I Don't Want This Anger That's Burning in Me

 Last week was a rough week so I am happy to enjoy a great weekend with my wife.  We hiked at Eagle Creek, got Smoothies and explored a local park in Westfield where we saw three Turkey Vultures enjoying the remains of a rodent of some kind for breakfast.  We watched the Irishman, which was amazing though an investment of times (3.5 hour movie).  Also cooking, cleaning, shopping and I made a killer brisket that I hope I can remember the ingredients I put in my rub. I am refreshed, but last week was tough. 

It was tough for a few reasons, the anniversary of Linda's death is always something that haunts me, less each year but the letter came that her murderer will again not be released a few days prior.  Tough because starting Religious School online meant being prepared for the various glitches that can occur when using technology, a technology on the first day of school for many failed.  Tough because the patterns of moving through the calendar have changed a lot and everything seems to be happening either at warp speed or a snail's pace.  And then there was the surprises. 

Saturday, August 29, I learned my Uncle Joe had passed.  He was 86, lived a good life, and while I no longer have a connection to my family since my mother's death, I remember him from my childhood.  He was a jovial man, married to my mother's more serious sister, my memory of him was of a big kid who truly enjoyed having us around as we would see them twice a year.  One thing I remember is he had a slot car race track that I loved to play with.  I may not be remembering that correctly, but I remember him teaching me how to slow down in the turns so my car didn't go flying into the living room.  I will always remember him as a working class kind of guy just having fun and getting along. 

Now our family back then was tighter.  On my dad's side there was my Aunt Mary, her kids were all adults, some as old or close to my parents age.  I called a lot of them Aunt and Uncle out of respect, but they were all cousins.  A lot of my second cousins were my age.  But I knew several of my dad's brothers as well, my real uncles.  If I didn't know them personally I knew of them.  Family reunions brought a few together.  

What was special about that generation of men and women that came of age in the middle part of the 20th century was war.  Reading his obituary I learned my Uncle Joe was a decorated soldier from the Korean War.  I knew my dad, who served for 25 years in the army and fought in Europe and shipped to the South Pacific in World War II and later was wounded and captured in Korea served.  Last year to prepare for our trip to Normandy I reread the story of my Uncle Bill , my dad's brother, who helped clear the beach as his battalion was charged to do.  Given a citation by General Eisenhower, my Uncle, my Dad and two other uncles, the two who I was named after, fought in the war.  As I stood in one of the cement pill boxes last year and thought how brave those men must have been as they cleared the deadly obstacles from the beachfront, I wondered if I would have been brave enough to do what so many people did to save the world from the tyranny of fascism.  

So when The Atlantic published their article about how President Trump sees veterans and members of military as losers and some how dumb for fighting for the country I had a visceral reaction.  I have never been a fan of war.  I don't romanticize the fighting as in Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori I find myself more in Wilfred Owen's camp on this.  But people died, some came home wounded, many came home changed forever and it didn't stop.  Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror have all lead to more and more people who have lost their lives, lost their limbs and some lost their souls to the horrors of war.  So when the President doesn't see them for what they are, heroes, we must questions what is important to a President who wraps himself in the flag and claims liberals want to end America. 

Now some might say the whole story is made up.  The original story was sources with 4 different people making the accusations and then confirmed almost immediately with two independent sources and later more news agencies found sources willing to confirm parts of the article.  It is common that people working in government will talk to reporters anonymously.  In fact we have discovered many scandals that way, including Watergate.  While all those sources could be making up the same story, sharing it among themselves, and telling reporters that would be incredibly risking for them.  How would it come up?  How would Pentagon and former government officials do that without at least one breaking ranks?  What would be the upside?  Also reporters don't tend to make up stories like this and then get it confirmed by rival media, in this case including Fox News.  In fact, when reporters have reported distorted or made up facts they created, they are often caught in the process of others trying to confirm.  

Trump has a history of being anti-military and through his own words or people close to him we have learned that he has called the late Senator John McCain a loser on many occasions.  He disparaged Senator Tammy Duckworth referencing her limbs lost fighting in Iraq.  He said he knows more than the generals in relation to the war on terror and he has offended Gold Star and Blue Star families several times.  The story trends with who Trump has always been.  

What is interesting to me is how it is framed.  That the people who join the military or those who couldn't get out of being drafted are losers and stupid is similar to the depiction of Don Corleone's reaction to his son joining the military in the book about the mob family in The Godfather.  The Don, like Trump, sees no upside to military service and when his son makes Life Magazine as a hero, he says "he does those miracles for strangers".   President Trump's bottom line has always been like Don Corleone, he will do things only if he sees a return for himself personally.  But unlike the Don who was motivated, in part, by love of family and culture.  Trump is motivated by himself.   Since the 1980s, Trump has always appeared to be trying to live up to the Hollywood version of a tough guy and thus used mob bosses as a template.  It is how he would operate in business, trying to find ways to cheat the people he hired.  His charities and other businesses, now apparently including his campaign and inaugural committees were just another way for personal gain.  So it makes sense he would see a selfless act like joining the military as a foolish one.  

We will see if people go on the record with this.  We will see if people will further confirm his alleged disgusting attitude toward veterans and active duty members.  We will see if it may change his behavior moving forward.  Or conversely we will see if people who serve or did serve the government made this up (because there is no way at this point that a single reporter did).  The thing is all those things are bad for the President.  But worse for our country.  

  

Blinded to the Science

 Whenever I read about science in any of the main stream media outlets I have to look to find the research article or original interview that the piece is based on.  Newspapers, magazines and television shows have always been terrible about translating scientific information to the press for the public.  Maybe the New York Times used to do it well as I recall but even then there were many necessary grains of salt to get through some reporting.  The reason science is a language free of emotion in most cases.  It often states facts with evidence that when dug through we find the story is less about the headlines that they generate.  Headlines are to bring you in.  In today's electronic media it is about clicks that generate ad revenue.  So a story for example about a near earth object might have a headline that screams:  "Scientists Find Asteroid Will Pass Close By Our Planet This Fall", when in fact the close part is defined in terms related to the entire universe and could mean 100,000 miles.  Close is a relative term and this case it is easy to see the sensationalism of the headline while the real story can be easily obtained.  There will always be people who read the headline and maybe the lead and start digging a fallout shelter.    However, during a pandemic the science reporting is not so cut and dried.  

