prayer to touch the conscience of anyone who was listening who had a conscience. He was precise about what the trial was supposed to be about (truth over falsehood, courage over cowardice). And I imagined his majestic voice and prayer emanating from above, delivering a message about good battling evil, and lies versus truth to souls that need saving.

House Managers Jamie Raskin, Joe Neguse, and Stacey Plaskett’s presentations were uplifting, and I was especially impressed by their impassioned, principled exhortations to righteousness. Raskin’s citings of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and the Bible were also profoundly inspiring.

Although most Republicans clung to their false prophet, there were some courageous living testimonies on that side, too. Burr, Romney, Cassidy, Murkowski, Collins, Sasse, and Toomey sought and will find salvation in the truth.

Following the Emmett Till trial, Wright and the two other black men who testified against the killers had to relocate away from Mississippi. The fate of the courageous seven Senators in the 2nd Impeachment Trial, along with the previously insufferable Liz Cheney, may not cause them to be run out of town; still, it is not unreasonable to think that a megalomaniacal sociopath and his disciples will try to punish them in every way possible. They are to be commended for their courage.

The “fight” for justice continues, and righteous warriors carry on.

0 Comments