Category Archives: Social Issues

It’s Not Your Fault: “Karma” and the Fair World Myth

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I put “karma” in quotes, because I mean the “what goes around comes around” platitude and variations of that.

What most people think of when they are blithely commenting that something is the result of karma, is this notion that if you do good, you get good things in return.

And if you do bad, you somehow get punished for it down the road.

It’s the idea that the world is run on a checks and balances system, and sometimes people use the physical orderliness of the universe (again, physics) to argue that it applies to human affairs as well.

No, it doesn’t.

Human behavior, while dictated in many ways (environment, genetics) by the physical world, is not controlled in any way by an orderly system.

Because humans are not orderly – we are messy, inconsistent beings who do wildly unpredictable things on occasion and often do things for which there are no consequences.

It’s this whole “the universe revolves around me and my desires” attitude, coupled with a “God-as-vending-machine” belief thrown in to explain why some people are wealthy and some are not.

Aside #1: “God-as-vending-machine” is the Prosperity Gospel idea of praying for monetary things while giving a donation to some religious scam artist organization.  In goes the prayer and money, and out pops a blessing!

Added to that is the “the world HAS to be fair, or it makes no sense to me” notion that many people hold because they cannot imagine the alternative – that the world is NOT fair, and often things happen which are unfair and make no sense, like childhood cancer, for example.

What prompted this blog post were a few things:

  1.  Something I hear/read sometimes, not only about me but about others who try to point out crappy things – with the intent that someone will take action and help.  It’s this: “But you’re so nayyyyy-gah-tive!”
  2.   Then there’s the rage-inducing comment about someone’s good fortune, whether it is big or small: “karma.”
  3.   And, finally, the equally rage-inducing comment about someone’s bad behavior: “what goes around, comes around.”

I say “rage-inducing” because, well, it makes me angry to hear/read things like that.  Only smug people say things like that, and I have a very low tolerance for smug.

And while some might argue that people say these kinds of things without thinking, I’m here to tell those people that it is coming off as smug to many of us who are suffering.

So tell those “unthinking people” to think before they say things like that, ok?  Help them become more self-aware.

These types of comments are sometimes followed by a comment about how one is rewarded in the afterlife for a life of suffering, so it’s all good.

Let’s just not address the afterlife thing, because no one knows if there is an afterlife.   We could get stuck on that discussion forever.  Even people who agree there is an afterlife, cannot agree on what it’s like.

But…telling someone who is suffering that it’s ok because after they die it will all cease is very cruel, no matter what religion/belief system says it.   It’s cruel because it implies that nothing needs to be done to end their suffering and pain.

Aside #2: And in the case of Mother Teresa, that kind of thinking was indeed used to do nothing about peoples’ pain and suffering. See “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice” by Christopher Hitchens, and “Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict” written by Aroup Chatterjee (this man is a native of Calcutta, where Mother Teresa did the majority of her evil “work”).  That second book might be hard to find, as it appears the publisher no longer has a website.

I want to address this whole idea that everything everyone does has some kind of cosmic relevance that all gets spewed back out in a system of punishments and rewards.

Aside #3: Please don’t write and tell me I have completely misinterpreted the Buddhist notion of karma, as I am not addressing that.  I know nothing about Buddhism.  I am merely commenting on the pop-culture version of karma, with all its implications.

Now I know some of you are thinking, “Wow she gets upset over the throwaway ‘karma’ comment!”  Yeah, I know.

But the whole point of my blog (and, indeed, it seems the whole point of my life) is to raise awareness of the consequences – intended and otherwise – of people’s words, good and bad.

Words do have impact.  Words reflect thoughts, and they can also change others’ thinking.

Words lead to action, or encourage inaction, and that has material consequences on the world.

However.

Words and actions do not end up being recorded in some kind of ethereal book somewhere, with some deity or deities sitting around deciding what actions and words prompt a reward or punishment for the speaker/doer.

If this were the case, then why is there suffering for children and animals and other innocents? What did they do to deserve the horrors they face?

There are 3 responses to this from people who assert that “everything happens for a reason” (another platitude I really hate):

  1.  We don’t know why, as God/whatever deity you worship works in ways we do not understand.  We just have to trust that he/she knows best.
  2.  They did something in a past life to merit suffering in this one.  Or, they chose to suffer in this life, between this life and their last one.
  3.   Newton’s Third Law: “For every action force there is an equal (in size) and opposite (in direction) reaction force.” (“Identifying Action and Reaction Force Pairs”, The Physics Classroom website, no date or author given)

This last one is the easiest to dispute, as it confuses causality with intention.

In other words, things that happen do have a cause – for example, hurricanes are caused by atmospheric and oceanic conditions.

But hurricanes do not possess intention: no hurricane set itself in motion to punish certain groups of people who are ultimately devastated by them.

People who state “everything happens for a reason” are stating that everything that happens is a direct result of intention, and I’m sure you can think of many reasons why this isn’t true.

Hurricanes being the one that came to my mind.  Now, if you really do believe that hurricanes are “sent” to punish people, you would then have to go on to explain what those people – in some cases, millions of people – did to get something horrible like that imposed on them by some deity, or by the hurricane itself.

If you can answer that with certainty, we really have no dialogue because you are then arguing from a position of faith, and that’s not something people can have rational discourse about.

Or, to use an even more mundane example, let’s take the case of a car accident where someone’s loved one has passed.

Sometimes people try to comfort the relatives by saying, “Everything happens for a reason.”

And, while it is tempting to retort, “Of course it happened for a reason – the reason was someone got behind the wheel drunk, hit their car, and they died, you idiot!” that’s not what the would-be comforter meant at all.

No, what was meant was, “This accident happened because, in the grand scheme of things, my deity decided it had to happen.  I don’t know how it fits, but just be comforted that it does, somehow.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t find this at all comforting.  In fact, if I thought my deity did something so cruel in order to carry out some sort of overall plan, I’d be really pissed off about that.

Some deity decided he/she needed to kill my loved one because it fulfilled some kind of overall plan, and didn’t even have the decency to explain it?

No, that just doesn’t seem to fit at all, actually.

The first two reasons behind the idea that “everything happens for a reason” are things that can’t really be addressed properly, because it’s all faith-based in some form or another.

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“La la la la I Can’t Hear You…”

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As in, stick fingers in ears and repeat as necessary.

This is the reaction I have been getting to my blog, and, oddly, one I got in person yesterday.

To provide some context: I emailed a friend to ask him why I can’t seem to get any feedback from anyone except him.  Don’t get me wrong, his feedback has been invaluable to me, as it’s always dead-on and helpful.  I was asking him because I had sort of taken an informal poll of many of my other friends, asking them how they thought I could improve the blog and so on.

Every single answer I received was evasive, from suggestions I find a forum for blog writers, to just not responding at all.  In between there were comments such as, “I don’t feel qualified to say”, and things of that nature.

I was very put off by these responses, so I asked my friend what he thought.

