Mama With a Mohawk’s blog

"Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O'er the land of the free

And the home of the brave?"

*****

I've often thought it fitting that this first stanza to U.S. national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner" by Francis Scott Key, is structured as a question. 

It's a question we should ask ourselves every time we hear it.  How often do we just let the words go by, without thinking of their meaning?  How many people don't even know the words? 

But we should. 

Both know the words, and think about what they mean.

Part of what it means, for me, today: 

It is not only, or not always, going to be the warm and friendly light of day that illuminates our nation's hopes, dreams, aspirations.  Sometimes -- and I believe now is one of those times -- it will be the heartbreak and perils of war that help us see what we yearn for.  Illuminating what we stand for far more starkly than in the soft daylight of happier times.  Despite our imperfections in reaching that asymptote.  Despite the very real dangers that the war itself will destroy what we yearn for.  But what is the alternative?  Give up, and make it a probability of 100%, that we'll see those ideals torn down and trampled in the mud?

We have to try.

Has our nation always lived up to the ideals of its founding?  No, but does that make them any less worth reaching for?  Have we at least tried to improve our grasp of those ideals? 

Those ideals represent a high standard.  It does not make us hypocritical that we have failed, so far, to achieve them fully.  It may not even be humanly possible to achieve them completely.

But we have to at least try.

What we yearn for, what we stand for, is worth defending.  Even if we have never yet reached it, and maybe never will.

At least we can still try.

*****

Going back to "The Star-Spangled Banner."

It's a good question.

It's a challenge to us in this day and age, and to our descendents in years and decades to come.

So. 

-- Does it?

I'm the oldest in our family.  Big Bossy Sis, that's me.  I have 2 younger brothers, both of whom are extremely cool, but today's story is about the youngest brother. 

Of course, he's not my "little" brother any more.  He's taller than I am by a good 3 - 4 inches.  I weigh more than he does, but I'm pretty sure he could bench-press me anyway.

He's, what is he now, gonna be 25 in August.  He's married and has a college degree.

When he was in high school, he started taking Tae Kwon Do lessons.  He learned quickly and progressed through the belts at a pretty good clip.  He earned his black belt during his first year or two in college.  Also in high school, he took up wrestling, and he proved to be pretty good at that, too.  Mano-a-mano combat, that was his thing. 

During college, one of his friends joined Army ROTC.  He toyed with the idea during his freshman year, but didn't take any active steps toward it. 

Then came 9/11.

The very next day, my brother joined the Army.  9-12-01.

His country needed him, he felt.  No more fence-sitting.

Since he graduated from college, he's been through all kinds of training which he can't even tell us about.  It's classified.

If all goes as he hopes, he will be deployed later this year.  (Guess where to?)

My youngest brother is doing everything in his power to get sent to one of the most dangerous places on the planet.

It's what he wants to do. 

He's going to put himself in harm's way.  So we don't have to.

So if anyone thinks I don't have a dog in this fight, think again.

And yet I continue to believe, as I have done since 9/11, that we must be there.

We cannot be seen to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving the job half-finished.  We cannot afford that.  The world cannot afford that.  Our soldiers who have already laid down their lives in this cause, or their limbs, do not deserve for their sacrifices to be in vain.  And if it takes 5 years, or 25 years, we need to stay the course.

I hope and pray that in another 20 years, it's not my son who's going off to war, instead of my brother now.  But at the same time, I'm not especially keen to see Shariah laws applied to my daughter, either. 

That one of the things Osama Bin Ladin has said he wants (in addition to Americans being dead just because): The whole world to accept not just Islam, but Wahabbi Islam, which is especially strict.  Shariah law to take the place of all man-made law.  "Government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed"?  "No thanks," says Osama.  Osama says, "All you need to know is in this book here, and if you don't buy that, then you're an infidel who deserves to die.  And oh by the way, it's what I think the book says; if you read it yourself and come to a different conclusion, you're wrong, and you're an infidel who deserves to die." 

