Crossing Nebraska

We’ve entered a new season of gun violence of late. Each time a mass shooting takes place, we now rush to read the tea leaves for evidence of the shooter being from the Left or Right. And each time a shooter is found to have been politically motivated in some way, those on the other side stand ready with narratives prepared. And, oh, how the disingenuous self-righteousness then oozes forth! In fact, violence is committed by individuals all along the political spectrum. It serves no productive purpose to pretend otherwise. However, it’s also a fact that the majority of politically motivated murders committed in the U.S. are perpetrated by right-wing idealogues. It’s not even close. There are five right-wing motivated murders to every left-wing one . And, no, that’s not coming from some left-wing source. Those statistics were compiled by the right-leaning Cato Institute . Regardless, it doesn’t do any of us any good to dive into our respective narrative thickets each time a shooting ta...

The very public murder of Charlie Kirk earlier this month as he engaged in debate on a college campus has shocked our nation’s conscience and thrust us into a meta-debate of sorts over the nature of free speech and our responsibility to be both truthful and civil. One popular late-night television host was suspended for allegedly inaccurate and irresponsible musings as to the motives of the shooter. Others have reportedly already lost their jobs for making comments deemed either too celebratory or too dismissive of Kirk’s fate. Even members of the military are being suspended for the content of their social media posts. Suddenly, a great deal rides on the subtle tone of our words, which is odd given that truthfulness and civility have been so absent from public discourse over the course of this past decade. No. YOU'RE the violent one! Yes, if only the debate over truthfulness and civility were an honest one. It used to be that folks on the right of the political spectrum decried ...

We don’t stop loving a family member who falls ill with a life-threatening disease. No, we show our love even more in their time of need, even though we may loathe the disease which has beset them. Such is how I feel about our country at the present time. Even as I love it, I must recognize that it is sick with a culture of ignorance, delusion, cruelty, and violence. Rather than being a populace guided by shared values and principles, we’ve become a writhing snake pit of views with widely varying degrees of connection to reality. Are vaccines good or bad? We can’t agree. Are our elections fair or not? We can’t agree. Should gun control laws be strengthened or thrown out altogether? Should we have separation of church and state? We can’t agree. Should we have meaningful checks and balances amongst our three branches of government, or does the executive branch wield overarching power? Should people in positions of power be chosen for their subject matter expertise or for their ideologi...

I thought I might touch on the power of politically oriented humor in my previous post. “Laugh!” I wrote in an early draft of Maintaining Peace and Joy Under Authoritarianism . “Laugh at the goons, buffoons, and loons propping up this destructive regime.” There’s no denying the power of humor to buoy our spirits in even the darkest times. And yet I still had reservations as I wrote that line. It occurred to me that our ability to laugh, and what we hope might result from our laughter, very much depends on our privilege. It was then I realized I’d need to delve more deeply into the nature of humor in order to do it justice. Satirical image of Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan, and Tucker Carlson  laying hands on Governor Newsom Yeruchem Eilfort states that humor has been an important part of Judaism since Biblical times, whether for the sake of preparing the mind for Talmudic study or otherwise coping with the vicissitudes of existence. This appreciation for humor would later play a role in h...

“You’ll never reach your destination if you stop to throw rocks at every dog that barks at you” is an aphorism often attributed to Winston Churchill. I hope nobody reading this is so hounded by critics that they need to heed this advice as it’s usually intended, but if we tweak it just a bit, it becomes advice for us all to follow in these current times. You see, there are so many outrageous things being said and done by the current POTUS, his administration, and his enablers that we would be well-served to consider a variation: “We’ll never successfully resist fascism if we fritter away our energy being outraged at everything there is to be outraged about. Ferocious dog superimposed on Presidential portrait I’m not suggesting we ignore injustice, turn a blind eye toward inhumanity, or normalize authoritarianism. I am suggesting, however, that we risk burning ourselves out, harming our mental health, or otherwise losing our joy when we get caught up in every inane or downright evil...