He told me that these people are most likely uncomfortable with what I write, so they either don’t read it, or they don’t know what to say in response to it.

Aside #1: I did get some unasked-for and unwanted feedback from someone who is tangentially related to me, who wrote me several times that I am too negative and therefore am attracting negativity, and that I ought to “just not care” about all the bad things I see and hear on a daily basis. That was so far off-base as to who I am and what I am trying to do, that I couldn’t really count that as “constructive criticism”.

Anyway, he added that I should keep writing, and keep trying to raise awareness of what it’s like being poor, disabled, and over 50 in the US.  I appreciated that a lot more than anyone will ever know.

But his point about people being uncomfortable was borne out in an interaction I had just yesterday, on Christmas.

I am currently visiting my son and his wife in Memphis.  They typically have her parents and 2 family friends over for Christmas dinner and what-not.  It’s always an enjoyable time.

But after dinner, when a lot of them were hanging out in the kitchen (cleaning up and watching the cleaning up heh), I sat in the living room so I could keep one of their guests company (this was one of the family friends).

She asked about Pennsylvania.  I told her I liked it, in general, and I was volunteering at the local hospital gift shops (they have 2), but that I was glad to be elsewhere because it was starting to get me down and drive me a little mad.

She asked why.  I began to relate the “holiday dinner incident” (“Let Them Eat Cake, Replied the Food Bank Staff”), in which a friend of one of the gift shop managers made some really uncalled-for remarks about people who use food banks and food stamps.

I had just gotten to the part where I was repeating the woman saying, “They shouldn’t take so much bread”, when my listener said…

“Stop!  I don’t want to hear it!” And put both her hands up in the “stop” position – palms out, facing me.

I stopped.  I looked at her and blinked.  I thought, “Well, now, this is unusual and a bit rude.”

She went on to state, “Tell me something good.  Otherwise, I don’t want to hear it.”

So I stammered, “Um, the older ladies I volunteer with are all really funny, and I enjoy their company…”

“That’s great!” she exclaimed.  She continued, “I don’t think you should have let the woman in the gift shop say those things.  I think you should have told her to be quiet because she was being negative.”

I blinked again.

“I can’t really do that,” I explained, “as I like my volunteer gig and they can actually ‘fire’ me for saying something like that to a customer, no matter how out-of-line she might be.”

I went on to state that I use these kinds of experiences to blog, so I can let others know what it’s like out there in the real world where people say awful things.  That I hoped it would foster some kind of understanding in people as to how people like me live from day to day.

I also told her that, had she let me continue, I would have told her what I said to this customer in order to attempt to raise her awareness.

“The best thing you can do is just tell them to be quiet, then walk away.  Then forget about it,” she advised.

I replied, “The thing is, I have done things like that, and have lost nearly every job I have ever had for either telling people they were wrong, or otherwise antagonizing them.”

She said, “But that’s a good thing.”

I thought, “Easy for you to say, you aren’t going to risk YOUR job by telling others to be quiet.”

But I didn’t say that out loud.

Instead, I changed the subject and we chatted about inane things – I can’t even remember what – until the others came in.

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“Let Them Eat Cake”, Replied the Food Bank Staff

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No, I don’t know any food bank staff who said this.  And yes, I know Marie Antoinette never said that (here is a link explaining the possible origins of that phrase).

It’s just a title to get your attention.  But, yes, this post will be about hunger and public attitudes.

I felt a need to write another blog post because I was in tears coming home from my volunteer gig yesterday.

It sometimes feels as if my words – either in print or verbally – have no impact, no matter how often I repeat them, explain them, or try to appeal to peoples’ humanity.

Yesterday, the bigwigs at the hospital held a holiday dinner for the volunteers.  It was pretty good.  And, aside from the administrators standing by the buffet, all in a row, wishing everyone who got food a “Merry Christmas”, it was a nice thing to do.

The administrator “line-up” is something one sees a lot in situations like these.  And, as an employee/volunteer, you are expected to thank them humbly, each and every one of them. They, for their parts, stand there looking every bit of “noblesse oblige” with smug smiles on their faces.

But, hey, I can play that game so it just pinched my heart a tiny bit.

I took my food and went back to the gift shop, as much to avoid some other volunteers for whom I did not have patience that day as avoiding the atmosphere in the room.

When I got back, the manager was there with a friend of hers who works in some department in the hospital – clerical, not clinical.  The manager is nice, and I enjoy working with her.

Her friend had always been nice and friendly, so I didn’t have a problem with her…until yesterday.

The first thing out of her mouth was, “I thought you needed your cane to walk, but I was surprised to see you go get your food without it.”  She was smiling as she said it, though the smile did not reach her eyes.

I was caught off-guard by this.  I am not used to people making personal remarks like that.  And, as usual when I am surprised, I default to the truth.  Instead of just not answering, which clearly would have been the normal option.

I said to her, “I usually do use it, but when I know I have to carry something I don’t, because then I will have several people making a fuss and trying to carry things for me, and I am not comfortable with that.  But it will make it hard on my back the rest of the day.”

She smirked.  She actually smirked!

I decided to just eat my food and let it go.

But apparently she had a bee in her bonnet or something because she decided to continue to talk to me.

“How’s the food?” she asked.

“Better than at many places I’ve eaten, like at the senior center,” I replied, since she had wrinkled up her nose as if she wouldn’t deign to eat the dinner.

“Yeah, they really don’t serve very good food at places like that,” she continued.  Then she turned to the manager and said, “I hate to even drive by those places, because I see people with shopping carts full of free bread!   They shouldn’t take so much!  I can’t afford to buy that much bread!”

I remained quiet, and continued to eat, not even looking up.

She added, “And they’re on food stamps!  What do they need so much bread for?  They’re lucky to get any food from the food bank.”

I looked up.

“It’s hard because the food bank often doesn’t have good food,” I explained.  “For example, many people give large amounts of canned corn and unhealthy food like ramen, so maybe some people supplement by using bread,” I suggested.

I added, “When I have used the food bank, it’s mostly donations of baked goods, corn, high sodium canned goods, and a lot of unhealthy things I cannot eat.  With choices like that, sometimes the bread is the healthiest, most filling option.”

And here it came…

“People who are hungry have no right to decide what they should get from the food bank.  If they’re really hungry, they’ll eat it.  And, like I said, I can’t afford to buy 6 loaves of bread, why just last week I was at JC Penney and I had to spend $24 on a pair of slacks…”

I tuned her out.

I looked at this woman, who claimed she couldn’t afford 6 loaves of bread – she had on full makeup, her hair was salon perfect, she had very nice clothes and jewelry on, as well as very expensive shoes.

My first reaction was to want to reach in my wallet, pull out $6, hand it to her, and say…

“Here you go, now you can buy 6 loaves of out-of-date bread.”

But, of course, I didn’t.  Because this woman is not worth me losing my gig over.

I tried again.  I know I shouldn’t have, but I did.

