Electing Sociopaths

Ohio Senator Rob Portman’s change of heart on gay marriage does in fact represent an admirable degree of open-mindedness, but why did it take him so long? (turns out he knew his son was gay and never mentioned it while he was being considered as a VP candidate) Of course I don’t know him, and it might be a tad presumptuous of me to speculate, but hey, that’s what we do here.

Here’s what I suspect of most Republicans and how Portman’s new perspective seems so representative of it:  prior to his son’s coming out, Portman, like many Republicans, was convinced he knew better than anyone else.  He was sure that being gay was just wrong, morally, legally, fundamentally wrong.  In his mind, prior to his son’s announcement, Portman’s beliefs had very little to do with anyone other than Rob Portman.  If your life didn’t look like his life, you were probably wrong. 

That probably sounds worse than it is, after all, we can only see the world through our own eyes and compare it to our own experience.  But at some point we have to grow up and accept the fact that just as we can ONLY see the world through our own eyes, every other individual in the world can only see it through his or her own eyes as well.  No one has our same experience nor do we have the exact same experience as anyone else.  In Senator Portman’s case, prior to his son’s epiphany, he apparently never considered that someone else’s experience might actually lead to a different perspective than the one he held.  Until it affected him personally, it was not an experience he was capable of or willing to accept or consider. I think it’s safe to say Dick Cheney’s experience was similar.  Ditto Mark Sanford whose Appalachian Trail lie covered up the kind of sin that he so loudly protested before he got caught.  That is, until it affected him personally, before it became part of his own experience. 

The problem as I see it is in this “growing up” part of the equation.  As mentioned, we all see the world from our own limited perspective, but as adults seeking to function in the larger world, we have the burden of acknowledging other perspectives exist, and accepting they may even have as much merit as our own.  I know this argument won’t convince some people that gay marriage should exist, but it is an argument far more basic than that.  It’s called empathy, and when adults don’t have it, we generally consider them sociopaths.  Even worse, adults who can’t or won’t (and what’s the difference?) acknowledge the merit of different ideas purposefully limit their own ability and experience in the world. They limit what contributions they make to the world and they limit what they can get from the world.  If you can’t imagine a world other than your own, it’s as if you’re admitting you are incapable of solving any problem that you personally have never encountered.  It’s closing yourself off to creativity or new ideas or discoveries.  After all, these things were not part of the past you experienced, and you won’t consider ideas, thoughts, concepts that aren’t already part of your past experience.  You have basically reduced yourself to a drone, plodding along, marching toward your own death.  No wonder so few Republicans are atheists!  I’d want to believe in an afterlife too if that’s how I lived this one.

This issue isn’t just an abstraction either.  In concrete terms, the inability to imagine a life other than our own plays out on a tactical level.  It’s hard to imagine that the ability to afford a car and insurance payment makes me richer than most of the people in the world.  (According to the CIA Factbook,  the worldwide average annual income is around $5500.) For even lower middle class Americans, this is simply unfathomable.  We can’t begin to imagine what that kind of life might be like.  So folks who cannot acknowledge something like that can’t possibly understand why those folks might not see college as a viable or even desirable option.  Folks who can only relate to their own experience fail to understand why these people can’t just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and build a business and end up millionaires because, after all, America is the land of opportunity. 

It’s hard for even lower middle class Americans to imagine growing up in a bad neighborhood where getting killed or going to prison before your 18^th birthday is 10 times more likely than graduating from high school.  For too many of us, such a life simply doesn’t exist, except, maybe, for people who CHOOSE to live it for some unknown reason.  When you can’t imagine those circumstances then you can’t understand why those people also don’t see college as an option..because baic survivial takes up all their philosophical thought time.  And when you can’t see that, you naturally blame them for the circumstances surrounding them.  You wonder, often aloud, why can’t these people just work harder and make something of themselves?  Wouldn’t they feel more self-respect from a minimum wage job than from public assistance?  You can’t imagine that some kind of public healthcare for their kids (since for-profit healthcare is neither affordable nor available to folks with minimum wage jobs) might be more important to them than their own self respect or resume building.

If you didn’t grow up in a town where everyone worked in the mill, or the steel plant, or the auto factory, or the farm, standing, using their hands and backs, heavy lifting, hard work, long days, for generations, where it has long been instilled that “real work” makes you sore and tired at the end of the day, then you probably can’t understand why the idea of a desk job NEVER factored in to their post high school plans, and thus you can’t possibly empathize with the fact that they simply don’t know where to turn now that the farm is a golf course, the mill, factory, plant have been moved to China or somewhere where worker safety and environmental stewardship have yet to figure into the cost of doing business.

Even if you worked in a clean, safe, well-lit American factory, you probably can’t understand why workers elsewhere might believe their ability to unite is a matter of life and death, rather than just whining for a raise (because whining for a raise is the only idea in your experience).

Until something happens to you personally, you can’t seem to wrap your brain around it.  It’s kind of childish or at least immature.  So forgive me for not celebrating Senator Portman’s sudden enlightenment.  My question remains:  if a person hasn’t matured enough to be able to consider the perspectives of others, what makes them think they’re capable of leading others?  And if people who lack empathy are considered sociopaths, then how are they even eligible for and how do they keep winning elections to public office?