If you follow the reports in many media and social media outlets you will find that reporters and thus the general public are often under informed because of ignorance of how the scientific process works.  Much like those who say things like evolution is just a theory because they don't know what the word theory means in a science context, we find people throwing around words like "peer-reviewed" as if that means it is factual. We also see reporters talking about how the information coming from public health agencies changes over time and some how we should trust them.  Again, when the science changes the results and recommendations based on science changes.  During the development of nuclear weapons the belief was that certain distances from a blast site would be perfectly safe, based on the results of earlier blasts.  However, the  materials and how the blasts were performed created different variables not fully understood.  In the end nuclear blasts, that people held parties to watch and soldiers were stationed to observe ended up making people ill and killing some.  From that new guidelines were created as more knowledge was obtained.  That is science.

So today we are struggling to get a handle of the spreading of Covid-19 and for some it has become a political issue.  This contributes to the nonsense reporting on the science even more.  The Center for Disease Control, a government public health agency, released information about Covid deaths in US.  They concluded the upwards of 94% of the deaths were people who had other co-morbidity factors, or conditions that were that made the results of the infection worse.  While the study clearly says it was Covid that killed these people as they would likely still be alive today without the infection, many people are reporting that only 6% of the people in the figure of deaths (183,000) were deaths from Covid.  In part this is due to the politicization of the this whole crisis, some thinking Covid isn't even real.  Now they wave a piece of paper from an agency and say "see we don't need masks if we are healthy, we don't need to shut down".  This is dangerous and I see no way to undo the long standing damage done to our collective knowledge by the lack of a voice out there to help understand what is happening, not only with Covid, but with all science.  People who don't like facts, ignore them and claim to have a different opinion.  Facts are not set aside because of opinion.  A guy named Greg could find a frog whose call sounds like Greg, but that doesn't mean the frog called his name, even if he believes it.  We cannot let opinion replace facts.  

Climate Change,  Disease, Pollutants, and Food processing have all fallen prey to opinion over science.  We will always be able to find someone with an advanced degree to make statements against the prevailing science because people are people.  That too is the problem.  Reporters will report on a the person who is contrary to everything the scientific community says about a particular subject without researching further into why that person might be saying.  Currently, the new doctor with ear to the President on Covid is talking about herd immunity and letting Covid run its course.  He has no background in epidemiology or virology, he is a radiologist.  We recently saw Dr. Ben Carson, a brain surgeon, touting a dangerous supplement that is untested to cure Covid.  The CDC has fired people over a recent treatment suggestion by the director that the media ate up, only to find a few hours after a briefing that the numbers were inflated.  

Some media outlets are trying.  They bring in doctors who have studied the spread of viruses and other diseases and understand the papers being written.  But often even they sound agenda ridden, looking more for gotcha moments that providing true explanations.  It is a growing concern that we will have a country who can be easily manipulated by someone with letters after their name on an opinion show pretending to be news and cause us to make bad decisions.  That is one reason that presidents need science advisors who will challenge their beliefs with facts and have the self-awareness to listen to the scientists.   Most of Congress doesn't seem to even care about the science.  The media, that is suppose to be an arbiter of facts, seems to spend time trying to look balanced and the people are lost.   I keep seeing on social media platforms that the quote "If one person says it is raining and the other that it is sunny, the media's job is not to report what they said, it is to look out the window and describe what is going on".  That is not happening.

This is by no means new.  The media and politicians have fumbled over science for my entire life time.  Think of the number of times in movies where the science advisor is seen as being hysterical until the catastrophe hits and they beg him or her for a solution.  This is based on real interactions between science, politics and the media.  We see this play out in many ways.  

It isn't just the right that does it.  In recent years we have seen massive media campaigns related to Alar on apples which turned out not to be a big problem and meat glue being used in processing of food, which is not only safe but something that makes sense.  Both driven by organizations and thinkers on the left. 

The problem with all this is because we don't have good information flow about scientific things every thing is valid and facts are just reduced to someone's opinion.  When people stop listening to those actually working in a particular field in favor of an opinion that confirms their bias we can't set good policy or act in the best interest of ourselves or others.  We are simply lost.  We must get back to a time when we value solid information, education, and expertise in matters of science and beyond.  We must be willing to allow that same science to learn and grow with more and new information moving forward.  We must not let political or religious ideology stand in the way of science progressing.  We must do it as if our lives depend on it.  Because for 184,000 Americans and growing it did and we as a nation failed.  

Where We Go 1 We Go All Down the Rabbit Hole

In the darkness of the right wing internet  there grew a new form of hate and division.  Q Anon, an anonymous (that's the anon) poster who claims to have high level security clearance (the Q) and weaving a web of ridiculous and scary content that seems unbelievable to any rational thinker.  But the thing is that there are times when many people lose being rational as part of their daily lives.  Anons are not new and nor are people who claim to have inside knowledge that they share on the internet.  This kind of stuff occurred long before the internet.  Now it is just easier to make a connection to people because a typical internet post can go around the world if just a few right people want to promote it.  And this is what happened.  That which has lived in the dark corners of places on the web most people would never go, is now retweeted by the President and running for Congress and other offices as Republicans embrace it.  

It is hard to describe the Q entire conspiracy.  Like many the connections are amazing complex and while the original postings have grown more vague over the years, the supporters conclude very specific things.  I will get back to that.  But the over-arching theory of Q is that there is a world-wide child trafficking ring being run by prominent Democratic leaders and Hollywood celebrities.  Q has convinced the followers that Donald Trump is the savior of the children as he is working in conjunction with others to unmask this ring and bring people to justice.  Among those he is working with is James Comey, surprised?  Yes the entire Russian conclusion evidence was a set up to get Comey the power to ferret out the real criminals and thus was the start of finding the members of the ring.  Yes, but wait for it.  The other leader of the movement is John F Kennedy Jr.  Yes the son of our 35th President.  A man who tragically died in a plane crash in 1999.  The theory is that he has been hiding in Pennsylvania  and will emerge this summer to public life to run along side President Trump as his Vice-President.  They even have identified him at rallies pointing to a man who they say is him in disguise.  Now if you think that is bananas you are right.  It is.  But we are merely scratching the surface of this conspiracy.  