“I don’t know many people who have food stamps and also use the food bank who take more than their share,” I stated.  “And for someone to be pushing a shopping cart through the streets of Altoona during winter suggests to me that they might have a mental health issue.”

She ignored me, continuing on….”Some old woman told me that she hates food bank food because it has bugs in it!  Can you imagine?  Here she was, getting free food, and…”

Her voice took on the “wah wah wah” of a Peanuts cartoon, when the adults talk.

The last thing I heard her say was, “And that’s why I never donate to charity.”

I tuned her out for good this time.

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Redefining Terrorism: Donald Trump and the Politics of Fear

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According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, one of the definitions of “terrorism” is “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion” (Merriam-Webster online).

“Terror” is defined as “a very strong feeling of fear” (Ibid).

According to the F.B.I., domestic terrorism has the following components:

  • Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
  • Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
  • Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. (“Definitions of Terrorism in the U.S. Code”, F.B.I. website, ref. 18 U.S.C. 2331).

Keep that in mind as you read today’s post.

This post is about Donald Trump, a candidate running for the Republican Party nomination for president.

For the future readers (refer to my “About” page if you don’t know what I mean by this), Donald Trump is a very rich man who is running for president of the United States in 2016.  His grandfather made his money by owning restaurants/brothels in the late 1890s during  the Klondike Gold Rush (“Donald’s Trump Grandfather Got Rich in the Yukon with Hotels Known for ‘Female Companionship’ “, Dermot Cole, Alaska Dispatch News website, 9/12/15).

Donald Trump increased the fortune he was born with by investing in property, primarily.  I am not going to cite his biography or CV or anything, because it’s just not worth my time.  There are plenty of sources if readers want to research Trump’s background.

He has made a lot of foolish statements during his lifetime, but the latest ones are worrisome because he actually wants to be president.  He seems to have a rather large grassroots base, mostly because he parrots the worst fears and extreme hatred of some segments of the American population.

He doesn’t research before he speaks, and he even cites faulty polls or, in some cases, completely misrepresents what polls have concluded, in order to advance his ideology.

It appears, at this point, that the Republican Party does not support him or his awful ideas.

So, what prompted this blog post was a speech Trump gave on December 7, 2015, to an audience aboard the USS Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.  In it, he literally read a proposal – referring to himself in the third person (can you see my eyes rolling?) – in which he stated he wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the US “until our country’s representatives can figure out what’s going on” (“Donald Trump’s Call for Banning Muslims from Entering U.S. Draws Condemnation”, David Jackson, USA Today website, 12/7/2015).

He also stated

“Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life” (Ibid).

In case you missed it, he was saying that all Muslims “believe only in jihad” and have “no respect for human life”.

He is repeating something that ultra-conservative, right-wing extremists say, that the actual religion of Islam is inherently violent, so all Muslims are inherently violent.

Other people, maybe not so political, also believe these things because:

  1.  They don’t know any Muslims personally.
  2.  They have never read any books about the history of Islam.
  3.  They have never read any books about the origins of terrorism.
  4.  They think all Muslims are Arabs who hate the U.S.
  5.  They don’t use critical thinking skills, and just believe everything that either confirms their     biases or panders to their fears of “the other”.

The San Bernardino shooters are held up as a failure of the ‘fiancee visa’ program, and of the immigration program in general.

The problem with all this is that you cannot just ban people from coming to the U.S., based on their religion.  And, until Trump started sputtering and backtracking today due to the backlash his comments received from the right, middle, and left (basically, from everyone with a brain), when he said “all Muslims”, he included American-born Muslims coming back from vacation, and Muslims in the U.S. military coming home from duty.

Trump cited Franklin D. Roosevelt’s use of internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII, stating that what he (Trump) was suggesting wasn’t as bad as that; the implication being that, if the public accepted the internment camps, they ought to accept Trump’s plan, too.

Or, as he also implied, if people thought Roosevelt was a great president, they ought to think Trump is, too, as his idea about banning Muslims from the U.S. isn’t as bad as putting them in internment camps.

However he tried to spin it, it sounded awful.  Because it is awful.

That’s like saying, “But Hitler cremated living people, and all I’m doing is banning them from the U.S. based on their religion – see how what I want isn’t bad?”

Which, as any first-year logic student can tell you, are false and patently ridiculous arguments.

And we all used to dismiss Trump as an idiot, a blowhard, and a narcissist whose world is divided into 2 parts – winners (him), and losers (everyone else).  In fact, he stated as much to Don Lemon on CNN last night (12/8/15) – I heard it myself.

He is an idiot, a blowhard, and a narcissist.  The problem is, he’s very rich, and so he has a lot of power…and he incites his base of supporters into doing some hateful things, by using a combination of whipping up xenophobic hysteria and flattery (telling his supporters how much smarter they are than everyone else).

For example, in August of this year, 2 men were arrested for beating a homeless man of Mexican nationality, and one of them told the police, “Donald Trump was right about deporting all these illegals” (“Police: Man Who Beat Homeless Mexican Said ‘Trump was Right’ “ Associated Press via the PBS website, 8/21/2015).

That was during a time when Trump was focusing on the “danger” from immigrants, particularly those from Mexico, claiming they were mostly criminals (“Donald Trump’s False Comments Connecting Mexican Immigrants and Crime”, Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Washington Post website, 7/8/2015).

All he is doing now is switching “Mexicans” for “Muslims”, and attempting to reinforce and spread fear in order to…

…intimidate a civilian population, and/or influence the policy of a government by intimidation.

Now scroll up and read the F.B.I.’s definition of domestic terrorism again.

In case you need another example, after his latest gaffe speech, someone threw a pig’s head at a Pennsylvania mosque (“Philly Religious Leaders Condemn Donald Trump’s Anti-Islamist Rhetoric”, Sandy Smith, Philadelphia News + Opinion website, 12/8/2015).

Additionally, a N.Y. shopkeeper was beaten after a customer stated, “I want to kill Muslims” (“Jittery Muslim Americans Accuse Trump of Inciting Violence”, Jennie Matthew, Times of Israel website, 12/8/2015).

I would also like to add an observation about the public at large:  I have been watching “liberal” news on TV (Anderson Cooper, for the most disappointing example I can think of) actually buy into this “all Muslims are terrorists” by having “experts” such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali of the “AHA Foundation” state that “most Muslims” will react to Trump’s rhetoric by “becoming more devout”, to which she added that part of being a devout Muslim was being violent.

She stated that she rejects the word “radicalization” because violent Muslims are devout Muslims (and therefore common, not some kind of atypical minority of Muslims).

I was surprised because this woman runs an organization that, on the face of it, appears somewhat progressive, claiming to want to end female genital mutilation and other horrors. She speaks out against the “oppression of women under Islam”.

Of course, progressive in one area does not necessarily mean progressiveness in other areas, and this woman clearly blames the entire Islamic religion for the policies of extremists.

Horrors committed by a government that tries to justify them by claiming religious authority is one of the oldest cons around.  It does not mean we ought to indict an entire religion.

