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Learning / Evolving
The summer months are busy for me. I manage and work with the volunteers that make the Summer (Outdoor / Camp) Ministry program happen here in Oklahoma for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Each week that camps are in session I visit for the day and help problem solve, meet the youth attending, support the directors and counselors, and take photos. It means that I am up very early and home late. So, I alter my reading and writing time for Davison’s Doodle, for Sacred Steps: Children’s Sermon Journal, and how I keep up with the news. Today, I’ve spent some time reading different opinions about the economy, catching up on the Daily Show that I missed this week, what’s happening in our own culture, and on the far side of the world.
And now some words that will read more like a rant than observations. Apologies. All the news about our nation is, well, questionable to bad right now. I don’t feel pessimistic. I am cynical and the fact that some citizens seriously listen to sideshow politicians at state and federal levels (Palin, Perry, and Gingrich) who are intent on building their own personal fortunes has ceased taking my breath . . . now I just roll my eyes. At least Trump admitted that he is all about the money which is why he is sticking with NBC rather than running or President. I’ve wondered if the first two decades of the 20th century were plagued with extremism in this country. History points to the robber barons and other lessons when government has needed to regulate unfettered greed, by individuals and corporations, which is why I continue to be astonished that the Republican party argues for more tax breaks and less regulation. Supply side and trickle down has not worked, but it has put us all in debt. The ideals of the Republican party seem intent to create a larger class (caste) of working poor to lure business back to the United States so that companies will outsource jobs here rather than China or India or some other country where there is no middle class (caste), no unions, and no workers rights. I do not understand why serious journalists don’t point out the “Lords and Serfs” ideology that is driving the Republican party and the discrimination that is an ingredient of the Tea Party movement. Probably, because corporations own the media outlets and control the news agencies that would do this reporting. Probably, because news is more about ratings and advertising revenue. Overt racism has not existed in such a public way since the civil rights era and no one has the national clout to call it what it is, not even a faith leader Christian or otherwise.
The Democrats are responsible as well and are so concerned with keeping or regaining power that they are bowing, in the name of consensus, to the business elites that have purchased our government. Our social contracts are being shredded through a war on terror in which the wealthy are sending the poor, working poor, and the middle class off to “defend our freedoms” while Santorum, McConnell, and other white males, in the name of life, are attempting to change laws about birth control and reproductive rights that will send women back to kitchens and back alleys. They argue that life begins at conception, but do little for policies that assist in the pursuit of life, liberty, or happiness once a zygote is breathing. It is irresponsible not to raise taxes on those that take from the bottom 98% unless the goal is to create a caste system that can only be breached by hitting the lottery or winning America’s Got Talent or some other controlled reality TV show. To this end I ran across this article in Bloomberg which speaks to the entertainment gluttony of our nation and our inability to hold elected officials accountable for the common good. I am cynical, but trust that people and elected leaders will eventually stop, think, observe, and plan before too much longer. It is called learning and evolving. BTW, I wrote this while listening to Nascar on my HD TV and the ending of “To Big To Fail” on HBO.
The Danger of Living on Bread and Circuses
by Alice Schroeder | Bloomberg View | June 1, 2011Rome in the first two centuries A.D. faced a yawning gulf between rich and poor. The mighty empire built on tribute reached its geographic limits. Its economy created few exportable goods. Slaves acquired by conquest built most of its bridges, roads and aqueducts and took jobs in farming, mining and construction. As this cheaper labor replaced Roman citizens, idle, unemployed, hungry people filled the capital.
The complicated causes of Rome’s decline have long fascinated historians, and provide a lens through which to examine the vulnerability of other dominant cultures. Americans’ addiction to entertainment has been compared to the circuses of ancient Rome. We can, and do, spend much of our free time watching dreck on TV like “Half Pint Brawlers,” about a company of self-styled “midget wrestlers” who attack each other with staple guns and broken bottles. In fact, in 2009, people over age 15 spent an average of 58 percent of their leisure time watching television, playing games and using the Internet — an increase of 16 percent from 2003.
She’s 10 and May Be Sold to a Brothel
One of the high school seniors that participated in a study trip that the Christian Church In Oklahoma sponsored this year opened his sermon (report to his home congregation that paid for most of his trip) with these words, “I am a 21st century slave owner and so are you.” The study topic for IAS was, “Faith and Economics: Consumption, Contentment, and Compassion.” We didn’t learn much about human trafficking that week, but what we learned about the treatment of workers in Bangladesh and other poor countries by multinational corporations that have home town names, Walmart for example, altered the world view of the group. The cold facts are that the gold and other minerals in my cell phone help underwrite regional wars between persons vying to control the natural resources (coltan, gold, diamonds, oil, other precious metals and gemstones) of poor countries. What I know is that little of I was wearing back in March, or even today, was made in the United States with materials from the United States, not even my Wrangler Jeans or shirt. Wrangler! Can it have a more western name, but not made in the USA.
I follow Nicholas Kristof’s investigative reporting for the New York Times and recently he has been looking into the sex slave trafficking that exists, the preys on the poor by offering a few hundred dollars for their girls and their boys. His reporting has been heart breaking, surreal, and at moments while reading I’ve thought that they should just scoop up these children in the night and put them on a plane to anywhere but where they are. It is hard for a white westerner to grasp what it must be like to be a lower caste or sub-caste member in India, though walking in Vegas, LA or NY, any major city really, you get a sense of our own American caste system though we “class” it up. This kind of trafficking in children and adults no doubt happens to Americans as well as people of other nationalities. Oppression and rape happen whether there is forced sex involved of not. How do we break the consumption cycle?
She’s 10 and May Be Sold to a Brothel
Nicholas Kristof | The New York Times | June 1, 2001KOLKATA, India
M. is an ebullient girl, age 10, who ranks near the top of her fourth-grade class and dreams of being a doctor. Yet she, like all of India, is at a turning point, and it looks as if her family may instead sell her to a brothel.
Her mother is a prostitute here in Kolkata, the city better known to the world as Calcutta. Ruchira Gupta, who runs an organization called Apne Aap that fights human trafficking, estimates that 90 percent of the daughters of Indian prostitutes end up in the sex trade as well. And M. has the extra burden that she belongs to a subcaste whose girls are often expected to become prostitutes.
What I do know is that it is surreal that these scenes are unfolding in the 21st century. The peak of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was the 1780s, when just under 80,000 slaves a year were transported from Africa to the New World.
These days, Unicef estimates that 1.8 million children a year enter the commercial sex trade.