The Unclad Soul

The recent killing spree at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, by Marine vet, Ian David Long, was a chilling reminder of the war mentality promoted by our government. Long walked into the bar and murdered 12 people, mostly young patrons, before taking his own life. He posted on his Facebook page before going to the bar, “Yeah…I’m insane, but the only thing you people do after these shootings is ‘hopes and prayers’ or ‘keep you in my thoughts’…every time…and wonder why these keep happening.” Wonder if anyone in the government will hear that? Wonder if all the NRA supports got the message? Ironically, the mother of one of the young people murdered at the bar told reporters she didn’t want anyone’s prayers, what she wanted was gun regulation. Wonder if anyone in the government will pay any attention to that? Ian David Long was not insane, but he certainly was profoundly disturbed. He returned from military conflict lost in a fog of unresolved rage and the damaging ps...

In her searing memoir, “Hope Against Hope,” Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote, “I decided it is better to scream.” Then she wrote, “Silence is the real crime against humanity.” She knew something about pain, horror, death. Her husband, a gifted poet, suffered endless persecution under Stalin. He died on his way to the Siberian gulag, humiliated and alone in the cold. She tells his story of sorrow in her memoir. After this week’s school murders in Santa Fe, Texas, even screaming seems useless. And though silence, too, is no solution, and worse, very well a crime in the face of so much bloodshed, one is nevertheless left in feelings of stone silence. What else can be said? We’re all tired of the empty religious jumble. Prayers and accepting God’s Will and all of that. Doesn’t work for me. It blasphemes anyone’s true faith. Our politicians have lost all sense of reality. They live in some cocoon of their own making, hiding from these horrific, senseless, obscene killings. Th...

Ingrid and her cousin Hannah and I walked the entire March For Your Lives in Dallas last Saturday. Ingrid was a bit hesitant when I invited her to join me. She was afraid there might be problems. Maybe a bomb. Or violent protestors. Or a shooter. I told her there would be plenty of police and security, though I knew in my own mind there are always risks at these kinds of events. She decided to go and Hannah came with us as well. I wanted the girls to have a sense of social conscience, to be a part of something historic and hopefully, a catalyst for change in our violent weary nation. The crowd was energetic, diverse, and respectful. There were chants and tons of creative signs and posters. There were ongoing conversations in the crowd. I sensed that people are genuinely worried about our nation. And they want change. Now. I never saw one protestor. There were no hecklers or angry people pushing back against the march. That says to me that most people realize something ...

What would a perfect world look like? I don’t know. Probably very sterile and boring. I don’t really want a perfect world. I’d be happy with just a humane one. Dictionary.com defines humane as, “characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals; especially for the suffering or distressed: acting in a manner that causes the least harm to people or animals.” When I was a boy I used to spend a few days with my paternal grandparents whom I called Nana and Granddad. They were both gentle souls, quiet, kind people. One afternoon after Nana had fixed me lunch in the kitchen and I had finished eating, I took my plate to the sink to wash it. I noticed a small spider on the window sill and asked Nana for the flyswatter so I could kill it. She said, “Oh honey, don’t hurt it. It’s not poisonous. It’s not bothering anyone. And it will eventually find its way outside.” I will never forget how at that moment I started feeling a deeper sense of compassion fo...

The Independent , a UK online news source, reported this week that Jack Wood, a 15-year-old boy from South London rescued a baby and a grandmother from a burning house. Jack was walking to school when he saw smoke coming from a neighbor’s house. He knows the family and knew a baby and grandmother lived there. He called his mother and told her to call the fire department. Then he ran into the house and grabbed the baby and put it on the lawn outside. He then went back into the house and got the grandmother and led her out to safety. Then he went back into the house, found a bucket, filled it with water and proceeded to put out the fire until the fire department got there. “I just wanted to get the baby and the gran out and make sure the fire was out,” Jack told reporters. All three were treated for smoke inhalation, but Jack was called a hero for saving the lives of the baby and the grandmother. Kids today, like kids in all days, are so easily dismissed. But young people today are ...