Luth,

Out.

Lawyer Language: from "budget" to "sequester"

Ever wonder where the term “sequestration” as used by Congress these days came from?  What’s being sequestered, and why, and how?  The explanation serves as proof – as if we needed more – that lawyers in general (probably), but especially the ones who become politicians, are snake oil salesman who manipulate language, or even create it like J.R.R. Tolkien using it to lend credence to an imaginary world, in order to create a world in which they are required to interpret it back to the people it is supposed to serve.  Gotta give them credit for the ingenious approach to job security!

Sequestration refers to the legal act of holding property (not money; property) in trust, in order to prevent squabbling parties from destroying it while the real ownership is legally determined.  So far it makes perfect sense.  We can all imagine scenarios in which this seems like a reasonable action to take.  Picture your 5 year old little brother holding your Cal Ripken, Jr. rookie card over  a candle, claiming that it belongs to him because he found it (…in your shoebox, on the top shelf in your room).  Since it is in his possession, your claim to its ownership is in question.  It makes perfect sense for your parents to step in, rescue the card from the flame, and hold onto it until its true ownership can be worked out.  Did your brother really “find” it?  Had you, via gross neglect, legally abandoned your claim to it?  Everyone agrees the card is worthy of being rescued.  Likewise, most would agree that its owner should be allowed to burn it, or anything else the legal owner wants to do with it.  Sequestration is a good idea, and thus far, it’s even a good word to describe the process.  It is a word that matches a definition most humans can understand.

Here’s the problem with Congress (lawyers) adopting the term in their annual budget cat fight:  it no longer refers to property in any kind of jeopardy. It’s money.  In fact, it’s not even money, really; it’s a forecast of money.  Back in 1985, the Gramm Rudman Hollings Deficit Reduction Act tried to fix a flaw that had grown out of another lawyer-created process – the national budget.  The way the budget worked before Gramm Rudman Hollings was that various unrelated appropriations bills got added into the overall budget discussion thereby guaranteeing that the total proposed spending would exceed revenue because no one oversaw the big picture.  Each bill’s sponsor was focused solely on his or her own priorities, and they operated outside of the budget committees.  When all of these bills got lumped together into the budget, unsurprisingly, the checkbook didn’t balance.  So Gramm Rudman Hollings basically said from now on when this happens, if Congress can’t figure out how to make it work by a specified deadline, an amount equal to the deficit will be set aside – sequestered – until this extra deficit is cut OR until the debt limit is raised.  If no agreement is reached, this “sequestered amount” will be deducted from all programs across the board until the checkbook is “balanced.”  Except for the fact that Congress considers at least some deficit spending to be “balanced” and the fact that several budget areas (military, Social Security…) are exempt from these automatic cuts, leaving the remaining programs to share  far larger cuts, it’s kind of a good idea. Gramm Rudman Hollings certainly didn’t solve or prohibit deficit spending, but at least it forced Congress to look at it, and agree to the extent of it. 

That was then.

Before I continue down the trite “let’s kill all the lawyers” path, I should mention this:  Lawyers are English teachers at heart. (and I have a special place in my heart for English teachers)  They discuss, analyze, and interpret literature (stories, legal precedents, laws…same thing) in order to find meaning and guidance for the rest of us. Literature provides a discussion point from which we can debate and discuss the most important issues to mankind without the constraints of personal and emotional involvement – without having suffered the experiences ourselves.  With the personal and emotional removed, we can then apply logic to the discussion and arrive at a mutually agreed upon better understanding of what we’ve learned, how to apply it in our lives. It’s identical to the way religious people derive moral guidance from their various religious texts, only lawyers (and English teachers, Literature buffs, book club members, and atheists) do it without the cognitive dissonance resulting from literal belief in fictional tales.   Lawyers do this with stories and laws men have created, stories and laws which, with any luck, have been arrived at via similarly unemotional, rational discussion and debate.

This is now. 

Gramm Rudman Hollings remains a decent band aid to put on the bleeding wound of a budget process grown too big to be workable (lawyer-designed), but we seem to have forgotten that the use of the term “sequestration” was, and I’m giving Congress the benefit of the doubt here, metaphorical.  It was a nickname applied because of the vague similarity of the process to actual legal sequestration of property.  You don’t sequester money!  You can’t sequester forecast borrowed (and therefore imaginary) money.  This money doesn’t exist.  It’s not in a lock box and sequestration won’t protect it, nor will it take any actual money from even the non-exempt budget areas in order to stay below the debt ceiling… because it’s not money… it’s a budget outlining how money we haven’t borrowed yet might be appropriated.  Likewise the “debt ceiling” – that boundary line of borrowed money that sequestration intends to maintain – is also figurative.  These terms were used as shorthand to ease the discussion, simplify and expedite the explanation of how they work.  The amounts in question are rather arbitrarily created. The checkbook is never literally balanced.  The federal budget has always included borrowed money in its definition of “balanced checkbook.”  And that’s fine and dandy… until we start interpreting these figurative terms as literal or pretending the nicknames for these conceptual abstractions are the hard nouns identifying actual concrete things.

