The most moving thing I’ve read lately Friday, Oct 20 2006

Earlier today I stumbled upon this article written by Kevin Tillman and I absolutely had to share it with anyone who may come across my blog. Kevin Tillman as you may or may not know is the brother of Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals safety who was shot and killed in Afghanistan in April of 2004. Pat turned down a 3.6 million dollar three-year contract with the Cardinals and chose to enlist in the Army instead. His brother Kevin also enlisted, and passed up a career in professional baseball.

This letter is written in anticipation of the November 7th elections, and I hope it will move people to consider what we have allowed go on in this country.

After Pat’s Birthday

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,
Kevin Tillman

Link to original article:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/

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Speechless Thursday, Oct 12 2006

Characters
Zavi, Girl and some other people sitting around

Location
Classroom

Scene
I’m sitting in the classroom after the class listening to a conversation between two girls sitting next to me. The conversation started out when the girl was looking at the picture of a pregnancy test on the web.

Zavi (with sarcasm)
I never understood why you need two lines on there. Why not just have yes or no?

Girl
Well one is just a test strip.

Zavi
So are you pregnant?

Girl
No, but this other b**** is, but I don’t think it’s my boyfriend’s.

Zavi
Wait, your boyfriend got another girl pregnant?

[I can't remember exactly what was said after that, she said a lot but it basically continues something like this]

Girl
Well he just got out of jail, so he got with the first chick he could.

Zavi
I see. What was he in jail for?

Girl
Here, I’ll show you.

[She pulls up a myspace page of some chick that's obviously too young]

Girl
Don’t look too hard, she’s 15.

Zavi
No worries, my age cut-off is quite a bit over the legal age.

[She clicks a few links and gets to another picture of a bunch of guys standing around]

Girl
Here’s my boyfriend at his sex-offender class.

[She said this in an almost cheerful way — I really couldn't think of anything else to say]

Zavi
Wow, you must be proud?

Honestly, what the hell do you say after a bit of conversation like that. Never understood how women can expect anything but the worst for guys likee that. And for the record, the guy is in his late 20s.

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Bad business Sunday, Oct 8 2006

Why hiring high-school kids is bad for business

When I moved to the states in 1998, the most notable difference was the employment of high school students throughout various establishments. Work was nothing new to me — I had also been working with my next door neighbor in the summers (as a plumber) since I turned 15, but that was over once school started and my level of responsibility was always minimal. I would watch, learn, and help out when an extra hand was needed. Here, however, these kids were full-fledged employees with responsibilities and customers. I think giving young adults responsibilities is a good thing but the whole business model of paying high school teens next to nothing to fill various positions is flawed. In comparison, being a sales associate at a department store in Germany was not a teenager’s job and people would attend the equivalent of a junior college to become a bank teller or a factory worker. Perhaps the concept of hiring kids to do some jobs isn’t that flawed, however the resulting application and cases where these kids are being underpaid for doing jobs that are a little over their head, are tremendously flawed.

We’ve often discussed the implications of having a hormone-crazed teenage working force and my friend coined an interesting phrase in response to questionable service we’ve received in the past. “For $5.50 an hour you’re only paying my body to be there – don’t expect me do anything besides showing up.” His interpretation of a teenagers’ point of view is fairly obvious at places like movie theaters where I still get carded, even when I’m sporting a full beard and my receding hairline. If I get carded for alcohol, it’s one thing, but when some 16 year old implies that I might not be 17, that’s seriously hysterical. I’ve sort of made a sport of this, although I don’t go to the movies as often as I used to. I would pretend that I did not have my ID while purchasing a ticket, and then proceed argue with the teen-on-a-power-trip about why it’s silly to insist there’s any chance I’m 16. I would also throw in some big words to really illustrate that I’m not a high school sophomore (Is this issue really that inexplicable?) Sometimes I would win and other times it would come down to speaking to a manager. Every time a manager showed up he or she would nod and say “that’s fine,” immediately after shooting the little punk a mildly contemptuous look for wasting his or her time with such idiocy. Soon another thing became obvious. All the words that a look of contempt is supposed say would usually fall on deaf ears because the kid working the counter either didn’t get it, or simply didn’t care. Sometime, I would also simply walk into the movie without having my ticket checked so I suppose my friend is right, they’re paying their physical presence and not much beyond that.

While the example of poor service you receive at a movie theater isn’t truly significant, there are occasions when this is a problem. I wrote about one incident close to a year ago involving a sales associate at a outdoors oriented store. I’m not going to discuss the details, but let’s just say he made a huge mistake by suggesting a certain product to a buyer. I stopped him and explained why it was a terrible idea and then I explained to the customer the proper way to go about resolving the issue. (This probably wasn’t to smart on my part because I could probably get sued if something went wrong, but I did also tell him to ask for a in-depth explanation at the other store I sent him to.) The customer thanked me and contrary to the bitterness I was expecting from the sales associate, I received nothing but a semi-polite but distinct attitude of indifference. He didn’t care about the fact that he was wrong regarding an issue that could result in injury, he didn’t seem to care that I made him look like a moron in front of a customer and he didn’t seem to care that I probably could have gotten him fired, had I requested to see a manager about this. As a result of this incident, I avoid that store at all costs. So while they saved on paying their employees they lost money by ensuring that a customer will not return to that store, or any other that bears its name, ever again.

hope that more people will understand that they as consumers have the power (in fact only they have that power) to control the level of service they will get. Too many people just take it and go on their marry way. I’m not saying go out there and picket-fence the store in question, but talk to a manager and tell them what went wrong. You don’t even need to single out an employee since this problem transcends far beyond one teenager who doesn’t have much beyond next Friday’s party on his mind.

If you’ve been paying attention you might say, “Follow your own advice, dude.” I would say: “I’m glad you’ve been paying attention and while I have ignored this in the past, I assure I would make it known these days.”

I hope you will too.

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