By using progressives to support blanket misconceptions about Muslims in general, CNN is making it ok for liberals to be as anti-Muslim as Trump.

I see that as a very dangerous thing and an attempt to deliberately mislead the American public.

For another example, I was surprised by watching Dr. Drew make some small noises of agreement for policies based on religion, as well.  And while I have no respect for him as a clinician, I do consider him a liberal.

One example of his lack of clinical knowledge is, when Amy Winehouse died, he stated that it was impossible to die from alcohol withdrawal!  That you can indeed die from that is a basic fact of alcoholism and there is no excuse for a “addiction specialist”, as he bills himself, to not know that.

Anyway, he didn’t come right out and say he agreed with “Muslim=terrorist”, but in a discussion with an audience last night, he basically shouted down any audience member who suggested that blanket anti-Muslim statements were ignorant and based on a lack of critical thinking.

It alarms me when liberals start agreeing with fascist types.  I know that often they are the first group to fold when the going gets tough (read that as “to save their own asses”), so my cynical self isn’t surprised, just dismayed – because I don’t want things to get to the point in this country where the sane people are in danger of being persecuted in some way.

Sane people like my friends, my family, and me.

I think it’s tragic and ironic that the “anti-terrorist” rhetoric coming from liberals and conservatives alike is causing my blood to run colder than anything that’s been said or done since the 9/11 attacks.

That’s real terror.

I have another blog post for tomorrow night, and will post “weird news” and my recommendations at that time.

 

No, I Wasn’t Blaming Christians…

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Sigh.  I should have known better.

I got some heat yesterday for my post about the San Bernardino shootings, from Christians.

So now I feel as if I have to explain my comments, because it wasn’t my intent to upset people who have a belief system that is different from mine.

I made the comment that it pissed me off to see pictures of the survivors of the shootings standing outside the building where it happened, holding hands and praying.

YES, they have every right to do that, public building notwithstanding.  Though, technically…

Perhaps my complaint ought to rest with the press, who took the picture.  I really don’t know.

It could have ended badly for those people if Christians – or non-Muslims – were the targets. I’m pretty sure they didn’t consider that, as at that time not much was known about what happened or why.

My reaction to it was based on the continuing, nearly constant public displays of people asserting their right to pray everywhere – at least in Central PA (and they do that in Memphis, too, where I moved here from).

Also, there are the constant comments online and in the media from Muslims asserting their rights to believe as they wish, always with the caveat that terrorists “aren’t them, it’s the other guys”.   CAIR comes to mind, for example.  They can always be counted upon to deny that anyone “bad” is connected in any way to Islamic extremism.

I am not commenting on CAIR’s funding or anything else the right-wing crazies accuse them of – I am basing my comments strictly on what CAIR says publicly, in press conferences.

Basically, my message was this:  I am tired of extremists of any kind.  I am tired of people stomping around and screaming about their religious views.  ANY religious views.

And lately, it’s everywhere – this “war on Christmas” silliness that gets bandied about on public transportation and the senior van (what happened to all the progressives when they got older?), on the radio, on TV, in the gift shop I volunteer in, and so on.

On the internet, it’s Islamic extremists and their anti-Semitic rhetoric on Facebook, their insistence on using the comments section of the “Times of Israel” to troll their hatred for Jews (and Christians), and their CAIR press conferences that no one seems to ever comment on unless they are batshit, Pam Geller-like crazy.

I AM SICK OF ALL OF IT.

NO, I do not blame Christians for the attack in San Bernardino.  I made my comments, just wondering, if the constant drum-beating by conservatives and fundamentalist Christians might, JUST MIGHT, have triggered something horrible in an already unstable fundamentalist of another kind.

What those two people did is on them.  Period.

Why people cannot just be who they are, without pushing it on everyone within earshot, and deal with each other as fellow human beings, is beyond me.

I realize it is in the nature of fundamentalists to convert everyone they see, or that non-believer faces some dire consequence either by some evil spirit on earth or in the afterlife.

I think I speak for most when I say this: WE ALL KNOW THERE IS A BIBLE, AND A KORAN.  WE KNOW WE CAN READ THESE BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY OR BUY THEM AT BOOKSTORES.  IF WE DO NOT BELIEVE AS YOU DO, IT’S NOT BECAUSE WE’VE NEVER HEARD OF YOUR RELIGION.

Shut up already.  That was my only message.  To everyone.  Quit trying to proselytize everyone you meet, quit making a show of your conversations with your deity (Matthew 6:5), and don’t assume everyone believes as you do.

Don’t assume that if you threaten people on Facebook, spew Islamist extremist hate anywhere on the internet, or post videos on YouTube instructing people on how to kill Jews, that people will just turn a blind eye now.  The ‘youth group’ (as I like to think of them) Anonymous has already put you on notice.

And after the San Bernardino shootings, most Americans are probably going to be a little more watchful, and a little more willing to report the potential for terrorist attacks or hate crimes now.

And, for the sake of everything sane and moral, don’t shoot/blow up/vandalize people or places where people gather who disagree with you – this includes Planned Parenthood, mosques, synagogues, and New Age stores unluckily named Isis (you know, after the goddess).

I think that just about covers everyone.  Ok?

 

 

Jingo Bells, Jingo Bells, Jingo All The Way

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Since part of this blog attempts to comment on/document current events for future readers, this post will be primarily about the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015.  And I will also discuss some particularly hysterical, nationalistic American reactions to those attacks (hence the title).

The very nature of terrorism is such that attacks are designed to paralyze societies with fear.  In that way, the latest attacks were somewhat successful, because I read/hear/see a lot of very terrified people now.  Which is amazing, considering I live in Central Pennsylvania, a rather bucolic and boring part of the US.

I would say that the likelihood of a terrorist attack in Altoona or Hollidaysburg is basically non-existent.  But the people here are scared to death, or at least a very vocal sector is.

Here is the timeline of the attacks, courtesy of the Irish Times website (“Paris Terror Attacks: A Timeline from Friday to Thursday”, no author named, 11/19/2015):

~ At 9:20 PM, the first of 3 explosions is heard at the Stade de France, where fans were watching France play Germany in a “friendly” (soccer, or European football match, where the outcome does not affect a team’s rank).

~ At 9:25 PM, a black sedan pulls up near a crowded restaurant/bar, and 2 men with Kalashnikovs get out and spray the place with bullets, killing 15 people.

~ At 9:30 PM, the second bomb goes off at the Stade de France.  2 bombers and 1 unidentified man are killed.

~ At 9:33 PM, another black sedan pulls up outside a restaurant, men get out and start shooting.  5 people are killed and 8 are seriously injured.

~ At 9:36 PM, another shooting occurs outside a restaurant, killing 19 people.  Most of them had been sitting outside, enjoying the evening.

~ At 9:40 PM, a man walks into yet another restaurant and detonates an explosive vest.  He is killed and 15 people are injured.

~ At 9:46 PM, the president of France (who was also at the stadium at the time of the attacks) prepares to declare a state of emergency.

