It’s Complicated

I made the mistake of reading an essay this morning by Andrew Sullivan where I discovered that I am Exhibit A of something called the Oppressor Class. Mr. Sullivan was trying to explain the thought process behind the tortured answers given by those three Ivy League presidents to that Congressional Committee this week. Some idiot Congresswoman asked this pretty straight forward question, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews constitute bullying and harassment?” On these campuses its hard to imagine a crime more grave that bullying and harassment. The three women all sounded like lawyered up corporate PR directors with answers that when boiled down to their basics amounted to, “It’s complicated.” The actual answer was “It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.”

So, Mr. Sullivan explained that this sort of squishy thinking comes to us from an invasive belief inside academia that every single interaction in all of recorded history comes down to only two realities. You are either an oppressor or you are oppressed. Essentially, even genocide can be contextualized if the ones calling for it are part of the oppressed class. And since the Palestinians are the oppressed and the Jews are the oppressors, then…its complicated.

Instead of delving into the whole Jews v Palestinian thing, I was challenged by Mr. Sullivan to examine my identity as an oppressor. The reason I am Exhibit A is because I check every single box. My mere existence practically screams oppressor, I’m told. First, I’m white, with European ancestry. Second, I’m a guy. Third, I’m heterosexual. Within the canon of critical theory this is basically the unholy Trinity of Oppressorness. So, because of this accident of birth everything I have managed to accomplish, while not completely illegitimate, at the very least needs to come with a giant asterisk. It is thought an impossibility that I have arrived at my current station in life without having somewhere along the line oppressed someone.

I have done a bit of soul searching on this point. I can’t recall any specific examples of me oppressing anyone. I would think that with my status as oppressor I would feel a bit more like a bad ass. Maybe not being aware of my oppressor role, I didn’t take better advantage. But then I learned, with Mr. Sullivan’s help that often oppressors are in fact oblivious to their oppressive behaviors. Its more like an innate part of our DNA and therefore, like breathing, it is an involuntary action, baked in to our character. So, if our laws catch up with this new theory, it will be super easy to convict oppressors of their crimes since no actual evidence will be required. But, like the Ivy League Presidents tried to explain, it really is quite complicated. 

For example, Although I am white, suppose I was also homosexual? White men are classic oppressors, but homosexuals have always been and remain oppressed. Which is dominant? Suppose I was a lesbian, but also white? Which one carries more weight? How about Asians? Most Ivy League schools have gone to great lengths to rig their admission systems to discriminate against this high achieving demographic. Are they considered oppressed or oppressors? Are they considered white or people of color? The most obvious member of the oppressed class I imagine would be a black, disabled women who is lesbian. However, there are other oppressed classes out there as well. The overweight who are everywhere being fat shamed. Physically unattractive people who are marginalized by our beauty-crazed culture. People who are either too old or too young and therefore oppressed by ageism.

Even though the list of oppressed classes can be daunting to keep up with, the number one oppressor class remains straightforward…whiteness. Getting back to the Hamas-Israel conflict for a minute, what makes the Jewish people the oppressors according to Andrew Sullivan isn’t their Jewishness but rather their whiteness. Since Hamas and the Palestinian people they represent are considered people of color, any behavior that springs from their oppression is justifiable, which helps explain the university president’s tortured responses.

But at this point I should bring up Andrew Sullivan’s status as a white homosexual man. Surely he is conflicted on the subject. He is very much against the entire construct of D.E.I. (diversity, equity and inclusion) which he considers an anti-democracy, anti-liberal racket designed by a bunch of tenured radical Marxists. He considers the university president’s performance this week a rare opportunity for the public to peek behind the curtain of what passes for enlightenment at the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in America. As for me, I’m just trying to banish any oppressor tendencies from my conscious and unconscious mind. But, since I’m 65 it’s probably too late.

I have learned at least one lesson today. Don’t read essays with titles like, The Day the Empress’ Clothes Fell Off.

