genetic testing

I just rewatched Gattaca for the first time since the 90s last night.  For those unaware, the premise is that in the near future children who are not genetically engineered are discriminated as such, and cannot get the same opportunities as those who are genetically engineered.

This calls to mind a concern I have had, and how it affects some minor decisions.  If given the opportunity I probably would not have genetic testing done, and I probably wouldn't get screening for diseases which lack a cure, such as Alzheimers.  The reason is not because I am morally or intellectually opposed to such testing.  The reason is that I think it will eventually mess up my insurance.

In Gattaca, the protagonist experiences discrimination in his desired profession of astronaut because his health makes him a risk to a mission.  He is instead only able to get a job cleaning offices.  The plot of the movie involves how he gets around the system in his attempt to get into the space program.

I don't fear my genetics or the results of a test would eliminate me from jobs like the main character in this movie, though I am already medically eliminated from a few. I am alert to the possibility that one day such a test could cause me to be unable to get health insurance or life insurance, however.

Right now in the U.S. it is not legal for health insurance companies to refuse to sell insurance to someone based on pre-existing conditions.  That may or may not be reversed in the future, as there is a lawsuit going through the federal court system which may do just that.  This is something that I always need to keep in mind when getting tested.

Furthermore, the pre-existing condition limitation also does not apply to companies who sell life insurance.  If I were to have a test done that showed I had a mutation that made me a bit more likely to have a stroke or get Alzheimers, I would be obligated to share this information with a company I was planning to by life insurance from, and potentially get myself priced out of the life insurance market as a result, in the case that I decided to get additional life insurance to what I currently have.

Some would jump to the insurance company's defense and say that their job is just to provide a service that sets a price based upon a calculated risk.  I am not casting blame, however.  I am just saying that in the current environment, there is a potential motivation to not know everything about your health and genetics.

Policy makers should keep in mind that systems which allow for filtering on pre-existing conditions or genetic conditions motivate some people like me to simply avoid pursuing that data.  There has to be a better way, so that willful ignorance isn't a winning strategy.

d day

Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

One of the most jarring scenes in any movie for me is in Saving Private Ryan. The camera takes the view of a soldier toward the back of a Higgins boat, the nerves of the young men in the boat are worked up, the front of the boat opens up for them to get out and approach to the beach, and the entire boat of soldiers falls victim to machine gun fire.  As an uninformed civilian, that scene sums up my view of the sacrifice of the D-Day invasion.  So many men who certainly would have preferred to be taking a different role than that on that day were forced into a meat grinder out of necessity.  Some survived and some did not.  However, for all of their efforts, Europe and the world are better places today.

There are a lot of battles through history that overwhelm the mind when I try to imagine myself in the shoes of someone who was there.  I don't know that any battle in history compares to this one in my mind, though.

Today, my mood is thankfulness for those who have served and sacrificed for the freedoms.  They're a privilege purchased at a high cost.

signing bibles

I'm noticing that, while I frequently contemplate the implications of news stories and comment on them, the news cycle is so fast nowadays that by the time I have real fleshed-out comments to make on them they're long out of the news.

One such story is the somewhat recent kerfuffle about President Trump signing Bibles in Alabama.  If you asked me immediately after the news story broke I would have responded that him doing this was deeply offensive.  Now I still think it's offensive, but I also think it's one of the bigger non-stories of the past month.

My initial reaction was that President Trump should have known better, and that doing this exemplifies the criticism that he has a god complex and/or narcissistic tendencies.  Christians should revere Scripture to the level that turning a Bible into autographed memorabilia should at least give serious pause.  In my view, putting a signature on the cover of the Bible makes it look like the person signing has the same or greater significance than the Bible itself.  I still believe this after giving the situation time and thought.  The general shrug that a lot of believers gave the story is still bothersome from the perspective that the Bible should be given due respect, and in this case it clearly wasn't.

However, my originally harsh view of the event has moderated significantly.  The biggest reason for this is that it's very easy to imagine someone getting random things shoved in front of them to sign and not stopping to think about whether it's a good idea to sign every single thing.  One can argue about how prone President Trump is to stop and think in general, but I expect that a lot of people in that situation who aren't President Trump would have signed a Bible in that situation without thinking about it.

Second, there is some debate as to what specifically about signing a Bible is offensive.  Other presidents have signed Bibles.  Few people consider signing the inside of the Bible wrong, especially when the Bible is a gift to another. People used to use the family Bible to detail their family tree.  I have had more than one Bible with my name inscribed on the cover.  If I can't draw clear lines on the whys for when it's offensive to put a name in or on a Bible and when it isn't, I do need to give some grace.

Finally, what's offensive about this is more what it represents than the act itself.  The real issue is that there are believers who are quick to judge the morals of politicians they disagree with, but will give President Trump or other similar politicians a pass (or twenty) because he nominates the judges they want.  In essence, this issue was always a proxy for that other issue.  Rather than litigating concerns about hypocrisy as a proxy, those should probably be addressed more directly.

So, this is sort of a defense of Trump in this one instance without really being one.  It's indicative of the times we live in.

self made

Twitter lit up a couple of days ago regarding Forbes declaring Kylie Jenner the youngest self-made billionaire, reaching that level at the age of 21.

I'll confess.  My gut reaction was the same as what a lot of other peoples' reaction was.  She started as a millionaire with every possible advantage available to her.  How "self-made" can we possibly call her?  In thinking through the logic of this assertion, I hit on what I believe are a few uncomfortable truths that a lot of people don't like to think about when comparing themselves to others.