~ At 9:49 PM, gunmen enter a theater where a rock concert is taking place and start shooting. Some take hostages on the stage.  The police finally storm the theater at 12:20, but by that time 89 people are dead.

~ At 9:53 PM, an attacker detonates an explosive vest outside McDonald’s, apparently killing only himself.

~ At 11:30 PM, President Hollande declares a state of emergency.

~ In the next few days, places in Belgium and Germany are raided.  Arrests are made, mostly for people being connected to a person who police know was involved in the attacks – Bilal Hadfi, one of the jihadists who blew himself up outside the French stadium.

~ Police also raid a residence in Saint-Denis on Wednesday, killing the person who coordinated the attacks – Abdelhamid Abaaoud.  A woman detonated a vest during the raid, and was also killed.

At the time of this blog post, 129 people are dead, and 352 are injured (99 critically so).  The victims are from 15 different countries (Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Chile, Mexico, Morocco, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, and the US).

All 7 attackers are dead – 6 from suicide and 1 shot by police (“Paris Attacks: French Terrorist Named as Vigils Held Around the World – As It Happened”, Chris Johnston, Ben Quinn, Raya Jalabi, and Claire Phipps, The Guardian online, 11/15/15).

One of the attackers is French, named Omar Ismail Mostefai, from the south of France (Ibid). Not a recent immigrant – he was born in France.  This is important, I think, when looking at the reaction of some people, who blame immigrants for this incident.

That’s all I am going to write about him, because I don’t think he deserves any more words.  I have read a lot of commentary about this incident, and about jihadists and their motivations and so on, but what it comes down to for me, as a psychologist, is this:

It doesn’t matter what happens outside of you, it is something internal to you that causes you to behave in this monstrous way.  YOU.  Not the US, not Israel, not religion, not your parents, not your poverty, not your race.  YOU are ultimately responsible for what you do, and it takes a very warped (or non-existent) moral compass to step over the line from hating to murdering.

So, anyway, that was the basic timeline.

Immediately, people made French-flag-colored avatars to paste over their Facebook pictures, to show their solidarity with France.

Aside #1: Really nice of them to do that, I guess, but what about the attacks in Nigeria recently? An 11 year old girl blew herself up in a marketplace, no doubt forced to by Boko Haram – who claimed responsibility (“Police: Bombers, One of Them 11, Target Nigeria Market”, Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN website, 11/19/15).  Where’s her flag?  I guess some of us only care about what happens in white Europe.

Many posted extremely hateful things about Muslims and immigrants, blaming them for the tragedy.  A lot of Americans ranted about the US taking in and relocating refugees from Syria, claiming that jihadists are “sneaking in” that way.

This climate of fear is being fueled by sites such as Fox News, Breitbart, Allen West, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump.  These guys are right-wing “Christians”, who do not want the US to take in refugees.

But, according to WorldVision – which is an evangelical Christian organization founded in 1950 – half of the 12 million people who are fleeing Syria are children.  

They are fleeing due to violence (over 240,000 people have been killed since the Syrian civil war began, and 12,000 of them were children).  Aid groups have a hard time reaching people in Syria who need help, because the Syrian infrastructure has been destroyed (you know, things like hospitals and schools).  Sometimes children are used as combatants and shields, too (“What You Need to Know: Crisis in Syria, Refugees, and the Impact on Children”, World Vision Staff, World Vision website, 11/3/15).

When Americans say, “Well, why don’t they go to Saudi Arabia or Jordan, instead of coming here?”, the answer is simple: they are not welcome there.

Those countries do not even have resettlement programs – people can go there to work as skilled workers, or stay in refugee camps, but they are never allowed to become citizens and their stays can be cancelled at any time, for any reason (“Gulf States Fend Off Criticism About Doing Little for Syrian Refugees”, Deborah Amos, NPR website, 11/20/15).

So they flee to Europe, where they hope they will be safe.  And they also would like to come to the US, as our country still does have the reputation of taking in and caring for people who need us.

Do people forget the Statue of Liberty, given to us by France?  Oh, the irony.

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Small World, Small Minds

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Note: I started my volunteer gig on Monday.  My very first day, I sort of got in trouble for reporting a problem that the “powers that be” subsequently told me wasn’t a problem.  

So, I am going to avoid situations where the “not-a-problem” comes up, in order to stay clean if the shit hits the fan.  Because I take these kinds of “not-a-problem” things really seriously and will not risk my reputation – such as it is – for social reasons and to “get along”.  

Yesterday I atoned for it by repackaging 160 bags of candy for resale.  And was chatty and pretended to like being bossed around by 80 year old women who get sarcastic and mean if things are not done “just so”.

I marveled at the fact that they were able to sit and stand for much longer periods of time than I was. Physically, these first days were hard on me.  The walk to the bus stop to go home is uphill and difficult.  I fell asleep both days during the hour-long trip on the bus going home.

Thankfully, I have today off.

Today’s blog post is about something that happened last week on the van…

I recently wrote a blog post called “Free Garbage is Still…Garbage”, in which I mentioned that many people do not understand how poor folk live in America.  I was writing mainly about people who have never “been there”, people who never think about unpleasant things like hunger and poverty, or people who basically think that being poor is self-inflicted.

Well, I ran into another representative of a group of people who like to complain about people who live on disability – that small but vocal percentage of people who are on disability themselves, but who deserve it!  Because they’re really sick!  They really can’t work!

But those “other” lazy bums, they can!  It’s not right!

I was riding the senior van to a facility, going to my volunteer gig orientation.  A very obese man sat in a wheelchair behind me and started the conversation with, “I used to be in a workfare program, and they were supposed to hire me at the job I worked after 2 years, but after 4 years I hadn’t been hired so I demanded that they hire me!”

“Uh oh,” thought I, “a real charmer.”

“Of course,” he continued, “they said why should they hire me when they can get welfare to pay me?”

By now I am rolling my eyes.  Because you just know that no one said any such thing.

Aside #1: It may have actually been true, but I don’t think they would have told him that to his face – that kind of stuff results in lawsuits.

So he was embellishing somewhat, ok.  We all do it sometimes.

“But then I got arthritis,” he said, “and I couldn’t work.”

He paused, then angrily stated, “It doesn’t matter anyway, because you have to know someone or be related to someone in order to get a job here.  I even went to go see the guy I used to caddy for, and told him I needed a job, but he wouldn’t hire me!  I told him he could either hire me, or pay my way through his social security payments!”

Yeah, because that will surely convince someone to give you a job.

Aside #2: Again, there is some truth to the idea that, in provincial Altoona and in the even more provincial surrounding small towns, you have to know someone/be related to someone to get a job. Mostly because everyone around here is related to someone, or knows someone who is connected to them in some way, who is in a position to hire them/give them a reference (or talk unkindly about them being a troublemaker, in my case).

He was on a roll now. “But you know what makes me so mad?  All these bums on social security who say they can’t work because they have drug and alcohol problems.  They just have to set their minds to not using or drinking, and go back to work!  They’re just lazy!”

