"Oh My God! Look Out!"

The other day, I had a conversation with a client/business associate/friend (I have complicated professional arrangements) in which he expressed concern over the effects of a potentially worsening economy on our businesses.

My attitude was, and remains, fatalistic. But in an effort to be a bit more reassuring than “que sera, sera,” I pointed out that this is a campaign season and political candidates are naturally going to hype any bad economic news to their potential advantage. I also noted that the official requirement of recession is two consecutive quarters of a shrinking economy. We haven't even had one yet.

Mistaking my apathy for optimism, he hoped I was right but remained worried.

Though I didn’t bother going there in our discussion, I could have pointed out that the news media is never satisfied unless they have impending doom of one sort or another in the headlines. There would be a lot unemployed reporters in Heaven.

Actually, we are all fatalistic, and we have a word for people who aren’t. We call them “crazy” or perhaps use a fancy phrase like “obsessive-compulsive.” You know, like people who wash their hands constantly because of germs, or folks who won’t throw anything away because they may one day need it. Even those poor souls know they can’t deal with everything in the world that could turn out badly, so they focus on one specific potential problem to exert control upon. That way in an uncertain world, they head off at least one possible difficulty.

Have you ever stopped to think about everything that could go wrong in a typical day? Let’s assume you don’t die in your sleep due to a house fire, brain aneurism or meteor strike. What if your alarm clock fails to go off and you’re late to work? Maybe not the worst thing in the world, but such an occurrence could lead (directly or indirectly) to unemployment and financial ruin. It’s the old “for want of a nail … the war was lost,” scenario.

If the alarm does go off, you could slip getting out of the tub after your morning shower, hit your head on the lavatory and drown in the commode. You might be in a car accident in which your gas tank explodes and if you survive you might be horribly disfigured for the rest of your life.

Not related to any specific timeline, your spouse might fall in love with another person, leaving you emotionally devastated. Deadly cancer could strike friends, loved ones, or yourself. The tiniest scratch might open your body to invasion by flesh-eating bacteria.

The fact is, you don’t have to think hard to come up with something terrible that might possibly happen to you or someone you care about at every single moment of every single of day for the rest of your life.

Most of us don’t even think about it, not that it would do us any good if we did. We play the odds that the alarm will go off, that we can take a shower without incident or that we’ll make it to the neighborhood grocery store unharmed.

And that's just the direct threats. A worsening economy may or may not actually affect any particular individual. The worst recession during my lifetime was in the early 80s. The unemployment rate reached 10.8 percent. That means nearly nine out of 10 people still had jobs. As far as an actual “death toll,” there probably was one, but it was likely considerably less than the number of people killed in highway accidents over a Memorial Day weekend.

There is a lot of anxiety in this world. It’s because, as we travel down the highway of life, we all seem to have someone sitting next to us constantly screaming, “Oh my god! Look out!” Even if these shriekers don’t cause you to wreck, it’s all very nerve-wracking.

I believe in defensive driving. I keep my eye on the moron at the intersection who’s yakking on his cell phone, or the old lady with her turn signals blinking for miles on end (apparently preparing to make a left turn in the middle of the Howard Frankland Bridge). I see the person coming up behind me at 70 mph in a 40 mile an hour zone (and dutifully speed up to keep him from passing). But those are all threats that I can see.

What I’m not going to do is worry about the drunk driver who may or may not be coming over the hill, or the 10 year-old who may or may not have decided to take the family car out for a joyride. That’s what safety belts and airbags are for.

Do I have the necessary “safety equipment” to deal with loss of income that might result from a bad economy? Nope. But lacking the means, wit or ambition to acquire such protection, I choose not to worry about it.

Like 99.9 percent of the time (or more), chances are I’ll be okay.

Which is worse? An ox in the ditch or the Tribulation?

Over the holidays, I watched several “apocalyptic” movies on the Trinity Broadcast Network. There was the second one from the Left Behind series, two films from another storyline dealing with rule of the Ant-Christ, and what appeared be the first movie in yet another series.

It’s always hit and miss with TBN as to when they air anything, and I don’t click my remote control up that way very often, so there’s no telling when or if I’ll ever see the parts I’m missing.

I spent much of the movies wondering if some of the actors were just earning a payday, or if they were actually committed Christians making a statement. I know Left Behind’s Kirk Cameron (formerly of Growing Pains) is an outspoken Christian, but other stars included Brad Johnson (Always), Margo Kidder (Superman), Mr. T (The A-Team), Corbin Bernsen (L.A. Law), Howie Mandel (Deal or No Deal)and Gary Bussey (The Buddy Holly Story). Actually, I thought the best of the three series was one which had no “big name” stars at all.