Truth #1 - No one is self-made

While it is true that there is a sliding scale to how self-made a person is, the reality is no one is truly self-made, and I doubt many are even in the general neighborhood.  If you're even mildly successful in some area of life I can guarantee that many of the factors in that are gifts that were beyond your control.  I considered typing examples of this, but it's so specific to the person and the examples are usually embarrassingly obvious.

The response that most people would give to this is that, sure, I have some advantages in life, but not anywhere near the advantages Ms. Jenner has been given.  Perhaps this is true, but there are billions of people who don't have the advantages that I've been given in life.  In my moment of taking credit away from her I'm also thinking in the back of my mind that I've worked for and earned what I have.

Truth #2 - I am responsible for the opportunities I pass up

The reality is that I wouldn't have become a billionaire if I were Ms. Jenner.   I like to think that I would have made something of the opportunities would have had in her shoes.  I'm deluding myself to think that my grit and smarts would have outperformed hers.  Yes, she had every opportunity, but she also clearly used it.

I have to acknowledge that my life, like everyone else's, is marked by a series of choices I have made to do or not do certain things.  There are times when I have chosen a path that led to growth, and there are times when I have not.  There are times when I made actively destructive decisions.

Whether I have the maturity to make a wise choice is always on me.

Truth #3 - We value people too much for their wealth

While accruing a billion dollars in wealth is significant and noteworthy, this doesn't say anything about Ms. Jenner as a person.  The size of her bank account or assets alone doesn't validate or invalidate her as a person.

None of this is shocking, new, or particularly insightful.  However, I find that I constantly want to go back to the same broken patterns I see others stuck in.  So much of life is spent building a career with the intent to generate an income that it's easy for that to be my identity.  It's then easy to compare the life that my resources allow me to have to the lives others have, then to let that determine my value.

So, when someone is shown to have accrued wealth it is easy to think of that wealth as a gauge of their worth, and whatever I have accrued as a gauge of my worth.  I know it's wrong.  Most people factually understand this.  I also know I'm not the only person who naturally falls into this mindset, and has to combat it.

So, Ms. Jenner does deserve some congratulations on this milestone.  It's significant!  But, it doesn't make her a more or less significant person.  If she loses her wealth and everything else tomorrow she's no more or less valuable of a person than today as a billionaire.  That's a truth I find both the easiest and the hardest to believe.

cherokee princess

From when I was born until when I was elementary-aged my dad worked on a few different reservations.  We are as white as white can be, and no one in our family ever pretended any different.  It never crossed my mind to think any differently about the situation, either. However, one of the first questions I'd get from people who did not live near the reservation was whether I had any Native American ancestry.  This was almost always a prelude to someone telling me about their grandparent who was half-blooded [fill in Native American tribe].

Even as a kid, this pattern jumped out to me because it happened so often.  Why did people who had probably never been on a reservation care so much to identify with a specific tribe?  In my experience (from the 80s and early 90s) reservation life was different from life off the reservation in a lot of respects, so it felt a little like trying to gain the benefits of an identity without paying in experience.

I don't remember this firsthand, but there's apparently a joke that gets told among Native people about how every white person's grandmother was a Cherokee princess.  That does fit my experience.  Everyone and their brother seemed to want to tell me about their Native ancestor.  In fact, even if I mention now that I used to live on a reservation to a small group of people it is more or less guaranteed that someone in the group will notify me of their Native American heritage.

This is what has made the evolving story surrounding Elizabeth Warren fascinating to me.  I don't doubt that she fully believed that she could claim Native American ancestry.  I've heard enough people who were convinced of it themselves that it fits the pattern.  Why, just based on family stories, she decided she should assert that as an identity baffles me.  Even if she had a close Native ancestor, she clearly had to know that she was mostly Caucasian and lived a Caucasian life.  She should have especially known that as someone who originally hailed from Oklahoma.  Of all of the unforced errors a [future] politician could commit, this is among the dumbest.

However, as dumb as I think that scandal is, my experience says that Warren doesn't go much further than a lot of other Native American wannabes.  I am certain that a lot of the folks laughing about "Pocahontas" Warren's claims have also asserted their non-existent Native heritage whenever they got the chance.  The reason I'm so sure is that I've probably heard one of them talk about their Cherokee grandparent some time in the past.

1000

After nearly fourteen years, this is my 1000th article on this blog.  Since another word for thousand is "grand" I've compiled a few "grand" facts.

• "Grand" originally came from the French "grant."  Then, as now, it meant large or powerful. [source]
• The name for the 100 grand bar (originally, the $100,000 bar) was inspired by the popularity of quiz shows in the 1950s. [source]
• The Grand Slam tournament in tennis, which is a sport I hardly know anything about, includes four events across three continents. [source]
• Alex Rodriguez set the major league baseball record for grand slams with an astounding twenty-five during his career.  This is one of those records that requires both individual skill and the fortune to have teammates who put you in a situation where a grand slam is a possibility. [source]
• While a Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming was founded in 1929, the current park includes large portions of land that were donated years later by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. [source]
• The Republican moniker "G.O.P." now stands for "Grand Old Party."  However, it originally stood for "Gallant Old Party." [source]
• On average, two or three people die from falling into the Grand Canyon every year.  However, since millions of people visit a year it has to be considered a safe place to visit, statistically speaking.  That said, I would be uptight about the possibility if we visited it with our kids. [source]
• Gerald Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He holds the distinction of being the only U.S. president to hold the office without having been elected either president or vice president. [source]
• There is a World War II power station underneath Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, New York.  It was placed there to protect it from German sabotage during the war. [source]
• The first piano created was a grand piano by Bartolomeo Cristofori in Italy in the late 1600s or early 1700s.  It was originally known as the "pianoforte," which means "soft" and "strong."  It differed from the harpsichord before it in that you could modulate the volume of the instrument based on how forcefully or lightly you struck the keys. [source]
• The "grand theft" in "grand theft auto" refers to the fact that what is being stolen is valuable.  "Petty theft" refers to the theft of less valuable items. [source]

shutdown

"Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin." - Deut 24:14-15

"Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty." - James 5:4
---

This isn't intended to be extremely political, despite the topic.  It's simply meant to be a doctrinal assertion.  In the moment it's going to come across as political, however.  While in any given situation this might target one party or government leader or another, there's no saying that the next situation won't involve the opposite party.