A literal perspective of an actual budget looks like this:  Money comes in.  Money goes out.  When those two pools of actual money are equal, that budget is literally balanced. Whether it’s a kid’s lemonade stand, Microsoft, or the USA, that is literally what we mean when we say budget.  Enter the lawyers who became politicians.  Rather than risking losing an election by administering literal budget practices and angering constituents when actual programs must be cut, they went the Tolkien route and created their own language.  This new language allows them to describe “balancing the budget” even when expenses far exceed revenue.  Obviously anyone with 6^th grade math skills knows that’s not possible and so the new language adds layers and layers of complexity so that the appearance of college math is require to understand it.  Few people who aren’t math teachers even remember the titles of college math courses and the problem is instantly solved.  Our budget process isn’t ridiculous and arbitrary, it’s complex, beyond a lehman’s grasp.

That’s not only bullshit, it’s also a little unfair on my part.  The budget of a nation of over 300 million people is a little more complex than that of a kid’s lemonade stand.  The depth and breadth of what that budget covers, from the security of a ready and well-equipped military to a single Head Start breakfast is massive by scale alone, even without considering the complex formulas by which it must be derived in pursuit of equity and fiscal responsibility.  But that’s just it.  The misuse of these mangled terms is specifically to avoid responsibility.  For Congressmen.

To have settled on the misnomer of “sequestration” was a handy expedient, but to have forgotten that it is merely a nickname, and to now hold the nation hostage over a process created by the same body who are now the hostage takers, and who suddenly believe the term is literal is irrational…the opposite of what we expect from lawyer language.

Luth,

Out

It's about our culture, not our laws

There’s a Sylvester Stallone movie coming out soon titled BULLET TO THE HEAD.  I haven’t seen it, but the trailers indicate it’s like every other action movie out there…glorified violence and revenge.  I don’t for one minute suspect that the niche market such movies serve actually plays any kind of direct connection to gun violence.  I don’t think such movies should be banned.  Hell, I might even like it, but the entire notion of a title like that getting green-lighted as a full budget endeavor featuring a major star is a perfect indicator of just how different our culture is from any other country with legal guns.

BULLET TO THE HEAD is based on a graphic novel, so its treatment of violence is a comic book’s treatment of violence – that of a two-dimensional, oversimplified world that only a child or someone whose capacities are severely limited would ever confuse with the real world.  One other fun fact is that the original graphic novel on which it is based is French!  (and everyone in the NRA knows the French are sissies!)

What’s any of this got to do with the NRA or gun laws?  Well, I’ve been thinking lately… for the first time in my life I might actually agree with something NRA President, Wayne LaPierre, said.  At least in part.

I don’t think it’s about our gun laws; it’s about our gun culture.

I’ve only recently arrived at this new conclusion and the realization that it means I agree with Mr. LaPierre. I’ve had guns in my household all my life, but I’ve never once been tempted to join the NRA.  During the years in which this opinion was formed, Charlton Heston represented that organization.  As I watched him slowly prove through frequent public tirades that he’d lost sight of the distinction between playing Moses in a movie and actually being Moses, I also saw signs that many of his followers were under similar delusions.  I was disheartened and embarrassed at my fellow gun owners for their inability to rationally discuss gun laws.  Even among close friends, and after taking pains to keep partisan politics out of the private discussions, folks I knew and trusted seemed to have drunk the Kool-Aid and refused to even consider that this nation might be able to come up with better gun laws than we have.  Period.  Not necessarily stricter, not necessarily banning any particular model or type, just better laws. I believe my countrymen are bright enough to take this on.  Many of my fellow gun owners, and the public sentiment of the NRA indicate otherwise.

For most of my life, the public face of the NRA seemed dead set against even having that conversation. Under President Heston, they proved themselves to be something far more frightening than an assault rifle. They helped create a culture of fear.  They established themselves as a giant, rich, and therefore powerful lobby 100% committed to NOT having a discussion. Nothing pushes a paranoid public toward their guns more than fear and a sense of powerlessness.  This was a brilliant strategy for the NRA. It’s a brilliant strategy for niche movies like the Charles Bronson franchises of the 80s, and just about every Sylvester Stallone movie.  It’s had terrible results on our nation and our political process.  There is little wiggle room in that kind of stance.  If you won’t discuss our disagreement, you are, by definition irrational, and you offer no contribution to a potential solution.  You ARE part of the problem.  In its own way, my own acquiescence to this stereotype (of the NRA and its members) distracted me from actually looking at the issue.  I was content to know (and I still KNOW this) that anyone not willing to talk is not rational, not worth talking to, and so went the NRA.

Sure, I knew the NRA sponsored and promoted safe gun handling and practices.  Though I’d had a hunting license long before the state of Ohio required completion of a hunter safety course to get one, I took the NRA course anyway and found it very well done.  But no good deed goes unpunished, and where your public face is clearly as insane as your refusal to talk, I had no use for such an organization outside of that classroom.  In fact, I simply couldn’t connect anything about the NRA with my experience in that classroom.  The class was good, sound, logical.  It didn’t in any way match with the NRA I‘d come to know.  Just like many of my smart, educated, logical friends who owned guns…I couldn’t connect what I knew about them in just about any other circumstance with how stupid they acted at the mere mention of the words “gun control.”  Suddenly they lost all critical thinking skills, listening skills, the ability to even have a conversation.  So I’m hoping this revelation of mine represents some kind of meeting at the crossroads.  That we’re finally ready to have this conversation.