“End of days” movies seem to be very popular — at least with a big chunk of the church-going public. I can see why. (I watched them myself, after all.) I like knowing who the good guys are, and I enjoy hearing my point of view expressed in a film even if it does come from a fictional script.

But I also think maybe there’s some strange pleasure in imagining ourselves in the place of Christians during the Tribulation. All the gray areas we deal with in our lives would suddenly be black and white. I mean, it’s relatively easy to refuse the mark of the Beast if you’ve witnessed the miracle of the Rapture and all the prophecies of The Revelation are unfolding before your eyes. There wouldn’t be any question or confusion anymore about what’s important. You know you’ve only got seven years to hang in there for God (or fewer if the Anti-Christ gets hold of you) and you’re done. Sainthood will be assured.

It’s not that easy when you’re dealing with house payments, work, friends and family and all the other things that distract us from living the way God wants us to. In a way, we all have ADD, and it’s remarkably easy to forget God is even there. Even when we remember, we may have a hard time figuring out what God’s plan is. We can’t all be missionaries … some of us will have to grow food if nothing else.

I think Jesus acknowledged that the temporal world does intrude on strictly focusing on God’s playbook.

And He answered them saying, “Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?”
Luke 14:5

That was after Jesus was getting some flack or healing people on the Sabbath, so I take it to mean, sometimes we have to take care of business. Of course, this doesn’t help with the problem of figuring out when it's okay to be concerned with the problems in this world..

Maybe we can take some comfort in some verses a little further down.

“When you are invited to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited … go and sit down in the lowest place , so that when he who invited you comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend go up higher.’ Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you.”
Luke 14: 8 -- 10

Perhaps we can’t really expect to know where we are in the “honored” department. The important thing is to be invited to the party, humbly take a seat and wait and see how we did.

Thoughts on Heroism

The other day, I saw an news segment about a nice, former football player (I don’t remember his name and I’m not going to look it up) who is walking long distances to raise money for NYC firefighters who have health problems associated with their rescue work on 9/11. Not surprisingly pulverized concrete does nasty stuff to lungs.

The nice fellow made the comment, “I’m not a hero.” I think he also said something like the real heroes were the police officers and firefighters who risked their lives to save citizens.

People who do good deeds are often called “heroes” but the man on the news was right. He’s not a hero --- at least by my definition of the word.

I don’t mean to denigrate his good works. His efforts are immensely admirable. To emulate his act of care and compassion would be a good thing for all of us. But it doesn’t rise to level of hero.

To be a hero requires taking a significant risk, with potentially catastrophic consequences, in order serve a noble sentiment. While I would allow the odds to come out in favor of a potential hero, I’d arbitrarily set them at there being a one in four chance (at best) of being much worse off from doing something heroic. Fictional “super heroes” would never be real heroes in my mind. There’s not much risk involved when bullets bounce off your chest and “you’re more powerful than a locomotive.”

Heroes are also unexpected. In other words, you can’t be a hero if it’s in your job description. That’s why I would disagree that firefighters are themselves heroes. They are, instead, members of a heroic profession — as are soldiers, police officers, missionaries in dangerous countries, or even teachers in many inner city schools. (That’s not an all inclusive list.) They also deserve our thanks and admiration.

Professional athletes are sometimes called heroes — ridiculous. Not only are they just doing their jobs (often because they lack the discipline, intelligence or skills to hold any other kind of work) they are also exceedingly well paid to be idolized by the masses. I suspect true heroes would do what they do even if no one but themselves knew about it.

A few years back, during the Bosnia War, an American pilot was shot down but managed to evade capture until he made his way back to safety. (I’m not looking up his name either.) Some people called him a hero. I’d say he was resourceful, and like the firefighters, in a heroic profession, but serving one’s survival instinct isn’t heroism.