My assertion is simply that shutting down the government in the way it has been done recently very clearly violates Scripture.  There are probably extreme situations where a government shutdown is the least sinful course, but those situations are limited.  They certainly are not at play here.

I've been in an awkward place on this issue.  I think it's important to acknowledge in the church that this is a sin, while it is also important not to get overtly political in a church setting.  So, I keep to myself what I see as public sin by other believers.  I feel like there's an unspoken obligation in church to make a stand in calling certain sins sin, but also a similar obligation not to take a stance on other sins because some people in the church disagree that they are sins for one reason or another.  Clearly, if they are sins then this is a problem.

In reading the passages above, I don't know how a Christian can justify taking a public position that making government employees work without pay isn't sin.  I don't know how a Christian government leader could ignore Scripture to force people to work without timely pay.

The natural defense a person might raise is that this is a different situation because it's addressing rich land owners exploiting their workers, but that's a semantic difference more than anything.  It's looking for a loophole to lawyer out of God's instruction.  These instructions/condemnations come from the fact that certain people exploit others, and this puts them at odds with God.  Shutting down the government does the same thing, so it should follow that this puts the people who cause the shutdown at odds with God.  If Scripture is true, doesn't this mean that the cries of unpaid laborers are reaching God, and that those responsible for the shutdown are ultimately under God's judgment?

That this shutdown and previous ones have involved individuals who claim Christianity should be seen as tarnishing our faith.  To counter this more church leaders should be speaking about this situation in terms of its sinfulness.  While I understand the motivation of doing something like shutting down the government as a negotiation tactic, believers should have a high standard for people who claim to represent them as Christians in the public sphere.  For one, those representatives should abide by the Scripture they say they proclaim.

happy holidays or merry christmas?

Around the holidays the issue of people saying "Merry Christmas" versus "Happy holidays" seems to be s significant one for some folks.  It's been a cultural debate, or in some cases, and opportunity to mock those who believe that greater culture needs to align with Christian doctrine.  It seems like there would be two different perspectives that this can be viewed from.

In the one perspective, I can see how some Christians might expect other Christians to continue to say "Merry Christmas" if they believe that failing to do so is somehow denying the Incarnation of Christ.  I don't know how the act of saying, "Happy holidays," could do such a thing, but maybe there are very specific social situations where refusing to acknowledge Christmas is an act of denying Christ's humanity.  That is frankly the strongest argument I can make for getting worked up about someone not saying "Merry Christmas."

From a different perspective, does it make any sense for Christians to expect non-Christians to say, "Merry Christmas"?  Is acknowledging that there are other holidays around this season denying Christ, and even if it were would it matter if someone who doesn't put their faith in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins did so?

If this were part of some overarching cultural strategy to do away with Christians celebrating Christ's birth I could see this being a big deal.  However, that's a conspiracy I don't buy into.

I think this is a battle for people who want to devote their time and effort to cultural wars rather than devoting their lives to the Gospel as presented in Scripture.  When Paul wrote about the Devil's schemes, and that our struggle is not against flesh and blood (Eph 6:10-20), he was specifically arguing against earthly pursuits such as cultural warfare.  Satan's goal isn't to get people to be more politically correct.  It's to get them to spend their finite focus on the earthly things (like cultural warfare) rather than on teaching others about putting our full faith and trust in Christ's blood, and living a life that reflects that.

However, I do want to be open to arguments that I haven't articulated.  Is there something that I'm missing about what saying, "Happy holidays,"  really means?  Am I misunderstanding Paul, and cultural warfare is somehow Scripturally appropriate?

it can't happen here

Sorry, heavy topic alert.

I've been thinking about the Holocaust a bit lately because I recently listened to the audio version of Anne Frank's Diary, and also because I recently did some reading about Kristallnacht in memory of its eightieth anniversary.  I used to be confused about how Nazism took hold, how Hitler was able to come into power, and how people could rationalize supporting a government that sent people to concentration camps.  I've thought many times that it couldn't happen here.  While it would be much harder for something like that to happen in the United States with the separated powers we enjoy in this country, in the last few years I've come to the conclusion that it can happen here.  People are people, and they're prone to demonizing others if doing so supports their preconceived worldview.

That Internet conversations and debates frequently devolve into one side comparing the other to Hitler or the Nazis is so well established that it has its own informal law. The real shame of this tendency is that comparing everyone to Hitler and the Nazis makes it so that few really take it seriously when someone actually does things like Hitler would.  If a real Hitler appears, anyone pointing it out would be seen as a crazy person triggering Godwin's Law.

My views on identifying nascent Nazism have changed some over the years.  I used to think of it as a workers movement because this is the vibe that the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will gives, and I in turn thought that was what I needed to be wary of.  However, workers movements elsewhere haven't had that same destructive tinge.  Certainly, some have.  The destructive ones are noteworthy because they're the exceptions, though.  Most have not.  Therefore, it has to be something deeper.

