Category Archives: social policy

Are All the Good Ones Taken?

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Recently, I saw a post in a group called Fuck the Patriarchy that asked the poignant, if unoriginal, question: Are all the good men taken? (Actually, it was phrased “Are all the good men coupled?,” a verb I associate more with train cars than with men. But I get the point and digress.)

(There seems to be a fair amount of relationship questions and advice in the group, rather than a strict focus on dismantling systems of oppression. But I digress some more.)

I find it encouraging that the assumption is that there are some men who are not essential parts of the patriarchy, and that they’re considered viable options for coupling with (or whatever).

The real question, I think, though, is not “Are there enough good men to go around?” It’s “Are there enough good enough men to be in a couple with?” (Or a thruple, if that’s your preference. Some kind of committed relationship, anyway. But I digress yet again.)

I say that because a “good man” may be too high a standard. It comes too close to being a perfect man, and that’s an impossible burden. Every man is a Jerk Boy once in a while.

What’s that (I hear you ask)? Well, a Jerk Boy is one who strays from the ideal in some measure. Not one who strays from the relationship, if the comments section is any indication, though.

One definition of a gentleman is one who, when he pees in the sink, at least removes the dishes first. Admittedly, that’s a pretty low standard. I would call him a Jerk Boy and tell him that as long as he’s there, he can wash the damn dishes.

Every woman has had Jerk Boys in her life. That’s a given. Whether that’s a deal breaker largely depends on how Jerky and how Boyish the guy really is.

Take my husband. (Well, no, don’t. I do lend him out for certain occasions, though, such as when one of his women friends (and he does have them) wants to see a movie or play that I don’t. Just have him home by midnight. But I digress some more.) Even Dan is a Jerk Boy at times. Just not the pee in the sink variety.

So, what are the standards for a “good man?” One who openly tries to destroy the patriarchy, or one who supports me when I do? One who actively educates other men about how to behave respectfully with women or one who behaves respectfully himself and thereby leads by example? I’ll take the second one in each of those comparisons. He’s good enough for me.

Not that I think that the first, or truly good, ones don’t exist. I do suspect, however, that, as of yet, there aren’t enough of them to go around. And fighting over them isn’t what you’d call good feminist behavior. (There’s enough debate in the group over what good feminist behavior is, especially in regard to cheating partners and what sisterhood requires one to do about it when the opportunity for a single woman to have a fling with a married man arises. And no, I will not debate that at this time. But I digress, just not that far. That’s a topic for Fuck the Patriarchy to take up, and they have.)

So, I am coupled with Dan for over 40 years, if not always perfectly blissful ones. He’s good enough for me. And only occasionally a Jerk Boy.

Words I’m Not Used To (Yet)

social policy, education, humor, etc., language, writing,

Language evolves over time. I know this and have (mostly) gotten used to it. In fact, I like it. I enjoy neologisms. I’m very fond of “yeet,” for example. (Although I’ve never understood the conjugation of yeet. I think it’s probably yeet/yeeted/yeeted. If I ran the zoo, it would be yeet/yote/yoten. But I digress.) I don’t know if yeet will last. I kind of doubt it, but while it’s still around, I’m going to savor it. (Dan yeets things all the time, so I’ll have plenty of chances to use it. But I digress again.)

Every year the various dictionaries add words that they deem to have made it into the language. This year, Merriam-Webster spotlighted 1,400 new words, some of which I knew (Rickroll, looksmaxxing) and some of which I didn’t (cuffing season, parasocial). There were also new uses of old words, such as “compute” as a noun.

Some new words or usages bother me. I’m still not used to “overwhelm” when it’s used as a noun rather than a verb. It just sounds wrong, even though I don’t know of any other word that fills that particular lexical gap.

I also love changes in language that serve a purpose in society. The best example I can think of is the demise of sex-linked words for occupations. When this change first got going, the new words and phrases sounded awkward, or there didn’t seem to be solutions for firmly entrenched forms of speech.

Some were derided at first, like “Men at Work” signs (though not the band), which sensibly became “Work Zone. Some have been abbreviated, such as “chair” instead of “chairman.” (Although I did once see someone try out “chairhead,” which, as far as I can tell, disappeared after the one use. Good. But I digress some more.)

The use of “male” or “female” (or “lady”) to preface occupations has likewise faded out. “Stewardess” briefly begat “steward,” but quickly both were given up for “flight attendant.” And publications are increasingly less likely to use “woman physicist” or “lady astronaut,” unless they mean the first example, which is also becoming less noteworthy.