That may not sound like I’ve reached any new conclusions, and as I sit back and think about it, maybe I haven’t.  Maybe I’ve agreed all along that the law doesn’t much matter. Gun laws really do only affect law abiding citizens.  But if that’s the case, then why does the NRA so fear any new or revised gun law?  It’s NEVER even been hinted at during my lifetime that anyone, even the most liberal presidential hopeful would EVER try to outlaw guns.  EVER.  Except by the NRA, which means their entire argument is fully encased in logical fallacy – the slippery slope.  And if you think the now expired definition of “assault rifle” is a tad ridiculous, like I do, then why won’t you help craft a better one instead of refusing to talk at all?

There I go again, getting distracted by the opposition’s weakness to the point that I’m blind or deaf to the rare, few valid points they make.  It’s not about the law; it’s about the culture.

On that note Wayne LaPierre and I completely agree. If only life were oversimplified and 2-dimensional enough to leave it at that. If only life were just a movie based on a French comic book. OR, if only we could work together and figure out a better way forward. Remember how cool smoking used to be?  Had we, as a nation tried to simply outlaw it, we NEVER would have reduced the health problems we have by reducing the number of smokers in our population. We’d still be arguing about it today.  We’d have polarized groups of tobacco manufacturers and consumers on one side and tree hugging health nuts (and some consumers too) on the other, even though the extremes of those groups only represent a tiny fraction of society.   Had we tried to ban a certain type of cigarette, such an effort would have failed from the start, and that tiny fraction would have held our nation hostage and prevented any progress. The tobacco shift was a cultural shift, not a legal shift.  Wayne and I would have been simpatico throughout it up to a point.  However, in order for that cultural shift to gain enough momentum to work, some laws had to change too. In order for our society to be able to weigh the importance of individual freedoms, the rights of industry, and the associated public costs, we had to have a conversation and leave laws on the table. Even if they squeeze out a few individual freedoms, or threaten some industry profits  That’s how law works in a country like ours. People (and corporations are people now) share individual sacrifice for the greater good.  But it can't happen if major players simply refuse to talk.

So we’re gonna have to talk about laws in order to talk about creating a similar shift in our values when it comes to guns.  Poll after poll tells us the NRA is just plain wrong when it comes to the public sentiment regarding gun regulation – the vast majority of Americans really do favor sensible gun law.  Too bad we haven’t been able to come up with any.  Too bad the NRA has made it its mission to prevent that very conversation.  At some point, even fence-riding NRA members are going to decide that one too many malls, movie theaters, or schools have been shot up.  At some point, things will become so extreme that the decision will get forced, and so it won’t be as a good a decision as our nation could actually make.

At some point, our gun laws will change and so will the NRA. Will it be forced, and will we take what we get, or will we participate responsibly in the planning for it?

Luth

Out

The Idiocracy - Fake Outrage

	Birther Issue	Tax Return Issue
Accusation:	not a U.S. citizen	didn't pay some/all of his taxes
Accusor:	various opponents, media personalities, opposition supporters, Arizona Attorney General, "voters"	Harry Reid, media members, voters
Implication:	sitting president committed felony fraud, possibly treason	businessman employed common tactics, possibly owes more
Refutation:	provided birth certificate	none
Precedent:	none	father, subsequent candidates provided complete tax history
Media Response:	constant repetition and resurfacing of dead issue	Shock at Reid's insolence!
Logical conclusion:	President Obama is a    U. S. citizen	Romney's tax returns hide something more embarassing than the character flaw displayed by believing he's above this precedent

Oh Paul Ryan, how can we not love a charismatic guy who will always tell us what we want to hear?

Initially I thougth I’d use a variety of sources to point out the umm, let's call them "issues" a lot of folks had with Paul Ryan’s GOP Convention speech. Then it occurred to me that no matter how many prior articles I cited and no matter how many times I used data from the Congressional Record, all such “evidence” would be cast aside as the machinations of a liberal press. (as R&R have stated, they won’t let factcheckers ruin a good convention) It was at about that point in my searching that I ran across a very succinct analysis of Ryan’s speech by none other than Fox’s own Sally Kohn ON FOX’s Web site! If a Fox columnist said it about the GOP VP, it couldn’t possibly fall into the automatically discredited pile of liberal trash, right?

(Of course, by the time you read this, Ms. Kohn will probably no longer be employed by Fox)

Fox’s own headline for Ms. Kohn’s Aug. 30 column was: Ryan’s Speech In Three Words: Dazzling, Deceitful, Distracting. Kohn sums it up in this favorite quote of mine: "…to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech."

 Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/#ixzz257uJYZEB

Again, I want to be VERY clear about this: these are Fox News columnist, Sally Kohn’s words, not mine! Ms. Kohn goes on to delineate the more, uh, shall we say “problematic” parts of Ryan’s speech, listing her own version of the facts next to what Mr. Ryan said. Of course, Kohn’s facts are merely corroborated by WaPo and NYTimes (and just about every other major news outlets’ columnists and fact checkers,) Ryan’s voting record, previous statements from Ryan, and what little info Team R&R has offered about their budget proposals thus far. Who could possibly know what the actual truth is. How would one ever verify said truth? If R&R have taught us anything to this point, it’s that their significant stances are subject to changing with the political environment, the whims of their party, and the audience at the moment, but back to the topic at hand:  Here’s the list of less than accurate items Fox News’s Ms. Kohn noted:

Ryan said: the downgrade of the US’s credit rating was all Obama
Kohn said: the threat by Republicans in Congress to refuse to increase the debt ceiling was the direct cause of the downgrade

Now, to be fair, that wasn’t exactly Ryan’s fault. He’s only one man in congress. If we were to lay blame, we’d have to start with the Congressional Budget Committee members like Michelle Bachmann or perhaps the Chairman of said committee. Who was that again? Oh, yeah, It was Paul F-ing Ryan!. Nevermind that raising the debt ceiling has been a matter of course for years, or that Ryan did it routinely during the W administration resulting in ballooning deficit spending that turned the only budget surplus in our lifetime into the largest deficit ever up to that point.

Here’s another
Ryan said: Obama policy led to the shut down of the Janesville, WI, GM plant.
Kohn (and most calendars) said: the plant was shut down before Obama took office (when will these Fox people stop blaming W for everything?!)

Oddly, Ryan failed to mention his conflict with his new boss over supporting the auto bailout. Yep, Romney hated it, Ryan supported it. Romney claims it is corporate welfare from an entitlement-based, big government administration.(initiated by W… when will Romney stop blaming W for everything?) Ryan says it saved as many as a million jobs. Obama tried to add some administrative control over it (vs. just handing out billions of dollars to private corporations). So it seems as though in this instance, Ryan has more in common with Obama than with Romney. Perhaps that’s why Ryan wants to have it both ways on this one. In his confusion, he seems to have forgotten the dates of the events in question. (but hey, that’s a lot of dates to keep track of) Next: Ryan said: Obama says all private sector success is because of government Kohn says: That’s not what Obama said, “period” (right… even this Fox reporter understood what the Kenyan refugee was trying to say, but the guys running for Pres and VP didn't get it?? Really?? And THIS is what they're gonna hang their campaign on... a mild mix up in word order? Thank goodness they don't have a chance.) Without getting into the notion that governmnet has, in fact, directly subsidized every major industry in this country at some point, to some degree, starting with the railroad that linked the coasts, and from which every modern industry grew, and which would NEVER have happened if left to private financing, Obama merely pointed out that this country offers roads, power grids, safe water and sewer systems, the protection of a strong military, police, and firefighters, and without them, it would be very difficult for any new business to thrive… that we ALL contribute to this as THE PEOPLE, and, furthermore that Government IS the PEOPLE… hence blaming government is blaming ourselves, not just the Repubs or just the Dems, but all of us… yeah, so without getting into all of that, only a politically motivated fool seeking to grab a sound bite rather than standing on one’s own substance would continue to use that sound bite as proof of anything other than a hatred for this country, it's political process, and what it stands for. Mr. Ryan, Mr. Romney, why do you two hate America?

Ryan said: Obama would cut $716 billion from Medicare
Kohn says: a) that’s an almost identical amount that would be cut in Ryan’s proposal, only Ryan’s is funded by increased taxes on the middle class, b) Obama’s proposal lists that figure as savings in reimbursment rates, which actually LOWER the out of pocket expenses of Medicare users as well(and while pesky old facts may cause a different interpretation about these savings, they are not in dispute for our purposes, cuz Ryan brags about them in his own budget proposal.) In addition, Obamacare further reduces the burden of Medicare users by covering many of the expenses dropped by Medicare to obtain those savings.

One would presume a man who embraces the “wonk/intellectual” moniker as Ryan does, would know the facts of his own proposal. If he does, this is more than simple deception, it’s an outright lie for political gain. 

Ryan said: “you are entitled to the clearest choice possible… we will not duck the tough issues.”
Kohn said: Ryan blew the opportunity to address the tough issues… the very issues on which R&R base their platform.

Where was the R&R budget proposal? Have the two not sorted out their broad differences enough to offer up any details yet?
Where was the logic (other than Biblical, because, of course, we shall pass no law...) behind their otherwise indefensible abortion position? Though neither Romney nor Ryan would ever be in the position to have an abortion (neither has a uterus), they have at least agreed on their stance about it – a stance that conflicts with a consistent 75% of Americans in EVERY poll taken when it comes to rape. A stance that says these two men know what's best for women.

Ryan’s implied concern for America’s senior citizens seems a little inconsistent with his past voting record in which he has clearly supported handing over Social Security to Wall Street – a group he still believes can best govern itself, much as they did leading to the crash of 2010, I guess.

Ryan the small government, fiscal conservative tax cutter didn’t mention the spending he consistently approved in W administration budgets. Or how his own budget proposals not only raise taxes on 95% of Americans in order to fund cuts for the wealthiest, but also INCREASE the deficit, which, by the way, could possibly require additional raising of the debt ceiling – the one thing we know Ryan opposes, except when he doesn’t. For a guy who has jumped on a "we can better manage the economy" ticket, he hasn't really offered much to go on.  Not only do we have to guess what he means - stop spending (like he says) or support spending (like he actually did), but we have to guess based on his past actions, not his promises for the future, right?  And the R&R ticket seems to be behind the economic model we tried from 2000-2008, a period, if you'll recall, that began with a surplus and ended with a record deficit and recession.