Ding ding ding – hot button pushed, right there.

“Now wait a minute,” I objected, “people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol do have a hard time holding a job.  They have a problem that needs to be addressed.”

“Yeah, but it’s all in their heads!  They could work if they wanted to!” he argued.

I sighed.  “You would agree that these substances affect your brain, right?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

“And you would agree that your brain is the thing you think with?  So these substances cause an impairment in the way people think,” I tried to explain.

“Exactly!” he beamed.  “That’s why they can just set their minds to not doing it anymore, and go to work!”

I gave up.  He clearly wasn’t going to get it.  I tried another tactic.

“Welfare and social security fraud is only at about 2%, that’s less than just about at any other government program.  So it’s not that many people,” I stated.

“I know TONS of guys who just sit around all day.  Why, just look at THEM!”  He pointed to 3 guys crossing the street.  They were all about 30, I guess, and were not white.

“Do you know them?” I asked.

“Well, no, but they should be at work!” he exclaimed.

Ok, this guy was just not going to get it.  He has decided that any minority person who is ambulatory and “doesn’t look sick” is just scamming the system.  People like him never seem to change.

So I dropped the subject and stared out the window at the scenery, annoyed.

With all the problems this guy has – health being the major one – he is worried about people he thinks might be taking advantage of the opulent living we on social security disability have?

But he himself is on social security disability.  Surely he knows this ain’t no “high-on-the-hog” living.

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Free Garbage is Still…Garbage.

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I remember talking to someone a few years back, about the local food pantry here in our little town (which is also the county seat, so it’s not exactly unsophisticated).   I had good and bad comments about the food pantry, but the whole experience left me wondering about how that and the healthcare system are somewhat intertwined.

First, the positive – the food pantry here delivers.  That’s really awesome and helpful, especially since the pantry is on the outskirts of town, where buses don’t go.  So, for those of us without a car, that’s a really nice thing for them to do.

The people who deliver the food are very nice, and when you try to thank them they say, “Don’t thank me, thank God,” which I take as the modest statement it is.  They are using their own cars to bring food to my apartment, and I think it’s really nice of them to do that.

Aside #1: Contrary to some misconceptions, I do not argue with every Christian who expresses thoughts about Jesus or saints or whatever deity they choose.  I fully support their right to believe as they wish.  My complaints only come into play when they try to force others to believe as they do, or force others to participate in their worship, or make judgments about neo-Pagans/non-believers being evil and so on.

The bad part about the food pantry here?  It’s nothing but unhealthy food.

Day-old baked goods like cake and cookies (which are, of course, yummy), white bread, canned vegetables with high salt content and lined with BPA, juice “drinks” (basically the ones with juice flavoring and sugar), hot dogs, beans (in cans, not dried beans), and tomato soup (very high in sodium).  And usually ramen – lots and lots of ramen.

Aside #2: Beans are the only things that are remotely healthy on this list, but they always seem to come in extremely large cans, are processed, and in general are not all that good for you. I don’t know why they don’t give out dried beans, as these are much cheaper, keep longer, and are easy to make – and better for you.

I received this a couple of times when my son was living here with me, as we had a very hard time making ends meet on just my food stamps.  Thankfully, he got some assistance and we didn’t have to call these folks again.

Thankfully, too, he got a job down south years ago and never has to live like this again.

I mentioned the unhealthiness of this stuff to someone, who then turned to me and said, “At least it’s free.”

Garbage out of dumpsters is free, too, but it’s still garbage.

Since the person I was talking to was somewhat conservative, I asked him what he thought the extra cost to the healthcare system is, due to people eating unhealthy food for prolonged periods of time.

Aside #3: Heart disease, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and other diseases can sometimes be prevented, or often can be ameliorated, by eating decent food.  That means little or no sugar, fresh vegetables (or at least frozen ones), fruit, fiber (like beans), and grains.

He thought for a minute and said, “I think we should pass laws so people can only buy certain things with food stamps.   That way, they would have to eat healthy food.”

Sigh.  I should have known – conservatives are not known for their generosity.  Or for their understanding of how po’ folk live.  Or for supporting other peoples’ self-determination.

Should we also pass laws telling private charities what they can and cannot give out at the food pantry, too?

Of course not.  The answer lies in education.  Education for everyone.

The people running the food pantries need to be educated so they can in turn educate their donors on what to give.  I think most people would love to know that what they give could make a huge difference in someone’s health.  And I think if they knew what to buy, and were shown how cheaply they can buy it, it would be a win/win kind of thing.

The people receiving food from the pantry could use some education, too (no, not all of them, and it’s not just the poor – most Americans don’t eat healthily).  I don’t mean about the food groups and so on, I mean education regarding how to prepare meals from scratch.

Many people do not know how to cook from scratch, poor or not.  But it’s not hard.  Cooking rice and beans from scratch takes time, mostly, not brains.  You can cook a whole bunch on the weekend and freeze it all, if need be.

Some poor people do actually work (for Walmart, too, but that’s another blog post).  They have families.  They might not have the energy or time to cook from scratch, unless they are given the tools by which to do so.

By “tools”, I mean…cookbooks.  Heck, you can have volunteers cut recipes from magazines, punch holes in them, and put them in binders for very little effort or money.  Or you could get people to donate cookbooks (though that’s probably a bit harder – most people’s cookbooks are not basic like Adele Davis’ “Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit”).

Aside #4: I always thought Adele Davis wrote “Recipes for a Small Planet”, but that was Frances Moore Lappe.   Adele Davis, by the way, was the person who coined the phrase “You are what you eat.”

You could even – gasp – ask businesses to donate crockpots.  They are not very expensive, and you can dump all the ingredients into one, set it, go to work, and have dinner by the time you get home.

You could get people to donate freezer-ware, and include instructions.  You can get containers to freeze things in at Dollar Tree – and all their stuff is BPA-free, I asked.  $1 for a set of 3 or more – cheaper if you buy by the case.

All of these things still add up to a lot less than hospitalizing someone who’s had a heart attack or other possibly preventable illness.  Which would keep healthcare costs down – that wouldn’t satisfy Libertarians or right-wingers, who both want to see po’ folk not get any healthcare at all – but for most normal people, this would be a good thing.

And why should we think about how we can help the poor eat more healthy food, and save on Medicare/Medicaid costs?  Because it’s the decent thing to do, and because it saves money in the long run (i.e., your tax dollars – and theirs, too, by the way, since many of them work).

But…what about people who work and don’t qualify for food stamps or government health insurance?

To them I say, “Be quiet, and be grateful that your life isn’t so horrible that you have to sit in someone’s office for an hour and explain to them why you don’t have enough food to eat each month.”

Aside #5: The intake process at most food pantries is pretty hard on one’s pride.  They ask you how you got to where you are, and that’s a fairly painful question to answer.  Not even welfare workers ask such nosy questions, or look at you like you’re trying to put one over on them.