When I think of heroes, I often think of a specific person. His name was Arland D. Williams Jr. January 13, will be the 26th anniversary of his death, the day that Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the ice-crusted Potomac. The Washington Post wrote this:

“He was about 50 years old, one of half a dozen survivors clinging to twisted wreckage bobbing in the icy Potomac when the first helicopter arrived. To the copter's two-man Park Police crew he seemed the most alert. Life vests were dropped, then a flotation ball. The man passed them to the others. On two occasions, the crew recalled last night, he handed away a life line from the hovering machine that could have dragged him to safety. The helicopter crew - who rescued five people, the only persons who survived from the jetliner - lifted a woman to the riverbank, then dragged three more persons across the ice to safety. Then the life line saved a woman who was trying to swim away from the sinking wreckage, and the helicopter pilot, Donald W. Usher, returned to the scene, but the man was gone.”

That was a hero.

Team Allegiance

Auburn (7-4) plays Alabama (6-5) this week. Winning this year's game will go a long way toward salvaging disappointing football seasons. I know I will feel a thousand percent better about the losses if the Tigers notch the victory against the Crimson Tide.

About a week ago, Auburn did lose their second biggest rivalry game to Georgia, by a score of 45-20. It was twice in a row that my alma mater has been embarrassed by the Bulldogs. But that's football ... and there's always next year.

Last night, I was watching a movie called Facing the Giants. It was purely a Christian message movie, enscounced in the tale of an underdog high school football team determining to play and live for God's glory. It was highly predictable in it's unlikely outcome, poorly acted, smaltzy, and obviously low-budget. (You could tell it was low budget because the southern accents weren't fake.)

I loved it.

Georgia's heach coach, Mark Richt, had what amounted to a bit more than a cameo role in the film playing himself. Prior to the big game where "our" team --- the Eagles --- meets the Giants, Richt tells the Eagles coach, "You won the big one when you accepted Christ."

You don't generally expect big-time college coaches to make such an unequivocal statement of faith.

The loss to Georgia was put in a whole new perspective. It turns out that Mark Richt is a coach for my team after all.

You Can’t Teach an Old Dog to Bark at the Moon

I knew a fellow who said he looked forward to getting old and yelling at kids to get off his lawn. As I get older (or “old” as compared to a couple of my friends) I find there’s not quite as much to look forward to as when I was in my teens or early 20s. That leaves becoming an unapologetic curmudgeon pretty near the top of my "things to do list."

(Already, I sometimes find myself yelling at some television talking head, asking "Who are you and why are you on my TV?!?")

In my twilight years — if I have the energy (doubtful) and the money (even more doubtful) — I would like to take my cantankerousness and enroll in the most politically correct, leftist university in the country. I think I’d major in “Women’s Studies” or something like that — any of those ridiculous social “sciences” courses that exist only to provide paychecks for frustrated Stalinists who missed out on Amerikan Politiburo jobs when the Soviet Empire collapsed.

Recently the University of Delaware backed off of an attempt to “re-educate” its freshmen, thanks in large part to the wonderful Foundation of Individual Rights in Education (http://www.thefire.org/). Seems the university’s thought police felt classroom indoctrination wasn’t sufficient for turning all the students into the bleating sheep described in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, so they were going to force the freshmen to attend dorm meetings for proper instruction on such topics as politics, race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. Don’t be misled, this re-education was no more a forum for open-minded discussion any more than was Pol Pot’s.

Here’s some of the crap these poor kids would have been forced to endure:
"Have you ever heard a well-meaning white person say, 'I'm not a member of any race except the human race?’ What she usually means by this statement is that she doesn't want to perpetuate racial categories by acknowledging that she is white. This is an evasion of responsibility for her participation in a system based on supremacy for white people."

Of course, the University of Delaware isn’t alone in advocating student brain-washing (though they don’t call it that). In a Nov. 12 article in the Weekly Standard, David Horowitz tells us how the American Association of University Professors are trying to legitimize student indoctrination. Horowitz reports the AAUP as saying, “It is not indoctrination for professors to expect students to comprehend ideas and apply knowledge that is accepted as true within a relevant discipline.”

What ever happened to “the scientific method” of rigorously and continuously testing hypotheses?

The AAUP stance is probably much like the argument the Catholic Church made in prosecuting Galileo for heresy. After all, it’s clear that Galileo failed to “comprehend ideas and apply knowledge that (was) accepted as true” by the Church.

Two things strike me about all this. First, why is it that a public school teacher can’t wear a tiny crucifix in class without the ACLU screaming bloody murder, but leftist loons are free to proselytize all they want … to the point of literally persecuting students who don’t want to drink the Kool-Aid?

And the second point: This is the standard modus operandi of weird religious cults who target young people — especially those on their own for the first time.

And that’s why I hope to go back to a PC college in the winter of my life. I doubt those bullies would get very far trying to “re-educate” this cranky old man.