Maybe the most famous story was that of Comet Ping Pong.  The Q followers who saw John Podesta's emails seemed to think they were code for planning Satanic Sexual rituals with children.  Podesta often referenced pizza from Comet, a Washington DC pizza place.  The Q crowd saw pizza as a symbol for kids and that there were all manner of horrors going on in the basement of the family pizza place that involved up to and including cannibalism of children led by Hillary Clinton.  Even as I type this I find it hard to believe that very many people could believe this.  But one man took it seriously enough to drive to the pizza place with a gun demanding to see the basement.  The building has no basement.  How easily this could have ended more tragically than it did.  The man was arrested but the pizza place still suffers the aftermath.  Other incidence include someone who stormed a Cement company site, the blocking of Hoover Dam, and assassination attempts on Joe Biden.  More recently the internet was on fire for a couple weeks because the online discounter Wayfair has a handful of products whose prices seem outrageous.  The main one was an industrial cabinet that cost $10,000 which in their mixed up minds must have meant that it wasn't the cabinet that people were buying but a trafficked child.  The fever swept through the Q world and finding pillows and housewares with higher than normal prices were found.  A set of pillows with feminine names became a focal point and someone linked them to the actual names of missing children.  They were off to the races.  But, other retailers have similar cabinets at similar prices and one of the missing children named posted on social media that she was home and fine and that they are hurting the efforts of helping real missing children.  However, weeks later, you still see this pop up.  Facts don't seem to work with these people and the danger is that when you can't educate someone there is little hope.  What is worse is they have the ear of people who have actual power. 

A recent primary in Georgia promoted for the Congressional seat a woman who is deep into the Q conspiracy and promoting a variety of conspiracies including the death of Seth Rich and 9-11 being an inside job.  While at first the GOP supported her primary opponent they are now welcoming her to the party.  This is dangerous.  Even the current President is willing to embrace her and the ideas that she is vomiting all over the Republican party.  

Q is a lot like a cult that follows a central figure who cannot be wrong.  There are many times Q has made serious predictions about what is going to happen in this fantasy world and when they didn't come true the response was that it was purposeful misinformation to keep the perpetrators guessing.  And the followers believe.  This self-sealing model means if often used by those telling their followers the world will end on a particular date or some other fantastic failure.  It is an inoculation against criticism.  It is not new, it is an old trick to fool those that want to be fooled.  It is remarkable how many people are that foolish.  

You may like President Trump for the things you agree with that he has done.  You may be a good Republican who can't find a way to vote for Vice-President Biden I ask one thing.  Purge your party of this disease.  It clearly shows that the President's far from normal behavior is not the only problem that is hurting our country.  A cult with political aims, a lack of interest in reality and an anonymous leader or leaders who manipulate their followers like a well honed conman is not only a danger to your party but to the republic.  Stamp it out, it won't be long until they come for you. 

Prayer Outside the Box, Inside the Box

This is a speech I gave to Heartland Unitarian Universalist Church last week.  It is always an honor to speak to this congregation:

I really do enjoy coming into your space to share with you. The coziness of the room, the way this community hugs and hold hands in prayer, and of course the baked goods and conversation in fellowship afterwards. We don’t have that today but I hope me coming into your homes through technology will bring a spark of thought and joy.

When Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer known as the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, saw that the Jewish people were threatened by tragedy, he would go to a particular place in the forest where he lit a fire, recited a particular prayer, and asked for a miracle to save the Jews from the threat. It is said that the miracle would come and the crisis averted.

Later, when the Baal Shem Tov’s disciple, the Maggid of Mezrich, had to intervene with heaven for the same reason he called out to the heavens “I do not know how to light the fire, but I can find the place and know the prayer and this must be sufficient.” The miracle was accomplished.

Later still, Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sasov, in turn a disciple of the Maggid of Mezrich, went into the forest to save his people. “I do not know how to light the fire,” he said, “and I do not know the prayer, but I can find the place and this must be sufficient.” Once again, the miracle was accomplished.

When it was the turn of Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn, the great grandson of the Maggid of Mezrich who was named after the Baal Shem Tov, to avert the threat, he sat in his armchair, holding his head in his hands, and said to God: “I am unable to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, and I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story. That must be enough.” And it was.

And it was enough. As we come together in prayer today we are like Rabbi Israel, we are in a new landscape, but we still trust in who we are as a community.

Someone once said the invention of the Jewish prayer book stifled prayer for the people. Indeed as we canonize what prayer is and put it in writing we lose a piece of what it is to be in the moment of prayer. When I lived in the south I envied my Christian friends who could be asked on the spot to offer a word of prayer and riff on the thoughts of the day with the eloquence of a poet. But often when I am asked to give an invocation I run to my bookshelf to find the appropriate language. It is something we lost, like that of generations of Hasidic Rabbis in the story. But in every generation we can tell our story while still keeping faith with our past.

Praying is a singular act we share with others. How we reach out to that which is beyond us is a highly personal thing. How it is received is too quite personal but too often we have created professionals to tell us how to pray and with what words. I know, I kinda am one of those guys. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

A shepherd spends his day in the field. Every day he praises God saying things like “Dear God, if you were cold I would give you my robe, if you were hungry I would share my lunch with you.” Or “Dear God you have given me such blessing, if it rained you could borrow my hat”. He didn’t know the traditional prayers but he felt a closeness with God. One day a great scholar and rabbi was walking down the path and heard the shepherd say, “Oh God, you give me such abundance, if only you could come to me and share in my joy and meet my family”. The rabbi was outraged. He told the shepherd that was no way to pray to the Holy One. He took his prayer book and went page by page reading and explaining all the daily prayers the shepherd should recite to pray to God. Hours passed and the day near ended. He gave the shepherd the book and walked away telling him to pray with that. The shepherd couldn’t read so he stuffed the book in his pack and took his flock home. The next day in the field he went to praise God but found he couldn’t remember how the rabbi had taught him. He looked at the book and saw lines and circles that made no sense, so he remained quiet. Days went by and God wondered why the shepherd was silent and sent an angel to investigate. The shepherd told him the story of the rabbi and the angel whisk him away to the heavens where a chorus of angels were praising God says, “Dear God, if you were cold I would give you my robe. If you were hungry I would share my lunch”. The angel returned the shepherd to his field. The next day God was thrilled that the shepherd again began his prayer.