Now that the murdering of 17 students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, has more fully registered on us, most Americans remain stunned. We are stunned that in this country of ours we still have a government that refuses to do anything about gun violence. The flimsy, tone deaf comments of politicians about this horror seem worthless. They are finally starting to talk about mostly cosmetic changes in the law but I’m skeptical of anything significant. We are stunned that our president has been mostly silent, unwilling or incapable of a simple sign of outrage over the senseless massacre of helpless teenagers at school. He is beginning to make gestures about passing new legislation, but I'm waiting to see if any changes are made. We are stunned that an organization like the NRA (National Rifle Association) has the unlimited power to dominate and control our elected legislators. We are stunned by our political leaders’ greed and their cowardice. We are ...

Stephen Paddock, the mass murderer in Las Vegas, continues to puzzle law enforcement and investigators. He will most likely never be understood. As I mentioned in my last essay and blog post, I think we have to seriously rethink our humanity, and consider how vulnerable we all are both personally and as a society, to the deadly effects of mental illness. This is not something new, and it is not something that will go away. I have no confidence in our political system to do anything useful regarding gun legislation. Congress will talk about it, offer their empty prayers to victims, and say perhaps the gun issue needs to be looked at. But the NRA has a death grip on Congress and state legislators across the nation. The NRA controls gun manufacturing, gun sales, and the gun lobby. Nothing will change there. Money, and lots of it, fuels our political system. Not the safety of the nation. Not the value of our children. Not the security of special events outdoors or indoors. The...

I was talking with a friend at work this week about the Las Vegas atrocity. Like everyone else in America, we both remain stunned by such a horrifying and cowardly taking of human life. My friend, deeply disturbed by it all, said, “Are we all capable of such a thing?” I thought a moment and said, “I think we may be.” He put his hands over his face and said, “Oh God, I don’t want to hear THAT!” I don’t want to hear it either, but he asked an important question. How does a seemingly rational person do what Stephen Paddock did? He was apparently not previously some deranged serial killer. We now know he seemed to have a pretty normal life. It is said he was not friendly or engaging, but there is no indication he was the monster he turned out to be. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the famous creator of the Sherlock Holmes series, a trained physician and himself a serious student of human behavior, once commented about the puzzling conduct of criminals. He said, “The most winning woman...

I did not know any of the 49 people murdered in the Orlando night club. I would eulogize them one by one if I did. And so I will eulogize all of them. They were individual humans. They had careers and jobs, families and friends, lovers and partners. They had hobbies and interests; they possessed skills and talents. They went out on a Sunday night to have some drinks, to laugh, and dance, and enjoy life with others. They were a part of our human family. And so they belonged to each of us as well. And that we too often forget. Our   hates   we remember. Our prejudices and aversions, our fear of differences, our loathing those not like us—that we keep in focus. But the fact we are all connected in our humanity, that we are all related as people of earth, that, we sadly forget. The abomination in Orlando was not an ugly accident; it was not a fluke of nature or some terrible mishap. It was a planned and thought out act of horrendous violence, prejudice and rage again...

Sociologist Theodor Adorno once wrote that “Triviality is evil.” That might very well be an appropriate epitaph for our nation. We may actually see the end to a great experiment in freedom, creativity, ingenuity, genius, and a once civil society known as America. And it won’t be from a terrorist bomb. Triviality certainly fits our current political climate. It describes much of religion in America today. It explains our economy and the shredding of fairness in the workplace, in the giant corporate arena, and in the wild untamed monkeyshine behavior of Wall Street and its gang of banks. The problems we face, the challenges ever in front of us, are enormous and daunting. But we don’t confront them intelligently. Instead we are seized, haunted, gripped by fear. Our media apparatus is a daily around the clock unfolding of fear inducing hype, gossip, distortion, lies, and propaganda. A tragedy occurs like the San Bernardino shootings and CNN airs the chase, capture and killing of t...