(The only occupation for which this is not true is “nurse.” Most people feel compelled to say “male nurse” unless there’s an obvious man’s name attached to it (Nurse Jim Denker, for example). Otherwise, a reminder is due. “I heard the nurse was just here. Did she give you a shot?” “No, he didn’t.” And many of us still expect a nurse practitioner to be a woman and a physician’s assistant to be a man. But I digress even more.)

But the new usage that most often trips me up is actor/actress. Oh, I know what it means when someone refers to “actor Gwyneth Paltrow,” but I find myself stumbling over using the word to apply to both sexes. I just can’t seem to remember to say “beloved actor Carrie Fisher” or “Meryl Streep is a fine actor” or “the film features actors Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.” I know this is a lack of linguistic subtlety and a failure in feminism on my part, but I just haven’t gotten used to saying it. I’ll keep practicing.

The New York Times Magazine published an article this week about the furor over new words entering dictionaries. It proposed that the usual dictionaries aren’t the right place for all these neologisms. Instead, they asked, “Couldn’t some new thing join them, some Oxford Social Reference or Collins Meme Almanac, for the sake of those poor future historians?” These, they suggested, would be “slang dictionaries,” a kind of L.S.P. dictionaries (“language for specific purposes”).

That might satisfy the lexicographers, but not the people who don’t know what lexicographers are. I, for one, am tired of looking up words in The Urban Dictionary and would like somewhere official to go for info. I like the idea of having a place to find new words and their definitions. Maybe we also need a dictionary listing recent words that have fallen out of use. These would have to be online editions of the dictionaries, of course, publishing and printing being the long, expensive productions that they are. (But I digress linguistically, wishing I had become a lexicographer. Chat, that would have been a flex.)

Hungry Children: A One-Act Play

education, family, government, health, social policy, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Sharing food with the needy

[Setting: The Halls of Power]

Guy in Suit: The media keep saying that there are hungry children in America.

Other Guy in Suit: Let them eat dinner.

Bleeding-Heart: That’s the problem. They don’t have dinner to eat. Or even breakfast sometimes.

GIS: We already give them lunch at school. That’s five days a week.

B-H: Unless they’re absent or on vacation or a snow day. Or if they can’t pay for it.

OGIS: Then it’s the parents’ problem.

GIS: Why do schoolchildren have so many vacations, anyway? We don’t get all those vacations.

B-H: Uh, yes you do.

GIS: Oh. Well, never mind that now. We were talking about tax cuts…uh, job creators…uh, feeding children. That was it.

OGIS: Suppose the media are right?

GIS: The media are never right unless we tell them what to say.

OGIS: Well, just suppose. For a minute. OK? The problem I see is that it looks good for us to feed poor, hungry, starving American children. By the way, are they as pitiful-looking as poor, starving foreign children?

GIS: Probably not. You were saying?

OGIS: If there are hungry children, and we do need to feed them, how are we supposed to do that without feeding the lousy, lazy, good-for-nothing moochers at the same time?

GIS: Ah, yes, the parents. If we give the parents anything, it should be one bag of rice and one bag of beans. And — hey — they could feed their kids that too.

B-H: But children need good nutrition — fruits and vegetables and vitamins and minerals, and enough to keep them full and healthy.

OGIS: Hey, we have plenty of minerals left over after fracking. Won’t those do?

B-H: No.

GIS: But if we give kids all that fancy food, what’s to keep the parents from eating it?

OGIS: Or selling it for booze or cigarettes or drugs?

GIS: Think about that! The drug dealers would be getting all the good nutrition. Then they could run faster from the police.

OGIS: We can’t have that, now can we?

B-H: But…the hungry children? Remember? Eating at most one meal a day, five days a week, when school is in session?

GIS: That’s plenty. I heard American children are obese, anyway. They could stand to lose a little weight.

[Curtain]

This post, which I wrote a number of years ago, became relevant again. I wish it would stop being relevant.

The Comeback of Bullying

education, etc., health, mental health, social policy, , ,

TW: suicide, violence

Some people have suggested lately that bullying is a good thing. This flies in the face of most people’s understanding of the effects of bullying and years of anti-bullying campaigns in schools.

We all think we know what bullying is, or at least that we know it when we see it. But what is bullying, really?

Bullying can be physical, verbal, or psychological, just like other forms of abuse. It can happen face-to-face or online. Online bullying is increasingly common and more difficult to deal with because much of it happens after school hours and because of the speed and vast reach of bullying speech or images.

Joanna Schroeder, a media critic and author, says that “the word ‘bullying’ often stands in for plain old bigotry or discrimination.” She notes that a slur for people with intellectual disabilities (the “R-word”) has been making a comeback.