Book Progress

So, I had an hour long conversation with my editor the other day. He seems like a decent guy, smart and reasonable. He suggested a couple changes he would like to see in the book. When he explained his reasons they made sense to me so I’ve been busy doing the rewrite. On the surface the changes seemed simple enough. He wanted me to introduce one of the characters earlier in the story. Then he wanted me to do a better job of providing additional background which might explain a portion of the plot that he found out of character. Both, reasonable requests. He gave me two weeks to make these changes.

Here’s the hard part. When its been ten years since you wrote something, then you re-enter the thing and start making changes, you feel like a time-traveler mucking around with their lives, screwing with them! I know that sounds ridiculous. These are make believe people in a make believe story. Still, for me the story was complete, its arc completed. Now I’m nosing around like some revisionist historian. Plus, its not as easy as it sounds—introduce this character earlier in the story. Ok, but if I do that, I have to make allowances for that character’s existence in a number of places throughout the story where before he wasn’t around. Its the ripple effect chaos that gets unleashed if you think about time travel too much.

Although making these changes has not at all been easy, I have had a surprising amount of fun doing it. Its hard to describe but its almost like bringing something back to life. I wasn’t sure how I would respond to the criticisms of an editor. It would seem natural to be defensive. It is, after all, my work. But the truth of the matter is that although I’ve managed to write four novels without an editor’s help, all of those efforts were for my own edification. I wrote them because I enjoyed it. I didn’t write them from the standpoint of what a reader might think. But as soon as the possibility of publication presented itself a bit of panic rose in me. Holy crap! Suppose this story is filled with errors and logical inconsistencies? Now suddenly people like editors and proof readers feel like saviors to me. So, if my guy thinks the dog in my story needs to enter the narrative much earlier then who am I to question him? He’s the pro. Not me!

I’ll keep you guys posted on the progress of this thing as we go. 

No Blockages!!

Well, it took them long enough, but I finally got the call to inform me that I have no blockages. I have been released to resume normal activities including all exercise routines from before. This is very good news. The removal of the possibility of blockages has done wonders for my overall sense of well being. So much so that I told Pam that I am ready to reclaim my status as the Stud of Aprilbud. Although I sent her this sentiment via text message I could almost feel the eye roll.

Of course, there is a chance I may once again feel some discomfort, tightness, and heartburn-like symptoms while exercising, and if so I may still have to have an exploratory catheterization at some point. But for now this is wonderful news. 

I feel better already!

The Worst Thing in the World

There are a whole host of things competing for my attention this morning. Consequently, the worst thing in the world just happened. But I bet I’m not alone. I’m willing to bet that this very worst thing has also happened to you at some point. What am I referring to, you ask?

So, you’re sitting in front of your iPad scanning the news while drinking your coffee. The first four emails are all making demands on your time. This leads you to shut that screen and check out the financial news, which then gives way to ESPN and the Atlantic, where you stumble upon an excellent article about the Russia/Ukraine war. Then…it happens. You pick up your mug and see that there is one more swallow left. You tilt the mug upwards as the thought enters your mind—might it be? Too late. It’s COLD. All of your reading and scrolling has taken longer than you thought. You have left that last sip of coffee too long in the bottom of the mug. As soon as it hits your mouth a shudder jolts your entire body. A split decision must then be made. Do I spit it back into the mug or swallow the tepid coffee? Either way, your morning has been ruined.

Look, I know that the kids today are all about their iced coffees, and honestly I’ve tried them a couple times and they are not horrible. But intentionally drinking cold coffee is one thing, being surprised by cold coffee is entirely another. Perhaps calling it “the worst thing in the world” is a tad overwrought, but its like being presented with what looks like a New York Strip steak then biting into it and discovering that its liver. It turns you into a cynic. What other grave disappointments are you in store for today?!