Let's review who deserves to die, according to OBL, shall we: (All non-Muslims) + (all Muslims who DON'T want to kill all non-Muslims) = More than half the people on the planet, I'm guessing.  Starting, of course, as he has stated quite clearly and repeatedly, with Americans... just because we're Americans.

When one guy and some of his like-minded buddies can decide who deserves to die, and it happens to be a majority of the people on the planet... I'm gonna have a little problem with that. 

The last guy who did that in a major way, the world knew as "Hitler."

I want peace now, before my brother gets sent over there.

I want my youngest brother to have a long and happy life and die peacefully in bed at age 96, a great-grandfather.  I want him to outlive me. 

Of course I want peace.

But some things are more important than peace. 

Winston Churchill knew this.  Neville Chamberlain did not.  

Who was right?

"If you're not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart.  If you're not a conservative at forty, you have no brain."

Who hasn't heard that one?  And laughed, perhaps painfully, at the partial truth encapsulated there.

I actually don't agree with this statement, even though my own life has followed this trajectory, more or less. 

For instance, my husband, with one of the kindest, most generous hearts I know, has always been more conservative than I, even way back when we were in college.  Likewise, many of my most beloved friends and family members, now in their thirties or forties, or even older, are both liberal AND highly intelligent.

However, the partial truth I see in it is, most liberals do seem to think, to greater or lesser degrees, that conservatives are heartless insensitive minions of evil, who perhaps have as a hobby, to relax on weekends, killing baby robins.  And most conservatives seem to think, to greater or lesser degrees, that liberals are brainless utopian dopes, and dupes of more cynical forces who use them as sheep.

The truth I see in that statement is what we think the other is, not what either of us really is.

In other words, it's a statement of stereotype.

What I really think is, we spend our lives having different experiences, and having our worldviews shaped by those experiences.  We each carry with us lenses, so to speak, shaped by our life experiences and shaping every new experience we have.

We see the world through these "lenses" -- conservative lens, or liberal lens; the "global warming" lens and the "global warming skeptic" lens; the "end war now!" lens and the "get the job done" lens; the "the answer to every problem is more government" lens and the "government is the problem" lens.  Et cetera.

The thing about these lenses are, they are self-propagating.  Self-reinforcing.

Once you have your lens on, you see what you want to see.

In optics, if you have a blue-tinted lens, everything you see through it will be colored blue.  If the object started out blue, its color will be more vivid; everything else will be faded or darkened.  Everything green will look blue, and the yellowish tone that is also present in green will be filtered out, unperceived by you. 

You will not see red. 

Same way with worldview lenses.  Every fact you see, you will see colored by your lens.  Whereas people wearing the other lens will see the very same fact, and come to completely opposite conclusions about what it means and whether or how to change it.

If you have on a "Conservatives are Heartless" lens, every statement made by a conservative will be filtered through this before it reaches your brain.  You may be completely misinterpreting the idea the conservative was trying to get across, and you will do this in a way that "proves" to you what you knew already, that conservatives are heartless.

Moreover, any statements made by conservatives that do not reinforce your idea that they are "heartless" will not even register.  You will not hear it, or see it. 

If it's red, your blue lens will not let that wavelength through to reach your brain. 

The same is true of someone wearing a "liberals are pie-in-the-sky idiots" lens.  Everything a liberal says or does that might tend to reinforce this notion will come blaring through; everything that might tend to prove otherwise is completely unperceived.

I love my liberal friends and family. 

Believe it or not. 

What I love most about them is their passion, and compassion. 

But one thing I've noticed about them is, most of them have never worked in the private sector (yes, yes, I know some of you have.  I didn't say all, I said most).  They tend to be either former social workers, or former teachers, and now stay-at-home moms; or some other career or calling that did not involve toiling for a living in a for-profit environment.  I am not denigrating these "caregiver" careers.  As a society, we need people to perform them.  We need to honor those people, and appreciate them. 

But their "lenses" have been formed in this area.  