It could be that the key is that Nazism, like Fascism, was Nationalist.  I know that belief is getting airtime nowadays more than in the past.  It could also be that a deeper dig could reveal that this is unfair to some Nationalist movements which are not so destructive, if such movements exist.  I simply don't know at this time.

I'm not calling anyone on the world stage a Hitler today.  Even if I did, who would take it seriously?  These are now the sort of accusations crazy people make, and so they are a red flag to most that the speaker wants to decry everyone who disagrees with his as a Nazi.  I do see tendencies of what I do know about Hitler and Nazism in general in some modern political figures and movements that give me pause, though.  Some of those figures are in other countries and some are in the United States.  Since I'm no true expert, it would be unfair for me to call out someone as a Hitler based on a partial observation.  I have to believe though, that it would also be right for me to be cautious about their statements and actions, and refuse to support or endorse those individuals and movements, wittingly or otherwise.

It is easy to see how an individual with similarities to Hitler could take power, and how horrible things could be justified in the name of whatever that man portrayed as the ideal.  In 1930s Germany the ideal was a form of Eugenics supported by a host of conspiracy theories about Zionists.  I'm certain that a lot of Germans figured the Jews were simply being sent to a camp where they couldn't harm anyone else, and whatever happened to them they had coming.  Modern societies aren't immune to that sort of thinking.  Someone today can mix a weird political philosophy with conspiracy theories about some other group of people and do the same thing.  As long as a vocal minority (or even majority) believes the conspiracy theory, what's to stop them from doing horrible things?  Those people probably won't even ever realize the negative things they enabled.

History can be scary when you stop thinking that it can't happen here.

no news is good news

One memory I have of my maternal grandfather came from an instance when we were watching the local news together.  They usually made time in their house to watch the evening and nightly news, though I don't recall him frequently commenting on the details of what was on the news.  At the beginning of that particular newscast he encouraged me to count the number of negative stories and compare it to the number of positive stories that were being reported.  As you would expect the ratio was somewhere in the 8:1 to 10:1 range.  He never let me know if there was a specific lesson that he wanted me to get from the exercise, but the experience did stick with me.  I've wrestled with myself over the years regarding what the exercise proved.

One thing I am certain it proved is that the media makes the world far more scary than it really should be.  To allow a newscast to define your understanding of the world is to imagine a world that is far more terrifying than the reality for the average person.  There aren't murderers lurking around every corner.  Most people want to do good, or at least be thought of as someone who does good.  Those good things don't get reported, though.  I am not saying that most people are good.  People are sinners--the whole lot of them, including myself--but people also have humanity and by and large want to do good.

Another thing I think it proved is that the things that are noteworthy sort of establish the opposite about what society is like.  Things that happen all of the time aren't considered newsworthy.  As an example, a news crew could conceivably go to a city rescue mission seven days out of the week and find positive things that people do for others in need, but if someone is stabbed at that rescue mission one day out of the year that bad thing is the newsworthy event largely because it is both abnormal and consequential.

Something that I've given a lot of thought to is what positive news would look like.  Usually when I see a positive story on the news it comes across as either a puff piece or mildly propagandistic.  I don't know how you'd report on positive stories in a better way, though.  Maybe I'm so cynical I can't properly process a good, positive news story.  Is the problem me?

I've also given some recent thought to the news that my grandfather had been exposed to in his lifetime.  I've been watching a documentary on the Vietnam War over the past few months, and I'm coming to understand that the sixties were as much a time of upheaval as the current day.  This is to say nothing of time of the Great Depression and World War II.  So, when he was discussing the news with me he had a perspective I did not have regarding how scary news could be.  Maybe he was preparing me for a time period like the current one when there's a lot in the news to discourage a person.  If so, I think it worked.

our worst selves

I just finished listening to the audio version of The Diary of Anne Frank.  I have a few thoughts on this, but I'll address the one that strikes me the most in this post.  That is that our perceptions of others is almost always inaccurate.  I'm not even taking this from the obvious direction of the fact that people thought wrongly of the Jews.  I was affected by a completely different manifestation of this in the book.

Ms. Frank apparently wrote her diary with the idea that it would one day be used as documentation of the life she and others lived during the German occupation.  This was brilliant of her, but it also establishes that this is not just any teen-aged girl's diary.  This is the diary of someone who is writing thoughts that she on some level expects to be broadcast to others.  Given this, her clashes with others in the annex where she hid are fascinating.  She probably expected those she wrote about to eventually discover what she was writing.  What she thought the end result of that discovery would be is beyond me, but that reality had to be known to her.

Once or twice she has a deep conflict with her mother, but the person she seemed to constantly be irritated with was the matriarch of another family in the annex.  In the book, this woman is named Mrs. van Daan, but her real name was apparently Auguste van Pels.  To me, the clashes sounded driven by personality and generational differences between Ms. Frank and Mrs. van Daan.

It's easy to take Anne's side when she complains about how intolerable Mrs. Van Daan is.  She is the one who gets to tell her side of the story, after all.  Having concluded the book and learned that only one person who hid in the annex survived Nazi captivity, though, has given me pause and empathy for all of its inhabitants, including Mrs. van Daan.  It has also caused me to wonder how I would be portrayed in such a work.