There may always be a right way to do things in our minds. Prayer may be one of them for you. But today we cannot fully embrace the comfort of what things were like just a few short months ago. So now here we stand or sit, at computer screens, struggling to stay connected while continuing the seemingly unending practice of distancing. Our prayers feel different, we are not in the room, and we do not fully experience the joy or angst  in those who would normally be near us. The small boxes are barely enough to stay fully connected in this space, but we can do it. It will be different and we may even be getting use to this. A joke going around the net is that of a congregant texting with their clergy who asked if they were worried that we would lose people the longer we do services online. The response was:

Pastor, I can get up an hour later, I can stay in my pajamas, I can drink coffee on my sofa, and I can mute you.  I think this will only increase attendance. 

Throughout Jewish history we have often changed the way we interact with God, The Tanakh (Bible) teaches God spoke directly to individuals who shared the message with the people.  Later, following God's direction, people sacrificed in many places then one central location.  Later, after the Temple was destroyed, sacrifice gave way to prayer as a means of reaching God.  Our homes replaced the Temple and symbolism allows us to stay connected with our past but blaze our own future.  We see God differently than our ancestors and make meaning of our relationship in our own way.  

When the pandemic hit we were flummoxed by the way we had to change the pattern of daily life. Our screens became a lifeline to family and friends who we normally would gather with, we shopped online and had groceries delivered, we tried to figure out what is safe and what isn’t as we learned to wash our hands like surgeons and avoid showing embarrassing art work on our walls during work meetings or maybe that was just me. 

And praying as a community had to change. But there is hope, you see, look into the eyes of the people on your screen, as they share their homes, sip their coffee and maybe even show off their PJs or workout clothes. This community has stories to tell and words to recite that are lifted up, alone and together. We do not have the room, we do not have the hugs and the hand holding and we do not have the great baked goods to share in fellowship, but we have each other and we have the stories. That will be enough!

The Fire From His Pants is Burning Down the House

 The current President of the United States is a pathological liar.  This all men know.  Some of us have known it since the 80s.  His early fame was based on the lie of his business acumen, his television show was a lie about his ability manage and his political career was based on racist lie about a functional President.  Now, as he fumbles through a collapsing economy and a raging pandemic, he makes wild claims all the time. But two lies this week are dangerous on a level.   

When the explosion in Beirut occurred the other day, there was a great deal of speculation of what caused it on the internet.  Silly speculation was that it was a small nuclear device or a MOAB (Mother of All Bombs).  It was clear from every video that it wasn't a nuclear device because the shock wave would have vaporized those who filmed the blast.  The MOAB which actually stands for Massive Ordinance Air Blast is a bomb the size of a city bus that is dropped from a C-130 and explodes over the target not at grown level.  Since there was always a fire already raging at the port many were filming the area when it blew up.  No one saw an airplane drop a giant bomb at the time.  The current story is that a massive amount of explosive material was being stored at the port and when the fire from a fireworks warehouse reached it the ammonium nitrate it went up.  

But the President a few hours later speaking in front of reporters said that it looked like an attack.  When asked about it in a follow up he said that he spoke with the generals and they said it was an attack.  He has since doubled down.  The problem is that there is no evidence it was an attack and so now it feeds the rumors that are part of the culture in that part of the world.  Lebanon is a country whose government is already in trouble because of failures on many levels but it also sows the seeds of conspiracies.  So when rumors are out that it was an attack there are few suspects in the minds of the people and the main antagonist is Israel.  In fact, there are those in the reason who blame Israel for losing a sock in the wash.  While Israel was pleading to allow then to come help with the aftermath, our President is feeding the notion that Israel may be responsible for this horrific accident.  This helps the government of Lebanon avoid their own culpability in the explosion because they see calls for revolution in the streets today.   This was not only an irresponsible statement, referencing the generals made it a lie that drags our military leaders into it.  They, the generals, however have stated that they can't figure out who said anything to the President.  

The other lie was dangerous to our own citizens.  In an interview with Fox News, the President said children are immune to Covid-19.  This was part of his effort to have schools open for in-person instruction around the country.  This is simply not true.  Children get Covid-19, children die of Covid-19, children spread Covid-19 to vulnerable family members, and children should not be treated as canaries in coal mines.  This lie will feed the ridiculous people who see the virus as a hoax, a Democratic ploy or some other nonsense.  I have already seen this lie repeated by the anti-mask, anti-lock down crowd.  They take what the President says as fact.  While reality doesn't care what you think, the actions of those who believe these falsehoods can be deadly to many.  The President shouldn't make these kinds of statements that are not only false they drive actions that put people at risk.  To me it is clear that he doesn't care about the people he could hurt.

The President lies easily and sometimes for no reason.  It seems to be the way he interacts with the universe.  Some of his lies are laughable.  Some of his lies are hurtful.  Some of his lies are dangerous.  But he lies so often that he is rarely held accountable because by the time anyone speaks on the first lie his next one is in the wild.  But we must stop and analyse these kinds of lies because if we don't who knows what will come next.  

You Can Beat Covid-19.......But it Means Being Humble

Last week at a Congressional hearing on the Corona virus response we saw members of the House of Representatives all Republicans try to smear Dr. Fauci and of course spread wild and nonsensical conspiracy theories all to impress the President.  It was gross but it further extended the the supply of nonsense that is driving the people on the street who are not following public health orders and extending the now ridiculous rise in Covid-19 cases and the coming deaths.  As other countries continue to squash the rise of cases we see the US exploding and spreading of cases and more and more people saying they have had enough and not following the simplest of guidelines to help slow the pandemic.  We have become a rogue nation whose citizens are not allowed to travel to many other countries.  It is getting clearer every day that if we had had a nationwide shutdown and a real testing plan in March and April we could be closer to normal.  Now we are still having to worry about what we might encounter at a grocery store or even a park.  The President and his enablers have failed us and yet they still spew asinine things and retweet lunatics.  So here are a few things.

1.  Masks work, they help slow down the spread.  They will not make you sick.  They will not stop you from getting oxygen.  You won't breath in your own CO2 or bacteria.  Yes masks aren't perfect and help others if you are sick and don't know more than they help you as a wearer but Covid-19 is a disease you can have with few or no symptoms and still spread it.  If we all wore masks when we can't remain physically distance it will go a long way to stop the spread.  

2.  Kids can get it.  I am tired of people telling me kids are immune or don't suffer with this disease.  Kids have died.  Not just kids with serious medical conditions.  But even those that haven't they have suffered greatly.  We don't know the long term effects of this virus on the system.  We have to remember to keep our children safe.