Speaking of grave disappointments, it has been six days since my nuclear stress test and I have still not heard the results from the Cardiologist. Yesterday I called the office requesting a call back to no avail. This morning I will do so again. There are several ways to interpret the radio silence. I had no blockages and am totally fine and since there is nothing wrong they are in no hurry to call me back. Or, they haven’t even looked at the tests results yet. Of course, the way my day started with the cold coffee disaster, it very well be that the office has dropped the ball altogether—the cardiologist thinking that his nurse practitioner was going to call me and the nurse practitioner thinking that the cardiologist was going to call! If thats the case I hope that both of them gag on that last cold sip of coffee.

The Power of Negative Thinking

Tuesday Evening: 9:36 pm

The past 8 days have been—with apologies to Norman Vincent Peale—a testimony to the power of negative thinking. On the 20th of November I honestly answered a question asked to me by a doctor concerning any new symptoms related to my heart that I had been experiencing. The truth was that I have had some exertion induced tightness in my chest along with potent heartburn. Immediately I was scheduled for a nuclear stress test. For the past 8 days I have been doing a very bad job of accentuating the positive. Discomfort and tightness in the chest for a 65 year old man doing strenuous exercise doesn’t have to mean blockages, stints, and a new bland diet of tasteless food. It could very well just be really bad acid reflux. But the human mind is an unreliable optimist, preferring as it does to play out the worst case scenarios during every fleeting moment of reflection. The wait has been intolerable. As soon as I heard the doctor use the word blockages, I have felt a barrage of discomfort in the chest area, the power of suggestion being the most powerful of drugs. At least I hope its the power of suggestion.

So, Pam made butter chicken for dinner tonight, my last meal before the big test in the morning. While we both stood around the Instant pot watching it come together she deadpanned, “Well, if the tests tomorrow don’t go well and you have to go on a bland diet, I figure we should go out with a bang!” Although I’ve always been the smart-ass in the family, my amazing wife has her moments.

What I know at this point is that this particular test takes 4 hours. It involves injecting some sort of dye into my bloodstream, a lot of sitting around waiting, then injecting various drugs into my bloodstream to speed up my heart rate to marathon running levels, then taking pictures of the blood making its way through all the valves and arteries surrounding my heart, then more sitting around waiting. This entire process is repeated as often as is required after which the professionals in charge of the test will hopefully be able to provide me with definitive news as to my condition—clogged arteries or too much spicy food.

I’m thinking that sleep will be fitful tonight, full of crazy dreams. Knowing me I’ll dream about shrimp creole, jambalaya, hot sausages, and Nashville-hot chicken, wake up ravenously hungry only to be reminded that I’m not allowed to eat or drink anything until noon.

Wednesday Morning: 7:30 am

Arrived at Henrico Doctor’s Hospital on Parham. Despite the fact that she would be sitting around in a waiting room for four hours, Pam had insisted upon accompanying me. We found the correct waiting room and I noticed how old everyone looked. This was not an encouragement. Within five minutes a nurse called my name and I made the first of what would be four different trips behind the curtain, this one to make sure that I was who I claimed to be and to secure an IV in my arm along with the aforementioned dye, after which it was back to the waiting room for me.

Wednesday Morning: 8:15 am

My second summons brought me to a giant machine called the NM/CT 850. My job would be to lay completely still with my arms awkwardly stretched over my head, while the rest of me was slid into the metal cylinder whose job it was to take a nine minute picture of my resting heart, followed by a minute long CT scan. This all was pulled off without incident and I was once again shuffled back to the waiting room where I discovered my wife in an animated conversation with a lovely church lady who used to work for Ukrops and dearly loved “Mr. Bobby.” By this time I was extremely hungry and quite done with sitting in the waiting room. So, I began walking the length of the hall outside the door. It was during one such walk that I discovered that my IV had sprung a leak. Perhaps too much walking and not enough sitting. I used a tissue to tidy up the drips and settled in for more waiting. On the plus side, I got my steps for the day in!