To them I also say, “You own a car and a house, have a retirement plan, savings account, and other things that poor people will probably never have.  We would all trade our food stamps and Medicare/Medicaid to have the income you have to afford all those things.”

We’d trade it all just to be able to work at a decent job.  To just have a shot at a life out of poverty.  Most of us aren’t lazy – if people who thought that had to live for a month as we do, where everything takes twice as long to do, or in some cases isn’t even doable, I think they would understand the amount of effort it takes just to survive.

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“You Kids Get Off My Lawn!”

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The above title is often used on the internet to denote cranky old folks.  It evokes a picture of an elderly person on his or her porch, shaking a cane and yelling at kids who are crossing his or her lawn.  It is the “old people are crabby” trope.

I am here to tell you, it’s not completely inaccurate.

I didn’t post last week because I was back and forth to a local social service agency, going through orientation and doing paperwork, so I can volunteer there.

The purpose of the volunteer program is to provide assistance to older people so that they can remain in their homes and not have to go to an institution of some kind to live.

I think it’s a great idea – the longer someone can stay independent, the better.  I am not a fan of institutionalizing anyone, for any reason, actually.  Not the elderly, not people with mental illness, not children with developmental problems, not anyone with any kind of special need.

Years ago, when I was taking special education classes at the University of Memphis, my professor talked a lot about how just being in an institution affects someone, whether or not the institution itself is a good one.

Think about it this way: If you had to live day in and day out being told what to do and when to do it, it would take a toll on your feelings of independence and autonomy, don’t you think?

We as a society talk a lot about how prison affects people, but don’t talk quite so much about how institutions as a whole affect people who have committed no crimes at all.  Yet many of the same conditions exist in institutions as in prisons (told when to eat, when to sleep, when you can go out, whether or not to take meds, and so on).

So, anyway, this program is in place to try to prevent people from being institutionalized.  I support that whole-heartedly.

The experiences at orientation and training last week are what prompted this week’s blog post.

Here comes the rant.

Everyone in this volunteer program (all 5 other volunteers) is older than I am. And, almost everyone who uses the services in this agency is older than I am, by at least 10 years.

Services start at age 60, but I have yet to see anyone younger than 70 participating.

But really, they are some of the crabbiest people I have met lately.

When there were breaks in the training, the main topics of conversation amongst the other volunteers were:

~ How schools today are wrecking our youth because they don’t have dress codes or prayer

~ How persecuted Christians are in this country because they can’t say “Merry Christmas” in Walmart and/or are prevented from exercising their religion wherever they see fit

~ How many Christian churches are different in how they worship, but “we all worship one god so we’re all saved anyway”

Do you see a pattern here?

These were also the frequent topics amongst different groups of people who were there to get lunch.  That, and passing around cartoons on smartphones that were less than respectful of President Obama, and that’s putting it kindly.

Added to that mix – what I guess was supposed to be flirting but came off more like sexist comments and raunchy remarks.

Now, anyone who knows me, knows I am not easily offended by sexual content.  But it struck me as bizarre that people who were in such a snit about the “lack of morality in today’s world” would then turn around and make a crack to someone about his private parts.

The response to that was a rape joke.

Let’s be clear about this: the people who talked this way do not have dementia or Alzheimer’s. They’re just jerks.  It’s been my experience that age doesn’t necessarily mean “nice” – young jerks turn into old jerks, it seems.

My mind was boggled.  Sitting there, waiting for lunch (which they so graciously provided for free), and listening to all that.

This, in a publicly-funded non-profit, where the volunteer coordinator asks before every lunch, “Who wants to lead the prayer?”

How persecuted are you when your own social service agency, which should know better, promotes Christian prayer before eating?

This is what drives me ’round the bend about fundamentalist Christians: They don’t appear to understand that they are not, in any way shape or form, persecuted in the US.

What they think of as “persecution”, others see as “letting others believe as they will”, “not forcing Christianity on the public at large”, or “realizing that we all – whatever we do or do not believe – fund public organizations and therefore do not have the right to favor one religion over another”.

Quite frankly, I am sick to death of listening to them complain about this.

But I kept quiet.  You know why?  Because I have an agenda, and I plan on sticking to it.

Part of that agenda is getting volunteer experience, part of it is also getting out and about and using my skills as a counselor again, and part of it is seeing how much I can physically handle in terms of work.

The bonus to all that is being able to help others.  And I wonder how many “others” mentally roll their eyes at a lot of this dialogue that goes on.

You see, the people that complain the loudest are assuming that everyone is like them: straight, white, conservative, Christian.

I’m fairly sure that, statistically, at least some of the people at the agency are none of those things, or at least not most of those things.

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October, Gently.

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domesticviolence1

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

This is an issue that I feel very strongly about, and the following is a re-write of a blog post I wrote one year ago.

I will continue to write at least yearly about this problem, forever.

I am not going to quote statistics.  I don’t think that’s necessary.

It is easy to see the violence that is perpetuated upon women, unfortunately, on a daily basis.  Even if you never leave your house, it’s on the news and it’s certainly on the internet.  I don’t think any reasonably sane person would argue that it doesn’t exist.

What I am here to write about is what you, as just an ordinary person, can do to help eliminate this problem.  It doesn’t have to cost money, and it doesn’t even have to take up much time.  But you can make a difference to some woman, somewhere, and I am going to tell you how.

For the edification of people who do not know me well, I have just a brief explanation of how this issue came to affect me.

I am a survivor of domestic violence.

Not just once, but a few times, beginning with the very first household where I grew up.  I witnessed it, and I was a target of it.

The reason I go all the way back to my childhood is two-fold: first, to illustrate that violence against women has never really been taken seriously until recently.

Second, it is to show that the effects of domestic abuse can have far-reaching consequences, even for intelligent women with advanced degrees in psychology (I once had a policeman in Memphis ask me, when called to my apartment while an ex was destroying it, “Don’t you know any better? You’re a psychologist!”).

There were no shelters, really, back in the day.  I am talking late 1950s up until around 1990 (in Memphis, in 2015, there is one domestic violence shelter, one, in a population of over 653,000).  Growing up in a pre-feminist era, just in time to see the growth of that movement, it’s hard for me to explain what it was like growing up in the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s.

ALL abuse – child, spousal, and to a certain extent animal, was pretty much blamed on the object of the violence, not the perpetrator.

People did not want to “cause trouble” by raising these issues – though thank goodness people did, or we would still be living in a world where certain members of the population are blamed for acts of violence they neither started, perpetuated, nor deserved (as if anyone deserves to be assaulted!).

Women covered up bruises and other evidence of violence – and we still do that today.  People saw the evidence but didn’t ask what happened, as it made them uncomfortable (“What if her husband hit her? What if he didn’t? Am I making a big deal out of nothing?”).

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have changed.

The police were not often called, and if they were, it was usually the man’s version of events that was believed (“She fell, she attacked me, she’s making a big deal out of nothing”, etc).

That has changed, thankfully.