3.  Which leads me to this, opening schools in many places is just dumb and dangerous.  In places the virus is not under control the opening of schools for in-person classes will cause problems.  We know this from a day care center in Arizona and an overnight camp in Georgia.  And now we know as schools began to open last week for the fall and students and staff at different schools had positive tests.  How are we going to keep kids safe in an environment that is not designed for it and that are already so underfunded in many places.  

4.  Sports can be a way to do things like the NBA and NHL with sequestering of players and regular testing and contact tracing.  (if only we could do that everywhere)  but the Major League Baseball which is not using a model where players stay in one place has already in the first week of play had to cancel games because the virus is spreading in club houses.  This is a tale of two models and while it is the worst of times for both we are going to see how best to proceed.  

5.  THERE IS NO CURE.  Hydroxychloroquine does not cure Covid-19.  It doesn't.  Studies have shown it.  Those studies that have suggested it does help were highly flawed.  The people promoting it are people who have no real background in the area of study and have lied about their practice.  The recent video that caused a stir because the President of the United States decided to retweet it and the right wing noise machine tried to amplify it was a goulash of gibberish.  The doctors (some of whom don't even practice medicine anymore) are part of a right wing organization that sounds like a medical society but really is just a repository of the ridiculous like HIV does not cause AIDS or that vaccines cause autism.  One of the doctors promoting this so-called cure believes that demons have sex with people at night and cause disorders and that a woman got pregnant from fantasizing about a celebrity and prayed the baby away.  Maybe it became a spirit baby and killed Renly, I just couldn't follow after a few minutes.  

6.  This is not a simple flu.  This is at least 10X more deadly than the flu and spreads a lot more easily.  And no you didn't have it in November so stop trying to tell us you had it then and you were fine.  You may have had the flu or a cold or just didn't feel good.  Who knows.  This is a deadly disease that will kill between 1-4 percent of the people who get it.  

7.  There is no conspiracy to take away your rights.  People keep telling me mask requirements and shut down orders are part of a grand conspiracy to take away our rights.  The masks show who is compliant with orders and the shutdowns are to make us see government as the savior.  They also say things like the vaccine that is coming is part of a way to put a chip in each one of us to trace our movements and monitor what we eat and do all day.  They posted this from their cell phone that they use to order take out that the company records so you can quickly order again.  The same phone that the OS will watch to target ads to you for things that you enjoy.  You know the phone whose GPS data is stored in the cloud for you for easy access from you smart home system.  The one where you log you heart rate and blood pressure while you trace your exercise routine that is sent to ap database to tell you when and how hard you should workout.  Here is the thing, the nanotechnology costs involved in creating a chip that can injected with the vaccine is unnecessary since you carry it with you everywhere you go already.  Why bother.

This is just a little of the stupidity that has become the norm under a President who loves to tell us he is the smartest person in the room and is fooled by the nonsense that is out there.  Who attacks people smarter than he is because they become more popular.  So a few rules:

1.  Go out only when necessary and if you must visit with people take care to physically distance.

2.  Wear a mask everywhere in public there are people, especially strangers.

3.  Stop trying make excuses why the virus is won't hurt you.  It can and if you don't take it seriously it likely will.  

4.  Listen to the voices of real researchers in the field and to the doctors treating real patients not metaphysical ones.  

This disease is terrible but many places around the world have shown we can beat it back.  Use common sense and act accordingly.  Wear a mask, wash hands regularly, and maintain distancing whenever possible.  It won't be magic if it disappears, it will be the effort of patriots and humans with empathy to slow the spread and help us find a way to use science to defeat it.  Our country did this 100 years ago, let's not let the sacrifices that they made in their pandemic go to waste.  

Justice Should Be Blind

On Friday, July 23 the Supreme Court, for the second time in recent months, sided with a Governor's pandemic safety order over the objection of a church.  In this case a Nevada church was asking to be allowed to have 90 worshipers at a time to conduct services instead of being limited to 50 at a time.  This restriction is much stricter than that of casinos who can operate at a higher rate of capacity.  This case follows another court decisions weeks ago where a southern California church challenged a shut down orders that would not allow in-person services at houses of worshipers.  Now in the California case the suit brought was nonsense, at the height of a pandemic there are broad powers to stop mass gatherings and of course there were other ways the or church to serve the congregants.  The Nevada case was trickier because, on its face, the discrimination against Houses of Worship seemed more clear.  In the decent, Justice Gorsuch called into question the ability of a theater with 10 screens to house 500 people, but a church that is large and can distance and use masks can't have more than 50 worshipers at a time.  Beyond that the casinos can be fairly packed and people gathering close by many without masks.  But the decisions of the court not to change a lower court's ruling on this said that those industries are highly regulated and easier to totally shutdown and punish over Houses of Worship.  In both these cases Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the so-called liberal wing of the court.  

Now for me I think the Nevada case could have gone either way and I would have been fine with the ruling.  While a general shutdown of large gatherings is something I think I am comfortable with in crisis situations, the idea that we make separate rules for Houses of Worship and other businesses needs to be carefully watched.  However, it appears the court has decided to give a good deal of power to local officials on public health and keep the court out of it.  Now if the church itself was forced to his number while synagogues or mosques were allowed more worshipers I would assume the court would have ruled 9-0 in favor of the church. I hope that as a culture we never get to that.  But what was amazing was the reaction not only of the right wing noise machine and the ignorant masses, but of elected officials to Robert's vote.

Senator Ted Cruz, once thought of as a potential Supreme Court Justice, tweeted that Roberts was a traitor.  When asked to what he didn't respond.  But that message was echoed around the internet and escalated to calling for his impeachment and that he must be a Democrat or part of the Deep State or some Q-Anon fever dream or such.  It is a terrible thing to see this.  There have always been people who don't understand how government works, recent calls to impeach Nancy Pelosi are a sign of that.  (you don't impeach a member of the House of Representatives).   But this kind of talk about a traitor on the court begs the question of a traitor to what?  The Constitution?  Certainly not in this case, a well reasoned argument shows that there is no infringement on worship and that in fact it protects the church in this case from a much more severe situation if they were to become an epicenter of spread.  So one can only assume that the conservative voices calling the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court a traitor meant that he was a traitor to their ideology.  That is a dangerous thing for the average person to think, SCOTUS (The Supreme Court of the United States) should never be partisan.  But when it comes from elected officials, including the President, that is in fact bordering on a Constitutional crisis. 