Wednesday Morning: 9:50 am

This was going to be the fun part. I was ushered in to a different room behind the curtain where I was asked to lie down and make myself comfortable—a ridiculous suggestion under the circumstances. Soon, a nurse practitioner, Jennifer, joined me as the technicians were about to inject the racing drug. I was told to expect a little shortness of breath. As is my custom during medical procedures of any kind, I close my eyes and keep my mouth shut. About a minute or so in Jennifer asked me, “How are you feeling?” I answered “Not good.” She replied, “well you look like you feel nothing!” The truth was that both arms and my neck were experiencing extreme discomfort. My head was hurting but there was no shortness of breath. Fortunately, the discomfort was brief and soon I was being offered a straw attached to a styrofoam cup filled with Pepsi. It was the most delicious soft drink I had ever tasted. Then they unhooked all the EKG monitors from my chest and escorted me back to the waiting room where I was instructed to stay for “about an hour”. In the one highlight of the day I was given permission to eat and offered stale crackers and peanut butter.

Wednesday Morning: 11:15 am

My last trip behind the curtain was for my last nine minute photograph of my heart post-test in the cylinder. Once this was completed I was told that I was free to go. My Cardiologist would read all the results and be in touch with me “probably by the end of the week.”

As we were walking to the car Pam asked me, “So, how was it?” My answer was, in hindsight, extremely dumb. I said something like, “That was like the worst kind of medical procedure ever, what with all the waiting around…” Pam’s response was pretty classic. Something like, “Seriously? That was the worst medical procedure ever??” After a timely pause she added, “It’s not like it was chemo!”

So now the test has been done and next up is…more waiting. For some reason I was thinking that they would be able to look at what was happening in real time and know exactly what the issue was right away. Apparently not. When I got home and had some soup for lunch I developed a killer headache that Tylenol was powerless against. It then dawned on me, (after Pam suggested the idea), that I hadn’t had my morning coffee. Problem solved.

Final observations:

Thanks to Medicare, probably 95% of the insanely inflated cost of this procedure will be born by my fellow American taxpayers, for which I would like to extend my gratitude. Secondly, as I lay there watching the nurse hook me up to the EKG machine it occurred to me that in this day and age where I can have a clear conversation with someone on the other side of the world using a wireless smart phone, where I can change the channel on my television using a wireless remote control, they are still hooking up EKG’s with what seems like a dozen cords. What the heck? But it was a medical procedure and I had my eyes closed and my mouth shut.

Revolution

When I was a kid we had one in our house. One television and one telephone. The television was a black and white model made by RCA. It had rabbit ears attached to the top that my Dad would adjust this way and that depending on the weather conditions and which of the four channels we happened to be watching. At the top of each antenna we had fashioned crumpled aluminum foil, back then known as Reynold’s Wrap, for additional reception. Our one telephone sat on the edge of the china cabinet in the dining room. It was a pitch black rotary phone whose one enhancement came the day my Dad sprang for a long cord that allowed us kids to have our brief conversations in the relative privacy of the stairway heading upstairs.

Almost everyone I knew had this same phone. You could always tell who the rich kids were when you would go over to their house and discover that phones came in colors other than black. The first time I saw that one of my friends actually had something called a Slimline phone in his bedroom, I discovered that wealth was indeed unevenly distributed!

I’ve been thinking about that old rotary phone a lot lately. In my lifetime we have come from the days of this ugly, heavy, corded beast to the age of the smart phone without the destruction and warfare that usually accompany such revolutions. While in my teenage years I might have averaged five minutes a day using the telephone, now the screen time usage on my Apple smart phone is an embarrassment to me. Ironically, I still only spend maybe five minutes a day actually talking on the phone. The other hours are spent inundating myself with endless streams of information, or scrolling through semi-literate ramblings of people I don’t even know, not to mention hours upon hours of hilarious puppy videos. Phone calls have been replaced with texting. The emails I am bombarded with have managed to almost render the hand written note or letter obsolete. If information is power, then I have more access to more of it than my ancestors could ever have imagined. 

