SOME GO EASY, SOME GO HARD

My mother died in 2011.

Her body died on August 7, 2013.

My wish for all of us is that our bodies and minds will go at the same time, but all too often that's not the case. It would seem that physical medical science is regrettably ahead of mental medical science. My guess is they could medicate/hook a person up to live until the Cubs win the World Series. That, to me, doesn’t meet the definition of living.

When I can’t do the things that make me, me; like using a toilet, recognizing my wife and kids and getting food directly into my mouth, maybe it’s time to move on to what ever is next.

I know most significant end of life issues are primarily religious issues so, let’s talk about that. If a person strongly believes that God put us on this earth and he’s the only one that can allow us to leave, then for a person with that belief things should stay the same. But, if you were to believe that a loving God would not want his finest creation (after Labrador Retrievers) to permanently lose all that made them humans, maybe we as a society ought to revise how we view our last days.

My mother asked for death for the last couple of years. We who loved her had to sit and watch and deny her any relief from her mental pain.  I’m sure some would say she was not in her “right mind,” and I would agree. This is just why she should have been unshackled from a non functioning body and her “wrong mind.”   My mother would have been mortified at what she looked and sounded like at the end. As “wrong minded” as she was, she knew at some primal level what she needed.

Everybody I’ve talked to about this subject agrees they don’t want the ending that society and medical science seem to have in mind for us.  It’s important for us to be sure those making end of life decisions for us (including our doctors) know what we want and are willing to carryout our wishes to the best of their ability and within the current law. Today in most of the US exiting a life with no quality when we want to exit, is not an easy option. Hopefully that will change, but probably not in our life times (pardon the pun). 

There are worse things than dying and living maybe one of them.

PROFILING: THE NEW DIRTY WORD

Let’s change the scenario a tad.

George Zimmerman pockets his pistol in the early evening and heads out on his nightly rounds to protect the citizens of his neighborhood.   Patrolling just a short while he encounters a stranger. Given that his area has been the target of recent burglaries and has one of the highest crime rates in the nation, he is super diligent. He approaches the stranger. The stranger is a blond haired, blue eyed, Nordic youth named Thor who is whistling show tunes. (Fill in what you think would happen next….)

But he didn’t, he came across a black youth in a hoodie named Trayvon who was not much interested in carrying on a conversation with a “crazy ass cracker.” We all know what happened after that.

Yes, George Zimmerman profiled, by race, Trayvon Martin.  SO WHAT? We all do it.

If you were leaving a movie theater late at night and to get to your car you had a choice of going down an alley with 5 black kids, pants at half mast, playing heavy rap music and speaking in a language you believe just may be English.

OR

An alley with 5 kids that just came out of a meeting of the sons of Norway, wearing cardigan sweaters and whistling show tunes. Which way do you choose? Either way you are racial profiling.

I would go the Norway route, and so would most people I know, both black and white. I don’t know the black kids, but I racially profiled them.   I know by reading the newspaper and listening to news broadcasts that more people are robbed; raped and murdered by black kids, pants at half mast playing heavy rap music and speaking in a language I  believe just may be English than kids that just came out of a meeting of the sons of Norway, wearing cardigan sweaters and whistling show tunes.

Why did Zimmerman think Martin posed a greater potential threat than our Norwegian friend?  Because statistically Martin did pose a greater threat.

Do people generally think of the Irish as smart, industrious?  Do they generalize Asian as lazy and not too smart? The generalization of people and their good and bad characteristics comes from something.

There were 49 people shot (11 killed) on the south side of Chicago last St’ Patrick’s day. There were no shooting/murders in Barrington Hills, Il. Which is 87% white, 1 % black (Reverse the figures of Chicago’s South side.)  There were also no shooting in Bridgeport, the old Irish section of the city.

Today, if I had to pick a group of kids to start a basketball team I would pick as many blacks as I could find. If I were asked to start a street gang I would also pick as may blacks as I could find.

We stereotype people based on their previous actions.  If blacks want to change the profile they must change the actions.

Anytime anybody writes anything about race they can get themselves in deep trouble, but this ignoring the elephant in the room has gone on long enough; somebody has to address the issue. Blacks are profiled because black crime rate is seven times higher than the white crime rate, so that’s the way to bet. When the police look for people involved in criminal activity, they are going to look for the kind of people listed in their previous crime reports.

The question that nobody is asking is “WHY?”  Why are blacks the “go to” race when looking for the bad guy. How did they get this “profile? What has happened to the African-American, and ever increasingly, the Hispanics, in America today? I have my theory. The Liberal philosophy of making the poor all wards of the state is obviously a major contributor to the decline of the minority family, but I also believe there is something more sinister at work. I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the black leaders. The Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, Charlie Rangels, NAACP, et. al.

The black leaders over the last few decades have made their living by making victims of those of color. The leaders spew the venom that blacks can never expect to make anything of themselves when they were brought over here to a strange land by white slavers (Fact: most slavers were black). Black leaders make it sound as if the black race arrived on America’s shore last Tuesday at five PM.  They pound the point that, “the man has kept you down ever since, and since he has the upper hand, you don’t stand a chance to succeed.” The truth is if the leaders would give hope to their people by helping them realize that 600,000 black people were brought over and that grew to 40 million people who are experiencing a greater level of freedom and prosperity then they could have ever experienced without the long boat ride.

As Tammy Bruce, a radio talk show host said, “When your victimhood is your empowerment, recovery is the enemy”:

Restoring black pride is essential if the once proud people ever want to get to the Norwegian level of racial profiling. That pride can only be restored if the leaders do not excuse every antisocial act as, “what can you expect from a poor uneducated person”.

The color of the skin is not the problem. It’s the way of life being adopted by all too many black families and being accepted and promoted by black leaders and financed by liberal politicians (both Democrats and Republicans). The politicians have done more damage to the black race than slavers whips could have ever done.

Let’s start at the beginning and get the family back to a two parent family. In the African-American community 72% of children are born to unmarried women (in 1964 it was 24%.) This statistic is important because 85 % of the prison population comes from fatherless homes. In the African American community only 31 % of couples are married (in 1960 it was 61%) The blacks must stop listening to their self-intentioned leaders and stop blaming everything outside of themselves for their troubles. They must take back their streets and not accept the limits their leaders put on them.

As you can see, back in the ’60s, when we were going through our major civil rights struggles here in the US, the black family was better off than they are now, and they were not profiled in the way they are today. In the ‘60s blacks were afraid of whites, today whites are afraid of blacks. Is that progress? Blacks who are angry at being profiled might do best to target that anger at those people and those conditions creating those profiles and stop the almost insane practice of tearing up their own neighborhood because somebody reacted to the profile created by those very rioters.

Every race has earned the profile they are living under.. It’s not up to society to view a race differently, it’s up to that race to act differently.

 (NOTE: While this discussion was about profiling and blacks, here in New Mexico I see the Hispanics falling down the same rabbit hole for the same reasons. It’s a shame