Déjà vu, all over again (or Thanks for the memory, Yogi)

Most of you don't know who Yogi Berra is, and that's OK. He was a part of my childhood. Every kid who grew up in America during my time, grew up with baseball. I was never a big fan, but there are times I still think of hot, muggy, summer nights at the ball park. That's a memory worth preserving ... but that's a subject for another time.

Anyhow, the title of this blog is one of Yogi's famous lines. A lot of people thought he was a little slow, but still a nice guy. I think he was a little ahead of the rest of us, and still a nice guy. I wonder if it matters which it was. I doubt it.

You know, it's weird when you get that déjà vu feeling. We've all had them, that's for sure. Usually, they sneak up on you when you least expect it, and suddenly you're overwhelmed by that feeling that you've been here before and done this before, and heard these exact words before ... it's like reality gets into a strange kind of time loop. It scares some folks, or so I've been told, but I've always found those situations exhilarating somehow. Well, I did, that is, until I realized my whole life is turning into one big déjà vu.

Just recently, an old internet-who-stepped-out-into-real-life friend stopped by for a visit. Since I'm back to where I started when Uncle Sam sent me overseas during my dodging-the-war-in-Vietnam days. Through more twists-of-fate than most people are allowed, I ended up doing liaison on the German-German border. I was sitting there in the Fulda Gap just waiting for "the balloon to go up" marking the onslaught of the savage Russian hordes who were just chomping at the bit a mere five miles as the crow flies from where I called home.

Yep, that was me at the End of the (so-called) Free World, keeping the world safe for democracy, ensuring that you could all sleep well at night. I was there. I did that. And, to this day, I wonder what I was doing.

We all knew the drill back then: when those Russian missiles full of nuclear warheads were screaming in to kill us, well, just hide under your desk at school and then, once the big dust cleared, walk quickly (don't run) home, and take a buddy with you, someone who would have had to take a bus to get to his or her own home. It didn't matter if you liked them or not. The fate of the world was at stake, and everybody has to do his part, you know.

And then, well, there I was, staring Ivan and his evil cohorts in the face, just wondering when they were going to take advantage of the slightest lapse in our vigilance and come thundering over the border with their thousands of tanks. They were just salivating, waiting for the order to attack ... at least that what was I was told. I spent a lot of time out on that border, I can assure you, and not once did I see a bit being chomped nor anyone salivating. I did see a lot of sad-sacks like myself being forced to pull duty somewhere they never thought they'd be. And every once in a while, one of them would escape and we'd have to debrief them, and well, their lives weren't going all that well and they were looking for something better, so they risked life and limb to go for it. I wanted something better too, but in comparison I was too much of a coward to risk life and limb for it. I just wasn't getting that life-and-limb thing.

Ivan wasn't coming, not if he could help it. And neither was Klaus or Dieter or Hans or whatever their parents had named them. They were sitting out their duty and the end of their world just hoping that Paul Bunyan wasn't going to get frisky, like I was hoping that none of them were getting the itch to conquer either. Turns out, they weren't. Little foot soldiers like we were (and that we had 100% in common) don't want to conquer anything. We'd rather be at home, or with our friends, or having a beer, or looking for a date, or just avoiding hassle. Anything would have been better than what we were doing, but we were under orders. Big brains somewhere knew a whole lot better than we did what was good for us.

Well, that's what they wanted us to believe, but I didn't believe it then ... and from what I was able to gather, neither did Ivan, nor Klaus, nor Dieter, nor Hans. To quote my idol, Bob, we were "Only a Pawn in Their Game".

That Cold-War thing was a big deal. A lot of people invested a lot of time, energy, and other resources, not to mention money in keeping that illusion going, to get us to buy into the fear and uncertainty, to get us to live in abject fear of total annihilation, so that other people, most definitely unrelated to any of us normal mortals, could gain a helluva lot of power and make one whole helluva lot of money. Down here, on the ground, there were millions of ignorant, exploited, drones who were working their butts off in hopes of a better life while up there, in ephemeral spheres, a small number of spoiled elites were ensuring that we drones kept our noses to the grindstone so that their lives which were immeasurably better already could be even more immeasurably better, or something like that.