Can I imagine being trapped in a poorly ventilated annex with seven other people and minimal privacy for two years without coming a bit unhinged?  Can I imagine the constant stress of potentially being captured, and slowly going further and further into poverty (There is a poignant situation recorded in the diary where Mrs. van Daan has to sell her prized fur coat so that they can continue to make ends meet.)?  I am sure that there would be multiple instances of my having said or done things that would appear indefensible.  Then, to have those recorded for posterity as the most noteworthy description of my life and character would be difficult to bear.  I don't want to pretend that dying at the hands of the Nazis was in any way a good thing, but it is a minor mercy that Mrs. van Pels never learned of her future notoriety.

This sort of thing actually comes up a lot today.  Someone will be filmed saying or doing something that is objectively wrong, then they are punished in an out-of-proportion fashion through a viral video or social media post.  Sometimes it's even for things that aren't objectively wrong, but are just violations of social norms.  An example of this showed up in a news story a few weeks back about someone who was caught shaving on a train (below).


Objective wrongs should be corrected, but people's lives shouldn't be destroyed in the process; and they should certainly not be destroyed over minor social rule violations.

That I am saying this isn't to imply that I'm better than those who share such viral things.  I'm as likely to laugh and click share.  I'm as prone as anyone to seek righteous comeuppance through online mob justice.  My primary point is that I'm trying to do my best not to be part of the problem when I'm online, and I'd encourage anyone reading this to take conscious steps to do the same.

the last jedi

It's been a while since I watched The Last Jedi, but in the aftermath I was surprised by the starkly different takes people had on it.  I didn't hear too many people say they thought it was so-so.  I either heard people defend it as a great movie or point out that it was too far a departure from previous movies.

I recall hearing about online activity in reaction against the movie, but that's somewhat expected.  A lot of people treat the Star Wars universe as holy and untouchable, and so if a movie departs from what some fans would want to see some will react online.  Apparently, at least some of that online reaction was from Russian trolls, however.  So, this makes me wonder if the movie was actually more well-liked than I perceived before.

For my own part, I enjoyed almost everything about the movie that people complained about.

[Spoiler Alert!]

• Rey turns out not to have important parents?  Neither did Anakin, and that just reinforces that the hero can come from anywhere.  This is one I expect to be reversed in future movies, anyway.
• The diversion to the casino planet was a dead end?  We need some of those in our stories to increase the value of the strategies that aren't dead ends.
• Luke projecting himself across the universe feels like a bit too much?  There are probably twenty other force-related scenes in the other movies that one could make that argument against.
• Major characters are killed off too quickly?  Probably so, but it was gutsy to do that as well.
• Luke is a different type of character in this movie than how he ended Return of the Jedi?  I think his arc between the movies is fascinating because idealism to cynicism to realism to redemption is a compelling and realistic path.

I certainly expect that the director of this movie will not be doing another Star Wars movie because he painted future directors into too many corners with this one, but that's Disney's problem rather than mine.  I also think there were some scenes that were just weird (like Luke milking that animal), but overall that movie was potentially my favorite Star Wars movie thus far.

I fully respect that a lot of people aren't fond of this addition to the franchise.  It does make sense to feel this way because the movie goes in a different direction from previous Star Wars movies.  It could feel like the film is disloyal to the franchise in a way.  I just enjoyed the movie enough not to see it as doing some sort of damage to the universe of the prior films.

right vs left

My biggest complaint about political coverage in the media doesn't have much to do with a right or a left slant.  Instead, it's about nomenclature.  I believe that American political journalism has done its audience a great disservice in throwing around phrases like, "far-right", "far-left", "moderate", "conservative", "liberal", etc.  This bothers me, not because labels are somehow wrong, but rather because it implies a continuum that I believe to be entirely contrived.

If you ask the average Joe (or Jane) on the street about politics in the United States they would probably describe a continuum going from very conservative on one side to very liberal on the other.  In the last presidential election a lot of people saw the last four major party political candidates in the following way.

[Most Liberal]
Sanders
Clinton
Trump
Cruz
[Most Conservative]

If someone considered themselves conservative they'd probably consider Trump the moderate and Clinton and Sanders extremists.  If they considered themselves liberal (or progressive) they' probably consider Cruz and Trump extremists and Clinton as a moderate (or a sell-out if they were pro-Sanders).  Regardless, their view would be focused on where the politician fell on the spectrum, and subsequently who is the closest on the spectrum to them personally.* Thing is, none of this is really the best way to understand political viewpoints, and my personal observation is that it leads to bad things.

American politics, and politics in general, is really just a collection of buckets of special interests.  The phrase "special interests" is often used disparagingly, and sometimes with good reason, but there is nothing inherently evil with a special interest.  Ask that same general person on the street what their views are on various political issues and they're probably going to care deeply about a small number of them and more or less toe the party line on the rest.  If the party line changes on these periphery issues their position will change as well.  They may not even realize it.

So, I would assume that a typical person possibly has two or three issues that they care deeply about, and those issues place them in a special interest bucket (or possibly a small number of buckets).  Over time a feedback loop is formed where more people from one side of the supposed continuum end up in a specific bucket, or some high profile voice for the bucket happens to advocate for one side of the continuum over the other, and this causes people in the bucket to identify with that side of the completely contrived continuum.  It could be either end of the continuum or somewhere in the middle.  Someone who would otherwise have opinions for different issues all over the continuum decides that, since I'm a [Conservative/Progressive/Moderate/Etc] I should take this view on this issue because that's the view of my people.

I see some negative consequences to this.  They include the following.