They work for the government, a lot of them, and they seem to think the government can solve all problems.  They know very little about the part of society that generates all the income that pays for the services they provide -- that is, the private sector.  They appear to feel mostly contempt for that part of society, and look down their noses on "the profit motive."  (Those selfish capitalistic bastards!)  They often seem not to grasp the most basic fundamentals of economics -- for example, that when you raise the price of something, its consumption tends to go down -- and they definitely don't grasp that nothing is free.  Nothing.  Not even something provided by the government is free. 

Especially, nothing provided by the government is free. 

I have one friend who has many wonderful qualities, but who drives me crazy whenever she talks about anything related to government-supplied health care being "free."  Once her father was on a trip to England and unexpectedly needed some health care, and she raved about how it was provided to him quickly, and for "free" by England's National Health Service.  No, it wasn't free.  Free to him, maybe.  But someone paid for it! 

If there were no private sector, there would be no money to run the public sector.  Period. 

One thing I like best about my closest liberal friends, is how every once in a while, something they say makes me take off my lenses and examine them.  Usually, I put them back on, unaltered.  Or altered only slightly.  But at least I'm aware I have them on. 

So thank you to my liberal friends for reminding me that I am wearing my own lenses, and for making me take them off every once in a while to clean them and check them for scratches. 

When's the last time you took a look at your lenses?

This may strike some as a hypocritical motto to live by, given the content of my most recent posts. 

However, this is probably the most accurate summation of my basic worldview.

I love diversity. 

I am diversity.

My family is diversity.

My upbringing was always about diversity.

And I still live in a wonderfully diverse neighborhood and town. 

Let's start with "I love diversity."

I deeply enjoy meeting people of different cultures, learning about their languages, foods, history and so on.  I love to explore the arts, folktales, music, and literature of different cultures -- though of necessity, my acquaintance with them is only superficial for non-Western cultures.  One of my favorite aspects of my former job (before I had kids, that is), was the opportunity to travel for business.  I travelled to 3 different countries (Britain, Germany, and India), and all over the place in the U.S.  My only regret was that I didn't get to do more international travel during my career.  I would have loved to walk upon the Great Wall of China.  Maybe I still will, someday.

Next, "I am diversity."

I am multiethnic.  My mother was once a minority girl living in poverty, who had a child out of wedlock.  (Me.)  

Next, "My family is diversity."

I was raised my first few years by my mother's mother (that is, by the grandmother who is a member of a marginalized racial minority), while my mother finished college and started on her post-graduate degree.  My first few years were spent playing with children who were black, white, and Native American -- none of which was remarked upon.  They were just the kids I played with.  The ladies who tended them were just my grandmother's friends -- black, white, or Native American.  They were just people. 

Believe it or not, that is still how I see people. 

My mother's siblings are a wonderfully egalitarian group.  For some reason they, too, failed to see people by "race," and as a result, married all different races.  Some married whites, two married Mexicans, and one married a black woman.  Some of my cousins look white, some of my cousins look black, and some of my cousins look Hispanic.  Yet we all share the same grandmother, and by virtue of her blood, are members of a Native American tribe. 

Racism, for me, makes no sense at all. 

So what does make sense for me?  What do I believe?

My political outlook is basically "free-market libertarian." 

My basic position economic position is, there has never been a system of economic or political organization that offered the most potential wealth-creation to the greatest number of people, as free-market capitalism.  Government's role should be to keep the peace, and get the hell out of the way.

I mentioned that my mother was once an unwed teenage mom-to-be, and a minority to boot.  Within seven years of my birth, she became a medical professional, married, a home-owner, a small-business partner, an employer of several people, and a pillar of the community.  I also mentioned that I have travelled the world (at least somewhat -- not as much as some, nor as much as I would have liked), I have acquainted myself with other cultures, I pay attention to world news. 

And I submit to you, that nowhere else on the planet could my mother have so drastically changed her educational attainments, income level, and social position, as rapidly as she did it here.  Nowhere else on the planet could she have started her children off in a much more improved position than she had to fight through in her childhood.