The Right Wing has tried and recently have succeeded at creating a Federal court system that is highly partisan.  Senator McConnell held up many appointees of President Obama including maybe the most qualified person in the country to serve on SCOTUS, Merrick Garland.  Then when President Trump was in office pushed through many nominees, including some so woefully unqualified that in a few cases it was laughable even for Republican members of the Senate.  For them they want to have their conservative positions validated beyond what the Constitution says or even implies.  Members of Congress or the Executive challenging the faithfulness of a Justice is just not what we value in this country.  It is scary.  But in recent years these kinds of things have become so common that not a lot is said about it.  

Throughout the history of the court SCOTUS members have voted in favor of the Constitution even if it goes against the ideology of the person who appointed them.  In fact if they never did that would be a clear sign that they might not have been the best pick for the country.  Even the most conservative Justice of my lifetime, the late Anton Scalia, was criticized by some on the right for following his vision of the Constitution which sometimes butted up against the right wing desires.  

The normal structure of American government is crumbling and we don't have the time to focus on every thing that is in trouble.  Today the Attorney General will be questioned in a Congressional Committee about his role in the administration and his influence on various investigations into people close to the President and circumventing justice in cases that have already been to court.  The President went on a Twitter rampage last night attacking the one person the country trusts on Covid.  The President has lied about simple things and big things.  We are easily distracted.  But we must keep an eye on the courts and those who want to twist it toward their political positions instead of the Constitution.  This is where the battle will continue even after President Trump leaves office, even after the Republicans lose their Senate majority, even after most of the government returns to normal.  Call this out.  Remember the one thing that can keep us a Democratic-Republic is a fair and free judiciary.  Keep your eyes open. 

The Swastika on the Ball Field

A few weeks ago there was a post on a neighborhood social media board that a swastika was drawn in the dirt of the baseball field near my house.  It was likely kids who were out being mischievous that morning (including vandalizing some sprinkler heads).  I don't know if they were caught for either offense.  What was interesting is that there was a great deal of discussion about this that didn't center on the fact it was a symbol of hate.  One person posted a long and factual statement about the history of the symbol which was used in many cultures and still used today.  Before the Nazis corrupted it was a symbol of hope, joy and other positive messages in India, the Middle East and among Native people in North America.  You will see it adorning old churches and even synagogues going back centuries and when I was a kid the Frederic Remington Art Memorial  has Remington's studio recreated in the building.  The museum was in my home town and we visited often on school trips.  I will never forget seeing the set of silverware that include the swastika with other symbols prominently displayed.  I asked about them and heard the story of items, but the symbol still felt uncomfortable.  Other people thought we need to teach more about the Holocaust.  But there were some who wrote it off as ignorance, as no big deal.  Saying they probably didn't understand what they were doing.  

That attitude of allowing ignorance being an excuse for hateful gestures is problematic.  In recent weeks we have seen football players and a national television host promote virulent anti-Semitic diatribes in public forums.  Ignorance was of course was the excuse.  One football player, DeSean Jackson, met with a Holocaust survivor and has accepted and invitation to travel to Auschwitz to learn.  He offered a sincere apology and maybe just maybe with better understand the history he so easily diminished and that the tropes that rolled off his tongue without hesitation were wrong.  Maybe.  

There are those who see that there are members of the African American community have a blind spot to the history of other oppressed groups and that Jews have been a target of resentment by Black America, especially among Black Nationalist leaders and Black Muslim leaders, like Louis Farrakhan.  Jemele Hill, a former ESPN commentator and a staff writer for The Atlantic writing about Jackson says: 

"Regardless of what happens with Jackson, the unfortunate truth is that some Black Americans have shown a certain cultural blindspot about Jews. Stereotypical and hurtful tropes about Jews are widely accepted in the African American community," Hill wrote. "As a kid, I heard elders in my family say in passing that Jewish people were consumed with making money, and that they 'owned everything.' My relatives never dwelled on the subject, and nothing about their tone indicated that they thought anything they were saying was anti-Semitic—not that a lack of awareness would be any excuse. This also doesn’t mean that my family—or other African Americans—are more or less anti-Semitic than others in America, but experiencing the pain of discrimination and stereotyping didn’t prevent them from spreading harmful stereotypes about another group."

Hill herself had a moment of antisemitism when she used the idea of Hitler in a joke about the Celtics when at ESPN.  She, like Jackson, took the time during the response to not get defensive, writing in the same Op-Ed that she now cringes at the thought of the lack of empathy for the Jews because it wasn't her and notes that if someone made a joke about slavery then she would have similar reaction.  

Since Jackson's words because public we have also seen another black celebrity, Nick Cannon, say similar things.  He has since apologized, such that it was, and I hope he too will take time to learn or more importantly unlearn what he thinks he knows about Jews.  Too often what is taught both informally within a culture and sometimes in formal settings can be quite hateful.  Not that Jews are the only victims but more often then not, like the Swastika in the ball field, when Jews are attacked it is more easily forgiven.  Nick Cannon will still keep his job.  Jackson is seen as a role model for admitting ignorance and so many others, well, their message doesn't make the news.  This week on Rachel Maddow's television show, Mary Trump, niece of the President and writer of a family secrets book, revealed the President comfortably used antisemitic and racist language among friends and family.  (It is not in the book this was in response to a question).  There are already voices saying that it was common in his generation.  

And that is the problem.  The normalcy of certain types of language and thinking makes it harder to confront.  When Mel Gibson has is epic meltdown so many years ago that was an antisemitic rant, well within the line of who he is as a person by all accounts, he was vilified.  He is now seen again as a top actor and director in Hollywood (that he ironically said was run by the Jews).  We cannot and should not accept this in our diverse culture.  Allowing a pass to people because Jews currently aren't as oppressed as other minority groups in this country is dangerous and we know this because synagogue around the country have to post guards for security.  In Poway and Pittsburgh people repeating the same tropes that Jackson and Cannon expressed shot Jews at worship.  I know, because as a Jewish professional I have to read reports of what is going on around the world when Jews are attacked.  I know because I get phone calls from colleagues asking me how to discuss the graffiti spray painted on the gravestones in the Jewish cemetery.  