One thing I know for sure: none of it had anything to do with freedom, democracy, the will of a people, or any of those high-falutin' ideals we get beaten about our heads and shoulders. Ideals are just a red herring. In the end, it's mostly about money and power, but not for those who don't have it, rather for those who do (and they always want more).

So, I took my friend out to Point Alpha, the Cold-War Memorial site nearby, where they still have an actual compound that was used by the troops on the border and where you can see in real life what lengths both sides went to in order to keep alive that illusion that something great was at stake.

For my part, it was, and is, nice to be able to share a part of my life with another human being. I like taking people out to the border so that they can see the physicalities of what was going on back then. There is a little museum out there as well, so you can see pictures and artifacts and models and listen to real-life testimonies of people who experienced all that, back then, when the world was clearly divided into black and white, us and them, friend and foe. And while you're walking around, telling your friend what you were doing then and how and why, you suddenly realize that it's over 40 years later and at bottom, not a damn thing has changed at all.

Suddenly, you're overwhelmed: it's déjà vu all over again.

Again, the old heroes push their way into your head. Dylan, a classic if there ever was one, "With God on our Side", near the end, sings:

I've learned to hate the Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side

What the hell are we doing? NATO's piling in as many troops around Russia as is possible, though there is no (just like there wasn't then) any clear, reasonable indication that Russia wants anything more than to be left alone ... or be given a seat at the table, but apparently we'll be having none of that. The USA alone has more than 1,000 military bases overseas, and apparently it's not enough. And they've got themselves trying to stare down the Chinese in the South China Sea, and just what they're doing in and around Syria is anybody's guess, but one thing is for sure: the Russians aren't going to have any say in anything if Uncle Sam has anything to say about it.

And there I was: staring at the fence, trying to formulate a coherent thought, and it had slithered its way, unseen and unsuspected, into my ill-prepared consciousness: not a damn thing has changed no matter how much water has flown under the bridge of history.

None of this inspires confidence in my view of human beings and their ability to learn. None of this comforts me when I have trouble sleeping at night. There aren't any facts involved now, just like there weren't any then. It serves some interests to have this full-blown, heavily armed, and propaganda-rich animosity towards the Russians so the long-gone, almost-forgotten, Cold War has been heated up again. What's for dinner tonight, dear? Left-overs.

Things were, in many regards, simpler in Yogi's days. But, truth be told, they weren't much different. That's kind of sad, when you stop to think about it.

Think about it.

RE: Brussels. It happened again, and we're still surprised

My heart aches every time innocent people are ripped out of life because evildoers do what they do. I weep for every family who suffers because someone, some group, some ideology thinks they can get what they want by harming others. How perverse can you get.

But, perverse is also thinking that we -- you and me -- are guiltless. We're not, no matter how much we want to be. Why? Because we allow those who have every interest at heart but our own to decide what is right and what is wrong.

What just happened in Brussels is a tragedy, no doubt about it. What it preventable? No. Could we have done something about it? No. Can we do anything in the future to prevent such tragedies? No, but we can do a lot to reduce the likelihood that we are victims of terror.

Terror is terror because it comes unexpectedly, violently, without warning, overwhelmingly. It shocks us to our core. Otherwise, it wouldn't be terror, would it?

The media love to tell us how terrible it all is. Politicians are the first to rant and rave and rail against the pain. But, in the end, those who cause it should be the last to condemn it.

A little story, a blast from the past: when I decided to stay in Germany after my tour of duty, the country was firmly in the grip of terrorists; that is, zealots who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted, regardless of what it cost. In those days (the 70s), the hounds of Hell were domestic, home-grown; our own (the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Red Army Faction) ... their color was different, to be sure, but their rhetoric and their love of violence was the same as we find today with Daesh. Change the colors, change the words, but you can't change the message, and you can't change the mindlessness. While I was studying at a near-by German university, every week a bomb exploded, a car blew up, sometimes with casualties sometimes not, but with wanton disregard for innocent life. And what did we do? Nothing. Because it was the right thing to do.