And I further submit that it is because of our (relatively) free economic climate that this was possible.  Also, it was because she had access to a good public school system, and teachers who pointed her toward college.  (So why is it that Democrats are seen as such friends of minorities, when they espouse politics and principles that keep urban youths mired in failing schools?  How many girls like my mother are presently languishing in dismal situations because they lack the good schools and good teachers my own mother benefitted so much from?  But don't get me started on that...)

It is not happening in Europe, or at least not to the same degree.  The socialistic models there have shunted much of an entire generation aside into unemployment.  Economic mobility, social mobility -- definitely not the same in Europe.

As for the "libertarian" part -- My basic policy position is, you should be allowed to do whatever you want to do, as long as it doesn't hurt another person. 

I don't mean you should necessarily choose to do certain dumb things (let's say, smoking, just as an example), nor should you be encouraged to do them, but you shouldn't be prohibited from doing them if they hurt no-one, or no-one but yourself.

On the other hand, neither should you come crying to the nanny-state to bail you out of the consequences of your dumb decision.  Whatever it may be.

And I've done a few myself, believe me.  Which I won't go into here.   ;-)

So all of that being the case, being a good diversity-loving, educated, culturally-aware girl like I am, how is it that I support the War In Iraq?  And how does that square with "Live and Let Live"?

Let's go back to "Live and Let Live" for a moment.

You may have noticed a crucial thing about this motto. 

It's reciprocal.

I will meet you as a friend, until you prove otherwise.  I will let you go about your business as you see fit, even if it's a choice I wouldn't have made, as long as you do the same toward me, and as long as you don't hurt anybody. 

Osama Bin Ladin has said, 

"A target, if made available to Muslims by the grace of God, is every American man. He is an enemy of ours whether he fights us directly or merely pays his taxes."  (See the full transcript of his 1998 interview, here.) 

I believe him when he says he will kill any American he has a chance to.  I believe him because people he infected with his dangerous worldview actually did kill 3000 innocent Americans and foreign guests of America, on 9/11.  And he rejoiced in those deaths.  He rejoiced.   

Osama Bin Ladin, and those who share his worldview, are not willing to "live and let live."  Their worldview is the antithesis of that.

Note please, that by his "worldview," I am most emphatically NOT referring to the religion of Islam.  Multiethnic, secular, predominantly Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Turkey are crucial allies in this global struggle.  I am actually willing to believe that Islam is "a religion of peace," because of the evidence of a friend of my parents, a Muslim immigrant from Senegal, who is one of the kindest, friendliest, and most gracious people it has been my privilege to meet. 

Al-Qaeda, and other fascist groups who clothe their menace in the language of Islam, are an entirely different matter.

Whether more recent evidence has supported it or not, I believed at the time that evidence seemed to show Saddam Hussein was cozy with al-Qaeda.  And additional evidence seemed to show he was a dangerous madman with stockpiles of dangerous weapons that he could either use, or sell to terrorists.  I believed it, and people and governments around the world believed it.  It wasn't just "George Bush lying us into war." 

Every day, imperfect human beings must make decisions based on imperfect or just plain wrong information.  The President of the United States must make these decisions on a much more terrible scale than the rest of us do. 

That's what we pay him for.  And those decisions based on imperfect data, and living with the consequences of those decisions, is what makes Presidents look so much older when the leave office than they did when they began. 

And, now that we're there, in Iraq, whatever you may think of how we got there, there's no way out but through.

No honorable way, that is. 

No fair way to the Iraqi people, and no way to ensure greater safety for both them and us in years to come.

So yes, I support the strategy that I like to refer to as "victory" in Iraq, as opposed to "giving up."  Which would be seen by Osama Bin Ladin and his friends as "losing."  Which would only embolden them more. 

Which would only make the world a way more dangerous place to live.

Another pet peeve of mine concerning the _)(*^*&$^T$&(^)(*& MEDIA:

The body counts. 

The body counts bug me.