So, why do humans seem dumber than ever? More accurately, why do I feel dumber?

Part of it is that ancient bugaboo that has stymied social planners for centuries—human nature. When humans are confronted with an enlightening article explaining how to create an organic flower garden, or one entitled Ten of Kim Kardashian’s most embarrassing red carpet moments,, the garden will just have to wait. When a man is given the choice between parenting hacks or free porn, well…the numbers don’t lie. 

The internet is usually dominated by the loudest, most provocative voices, not because they are more interesting or informative but rather because we have elevated them to their place of dominance because human beings are attracted by loud and provocative, not understated and calm. In the old days when newspapers were dominant in the information culture, those old editors understood that if they wanted the guy on the street to read about some unifying, uplifting story that might make life better they first had to get him to buy a paper—and that was done by the vitriolic screaming headline. However, with the internet and the smart phone, its not just a matter of good vs. bad content, its the addition of video, especially the live variety. Nothing can compete with the addictive live feeds on our smart phones. The entire world is one big train wreck and none of us knows how to look away. I wonder sometime if when Al Gore was inventing this thing he ever considered the fact that maybe the human brain was not created to hold and process all the information that his internet brings to our doorstep. Maybe its all just too much.

From where I sit in November of 2023 I see no viable way to lessen the universal dumbing down of human beings brought on by this astoundingly convenient and prosperous technology. Sure, we could all just stop using the internet. We could all throw away our cell phones and go back to the land line. We could give up the GPS for that old road map that nobody knew how to fold. We could give up our instant expert YouTube status in exchange for dusting off our old library cards. 

Who am I kidding? There’s no way that this genie is going back in the bottle. Each of us instead will have to decide how much we are willing to allow this new Information Age to define us. 

Thankful in All Things

Its 3:30 in the afternoon, two of my kids are on the Interstate Highway system heading home, and I am nervous. The other two are already here and when they were on the road it was the same feeling. I wonder if it will ever be any different, like maybe when I’m 80. Will I still be glancing at the clock? Probably.

Thanksgiving is upon us. It has always been my favorite holiday. Although I love the great meal and being together with family, the day also brings with it a measure of guilt. I don’t always have a heart full of thankfulness on most of the other days of the year. I find it a challenge to be thankful for bad news when it arrives. Nevertheless, my faith teaches me that I am to be, thankful in all things. I’m told that during times of crisis our faith is most valuable and our reliance on God most comforting. Recently someone from the pulpit of my church called the difficult seasons of life opportunities for growth. From past experience and intellectually I know this to be true. But there is a vast chasm between the mind and the heart at the first introduction of crisis. So, it is a very good thing that Thanksgiving is on the calendar, as a steadfast reminder to give thanks for the blessings of life…and every fresh piece of bad news.

This year the gathering will be at Linda’s house. She’s my big sister and she has the biggest table. Still, there will be three rooms, three tables, and 26 mouths to feed. Linda is great at hosting these types of things. Everyone feels at home the minute they walk in, and the food is incredible. How she manages it all is the question. The same way Mom used to. It must be in the blood.

Most of you can tell a similar story. There’s a place you go, a special dish that’s your favorite, that weird cousin and obnoxious uncle. Most of us, the vast majority of those who read this blog are blessed with supportive families. However, there are many families where the holidays are a minefield of hurt feelings, resentments and hostility. I always think of them when the 26 of us are holding hands saying the blessing. Then there are those families who are struggling to put food on the table. For them, there is no Thanksgiving meal. Any meal at all would be a blessing. Its these people who my church attempts to help through our partnership with various food banks in the area. The fact that within a ten minute drive in any direction from our church there are hungry people should shame us. So this week we hit our goal of delivering over 4000 pounds—two tons of food to The Henrico Community Foodbank. It is a wonderful feeling, but the need never ends.