As Kohn goes on to point out, this speech was Ryan’s chance to explain why his seeming inconsistencies are what’s best for the nation. He had an audience who would have bought even the dodgiest explanation. Instead, he promised to do just that, but then only attacked his opponent - on some pretty shaky grounds.

But hey, as Ms. Kohn said, at least they’re creating dozens of new jobs among "the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth”

Her words, not mine!
Luth
Out

Fair Game

More rhetorical analysis from The Daily Show: Last night, Stewart summed up the (primarly Fox News) fervor over what's "fair game" to discuss, call into question, or criticize in a presidential election campaign. In addition to indecorously suggesting that news outlets spend their time determining the objective veracity of claims rather than pointlessly discussing a subjective determination of whether said claims are "fair game," Stewart points out that "referring to someone's prior business experience during a job interview" is actually EXACTLY how hiring decisions are made. He went on to compare Fox's non-value-added preoccupation with "fair game" to a "circle jerk." (...but then clarified that this would be a discredit to circle jerks since they at least have an actual, observable outcome.) Been pretty busy lately... it's good to be back. Luth Out

Demjanjuk's death leaves questions?

Happy Sunday after St. Patty's Day!

If Ivan "John" Demjanjuk's death leaves any questions, they're about us, not him.

You may recall this retired Cleveland autoworker as the guy accused of being "Ivan the Terrible," who participated in the deaths of 27,900 Jews (according to charges he faced in Germany) at the Sobibor death camp in German-occupied Poland in 1943.

A headline in this week's paper suggests his death, at 91, frail, in a nursing home, only leaves questions unanswered, but any questions about the man himself - whether he was or was not Ivan the Terrible - can't possibly matter much now that he's gone. The important questions are the ones his story raises about us.

I've always been a joiner, a follower, a go-alonger. In my profession, I get to do a lot of those personality type inventories, and the so-called clinical data all support this notion. I've known it much longer than I've known what a Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator was. Those things just lend authority to what I knew in middle school, maybe earlier. We can't all be the general or the chief. Some of us have to be the grunts.

And so, whenever this comes up in conversation, I'm surprised by the reaction I get from friends when I translate this self-knowledge into what I feel are its logical extensions: Were I alive in Germany (or maybe anywhere else in Europe) in the 40's, I'd likely side with the Nazis. Were I a plantation dweller, or even poor white trash in the American South before the Civil War, I would have likely supported slavery.

I suppose the shock of saying such things is purely temporal. Friends who know me to be a human rights defending liberal also know that those episodes in human history sicken me, and are what drive me toward my leftist leanings TODAY. I'm pretty sure there are no absolutes, precisely because these disgusting episodes are the logical end of such extreme belief. But let's face it, my largely white, middle class circle of mates would very likely be in the exact same position with me if we traveled back to those eras.

I believe this not just for the convenience of it, but for reasons of pure self preservation. And to be clear here, I'm NOT saying I would have been RIGHT about any of this, just that it's pretty likely the way things would have worked. Think about the situation in Nazi Germany. Hitler led one of the most incredibly successful marketing campaigns in modern history, convincing even the Catholic Church that his plan was a good one. If you weren't with them, you feared for your life. I'm pretty sure if the Pope was convinced to look the other way, my will would have stood little chance of overcoming the force of Hitler's pull. (Hell, I signed a 6-year hitch in my country's service just cuz I ran out of college money... and then stayed on another 16 years just because it would have required more effort to quit than it did to re-enlist!)

As a nation we sat back and watched the atrocity unfold for almost two decades before we'd had enough of the Nazis. So yeah, I don't think it's a stretch that I may have traded my white, non-Jewish background for safety, and perhaps aided by the pressures of the society all around me, joined the army, which, in Germany from the late 1920s to the mid 1940s meant becoming a Nazi.

Now consider some of Dmjanjuk's circumstances. Compared to what most of us deal with these days, the dude's life was hell from the start. He was born to disabled parents in an impoverished village in Ukraine and spent what were probably his most "comfortable" years in the Soviet Army, where he was injured, captured, and imprisoned by Germans. After being captured, he claims he was forced to work in prison camps where he was a PRISONER. Others have claimed he willingly took some pretty horrible jobs in those camps and even became a volunteer. It doesn't really matter now. He's dead. He then spent the rest of his post-military life in displacement camps before escaping to America in 1952, where he raised a family, lived quietly, and dealt with his past on his own.

So put yourself in his shoes. Prison camp, after a horrible life by most standards, and you probably think it's all going to end tomorrow, or the first opportunity you have to piss off your captors. One day they say, "hey, if you stand here and operate this lever, you'll live." Would you operate that lever? What if you didn't really know, at least at first, what that lever did? Don't be so quick to play the hero here with 70 years of safe, comfortable hindsight between you and that prison camp. That's all I'm saying.

If all it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing, then every one of us is just as guilty as the real Ivan the Terrible. I suspect that if there truly remain any questions regarding John Demjanjuk's history, they are more about us than about him. He's dead. He lived the last 2/3 of his 91 years with the knowledge of choices he made. He was either a psychopath, or he suffered as a result of that knowledge. None of us are completely innocent. And the real question is, would any of us have done anything different in his circumstances... IF he did any of the things he was accused of doing.