Before you get all feisty on me, the problem I have with the Iraq body counts is not so much the fact that we're forced to face the human toll of the war effort.  We should know that.  We, the people, sent our soldiers over there, and it is right that we acknowledge the cost in human sacrifice.  And honor them, and all the other soldiers who may come home maimed in body, mind, or soul, for our sake.

Even though we have all-volunteer armed forces who more or less knew what they were getting into and chose to put themselves in harm's way, for our sake.  We still should know. 

The problem as I see it, is that's all we're told.  "Such-&-such number died in a bombing in Iraq."  The end. 

That's not news.  That's not information.  That's barely a datum.

We need more context.

What we need to know is what they died trying to achieve; and whether or not they achieved that goal before they paid the final price; and if they were thwarted by this bombing, what's our fallback plan for achieving that same goal, or what are our revised goals, so that their lives may not have been lost in vain.  We also need to know less about terrorist bombings, and more about the incursions our forces, and the Iraqi forces, have made against the terrorists. 

Because our forces have made them.

We just don't hear about it.

All we hear is the steady drip, drip, drip of the bombers' bloodletting. 

And that follows directly the media playbook of the terrorists themselves.

After 9/11, Osama Bin Laden gloated about how soft we are, how weak.  (Am I the only one who remembers that?) 

He said something to the effect of, "I know how to defeat you.  You will not last.  As soon as the body bags start coming home, America will turn tail and run."  At one point he referred to the "Black Hawk Down" incident in Mogadishu as evidence of our cowardice and softness.

Oh yes, he seems to have studied the Vietnam War well, and to good effect for his plans. 

At the time, I said to myself, "No, we've learned since then.  We will not allow that to happen this time.  This time it's different.  This time, blood has already been poured on our own soil -- innocent blood, noncombatants.  There is no excuse or mitigating factor for this mass murder of civilians.  We won't forget that.  We're stronger than he thinks."

Are we?

Now we've got the peacemongers in full cry over here, practically bragging about their vote to establish a timeline to pull out of Iraq -- that is, to betray our Iraqi allies, who trusted us, and our soldiers, who have put themselves in harm's way for us. 

Just like we betrayed South Vietnam with our ignominious departure there.

Now we've got Damascus Nancy, playing the role of Hanoi Jane in the previous war, hobnobbing with known terrorist-backer Syria and wearing, of all things, a headscarf in some bizarrely misguided notion of "outreach".  All so she can thumb her nose at Bush.

Pelosisyria

Hey, I've got a lot of problems with Bush, frankly, and the way he has prosecuted this war.  But he is the Commander-In-Chief, and undermining him is not the right way to show unity in the face of our enemies.  We need a loyal opposition; an opposition that may differ seriously with the executive branch, but has a serious grasp of our nation's best interests despite that. 

Here's the thing that bugs me:

Most major media, including Internet news portals like Yahoo, appear to be covering this entire conflict from the perspective that they need to use their bully pulpit to stop it.  They need to hobble the Gulliver, America.  Even though the very freedoms they treasure -- to spout their mouths off, for one -- thrive only because America is strong.

Hey - Nancy!  You really think Bashar Assad likes chatting with a lippy woman like you?  You think women in his country can get away with that?  You think the newspapers in his country could get away with the kind of stuff Bush has to put up with? 

You and your buddy Assad.  Bah.

Here's the thing that bugs me, and really, the body-count "reporting" that the media do is only a symptom.

The thing that really, really bugs me is...

It seems to me that Osama was right about us.

And man!  Does that ever rile me up!

Does it EVER!!!

Osama was right about us.

Doesn't that bug the HELL out of you????

It should.

Here's the thing about the Virginia Tech killings.

If you were for more gun control before the shootings, you'll still be for more gun control now.

If you were against gun control before the shootings, you'll still be against gun control now.

Wanna know who I'm really pissed at?

Well, let's start with the killer.  Clearly, he was recognized as a deeply disturbed, disturbing, and even dangerous individual by many people who knew him.  Equally clearly, he is not the sort of person who should legally be allowed to purchase a gun.