The Anti-Bullying Alliance provides a succinct definition. Bullying, they say, consists of four characteristics:

• the hurting of one person or group by another person or group

• repetitive hurtful speech or behavior

• intentional behavior

• a real or perceived imbalance of power.

So, bullying is hurtful, repeated, and intentional behavior. That’s easy enough to understand. Let’s examine the last characteristic, the imbalance of power.

An imbalance of power in the workplace of a superior and a subordinate is a clear example. In schools, principals and teachers would be one example, and teachers and students would be another. But how does this play out in terms of student versus student? Where’s the power and the imbalance?

The imbalance of power can be obvious, such as that between the quarterback of the football team and the other players or the imbalance between a senior and a first-year student. A perceived imbalance can exist because of students who are larger in size, more athletic, neurotypical, physically unimpaired, or belonging to a majority racial or ethnic proportion of a school. They are perceived as having more power than those children who do not possess those qualities. And a clique of “mean girls” or a group of “rich kids” has the perceived superior power of popularity. Any of these imbalances can play into bullying. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that higher rates of bullying are directed at girls, LGBTQ students, and teenagers with developmental disabilities.

In the case against bullying, we have seen accounts that some children who die by suicide have been subjected to extreme bullying and others who perpetrate mass shootings have, too. (There are often other factors that contribute to their deadly actions. Bullying is rarely the whole answer.) Deaths have occurred during incidents of college hazing of pledges or recruits by the senior members of organizations. Mental health professionals view bullying as too serious a problem to be considered a character-building exercise.

So, if it’s so harmful, why is bullying losing its bad reputation? Some people think that society has gone too far in “coddling” children and that they need to toughen up or be less sensitive. The world they will live in is often harsh, and children must grow into adults who are aware of that and able to handle it. In this increasingly popular view, sensitivity is for the weak, and only the tough will succeed. There is anecdotal evidence to support this view. We can all think of bullies who have succeeded in politics, business, entertainment, or the media.

“If I’d never got bullied, I don’t think I’d be where I am today,” said one TikTok influencer. “I don’t think I would have the motivation to prove people wrong.” He believes that bullying “is not as bad as it is made out to be.” He has said, however, that it’s “never OK to turn to physical violence or pick on people based on their race, religion or disabilities.” But he maintains that at least some kinds of bullying are not as harmful. One wonders what his definition of bullying is and what the Anti-Bullying Alliance would say about it.

Just as the self-esteem programs of the 1980s, so popular at first, drew increasing criticism as leading to “participation trophies” and the devaluing of personal accomplishment, the idea of bullying may be undergoing a redefinition as a response to “wokeness” being seen as “weak.” It remains to be seen if this opinion will spread to society at large rather than just the bullies we already have.

Quotations in this post first appeared in the Oct. 6, 2025 edition of the New York Times in an article by Callie Holtermann.

An Investment in the Future

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My investments are not stocks and bonds and they’re not biological, but they affect the future anyway.

I don’t have any children—I’m the proverbial cat lady—and because of that some people are saying that I’m not contributing to the future of our country or that I shouldn’t get an equal say in how our country is run. And I think that’s just plain wrong.

Some families have no children because they can’t have any. Others don’t want children, for whatever reason. But making the most fundamental right of our society dependent on whether a person has a child is a profound violation of the foundations of our democratic society. Even if you’re a strict constitutional constructionist, there’s absolutely nothing in there about voting being contingent on offspring. (That voting was originally limited to white male property owners is another issue that hasn’t yet been brought up.)

This proposal is billed as “pro-family,” but it’s nothing of the kind. It defines family as only one kind of family and denies rights—not privileges—to the rest. Granting those privileges to children, to be exercised by their parents, contradicts the basic principle of one person, one vote. When those children turn 18, they are welcome, even encouraged, to cast their votes for themselves. But allowing parents extra votes per child is nonsensical.

I wonder how long it will be before the definition of a family is a two-parent (heterosexual) couple with children. Will single mothers get to vote more than once, considering their children? Single fathers? If a family doesn’t include two parents living together, does the voting right automatically go to the mother? The father? These matters are far from clear. And unless I’m mistaken, they would require a constitutional amendment to go into effect. In other words, it’s grandstanding.

But leaving that political nonsense aside, what are the rights that childless people have, or should have, regarding children?

Well, first of all, our taxes pay for schools, parks, lunch programs, Head Start, child tax credits, nutrition programs, Social Security survivors and dependents, Social Security Disability, Medicaid and health insurance, and of course schools, among others. I’m paying into those whether I have children or not.