The new Star Wars movie, “The Force Awakens,” is in theaters this weekend. I was a huge fan of the first three movies. I tried to keep up with the following ones but eventually lost interest in them. This new one though I will see. It reminds me of the earlier films. In the second movie in the original trilogy, “The Empire Strikes Back,” Luke Skywalker crashes on the planet Dagobah with his mentor and guru warrior, Yoda. Luke is in training to be a Jedi Knight and at one point Yoda instructs him to enter a dark cave without his weapon. Luke looks at the cave and then looks around. He says, “Something is not right. I feel cold. Death.” Pointing to the cave Yoda says, “That place is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go.” Luke hesitates, “What’s in there?” “Only what you take with you,” Yoda says. Once in the mysterious cave Luke is confronted by Darth Vader. He draws his light saber and comes at Luke. They wrestle and Luk...

Domestic gun violence with mass murders of innocent unarmed people. Refusal to pass any meaningful immigration reform. Glaring unjust economic inequality. Unquestionable racial discrimination. Blatant disrespect for the office of president and the function of government. These are vital national issues Republicans perpetuate and will not face. Why do Republican candidates want to be president anyway? Why do Republicans in Congress want to serve? What is it Republican governors, mayors, and elected state officials want? Why are they there? I mean, what possible good do any of them want to do for the country? They refuse to cooperate with president Obama and Democrats. They demagogue. They patronize. They pontificate. They incite discord and often hate. They dismiss the constitution. If they dislike a law they just ignore it. They either distort the truth or outright lie about the economy, about immigration, about abortion, about Planned Parenthood and all the other social and moral i...

Could we all possibly take a deep breath and not go insane over the terrorist brutality in Paris? Yes, it was horrific, cowardly, and barbaric. Innocent lives were murdered in cold calculating hate. But there needs to be a sense of reasonable thinking now. Not just panicked terror. That is the precise goal of terrorism: to provoke fear, frenzy, paranoia, and chaos. And when all of Europe and the Western world collapses in horror and hysteria, screams threats against Muslims, reaches for the big weapons, stirs up more hate and violence; and the decent and the thinking and the caring people of the world give into the urge for matching ruthlessness, then terrorists have truly hit their target. This is a war of ideas. You can’t kill an idea with bombs. This is a war of beliefs. You can’t annihilate a belief system with deadly arsenal. And let’s not compare this to Nazism thinking we that destroyed that idea with war. Nazism was the mastermind of one brilliantly demented man. The whole...

The country woke up this morning to more madness. A white, apparently deranged young man in South Carolina, killed 9 people at a Bible study in a historic Black church. Police are calling it a hate crime. More details will obviously come in but here is what is undeniable. Our country is out of control. We have lost our way and it is not by accident. We as a people have chosen to allow our nation to be violent, hateful, prejudiced, bigoted, unjust, and inhuman. When this young man is caught, if he does not end up shooting himself in some cowardly panic, let the psychiatrists do their analyses. Let law enforcement prescribe the punishment. Let those who want to coddle him because they’ll say he’s insane do so. Let the gun lovers make excuses for him as they always do. Let the whites clamor on about mixed messages and make their phony allowances for him as they will. But here is the reality. This guy is the product of an unapologetic racist society. He is the result of our primit...

I have just finished watching Ken Burns’ magnificent series, “The Civil War.” I saw it when it first aired on PBS some years ago but I wanted to return to it. The racial unrest in our country today is hauntingly and shockingly similar to the racial divide in the country a hundred and fifty years ago. Think of that. We are still fighting that long, bloody, wasteful and savage war.  President Lincoln wanted to keep the Union together, strengthen it against any foreign power, and make America a country free for all of its citizens. But slavery in the South prompted leaders there to secede from the Union and form their own government under a new president, Jefferson Davis. They saw where Lincoln was taking them and they refused to go there. There have been calls for secession again in the past few years. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry was one who flaunted that threat. As usual, it was a political ploy for him and nothing more. But he stirred up people ready to separate t...