People talk about the horror of cancel culture which I am not sure exists.  Antisemitic ideology is no longer seen as disgusting but as a political position both on the right and the left.  American Nazis comfortable march in communities (as is their right) often preaching violence as they march.  Leftist groups verbally attack Jewish organizations who would be allies and some leaders like Farrakhan continue to avoid criticism from political leaders when they should be shunned.  

 As culture when we let any kind of hate and ignorant be written off we let the disease fester.  We will be better if we not only shine a light on this but totally purge it.  It might take a lot of education, there may be some who will never learn, but we must try.  We must stand up.  As I write this the country mourns the death John Lewis and C T Vivian, two icons of the Civil Rights movement who did just that.  They stood up to hate and ignorance their whole lives.  If you posted something this weekend to mourn their loss then it is up to you to make sure the Good Trouble you choose to engage in includes everyone.  Let's cut out the disease of hate.  

Freddie Mercury, No Pants and Wear the Mask

I had would could be the silliest discussion this week about wearing a mask to continue to slow the spread of Covid-19.  The person who said we shouldn't wear one kept harping on the fact that a typical cloth mask has a weave that allows the tiny virus particles to get through and since there is evidence that the particles can be airborne a mask is useless.  People keep using the analogy of trying to stop a mosquito with a  chain link fence.  But that is not a good analogy because while it is true that some virus will get through the mask and may become airborne in those cases, a large quantity of the virus is in spittle and other expectorants that are stopped by a mask, even a simple cloth mask and do not spread as much.  Think about it like a shower curtain.  The shower curtain, when utilized properly, will keep the water from splashing out onto the floor of the bathroom.  Is it perfect, no, especially when someone turns into Freddie Mercury in the shower doing the entire song with  movement, using a Trader Joe's shampoo bottle for a microphone (best kind of bottle so I am told) and swinging your arms around sending waves of water over the top of the curtain.  It also allows the steam to float out and condense on the mirror that you have to rub away to truly see what all God gave you....okay back to masks.  

Without the shower curtain, the bathroom would become a swamp in due time because regardless of your actions in the shower it will block a significant amount of moisture from getting through but not all.  That doesn't mean it is ineffective, the argument that because masks don't stop all virus it is useless is illogical on its face.  People are looking for any excuse to attack mask instructions because of politics.  Someone wrote that it was one step closer to being put in cattle cars and taken to the ovens.  While remarkably offensive it also makes no sense because if wearing a mask for public health is a way to begin a Holocaust why didn't we see it when laws were passed that required shoes and shirts in many public indoor spaces for health reasons?  

One thing we have learned during this pandemic is that a surprising number of people don't like to wear pants.  I don't just mean the remarkable and subversive nature of women's workout apparel becoming office and even formal wear, I mean going completely without pants.  When co-workers only see you from the chest up in a little box who knows what is going on down there.  That is unless your child coming running into the room and asks why you aren't wearing pants or worse cut themselves and you get up to  help showing that the print on the underwear you chose that day has faded.   But here is the thing, we expect to wear pants in many situations.  It is not tyranny to require you to do that and it may not even be public health at stake but it is an agreed upon norm that we embrace.  Masks, like shirts, shoes and pants are not a fascist mile marker, they are one club in the bag to help keep this virus at bay until we can better destroy or live with it.  Masks save lives.  We have research to prove it.  It is time we start acting like adults who until very recently didn't think about all the times during the day there were cultural norms and rules we follow unquestioned or at least most of us try to follow.  

Masks will be part of who we are for the time being.  Wear them when you are around others who you might infect.  Wear them when you go to the grocery or get take out.  Wear them when you really need to talk up close with a neighbor or friend you don't share living quarters with.  Wear them for the sake of those who will not survive the virus.  Wear them because it is the right thing to do.  

Oh and when you are dancing in the shower singing Freddie's part think about the words......

Turned away from it all like a blind man

Sat on a fence but it don't work

Keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn

Why, why, why?

Love, love, love, love, love

Insanity laughs under pressure we're breaking

Can't we give ourselves one more chance?

Why can't we give love that one more chance?

Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love

Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?

Let's make sure we give love a chance, love calls us to wear the mask.  

The Mandela Effect and Conspiratorial Thinking

The Mandela Effect is a paranormal and conspiratorial concept that suggests that things in our history are being changed either by a glitch in existence or a nefarious reason yet to be identified.   It was coined by Fiona Broome in 2010 and has since exploded on the internet.  It boils down to being a collective misremembering of some item or event that now seems different.  This ranges from song lyrics, movie lines and how things are spelled to world events.   Broome is a paranormal researcher and writer who was struck by the number of people she encountered who remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s when in fact he lived until 2013 and became President of South Africa after the end of Apartheid.  The 80s were a significant time in the global Anti-Apartheid movement and many people became aware of the history of South Africa's racial policies and the oppression of the native population.  There were leaders who died in prison in the 70s and 80s, one of which Steven Biko, became famous in part through a song by Peter Gabriel.  I has a small role in the anti-apartheid movement when I was in college in the 80s and I know one of the chants was Free Nelson Mandela which is the closing of the song Sun City released in 1985 by Artists United Against Apartheid.  But one can understand remembering this differently.  News has a way of being a flash in the pan and has the 80s gave way to the 90s the growing internet meant that information overload was common.  

Memory is not a static thing.  We construct our memories because frankly we construct all of our perceptions.  We filter out much of the stimulus in our world and focus on what is either important at the moment or unusual.  Driving home from work you probably would not recall all the squirrels you saw running across or near the road but if it were a turtle or a vulture you may pay more attention.  But even the retelling of a memory creates not only an opportunity to remember it differently than it happened but when you remember something from your past, you are a different person with more experiences so you perceive your own memory differently.  This is why eye witness testimony can be so flawed.  Time, retelling and other people's perspective of an event can change your memory of it.  A famous experiment had people count the number of times a handful of people bounced a ball to each other.  While keeping track of all the balls the subjects didn't notice a person in a gorilla suit walk into the scene, wave and walk out.  Once people were told of the gorilla it was easy to see.  However, watching knowing about the gorilla has other surprises.  Click the link and see what you miss.  