So, you think you'd have made better choices? Think you're the true owner of every decision you've ever made? Think you don't just march in lockstep with the pressures of the crowd? Sure you don't. Off to church with you now.

Luth
Out

Elevator Control Switch

Chip and Dan Heath, professors, researchers, authors, entrepreneurs, and contributors to Fast Company magazine, have recently released a second book called Switch that claims to help folks manage or initiate change in their lives, businesses, etc. Dan recorded a video about the book for a group of VA Senior Executives to be played during last year’s Senior Management Conference, and his speech is available via VA’s Training Management System (TMS), but no one can find it there because the system’s search engine is about as useful as the following procedure:
1. Set up a manual typewriter next to a cactus in the desert

2. Type the question “what is Switch”

3. Swing the carriage return

4. Stare at the cactus

(but that’s another post)
Dan’s video boils down the message in the book which is essentially: people don’t actually resist change, they resist ambiguity, vagary, lack of direction. Dan points out that folks regularly go willingly toward some of the most massive changes a person can experience by simply breaking them down into manageable next steps. We voluntarily join the military, get married, have kids. Those are some pretty massive changes and humans seem to embrace them, not run from them.

He tells that story to explain this one: we like to think change is hard because we’re all schizophrenic. We have a rational side that fully understands why we shouldn’t spend so much time blogging or Facebooking, why we should drop 10 pounds, or why we should get up early tomorrow. Humans also have an emotional side that ignores the rational side and tells us things like one more drink before last call won’t hurt, or we deserve that donut, or hitting snooze one more time is the right decision. The Heath brothers describe this situation (actually they cite the psychologist who described it) as a rational human rider on the back of an emotional elephant. In a battle, the elephant will obviously win. So, the Heath brothers explain, any call for, or attempt to change anything must come with a rational appeal for the rider and an emotional appeal for the elephant. The rider must break down what it wants the elephant to do into easily manageable key steps and then provide the motivation to make those steps appealing to the elephant. Read the book, or, if by some miracle you can find it in TMS, watch the videos. They’re way better at explaining it than I am.

I told you that story to tell you this one: I was in New Orleans last week for the program in which I played that Switch video for a small group of VHA employees in a leadership training program. The hotel where I stayed, gorgeous though it was, had the strangest elevator control system I’ve ever encountered. Before I go on to describe it I should emphasize that I’m one of the folks who don’t need to read Switch in order to be convinced that humans embrace change. I’ve always enjoyed change. I get bored easily. I’d much rather be involved with creating or implementing or revising the new than with maintaining old. It’s just the way I’m wired. I tell you this so you’ll better understand, and perhaps better be able to help with my dilemma.

Back to the elevator control system. I vaguely recall as I checked in to this hotel, the clerk mentioning that I had to go up two floors (via escalators) to the main elevators in order to get to the guest rooms. Like most big city hotels, the first few floors were conference space, public areas, bars, restaurants, Starbucks, and FedEx store. The clerk also said something about swiping my room keycard in order to use the elevator. That seemed odd from a main floor. As a regular traveler, I belong to several of the major chain’s “preferred customer” groups and so I assumed she referred to those floors or areas reserved for card carrying preferred customers, like a top floor lounge, or the floor with just suites or something like that. I was too busy trying to remember her directions for how to even get up to the elevators to think much more about how my key card might be necessary to operate them. It was a good concern to have cuz it turns out I could have walked to another hotel (with my luggage) in less time than it took to get to these damned elevators.

As I approached them, I realized I should have paid more attention to what she said about how to operate them. Unlike every elevator I’ve ever been in, this bank of four cars had a touch screen on the wall between each pair of cars right where you normally find the simple “up/down” buttons you usually associate with elevator operation. I watched as another guest swiped a key card under the touch screen and walked into the car that opened behind us. My past experience with elevators told me to just follow her rather than fish through pockets for my keycard, and so I dragged my roller suitcase into her car, smiled politely, and then turned to press the button for the 7th floor.

“First day here?” she said from behind me as I began to realize the mistake I’d made. This elevator had no buttons inside it save for the alarm bell, and door open/close buttons.
“You’ll have to ride with me to 15, get out, and swipe your card again to get to your floor. Watch the touchscreen to see which car will take you to 7.”

Her instructions seemed about as clear as the ones I’d already ignored at the front desk – they in no way meshed with my four decades of elevator riding experience - but I smiled and thanked her and then rode quietly to 15 with her. I was silently debating whether I would actually get off at 15 until it dawned on me that staying in an elevator with no buttons on the inside was not a useful activity, so when we arrived at 15, I followed her out. I dug my keycard out of my pocket and swiped it under the touch screen. A keypad similar to the one on my iPhone appeared with the “3” and the “7” “keys” highlighted and flashing. I was a tad confused, but I intuitively tapped the “7” and the screen changed to instructions that said something like “take car A to the 7th floor.” And right about then, the door I’d just exited – car A as it turned out – opened. I stepped in and was whisked back down to the 7th floor.

