Obama's speech

I know that this video's probably been seen by just about everyone and their grandparents by now, but I provide it here as a courtesy:



Full transcript of video courtesy of Juan Cole.

Now, I want to share my own special experience with racism and religious fundamentalism. This is an event that happened back in 1998, at the church I was attending at the time, back in the days before conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, before 9/11, before the Supreme Court selected a chimp to be our President, before shit went attempted genocide in Kosovo, before I'd finished pharmacy school, long before I'd gotten it into my head that being a nurse would be more fulfilling. Long before I deconverted into atheism.

It is that last point I want to focus on. I didn't officially declare my atheism until the end of January of this year, but I've felt disconnected and disenfranchised from Christianity for some time now. In fact, it was listening to the Reverend Moses Yang preach about the curse of Ham, and how black people are inferior as a result that started me down this path. I'd been sort of committed to Christianity at the time, having asked Jesus to come into my heart and forgive my sins in Sunday School class when I was eight years old because, like that kid in Jesus Camp, I was bored. I suppose my attitude towards religion at the time was like that of lots of other people's; I'd go with my family to church every Sunday, but just lived my life as my own the rest of the week. Still, it was a part of my identity, and I didn't dare think different for fear of going to Hell after I died.

So, this Sunday in the long-ago summer of 1998, I went to church as usual, expecting to be bored out of my ming like I usually was, expecting to be playing a mental game of Goldeneye to pass the time. I thought it was just going to be another Sunday - sit for an hour to listen to Rev. Moses rant about sin, or the End-of-the-World and his interpretation of eschatology, or maybe some combination of both - and then go home and play some Goldeneye for real. I wasn't expecting a small, but fundamental, change in my world view to happen that day.

One of the church members was an older gentleman who'd suffered a stroke not too long ago that rendered him unable to ambulate and dependent on a private-duty nurse for much of his activities of daily living. His private duty nurse, who was the only black person in the room, accompanied his patient to the service. So far, so good - a hard-working man just doing his job, and getting his weekly dose of religion to boot. A win-win situation, right?

We sang hymns, prayed some prayers, and then the world changed. Then Moses starts going all Bob Jones and starts in about the Curse of Ham (relevant bible passage here, or check out the lolcat version), and how black people and Africans are inferior to everyone else because of this. Through it all, I'm sneaking glances over at the nurse, wondering why he doesn't just get up and walk out. I mean, holy shit, he's the only black person in the room surrounded by Chinese people who are, for the most part, listening raptly to this hate speech. Why doesn't he realize that's he's no longer wanted here, and just get up and leave?

I'm no saint. I remember my sophomore year of college, the year before, when I'd had black roommates, who I avoided as much as possible because I couldn't stand rap, I couldn't stand their being so loud, because I just plain couldn't stand them. Still, I know this about myself: I never believed that all blacks were ghetto blacks, like these guys were (they were from Newark, NJ). The nurse was a professional, as far from ghetto as it was possible to get, and the fact that he sat there, throughout the entire fucking sermon, and did not abandon his patient taught me more about professionalism than I'd learned, up until that point, in pharmacy school. He sat in his seat next to his charge, stock still, expressionless, and did not make a move to get up until after the service was over. Needless, to say, I never saw him at this church again. Still, I'd like to thank him for showing me what true professionalism is, for not abandoning his patient (huge no-no for nurses), and for helping me get over my prejudices against folk of different races. I don't know his name, but I hope he's fine and is happy doing whatever it is he's doing now. Sorry you had to go through that, man.

I started to question my Christian beliefs then. I started to ask myself why, if God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son to die for all of out sins, that he would play favorites and set aside a race of people to be the slaves of another. Then, news of Christian Serbians slaughtering Muslim Albanians made me question these beliefs more, 9/11 brought me back to the faith, and long story short, a combination of Bush, holier-than-thou Christian fundamentalism, and Richard Dawkins brought me to my present atheism.

Anyway, I know now who I'd want for President of the United States. Sure, he's not perfect, and he's no Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney, but I think he's got it. Go Obama!

5 Years of War

Let me take the opportunity to wish happy belated anniversary to the war in Iraq. Happy 5th birthday to the bastard child of misguided foreign policy, outright lies of a psychotic president and his administration, and a vast conspiracy of ignorance. This war has cost nearly 4000 American soldiers' lives and who-the-hell-knows how many Iraqi lives (see the original Lancet article here), and has destroyed countless others' lives all over the world. This misbegotten war is the proud bastard legacy of a failed presidency that will be denounced as one of the worst ever for generations to come.

I'm going to keep this brief, because I don't have a lot of time these days, and there's something else more compelling for me to blog about (more in the next post). I remember the days leading up to the start of hostilities, and I remember the protests, I remember some of the news reports that attempted to cast some doubt on the reasons being presented to take us to war. Back in February 2003, I was still just a pharmacist, out in sunny California to attend a training session for my new job as a nuclear pharmacist. (And, if you'd told me then that 5 years later, I'd be a nurse with a pharmacist's license - or is it a pharmacist with a nurse's license? - I would have thought it about as likely as a really old guy running for president, who would be fine with keeping soldiers in another sovereign country overseas for another 100 years, and who can't even keep his facts straight!)

I remember passing by one of the corner protests on the way back to the apartment after the day's class, and I remember people holding up their signs saying (I'm paraphrasing here) honk for peace. I didn't rent a car out there, so I was on foot, but I still walked by, made a gesture like I was pulling on a truck horn, and said "honk, honk." A young lady sees this, smiles, thanks me, and invites me to a larger protest scheduled for the coming Sunday (?). I decline, my flight back to Philadelphia leaves the day before, but I say I still hope that peace will win out in the end.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should have just gotten on another flight, and called out sick at work the following Monday, just so I could take part in a historical moment. Granted, it was a historical moment that ultimately proved futile, but the point is, it was historical. Would it have made a difference? What could we have done? What should we have done? Where does one put the pebble of change in order to divert the stream of history into a more desirable course, further away from civilization, into a place where the flood does not wash away those whose only crime was living in the wrong place at the wrong time? All questions for the historians, I suppose.

Next post, my own take on Obama's famous speech.

The American Axle Strike

Courtesy of Bendygirl at Dailykos: a report on the American Axle Strike, news I bet you did not know about. Read about the effects on one family here: Family Learns to Make Do With Less. Read the official company line here: http://www.aam.com/

Let me just go on record to express my support for the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike, and to say that asking people to accept a 50% reduction in wages is fucking bullshit (unless, of course, you are the President of the United States or his puppet masters, in which case you don't even deserve one dollar for what they have done to countries around the world, including our own). Yeah, you can blame pressure from investors to cut costs and drive up profits by either outsourcing jobs to cheaper labor markets or cutting wages, but the simple fact of the matter is, management executives have only their own greed to blame. Here's an idea: if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen! If the pressure to increase profits is getting to be too much, just get out of the market and go private! Unfortunately, making a public company private might make it harder to monitor for corporate malfeasance, but the union can probably threaten another strike unless they get a say in how the company monitors management's accountability.

Anyway, best of luck to the union and especially to the members who are literally putting their health and their way of life on the line in order to fight for what is fair. Best of luck.