People were dying, violence was being wrought, but no one, and I mean no one ... neither the populace at large not the politicians in power ... thought of curtailing rights, instituting massive surrveilance, or creating extra-judicial gray zones to fight against the insanity. All of those are standard fare today. Why? Because we've lost sight of the goal: a free and open society which embraces values that are worth standing up, and even dying for. No, today, we've become cowards and victims of our own making.

It doesn't matter whether terror strikes in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, London, Athens, or anywhere else. Terrorists can only terrorize if we allow ourselves to succumb to fear. When we do, they win. It is that simple. In that moment in which we allow the power that be to curtail our rights, restrict our freedoms, impose their own will, we have lost the struggle for humanity. It is that simple.

It's not about safety or security or surveillance or anything like that at all. Either we have values we believe in and are willing to die for or we can merely choose whom we would like to be our masters and enslavers.

I find it particularly interesting that those who profess to have the strongest faith -- evangelicals and fundamentalists -- who are the first to call for more restrictions, more protection, more repression, more whatever, to save or protect their already petty lives. If you cannot live in the face of death -- the fate of every single living organism on earth -- you haven't really lived and chances are you never will.

So don't make life miserable for the rest of us. We live and we die; everything that lives, eventually dies. Just because your own belief makes small of this fact is no reason to cry for the protection of another because you personally are afraid.

I choose freedom. I choose life. I choose a world that allows me to be me and you to be you. I choose being over fear. I choose going down with my head up rather than cowering with my head down.

You can choose more police, more military, more violence, more killing, more aggression ... that's your choice, but do know that I will fight you every step of the way. I am willing to die knowing that I lived, in freedom, rather than dying never knowing that I lived.

The language of language

Most of you probably hated English class. I was one of those weirdos who didn't, but I know a lot of people, then and now, who are still wondering why we had to read Shakespeare and write essays and wasn't Ben Franklin's autobiography the absolutely most mind-numbing read in the history of printing. I don't blame them for not getting excited about it. Motivating my students was always my biggest challenge in teaching.

But, apart from all the prim and proper, upstanding, prudish, school-marmish notions of English instruction that we all had to suffer through, there is another -- darker, more fun, livelier, and challenging -- side to it as well. It's about communication, but not as any of you who have had to suffer through a communication class are now imagining. English (and here, any of you can substitute your own native language from your own native culture ... everything I have to say applies mutatis muntandis for your own) is about the magic -- and I use the word consciously -- of language. The person who said the pen was mightier than the sword knew what he was talking about. Words -- and I can't say this often or emphatically enough -- are the most powerful weapons known to (hu)man(ity).

We suspected it for a long time. When the notion of higher education first arose, you studied the Trivium after your general education. The Trivium consisted of just three subjects (and you need to think this as analog to a bachelor's degree today): grammar (how words are fit together to make sense), logic -- actually dialectics (how to combine ideas to make sense), and rhetoric (how to influence others with what you say). That's it. It was all about using language to make friends (and enemies) and influence people. No more, no less. These days we all complain about most people's terrible spelling and using 50 words when 5 would have done the trick and pull our hair out trying to figure out what they meant in the first place. Oh yeah, we've come a long way, haven't we?

Regardless, I'd like to ask you to do a little exercise. It won't take long and I guarantee it will tell you more about yourself than you ever really wanted to know. This is it; I call it Fivers:

1. Which are the 5 words you find most uplifting?
2. Which 5 words upset you the most?
3. Who is your favorite person to listen to?
4. Who is your least favorite person to listen to?
5. List the last 5 books you've read and the years in which you read them.

Now comes the hard part: Look at your answers and think long and hard about how they relate. Satisfied? Regardless, the answers to those five simple questions tells you (and everyone else) all they need to know about what floats your boat, what gets your goat, how they can get you to go along, and whether they even have to worry about you figuring out what they're doing.

Really. Think about it.

What's wrong?

I'm not revealing any secrets here, but most of our news reporting isn't all that objective anymore. Let's face it, there are any number of agendas that are alive and well and are being used to, let us say, influence what it is that we "know" in the end.

What does surprise me, at least a little, is that regardless of which agenda is being pushed, some certain "facts" seem to seep through anyway. I use the word "facts" cautiously, because there does seem to be some topics, or themes, that appear to be the agreed subject of discussion at any rate, even if there isn't agreement on the details.