I am not going to chronicle in detail the events that led up to me fleeing for my life to a domestic violence shelter in Altoona 5 years ago, because I am acutely aware of how very uncomfortable that makes people.

5 years ago, I was slapped, punched, kicked, tied to a chair, hit with various objects, strangled, smothered, had my hair pulled, spit on, pinched, bit (yes, really), screamed at, had my money/keys taken away, was isolated from everyone, had my spiritual beliefs mocked, had my pets threatened (I took them with me when I left), was stalked at work, and had my car sabotaged so I couldn’t leave.

I was humiliated in public several times.  No one who witnessed those incidences said or did anything to stop it.

The long-term effects of this experience are PTSD, dental issues from having things thrown at my mouth, and probably a lifetime of second-guessing any future romantic involvements I might ever have.

I am recovering from it.  Each year gets better. This blog helps.

I want to make people aware of what these things are, these aspects of abuse, so if you or someone you know is experiencing them you can know it’s not right/normal/deserved.

Physical abuse: I have detailed that previously but I think everyone knows this is anything that physically hurts or terrifies you – including throwing things, breaking things, and slamming doors. Oh and not letting you call an ambulance when he injures you.

Emotional abuse: Telling you who you can/cannot talk to/be around/communicate with on the internet, making fun of you (the kind that isn’t playful teasing), isolating you from friends and family by telling you they don’t care about you, telling you “no one can love you like I love you/no one will ever want you”.

Deriding your education/skills/talents, calling you ugly/stupid/worthless/crazy/fat and other awful things, putting you down to others, threatening to kill your pets, and generally making you feel like less than nothing.

If you already have self-esteem issues, and/or if you grew up in an abusive environment, this isn’t hard for someone to do to you.

Economic abuse: Controlling your money, hiding your money/keys/personal effects, interfering with your job, getting you fired or forcing you to quit (neglecting your children when you are working and he is home – for me, that wasn’t this last time, it was when I was married).  Telling you what you can and cannot buy.  Returning things you bought without your knowledge or consent.

Spiritual abuse: Making fun of your beliefs, not allowing you to attend services (or, in my case, conduct ceremonies), or threatening violence if you do not convert to whatever belief system your abuser has (this did not what happen to me, but to women I have known). Making it really uncomfortable for you by arguing with you about your beliefs, or making it uncomfortable for you to even express those beliefs.

It comes down to a lack of respect, really, and a lack of acceptance of you as a person.

No one who loves you is going to act like this.

Sexual abuse: I think most of us know what that is, but it also includes forcing someone into lifestyles they are not comfortable with (swinging, bdsm, etc).  The key is “something they are not comfortable with” – I make no judgments about lifestyle choices, as long as they are choices.

Basically, your body is yours, not someone else’s, and you are the one who says what is or isn’t done to it.

If you are experiencing any of this – and I would hope, as someone connected to me, you would come to me for help – get to a safe place.

Call me!  Email me!

Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7223) or visit their website.

Go to a friend’s house, or a relative’s.

You do not have to live like this.  I know it seems hopeless and scary and exhausting and deeply sad, but you can get out.  You can live a life that you want.  You can be happy.  You are worthwhile, and there are people who really do care.

If you know someone you suspect is being abused, there are many things you can do. Most of them will not cost you anything in terms of time or money:

1.  If you hear screaming or yelling or crying coming from out on the street or from         someone’s home/car, call the police. Don’t be hesitant that “maybe it’s nothing”.  It’s the job of the police to assess the situation and deal with it.  They will not think you are wasting their time.  You could save someone from being hurt or killed.

I cannot express to you the horror I felt when a neighbor passed by my previous residence and told my ex to “keep your woman quiet next time”, even as he noticed the scratches on my ex’s arm from where I attempted to dislodge it from around my throat.

Another time, a neighbor – this time a woman – passed by as I was sitting on the porch and said to me, “You shouldn’t let him hit you like that.”  Then turned to my ex and said, “You know, if it was me I would have beat your ass.”  Later that night, I paid for her remarks.  I know she meant well, but these things do not help.

Those 2 experiences left no doubt in my mind that the neighbors heard my screaming, but did nothing. 

And all anyone had to do was pick up a cell phone and push 3 buttons.

2.  If you must intervene, tackle the abuser at the time of the attack, and disable him while someone else calls the police. Making angry or snide comments may only serve to get your friend hurt.  Not all the time, but just be aware the person she is dealing with is unstable.

If someone comes to you for help, by everything that is righteous, help her!  Listen to her, take her for medical care if she needs it, take her in or take her to a shelter.

Call her relatives and explain how serious it is (they might not know) and ask for their help.  I don’t think my family had any idea how bad things were with me; I like to think they would have come and gotten me if they had (they all live out of state).

If she won’t leave, or she returns to her abuser, be patient – a woman leaves an average of 7 times before she leaves for good (“50 Obstacles To Leaving: 1-10”, National Domestic Violence Hotline article, 2013).

3.  Remember that every little kindness helps.  And here is something you might not know – the longer someone is away from their abuser and around normal caring people, the more likely she is to leave for good.  So take your friend out somewhere – to lunch, to a park, to have coffee, whatever, and do it often.  Show her that the way you act is normal, and the way he acts is not.

This way she can see that it’s not something she has done, she can see that he’s the one with the problem.

4.  Get her a copy of “Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men” by Lundy Bancroft.  It not only explains (doesn’t excuse) the different types of abuse and the warped minds behind it, it also reinforces that it’s not her fault.

Lundy Bancroft runs a treatment center for men who are abusive, and it’s not the (ineffective) “anger management” stuff most social service agencies who attempt to deal with abusers use.

His program is confrontational and hits at the heart of what’s going on – the power issues and the beliefs that these men hold about women. It is based on Ellen Pence’s (1948-2012) excellent Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (aka The Duluth Model).

Here’s the link to Bancroft’s site, where you can buy the book and also read some interesting and helpful thing.

5.  Help your friend make a safety plan.  Some of this might involve you holding her   important papers for her (birth certificate, etc).  It might involve a code word she can use so you know when you need to call the police.

There are other things you can do, too, of course.  You can donate money to your local shelter.  You can attend any number of domestic violence month programs in your area. You can wear a purple ribbon this month, and speak to people who ask you about it.

If you are really ambitious, you can help me start a shelter – the one I was in was woefully inadequate, had no counselors, and sometimes took in people who did not belong there.

It also didn’t have any space for pets or women who had adult children with special needs (you think a woman is going to leave if she can’t take her child – no matter how old – with her??).

Some of this is funding, but some of it is a lack of education and training in disability issues and substance abuse assessment.

But the result is that women who need help are not getting it.

I want to change that.  I WILL change that.  And I hope when future generations read this blog, they can see the history of this problem and be thankful it’s either been eradicated or dealt with properly (I can only hope things will get better).

Domestic violence survivors/victims are your mothers, your sisters, your aunts, your grandmothers, your daughters….and me.

I am a survivor of domestic abuse.

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