As I’m running past the cornfields near our home, I often notice stunted specimens growing closer to the road. Sprouted from seed fallen just outside the farmer’s field, these plants must work their roots into untilled soil, stand largely alone beneath the scorching sun, and make do without the fertilizer provided to the other plants of the field. They may still bear fruit, though perhaps not as large as their advantaged neighbors, or they may use up all their energy simply staying alive. Nature always does her best, but life is seldom fair. Edge of the Cornfield Each time I notice something like this, I think of a beautiful teaching from the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, which I’ll paraphrase here: If the lettuce you planted isn’t growing well, it doesn’t help to blame it. You look for reasons it’s not doing well. It may need fertilizer, more water, or less sun. On the other hand, if we have problems with our friends or family, we often blame the other person. Blaming doesn’t help...

Democracy in the U.S. is circling the drain. The Grand Old Party has become unabashedly fascist,  Congress has abdicated its constitutional power of oversight, and the Supreme Court has turned into a supreme enabler of authoritarianism. But it’s not just our elected and appointed officials who’ve lost track of what democracy is and what it requires. Many who voted in the last election seem to be living in an alternate reality, and those who sat it out seem strangely incapable of realizing what’s at stake until some executive order hits them on the head like a cudgel. At least at the present time, however, there appears to be enough pro-democracy voters out there (from both parties) who are politically engaged and of sound enough mind that a winning coalition might be assembled. Why then can’t the Democrats seem to get it together? Democratic Party logo surrounded by question marks A big part of the problem, as I see it, is that the Democratic Party has an image problem related to...

  Title notwithstanding, I’m not a fan of the expression “blood and treasure.” It strikes me as coarse and archaic and coldly calculating about matters of life and death. It evokes a barbaric age that should remain forever in our past. Sadly, though, it’s not. I first recall hearing “blood and treasure” spoken of within the context of the Iraq War and the quagmire that so many foresaw it would become. Once the adrenaline rush of the first bombardment and invasion wore off, we began to realize what a long slog the ground war was going to be. The loss of life and exorbitant monetary cost began to become apparent. It took years, but we eventually realized that that war wasn’t worth the blood and treasure it took to fight it, not that any are. In an earlier post, I recalled some of my earlier antiwar activism. I mentioned attending protests in St. Louis, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. in a failed collective attempt to try to stop the Iraq War. While some may have forgotten and some ot...

  We’re in a dangerous place here in the United States at present. Unconscionable pardons of convicted criminals and political firings of those who’ve assembled cases contrary to the interests of those now in power threaten to erode faith in our justice system. Government agencies have been gutted or dismantled to the point where reasonable concern exists whether any assistance or meaningful oversight will be available in times of disaster, famine, pandemic, or economic downturn. The balance of power between branches of government has become so lopsided that our form of democracy is now all but unrecognizable. More fundamentally, though, elections, science, and even truth itself have been called into question so frequently and forcefully as to leave us without an agreed upon objective reality from which to begin rational policy-making discussions.  It's enough to leave one apathetic and disengaged, or even clinically depressed for that matter. It’s enough to make one cynical...

If you’re a spiritual practitioner, I hope you’re “blessed” from time to time with an encouraging sign that you’re on the right path. Whether it be with an insight, observation, opening, understanding, felt sense, embodied knowing, or what have you I wish for you assurance that you’re moving toward whatever wholeness and authenticity mean for you. We Zen practitioners are not inclined to speak much about such experiences. We’re warned against putting too much stock in them, becoming attached to them, striving to repeat them, or thinking they result from our specialness. That notwithstanding, for the sake of this two-part series, I’d like to relate how certain practice-related experiences have prompted me to toward activism. Arrest of the Buddha In the first post of this two-part series , I stated: “The emptiness [ sunyata ] of all phenomena does not mean they are illusory. The emptiness of all phenomena merely means that all “things” are without any separate and abiding existence.” ...