I don’t resent that. I think such programs are necessary and I’m glad to help fund them. The children and families they help impact me directly and indirectly. They will be my congressional representatives, my nursing home aides, the inventors of devices that will improve my life—every slot that must be filled to make society run, if not smoothly, then at least adequately.

Of course, not all children have the same start in life or pursue noble or necessary functions. I would like to help them do so. The way I can do this is to vote. These issues and functions affect me in very real ways that I have the right and the privilege to vote for.

And I do vote.

Now, let’s talk about schools. Because I don’t have children, many people think I should have no say in what happens in schools. I disagree. What happens in the schools affects me too. I want doctors who have a firm grounding in accepted science. I want bankers who have a keen grasp on economics. And I want government people who have a thorough understanding of civics. That means I have an investment in what goes on in schools and what children learn.

I’ll never be on a school board or even a member of the PTA, but I do get to vote for who’s on the school board and I pay attention to what they do. Now, I’ve got no problem if people want to homeschool their children or send them to private schools, as long as my tax dollars go to the public schools. Public money, public schools.

But don’t try to take away my rights as a citizen or come up with some hare-brained scheme to make my vote count for less. You can say the children are our future all you want.

But they’re my future too. Whether I’ve given birth to any or not.

Who Owns the Rainbow?

Christianity, etc., language, social policy, , , , ,

I can’t believe that a rainbow is controversial, but there you have it. These days it is. The problem is that the rainbow means many different things to many different people.

This being Pride Month, we see a lot of pride flags, shirts, coffee cups, buttons, posts, memes, etc. with rainbows on them. They are brightly colored rainbows, not the more pastel kind you see in the sky after a rain. They’re meant to symbolize sexual diversity and visibility. The rainbow flag was first flown in 1978 at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade. Now the rainbow flag stands for gay pride. You also see flags with white, pink, and blue, and black and brown added in some configuration for trans visibility and POC intersectionality.

There’s pushback, though. There’s the question of whether—and how much—rainbow merchandise should be displayed in mass-market retail stores during Pride Month. The manufacturers and sellers, whether they actually support the LGBTQIA+ community or not, naturally want to make money, and their first instinct is that people supportive of gay pride will buy rainbow-themed products. The pushback comes from some in the heterosexual community who feel that too much square footage and prominence have been given over to gay pride merchandise. Fearing that they would lose money if the complaining heterosexuals shopped elsewhere, some retailers cut down on the stock of rainbow merchandise or put it in the back of stores so it would be, if not back in the closet, at least less in-your-face.

Some Christians also push back against the rainbow-as-gay-pride concept by invoking religion. The rainbow, they say, belongs to God and is not to be associated with what they see as sin. It was a sign of God’s promise never to destroy the world with a flood again and so symbolizes holiness, faithfulness, and salvation. I’ve seen Facebook posts and memes promoting this understanding of rainbows and an attempt to “take back” the rainbow for God.

Call me pedantic, but no one seems to talk about what a rainbow actually is. It’s a product of refraction, which Sir Isaac Newton explained in 1665 when sunlight hit a prism and produced a color spectrum that resembled a rainbow. National Geographic defines a rainbow this way: “a multicolored arc made by light striking water droplets.” The controversy over rainbows, however, is not about what they are but what they symbolize.

Symbols, to get pedantic again, are not absolutes. They mean what we put into them, what we believe about them. And they change meanings over time. The Don’t Tread on Me flag (technically called the Gadsden Flag) was once a symbol of Colonial America’s resistance to the British. More recently, it became associated with the Tea Party movement and other right-wing causes. What does it symbolize now? Independence (though not from the British)? No taxation? Anti-government sentiment in general? Objections to one particular political party? All of the above? None of the above? When there’s that little agreement, the symbolic meaning fades out and the flag simply means “I’m angry” or perhaps “I’m defiant.”

The same is true of the American flag as a symbol. To some people, it represents the United States itself. To others, it means American ideals like liberty and justice for all. To still others, it stands for the US military. So if you disrespect the flag (in whatever way) who or what you’re disrespecting—the nation, the ideals, or the military—depends on how you interpret the symbol. (There’s no pushback at all against flag-themed clothing. At one time that was thought to be disrespectful too. It’s part of the US Flag Code that the flag shouldn’t be worn as clothing, but hardly anyone knows that anymore, much less abides by it.)

So, back to the rainbow. Going on the principle that a symbol means what you put into it, there’s no use fighting over what it means. It means different things to different people in different circumstances. Everyone is entitled to associate it with any meaning they prefer, whether that be gays or God. Or, as I prefer, refracted light in the sky that looks pretty. That’s a lot less contentious.