Depending on where you are, these topics will vary. In the US, they seem to focus on security, gun ownership, dirty energy, and banking/finance. In Germany, they tend more toward healthcare, green energy, and banking/finance. In Southern Europe, unemployment, especially youth unemployment is a big deal, along with banking/finance. And since I'm no expert on Latin America, Africa or Asia, I can't really say what's making their tongues wag, but I can't help but think that the topics there can't really be all that different, and I'm sure there is some cross-section that they share with the rest of us.

In other words, regardless of how good or bad the press may be, there is really little, if any, excuse not to be aware of the big-ticket issues of the day, and the one that apparently affects us all has to do with money and those who handle money matters, the banks. We know it. We are aware of it. We all feel it at some point, either at the gas station or the supermarket or when we realize we won't be taking a vacation this year. What's worse, jobs seem to be disappearing faster than people (we do have declining populations in most of the industrialized world at any rate), and things aren't looking all that rosy for our kids and grandkids.

And this is what surprises me about that: nobody seems to want to talk or do anything about it. Why? Is it because most of us believe we have enough that it's not our problem? Is it because we haven't got a clue what I'm talking about? Is it because we don't understand the issues themselves? Or is it, perhaps, simply because we're to fat, dumb, and lazy to care?

I don't mean any of this as an insult. There's more frustration involved than anything. But, it just amazes me how many people I do talk to from so many different places who have become aware of problems, have identified the difficulties, but when asked what they intend to do about it, all seem to agree that there's nothing they can do, so they'll just do nothing at all.

Only conspiracy theorists like to think there is some great, secret cabal out to gain control of the world, but that's perfect nonsense. We are perfectly capable of suppressing ourselves.

Propaganda

Picking up on the theme of my last post, it occurred to me today that a very important word is both losing favor -- most often simply through misuse -- and is also shifting it's meaning. This time the shift is not toward another word in the same domain, if you will, rather it is sliding into a separate domain and will be overwhelmed by the current standard term there. That word, of course, is "propaganda". We should keep it around, I think. It's a good word, and it actually communicates quite a bit. But, what is propaganda anyway?

If we stop to reflect for a minute, we see it is a form of communication. It's primary purpose is to influence its listeners (or readers or viewers, depending upon the media). The influence should be in a particular way, of course, that is, in favor of the position or assertions being made by the issuer, most commonly but now hardly ever known as the propagandist. The influencing is accomplished by presenting facts selectively. That doesn't mean it's an outright lie, rather, the selection allows the stater to simply leave things out in order to encourage the listener to draw particular conclusions. What is more, propaganda is generally presented emotionally. Emotion, not reason, should be directing the decision-making processes of the listener. That's how we generally understand the term these days.

Granted, this was a political term for the longest of times, but I don't hear it so much in that domain of discourse any more. I do see exactly that happening on a daily basis, and that is my cause for concern. We are all confronted with it day in and day out ... Americans and Brits more than, say, Germans or the French, but no one these days is immune to it. We know it as advertising.

Now before our marketing friends get all weird on me, stop and think about it for a minute. Advertising is a form of communication. It's primary purpose is to influence its listeners (or readers or viewers, depending upon the media). The influence should be in a particular way, of course, that is, in favor of the position or assertions being made by the advertiser. The influencing is accomplished by presenting facts seletively, also in order to encourage the listener to draw particular conclusions. And I doubt that anyone would disagree that it is presented emotionally. So where, I ask you, is the real difference?

I don't see one, so I'm sticking to my guns.

Generally, things like this wouldn't bother me all that much, but I am reminded of McLuhan's aphorism on the one side: the price of eternal vigilance is indifference (we simply get worn down by it all, throw in the towel, and end up with too big a car payment or a world war or whatever). On the other side, there aren't enough people these days educated enough to (a) know what propaganda really is or (b) have been taught or allowed to think critically enough to defend themselves. We can all do something about (a), but (b), well, that's a bigger problem ... and one that's bigger than I want address at the moment.

The next time you're being schlocked or enticed, or being amused to reach into your pocket for money, I'd suggest you stop and think. Of course, what works in marketing, well, that should be right and proper for politics now, shouldn't it. Think about it.