What do I know?

I often find myself wishing that major issues of the day could be presented like a jury trial where both sides have the best possible representation. Let everyone present their evidence and have witnesses face cross examination. Then maybe I could be a lot more positive about some of the views I hold, or maybe I’d occasionally change my mind altogether.

As it is now, I realize I rely a lot on environmental conditioning, biases, philosophy and imperfect sources to help me reach conclusions. But unless I’m going to make researching issues a full-time job, any other approach is impractical.

Plus, in a one-person-one-vote democracy, the thoughtful expert’s ballot counts no more than that of the delusional or ignorant yahoo. Why bother to be well-informed?

I have competing interests at work here. I love being right, but I don’t want to put the time and energy into making sure I always am. Along with discerning a few facts from all the non sequiturs and nonsense, the best I can do is examine those non scientific factors that influence me. For instance, environmental conditioning as in what makes a white male from Alabama feel so differently about so many issues than a white male who was raised in Boston?

Then there are the biases. For instance, I think the vast majority of people who comprise MoveOn.org are morons. (Maybe I’ll start referring to them as MorOn.org, heh, heh). Put Rosie O'Donnell on one side of an issue, and I'll reflexively take the other side. I feel I have valid reasons for this, but as the saying goes, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” (And when some of those people talk, you can just see the flashing digital 12:00 in their eyes.)

My philosophical views were beginning to gel in my mid-teens. By 11th grade in a class discussion of current events, I was questioning why there should be price supports for farmers and not storekeepers? (I said --- and still say --- there should be no price supports for either.) But for the past 30 years, most of my effort has gone into defending and asserting my libertarian-free market philosophy. I’ve made my choice and I’m staying loyal to my “team.”

Then there is the issue of sources. The media IS biased, but the response as been to combat that with more media sources that are biased in the other direction. I really can’t trust anyone to give me the “truth.” It’s probably not even anyone’s fault. Reporters, documentary makers, bloggers, talk show hosts … they are like me --- operating with the same baggage. Hopefully they have a few more facts but how can I be sure? Besides, knowing some of the facts can be worse than knowing none.

All of this is why I like the adversarial approach. You have expert versus expert and trial court witnesses can’t spin their answers without being challenged by the other side’s attorney. If you’re sitting on the jury, there is no media filter telling you what you just heard or what you should think is important. There is no Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh. Even “mom and dad” are out of the picture. It’s all just facts and testimony to be evaluated under tight scrutiny.

That would let me reach some conclusions without a reasonable doubt.

I understand you feel strongly, and I want you to know I don't care

I have never had any patience with politically correct terms. For the life of me, I can’t understand why “people of color” is a preferred designation but saying “colored people” will get you sentenced to six months of sensitivity training. And I will die and go to hell before I seriously refer to a short person as “vertically challenged.”

By the way, I also refuse to call American Indians “native Americans.” A person is a native by virtue of where he or she is born and continues to live. I’m as native to this country as any Cherokee or Apache out there.

But “oppressed” minorities and other officially recognized victim groups don’t have a monopoly on this silliness. (Believe me, I have a whole different rant lined up for “victims.”) We can add small business owners to the list of hyper-sensitive goofballs.

In a couple of jobs I’ve had, I’ve been told that small business owners object to the word “small.” C’mon people, get a grip. It’s merely a comparative term — a simple and useful designation to differentiate the business owner with five employees from the fellow with a staff of 100. I promise; no one is making a subtle inference about your penis size.

(I once worked for a company that had its franchise owners categorized by market as micro, small, midsized and large. I wonder how the poor micros ever got a date.)

I’m a professional copywriter. I need to be concise and clear in written communications for my clients. If I write “physically handicapped” my reader has a general idea of what I mean. If I write, “differently enabled” however, the average person will be left scratching his head, possible muttering, “What the f …?”

Writing to a specific audience is also critical to what I do for a living. I have to know what sets that group apart from any others, and let my target audience know my message is specifically for them. The last thing I need to do is blur the lines by invoking some idiotic new euphemism for a term that’s not derogatory in the first place. No way should I write, “As the owner of a midsized company that’s not as large as some businesses that have been traditionally regarded as such, you probably …”.

One of the best things about being a conservative-libertarian is that no one expects us to go along with all the stupid crap that others (mostly liberals) take seriously. But if my attitude still bothers you, don’t think of me as rude; think of me as “alternatively sensitived.”