1. Many people of all political persuasions don't look at any issues objectively, and even issues that they don't otherwise care much about.  They investigate an issue from the perspective of where they are on the continuum.  I've seen it and I've done it.
2. Many people believe they have to agree with people near them on the continuum on all issues.  That's just silly.  For one, there shouldn't be any shame in taking the position that I won't hold a position on an issue until I've had the opportunity to gather enough facts about it.  I've certainly held political opinions before I had enough facts to understand whether they were wise opinions.
3. Many people are skeptical of news sources that are from a different place on the continuum but are overly credulous of news sources in the same location on the continuum.  While it runs counter to human nature, the time we should be the most skeptical is when we agree with everything we're hearing.  I know very much the urge to tune into people who I know will tell me what I want to hear.
4. When many people identify people who are near them on the spectrum they overlook flaws in their logic and flaws in their character because they're on the same team.  I've made excuses for scoundrels on many occasions because I agreed with them, and that's a behavior I see across the board.  This year is like most, where there are multiple people from both parties who will win their elections even in the middle of ridiculous legal and ethical scandals.
5. Most importantly, when many people claim territory on the political spectrum they frequently declare themselves enemies of people who are elsewhere on the spectrum.  Everyone who isn't near me on the political spectrum must be intellectually or morally deficient.  I've been there for sure.

For my part, my motivation for this post is that over time I have realized that I don't belong anywhere on a political continuum.  I believed I did for a long time, and maybe I did in some contrived way.  I don't now, though.

Pick a politician and I almost certainly agree with them on at least one issue and disagree with them on at least one issue.  Maybe the issues I agree with them on are inconsequential enough that I'm not in their bucket, but I can still find an area of agreement.  The buckets you could place me in are all over the place.  Furthermore, like most politicians, my positions on some major issues have shifted over time as well in various directions, and some will continue to shift.  Most people would call this being a Moderate, but I don't hold a lot of the positions that I would expect a true Moderate to hold, so that leaves me believing the concept of a political continuum is woefully inadequate.

It may sound like I am saying that people should be like me, but that would be reading my intentions in reverse.  I believe that, deep down, the majority of people actually are like me.  They may claim a specific political identity, but that's just for maybe two or three issues that place them in a bucket rather than on a continuum.

I believe that if you forced people to explain their political beliefs on a variety of issues without resorting to platitudes and talking points, and forced them to acknowledge the issues they don't really hold a firm position on, you'd find a majority of people who don't fit comfortably on the continuum.  You'd find that everyone is all over the map on the various issues that they actually hold informed opinions on, and you'd also find that people don't care about a lot of issues they claim to that identifies them on one side or the other.  I believe that most Americans are more alike politically than they are different, but most just don't realize it.  We're not all that different, you, I, and most everyone else in this country.

* I'll add that if the person you were asking was a Libertarian they might describe a quadrant instead of a continuum, but the concept is still the same--just with an extra dimension. 

confederate flags

Every once in a while I'll start to type a blog post and not really feel right about publishing it.  Ten or so years ago one of those posts related to a semi truck pulling a trailer I saw on the highway.  On the back it sported a Confederate flag and a verse from Psalms.  At the time, my irritation was in the fact that the love for these things could be conflated.  In my life, experience, and reading of Scripture, they are incompatible with each other.  That is still something that irritates me, but I never felt like my thoughts were developed well enough to post on it.

I've had another observation lately.  I don't live in the deep South, but I've still seen more Confederate flags around than I remember seeing before.  I don't know if this is just a situation of me noticing them more than before or there actually being more than before.  Maybe it's a bit of both.

I know there's been a debate for years around whether the flag is important for honoring past generations or if it's just racist, but I'll be honest that I don't understand how it isn't just racist.  If honoring the past requires pretending that the sins of the past weren't sins, or requires venerating the symbols of those sins, perhaps it is better not to honor that aspect of the past.

I do say a lot of political things here, but this is the one I'm the most concerned will cause problems for me.  Most people don't care about the Confederate flag, but those who do really do.  I'm not attempting to attack a region or cultural identity, but there's no way to discuss this without sounding like I am to a certain group of people.  Nikki Haley made it a bit easier to broadcast that view a few years back, but I could see this getting push-back in some quarters.

This brings me to a final observation that is difficult for me.  For a stretch of time when I was a kid "The Dukes of Hazard" was my favorite show.  As a six-year-old I couldn't go over a hill in the car without yelling "Yeeeee-haw!" like the hero Duke boys jumping over some obstacle in their Dodge Charger, the--uh--General Lee.  Which had a Confederate flag on the top.  And whose car horn played Dixie.  The 80s certainly was a far different time!

retirement

In thinking about life goals one of the obvious questions that comes to mind is when I want to retire.  I've been struggling with that thought as of late because, as far as I can tell, retirement isn't very scriptural.

The one passage that I have come back to time and again over the last few years is Luke 12:13-21.  In this passage a man asks Jesus to mediate an inheritance dispute he has with his brother.  Jesus' response is to question why he should be an arbitrator in this dispute, then to warn against greed and an abundance of possessions.  He follows it up with what seems like a damning parable.

In the parable a rich man has a bumper crop, and his response is to build grain storage.  He figures he can now live off this grain, kick back, and not worry about life any more.  The NIV records him as saying, "Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”  Jesus calls the man a fool and spells out the condemnation the man is to experience.

A typical westerner will read this passage with an almost automatic, "Of course Jesus isn't warning against savings!  He's simply preaching against greed, laziness, and lack of care for others in a general sense.  Sure, saving excessively is greed, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't save for retirement."  Without fail, if I bring this issue up to others in a church or Bible study setting with a question about retirement, someone jumps to retirement's defense without really addressing the fact that Jesus told a parable where the villain's villainy was simply that they saved when they should have given away.