But more gun control laws are not the answer.  The Virginia Tech campus was already a "gun-free zone."  Did he care?  If someone had gently reminded him, "Um, Mr. Cho?  This is a gun-free zone; maybe you didn't realize that," does anyone really think he would have put down his weapons and said, "Oh, okay then, sorry about that."

Please.  Let's not be naive.

I really really wish we lived in a world as kind and gentle, and full of sweetly reasonable people, as my liberal friends seem to think we do.  It would be a wonderful place, wouldn't it?  I would love to move to that world.  When's the spaceship take off?

But we don't live in that world. 

We live in a world with evil, deeply unreasonable and dangerous people in it.

And NO, this is not the point where I say, people should pack heat if they want to get to their college classrooms safely.  I'm not a member of the NRA, I have never shot a gun, and I don't hunt.

But the reality is, there are evil people in the world, who WILL find a way to get hold of guns and commit crimes with them.  Or if we outlaw all the guns, they will go down to the hardware store and make a bomb out of fertilizer and common household nails.  And if we outlaw nails with exceptions only for licensed builders, the criminals will steal the nails from a licensed builder's storage locker.

They will find a way.

And that being the case, here's who I'm really pissed at, just at present.  (I'll probably think of more, later.)

The bleeping _)*&(&%(*&^()*% MEDIA. 

The mainstream media, particularly TV news, really are biased. 

In this case I'm talking about their bias towards, "If it bleeds, it leads." 

Why give this guy so much attention?  Why focus reporting on him, and not his victims?  Why broadcast his so-called "manifesto"?

Why indeed, unless you are specifically trying to get other deeply disturbed and dangerous individuals to think (or what passes for thought in their heads), "Hey, now THERE's a great way to get everybody to pay attention to ME!"

And I'm really pissed at all of you who were glued to the TV, helping drive those ratings higher, and just reinforcing the "if it bleeds it leads" mentality.  Isn't it enough for you to play your violent video games and watch your violent movies, that when it spills over into the real world, you have to soak that up too?

I do not watch TV news.  I did not watch this. 

I watched 9/11, all day long, but I did not watch this. 

Here's what I want to know, MEDIA:

Why the HELL can't you make it be news when teenagers or college students do something GOOD, something LIFE-AFFIRMING, something to help those less fortunate than themselves, something to create bridges instead of walls?

If the TV news showed this, I would watch it:

An intergenerational group from a local church, including about 10 teenagers working alongside their parents or in some cases, grandparents, went to Mexico to help build housing for the poor.  They worked in the baking sun every day for a week, right alongside the future homeowners, mixing cement and carting it in wheelbarrows.  They slept in sleeping bags on the floor of a Texas church just over the boarder.  Upon returning to *Midwestern City*, the young people stated, "It was totally exhausting, but really cool too.  I can't even explain how much this meant to Guillermo, our homeowner.  He had been living in a cardboard box by the city dump.  Now he has four solid and waterproof walls, and a door that locks.  I'll never forget this experience as long as I live."

Why isn't that news? 

This actually happened in my church not too long ago.  

Yet, we never hear about this. 

Think maybe it would be better to get a little copycat action on THAT kind of behavior?

Okay, maybe Cho wouldn't have gone down to Mexico and carted cement.  But maybe, if he hadn't had Columbine as an example, and all the others since, maybe he wouldn't have thought to do what he did. 

One thing I'm sure of, and that is, we will inevitably be seeing more of this from someone, somewhere whose dark fantasies are blooming even now in the fertile ground placed there by the recent media feeding frenzy over Cho.

She knows what people think of her kind:  Frumpy.  Dumpy.  Boring.

But in the next few posts, she's going to change all that. 

She stays home with her kids.

She's Midwestern, Middle-aged, Middle America.

She's Mad as Hell.

(Well, not really.  Maybe a little.)

She's...

Mama With a Mohawk.

(Credit, recognition, and gratitude to Lynda Barry for the original.  See it here.)