Examples some people use for  the Mandela Effect are people believing that the comedian Sinbad starred in a movie called Shazam where he played a wizard, he didn't; that the Berenstain Bears were Berenstein Bears, they weren't; and Darth Vader said "Luke, I'm your father", he didn't.  While all irrelevant to life in general many will put up quite a fight defending their memory even when you can prove they are wrong.  Even more so are those that seek out these so-called glitches in reality sometimes finding them when there is no debate, one Youtuber, All Time Scary, has made a little cottage industry of this.  One of the silliest is from the movie E.T.   When learning to speak English, the alien character fumbles over a variety of words taught to him by Elliot and his siblings.  He learns the name they use for him,  E.T., and the words home and phone.  At first E.T. says "E.T. Home Phone" and when corrected for syntax by the kids it becomes the iconic "E.T. phone home".  Because it was the most often repeated line of the movie we forget his first vocalization.  That doesn't mean it was added or changed.  It means we remember what created as a memory.

None of this is important except that when people start to believe their memories are being tampered with there can be a problem.  We are living at a time when the leaders of our nation and several others are basically telling people what they know to be true is not.  There is a wide-ranging movement of conspiracy theorists who create outrageous stories to attack political opponents and insist that any evidence to the contrary is part of the grand conspiracy.  Birtherism, which propelled the current President into the political sphere in a real way, for example.  Time after time evidence was produced to show President Obama was born in Hawaii, but if you can believe that somehow an entire movie can be made to disappear, then why couldn't it also create a fake past?  Believing conspiracies has gone from a group debating how the CIA and the Mob worked together to kill JFK to elaborate discussions of pedophile rings that brought a man with an AR-15 into a local family pizza place in Washington DC demanding to see the non-existent basement.  While we can laugh at people who believe their past was altered by some outside forces because they don't remember something correctly, that soft minded thinking can also lead to some terrible outcomes in the real world.    

The current administration has for a long time made public statements that are completely and utterly false.  One spokesperson said that they were "Alternative Facts".  As if reality is a point of view.  This week for example, as spikes in at least 30 states in cases of Covid-19 that caused some states to roll back their reopening efforts, both the President and the Vice-President stated we are doing great.  That reopening is moving forward well.  It leads so many to believe that this virus crisis is over.  It isn't and it is getting worse.  This is life and death for many.  This is one example of many where the President states things that are so far from reality that it is hard to understand how that can be allowed to fly but there is a group of people who will always believe him.  

People will always want to remember what fits their narrative, but what is troubling is when evidence is produced to prove them wrong when they are the evidence is ignored.  Someone recently told me that a message from the CDC that was on the news has been scrubbed from the internet because it didn't fit the agenda of someone or something.  The Mandela Effect may seem silly, and fun.  But in the end when people can believe their memories can be scrubbed from the world they can believe their worldview is being manipulated.  That is scary.  

President Mandela did not die in the 80s.  Sinbad didn't do a wizard movie.  No one is changing movie lines.  And no one is erasing from the internet things you want to believe.   So in the end, don't think your memory is a video recording,  if challenged research and be willing to accept you are wrong, and please, if you go out, wear a mask. 

Whose History is Black History

Many years ago I attended a lecture called Whose History is Black History.  One of the things that struck me was when the speaker said something surprising to me about Crispus Attucks.  As I recall she said that many schools in the country, in Black neighborhoods are named for him but he fought for the wrong side in the Revolutionary War.  You see the thesis of the talk was that so much of American History's view of African Americans was from a White perspective.  She went on to say that there were many more people of African descent who fought for the British and many of them went free after the war.  At the same time George Washington didn't want black people in the Continental Army.  It is ironic that one of Washington's slaves from Mount Vernon was one of the men who joined the British, after the war was free.  Harry Washington went to Nova Scotia with many more freed people from the colonies and later moving on the Sierra Leone, where he used not only the agricultural knowledge he learned in Mount Vernon to produce more crop, he led a revolution about the British company and leadership that he was working for based on what he learned from the American revolutionaries.  

i think it is important to think about this. The speaker was saying that we don't learn enough about black history in this country because we don't listen to black people who write it, we read history books written by white people.   In the last few months a lot of white Americans learned about parts of our history that didn't make those textbooks.  It took an HBO series about a DC comic adaptation to inform many people of the attack on Tulsa, OK's Black Wall Street where literal bombs were dropped on a section of an American city to destroy the business district of the highest concentration of black wealth in the country.  It was a racist attack that people were never fully held accountable for.   There was also a significant number of people who never heard of Juneteenth.  Both of these stories which are important to American history for many reasons are often ignored because they are relegated to what is called Black History.  But today those artificial boundaries should come down and I think they will.  But there is still such push back.  The President was amazed to learn about Juneteenth.  That is criminal level ignorance, not only because he had planned to schedule his rally on that date but that the rally would be in Tulsa.  What is also funny is that every year the White House mentioned Juneteenth in a message to the nation.  He just never seemed to care about it enough to learn until it became a problem for him.  And that is the issue with how we have dealt with the segregate history in this country.  Important dates, events and people are moved out of view in favor of a more generic and white view of the country.  It has led to systematic racism and a long standing ignorance of the vast importance people of color have brought to the develop of our nation.  I believe we have met a new milestone and we will not go back. 

The country is being forced to face the systemic racism that is part of our past there is outrage.  Outrage that Confederate monuments put up to intimidate black people during the Jim Crow era are coming down.  Outrage that companies who have had racist icons for products are changing their company image.  Outrage that companies are looking to better understand who they have benefited from that racism and undo their past sins.  And outrage, at the highest levels of government, that a sports league may have been wrong to punish those who tried to race the very issue that has set this sea change in motion.  

All people have trouble facing their own sins.  We work to justify, look to deflect, and sometimes just ignore or worse blame others.  We as a nation can no longer do that.  We must learn what we don't know of our past, listen to those telling us what is wrong right now and work together to bring about a future where we are all truly distinct and together.  Western culture is not a monochromatic one and really never has been.  We are a tapestry but we have allowed some of the threads to be hidden, let's bring them out into the daylight and where they are frayed or broken, let's fix them.  One way is to learn.  Many people more educated than I have taken the time to write about what was left out of the history books, or set aside out of context for a few sessions in February.  Social media and by extension several informative websites have been filling in the gaps in our knowledge sharing first person stories of today's plights and of a history that is richer than you can imagine.  Look for them.  Educate yourself.  Expand your knowledge base.  You will be surprised and delighted and maybe even a little angry about what your formal education lacked.  But you will be a better person and we will be a better nation.  Bigotry of all forms is a disease and knowledge and experience is the medicine that fights it.  Take your medicine.