I'm not actually trying to make a point here.  I honestly don't know what to do with this.  I have a retirement account.  I don't contribute at the level that Fidelity says you should, but it exists for the purpose of providing an income when Golden and I are older.  Is this wrong?

I think the question of what to do with this passage invites knee-jerk responses, but it really deserves heartfelt contemplation, even if a person decides that retirement accounts are good and acceptable.  As I noted, I have a retirement account and I still contribute to it.  Part of the why is that I'm not convinced yet that it's inherently wrong.

One potentially valid argument that I have heard is that the cultural rules for caring for one's elders has changed.  Retirement accounts weren't a thing because elders in the same family unit worked together in whatever the family trade was and all raised the children together.  Retirement accounts are a natural result of a structural shift in our culture where family units are smaller, and don't include grandparents.  Whether that is good or bad can be debated, but it is possible that this cultural element to this that changes the application of this passage.

One thing I am certain Jesus was decrying is a mindset that I do see within the church today, and that I am prone to.  Jesus very clearly indicated that the person who believed they had earned the right to leisure and pleasure was to be condemned.  So, perhaps the question isn't whether retirement from a specific career is wrong, but whether the attitude surrounding that retirement is wrong.  If I have the perspective that I've earned or I deserve to spend the rest of my life devoted to "me time" because I've banked enough money to do that, I'm inviting condemnation.

It's a lot to think about when reviewing my 401(k).

christopher robin

A few weeks ago we saw Christopher Robin with Golden's family.  I'm torn about it.  It was a well-made movie, but it pushed a button that drives me nuts.  I get the sense that I'm overly sensitive about it since I've never heard anyone else sound off about it, but it does bug me.  I've sounded off about it before for other movies as well.

Christopher Robin is presented as someone who as an adult apparently cares too much about his career at the expense of his wife and daughter.  He's presented with an ultimatum that he has to work through the weekend when he has a trip planned with his family or he's informed that a large number of people are going to lose their jobs.  When he reports the situation to his wife and daughter individually they are each disappointed.  While the emotions and motivations in the situation are well-handled for a children's movie, he is presented as going down the wrong path for choosing to work through the weekend, and the story really kicks off from there.

There is more to the story, but in the same situation where other peoples' livelihoods hung in the balance, I would be hard-pressed to justify taking time off, even to spend it with my family.  In order to make the main character's choice difficult, I believe the movie overplayed its hand and presented a situation where the workaholic father and husband was actually justified in putting work ahead of other responsibilities.

With that being said, our kids loved the movie, and that is definitely not nothing.  There are quite a few well-loved movies they don't connect with.  This one had just the right laughs for them.

careful what you wish for

I know this sounds weird to hear, but I remember when Tiffany Trump was born.  Clearly I wasn't there, but I remember it announced on the news.  It had minor significance to me at the time that I thought would be passing, but reflecting on that memory today has put in perspective for me how much viewpoints can change in one's life.

Ms. Trump was born at a time when my dad was moving between jobs, and so our family was living with my grandparents in a reasonably lengthy interim.  There wasn't a lot of money available in our family at the time, and while I did not grow up rich by any stretch, we were especially poor at that time.  The adults in the picture at the time (my parents, grandparents, and great aunt) all tried to make the best of it, and I was given more or less full reign in my grandparents' basement as my room, which was nice.  So, we weren't destitute on the street, but a big part of my personal identity at the time was feeling broke and trying very hard not to look poor.

At the time all I knew about Mr. Trump was that he lived in New York and was wealthy due to some businesses in the city.  I knew nothing of his personality, the nature of his businesses, who was in his family, or anything.  In a passing statement in the evening news the anchor mentioned that Mr. Trump and Marla Maples had a new daughter that they were naming "Tiffany" after the jewelry store.  The anchor implied that he owned the store, but my understanding now is that he just had business dealings with them.  I remember that all I could think in that moment was that this was a kid who was going to have a much easier time in life than I was having as I experienced a moment of envy.

Fast forward to my current adult life, and I understand today that the source of my envy could not be further from the truth.  I don't know anything about Tiffany Trump, but I do know that I would have hated my life being in now-President Trump's spotlight with all of the associated scandals.  I don't know her relationship with her father, but I do know that it's a running gag among comedians that her relationship isn't as good as with the president's other children.  That alone would be painful.  I don't know a ton about how Mr. Trump parented his kids, but the sources I have heard have indicated that he left a lot of that to the children's mothers.  From money or not, I can't imagine a more isolating situation to live in.

She clearly doesn't crave the limelight, because she'd be in it if she did, but her name is one that almost everyone in the country knows.  It would be hard to establish deep friendships because people already have an opinion of her before meeting her, and who's to say they aren't trying to use her to get to her dad.  How would you even do something as simple as go on a date?  It would be like getting all of the drawbacks of being a celebrity with the only positive being a bit of extra wealth.

I've heard warnings all of my life about being careful for what you wish for.  It's a very common trope in entertainment.  Still, you don't really appreciate the advice as much until you see it play itself out in action.  I really would not ever want to trade my life with that of anyone in the Trump family, and that's something my fourteen-year-old self would have been surprised to hear.

doesn't age well

One of the things that most strongly shaped my childhood was that my parents were far more cautious than most other parents about the media that I consumed.  There's good and bad to that, and I'm finding that I'm a relatively strict parent in that regard as well, but it has given me a different perspective on some of the modern reflections on former media coming out of the #MeToo movement.

Today, watching TV and movies that came out during my childhood in the eighties or nineties is a non-stop experience in thinking, "They wouldn't get away with that today." What has become weird to me is that some of the very issues that would have violated my conservative parents' rules as a kid have become unacceptable in today's society.