I felt fairly confident with my success. I had passed the first lesson even if, you might argue, I had failed on my first try ending up on the 15th floor. I was now on floor 7 and could now go back to a more familiar process: searching for an indication of which of the four hallways I should follow to find room 725. I pulled my suitcase along while scanning the walls ahead of me and had far less difficulty finding my room than I had controlling the elevators. But the entire time I walked to my room, entered it, hung up my clothes, drank a glass of water, and headed back out to meet with our conference hosts in the building next door, my thoughts were on that elevator control experience.

Was this touchscreen thing that automatically offered me options a better system than the ones I was used to? It didn’t seem like it. It seemed overly complicated, but did I only think that because it was so new and different from well-established prior experience? More importantly, would I be able to work the system to get myself to the second floor – a floor I previously only set foot on between escalators on my way to the guest room elevators on the third floor – in order to meet with my host? I was about to find out. The elevator bank on the 7th floor was rapidly approaching. I had my keycard out and was ready to scan, but I paused to observe for a moment before I jumped right back into this new game. There were two sets of four elevators. Cars A-D were on the far end of the crossing hallway, and cars E-H; on the end nearest the hallway to my room. I had stopped at the E-H touch pad.

I swiped my card and a message on the touchscreen offered the iPhone-looking keypad again, this time with the “3” highlighted, but right below the keypad grid was another box that said, “lower floors.” I tapped it. At that point a new, less complicated grid popped up that offered “2,” “lobby,” and ”upper floors.” I tapped “2.” The screen then flashed “take car A to the 2nd floor.” I headed over from the E-F bank to the A-D bank, and as you can probably guess by now, got to car A just as the doors were closing. I swiped my keycard again, calling up the increasingly familiar iPhone keypad with the “3” highlighted again and the “lower floors” box below the grid. (Apparently, everyone from every upper floor rides to three and then hikes or escalates to 1 or 2??) I tapped the “lower floors” button again, selected “2” again and read “take car B to the 2nd floor.” I glanced up at the two cars I was facing: A & C. I turned around in time to see the doors to car B closing. (did I mention I had an ear infection, and couldn’t hear the doors opening - or jets taking off, or small arms fire - since my plane landed at Louis Armstrong Airport?) I swiped my card again. Tapped “lower floors” again. Tapped “2” again, and braced myself to launch at the first open door. The screen read “take car B to the 2nd floor.”

I tried that once! I thought, loudly.

This time I was ready though, and I managed to enter car B as the doors were closing. Out of habit, I still looked for buttons to push as the car descended to the 2nd floor. I got out, located the skybridge to the connected federal building next door, and made my way over to my host’s office building’s second floor lobby. I passed a bank of elevators marked “Levels 1-4,” a security desk where a friendly guard told me to have a good afternoon, another bank of elevators marked “Levels 5-9,” and finally, just as I was beginning to wonder what problems folks in New Orleans must have had with just plain old elevators in the past, a bank of elevators marked “Levels 9-15.” To my great relief, the elevators to floors 9-15 were operated by the old standard “up arrow/down arrow” buttons. I pushed the up arrow button and climbed on the first car that opened up. Inside, I found the standard panel of buttons (and in answer to the newly forming question in my head, I could actually choose any floor from 1 through 15 in spite of the signage that forced me to walk all the way past two other banks of perfectly good elevators to get to this one. I guessed that the others would have provided the same selection of floors no matter what the signs said!)

I arrived at floor 10, and in typical government fashion, saw absolutely no signage that would confirm nor deny that I was in the right place. To my left was an opening to a hallway. To my right was a set of decorative glass doors with an empty reception desk behind them bearing a Department of Veterans Affairs seal, but no further hierarchical identification indicating it was in the fact the Human Resources and Recruiting Office headquarters. (there are actually a LOT of Department of Veterans Affairs offices)
I walked through the glass doors until I found someone who instantly recognized me as someone who didn’t really belong. I introduced myself, explained why I was intruding, who I was looking for, and discovered I was in fact in the right place. The meeting (and the entire trip) went well from that point on (except for the cabin pressurization/depressurization effects on my ears on the flight home) but the issue of the hotel elevator controls either nagged or intrigued me, and continues to do so.

Each trip I made to and from my room reminded me that I had yet to decide whether or not this change was an improvement. The elevator touch pad was definitely a cool, Star Trek-like, high tech, futuristic kind of toy, and its inconspicuous, brushed stainless steel frame surrounding the glowing blue screen fit nicely with the newly redecorated hotel interior. There was no doubt that the hardware involved was sexy. These touchpads were sleek, slim, cool looking.
There is also no doubt that they worked, once a new user got the hang of them. No doubt that the inside of the elevator was “cleaner,” sleeker looking without all those buttons cluttering it up. No doubt there are fewer moving parts without a button for each floor plus the buttons outside, etc. I can certainly come up with a list of positive things to say about this new elevator GUI, if I may. But the question remains, is it better. If I could become used to it, does it make my elevator experience better than it was in the past?
I’m not sure I’m ready to make that Switch.

So, my dilemma: Do I suspect this new system is not better only because it is so new? Will I grow to love it once it becomes second nature? Or is it sufficiently overly complex and just the latest failure in a line of attempts to replace what is actually a solid existing system that will require more time and effort (and something WAY better than this) to replace it? And how do you ever know?