One example is The Breakfast Club. I didn't watch it when it came out in the 80s. I was only five-and-a-half in February 1985, after all. I did watch it for the first time almost exactly twelve years ago, though, and remember feeling it was a bit off even then. I remember thinking that I didn't like any of the three male character's arcs because the jock and the troubled teen didn't really learn that they needed to change anything about themselves, and the nerd simply got a justification for doing everyone else's project. Based on the content in the movie, I would never have been permitted to have watched it in my parents' home. Apparently, Molly Ringwald rewatched the movie recently with her daughter and had a similar experience, though more for #MeToo reasons.

In one odd one I remember that Friends was off-limits because of sexual themes.  In more recent years I've seen analysis complaining about the jokes made at the expense of trans people.  So, the complaints about that show have come from both sides.

It's also very likely that jokes I've made or things I've done in years past haven't aged well either.  If so, it probably exposes wrongheadedness on my part more than anything else. So, if you've ever been offended by something I've said here because I've pushed that line, consider this my apology.  It was done in ignorance, but that doesn't excuse it.

More than ever, the times they are a changing. Rightheadedness or wrongheadedness stays the same, though.

fruits and vegetables

I know I have to be getting irritating to those around me all I talk about food nowadays, but the last year has represented a huge shift in how I think about food so it's frequently on my mind.  Believe it or not, this is keeping my thoughts on the matter short.

I have completely changed how I think about American healthcare system and the causes of disease and chronic health problems. When I talk about weight loss with other folks a lot of them comment about being hungry all of the time when they're on a diet. That was historically the primary thing that kept me from watching what I ate. I had that a little when I started watching what I eat, but once I started eating fruits and vegetables in significant quantities to where I was getting 30 to 40 grams of fiber a day that was rarely a problem. The only days that I get hungry are when I eat too much red meat, breads, or sweets and run out of calories by the end of the day.

Because of my experience, I'm realizing that one major factor that is driving health issues in the United States is simply access to fresh produce. When I visited a General Dollar near my in-laws a few months ago I was struck by two things. First, food there is very reasonably priced.  Second, there is very little produce. If that was my nearest shopping option and my transportation was limited I would have to go out of my way to get the amount of fiber that I now try to consume. I'd probably have to mostly eat beans. Without knowing any better, which I didn't until very recently, I am certain my health would be negatively affected, and I wouldn't really know why other that to blame myself for snacking too much or not exercising enough.

I don't know what the solution to this problem is. Some people say that national policy should be changed to encourage farmers to grow healthier crops, or focus less on red meat production, or whatever. There are a host of potential consequences from that, and there is debate as to how effective it would be anyway, so I don't know what to think at this time. I suspect that agriculture policy could be tweaked to improve people's health, though.

I have also noticed that some fast food places have made it easier than others to get a low calorie option from their menu than others.While healthy fast food is an oxymoron, I have noticed some fast food places providing reasonable alternatives to fries in their combo meals. However, if your primary local options are Burger King and KFC, it's going to be difficult to stay on a calorie budget with a combo meal.

I'll just conclude with the thought that I'm realizing how extremely fortunate I am. I have been able to adjust my diet in a reasonably affordable way because I have access to healthy foods. I also don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, and I've grown to really enjoy many of snack foods I now have available at home. There are a lot of people in food deserts who can't afford healthy, satisfying foods.

soft drinks

It's weird to me that, as I am shifting away from drinking soft drinks, I am seeing that I am not the only one doing so.

Growing up, my family drank some soft drinks, but limited our intake far more than other families around us.  I have a distinct memory of going to a restaurant, our whole family ordering milk, and the waitress commenting how we must be a health-nut family.  I was so embarrassed because I felt that drinking soft drinks was what normal or even cool people did.  At a younger age I understood that soft drinks were unhealthy, but I did not see any correlation between the people who drank soft drinks and their health.  The athletic kids didn't avoid sugary drinks so there was a disconnect between what I "knew" and what I saw.

Through college and early adulthood I didn't binge on soft drinks, but I didn't hold back either.  They were included in the lunch plan in the school cafeteria, they were a cheap treat at home, and I could get them free at work.  In the years after college I gained quite a bit of weight, but I started very skinny and my vitals on my doctor visits in my twenties were always fine.  So, why not get refills on my Coke or Pepsi when out to dinner?

I've already gone through a phase where I limited my soft drinks but still drank more than I should.  I also went through a phase where I drank Diet Pepsi for a while.  I never thought that I would be in my current state, though, where I might have a can of some soft drink every two weeks to a month.  We don't even buy soft drinks in our house any more unless we're having company, which an earlier version of myself would have found insane.

In our office we get drinks stocked by what people want and actually drink.  We used to fly through Coke, Pepsi, and root beer, but people in the office don't drink it in any volume any more.  As of late this means that we get a lot of Le Croix and Diet Mt. Dew.  I don't drink a lot of the La Croix and I don't even like regular Mt. Dew (let alone the diet version), however I have zero complaints about what is stocked because I wouldn't drink the regular soft drinks even if they were available.

These trends are occurring nationwide as well.  Coke and Pepsi are relying more on their diet soft drinks and other alternatives to their traditional soft drinks to drive profit.  This is odd to me because I grew up thinking of drinking soft drinks as the normal and cool thing to do, and now it's more cool to order flavored seltzer.

All of this is probably a good thing.  Seltzer has to be more healthy than cola.  I'm just struck by how things change for me and for society at large, over something as pervasive as what we regularly drink.