Now I wait for the comments that I’m disrespecting gays, God, or America (though probably not Sir Isaac Newton). You’re entitled to your symbolism. But no one owns the rainbow.

What We Deserve

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I saw a mattress commercial once that said something like, “You’ll get the good night’s sleep you deserve.” Or maybe it was good dreams. I was taken aback. Do we really deserve a good night’s sleep? The ad appears to not have taken into account new babies and new puppies, known destroyers of a good night’s sleep and neither one a problem solvable with a new mattress. If you’ve recently acquired either a baby or a puppy, a good night’s sleep is not so much something you deserve as something that you desire.

Especially in commercials, there seem to be many things that folks apparently deserve. The most recent one I’ve heard is toilet paper that tears off neatly in pretty scalloped lines. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never desired—or deserved—ass-wipe that made pretty patterns on the roll. I’m satisfied if there is a roll and not just a brown paper tube on the holder. After being stranded once or twice, I won’t even insist on it facing the right way (over the front) as long as it’s there when I need it.

When it comes to what we deserve, I generally think of the very basics. We all deserve to have shelter and food and physical safety. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has these physiological needs as the foundation of its levels of development. Maslow’s theory is that we can’t move on to higher levels of the pyramid until we have completed the ones below. So, until we have our basic needs met, we can’t move on to higher needs like love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

But apart from our basic needs, what do we deserve? Singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter has some thoughts (or rather Lucinda Williams, who wrote the lyrics). In her song “Passionate Kisses,” she lists “a comfortable bed that won’t hurt my back”—so maybe that mattress is something we deserve after all. Other needs she wants fulfilled are “pens that won’t run out of ink and cool quiet and time to think.” And of course, those passionate kisses. “Shouldn’t I have all of this?” she asks. Yes. Yes, you should, I find myself thinking. Especially the pens. (Those don’t appear on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and neither do passionate kisses, except as a part of the love and belonging tier. But I digress.)

Williams was really onto something. While the comfortable bed and the pens cost money, the cool quiet and the time to think don’t, and neither do the passionate kisses.

I can think of a few other things we deserve as well. Healthcare that won’t bankrupt us. Enough food to stave off hunger, especially for children. Low-cost housing that the working poor can afford. Just to name a few. You know, stuff on the lowest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy.

Unfortunately, those do cost money, which really needs to be provided by social programs that require government funding, either national or local. Charitable organizations can help too, but they can’t shoulder the entire burden. And in the current political climate, funding for social programs is increasingly on the chopping block.

(And no, I’m not suggesting that there should be social programs that would offer funding for pens that don’t run out of ink or passionate kisses. That would be crazy. Maybe there should be a research effort to work on the pen thing, though. But I digress some more.)

For me personally, I think I deserve a mouse and keyboard that won’t run out of juice, a refrigerator that won’t run out of juice, and passionate kisses that won’t run out of juice. My old mattress works just fine.

What I Love About Election Season

education, etc., government, journalism, social policy, television, , , ,

I’m tempted to say “Nothing,” but that would be too obvious.

I’m tempted to say “Watching the debates,” but that would be a lie. (I do enjoy the Bad Lip Reading versions, which are truly hysterical. But I digress.)

I’m not tempted to say “The engaging political discourse and the spirited exchange of ideas,” because that would be a big, fat lie.

However, if there’s a woman candidate, I do like to watch and see how many times the media comments on her fashion sense and grooming and calls her voice shrill and her personality unlikeable. I can keep score and see which outlets do the best and worst jobs. But that seems somewhat unlikely this year, though there may, of course, be female VP nominees—most likely will be unless Joe decides to ditch Kamala, which he shows no sign of doing.

No, what I love about the election season is the opportunity to view rhetorical fallacies in the wild. Slippery slope? Got it. Moving the goalposts? You bet. False equivalence? You know it. Appeal to the common man? All over the place. The places to see them are the debates and the TV commercials. Again, it’s fun to keep score. Keep a checklist handy. It’ll keep you distracted from your outrage.

(One year during election season I was teaching freshman English at a university, and I had a grand time introducing rhetorical fallacies through the above-mentioned method. It wasn’t around at that time, but now there’s a card game called Fallacy, which would have been a dandy teaching aid. But I digress again.)

Of course, there are classic political ads. (Some would say notorious.) The king of them all was Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” ad. It starts with a daisy and ends with a mushroom cloud. It was a classic slippery slope fallacy (also called the camel’s nose). The subtext was “Give the Soviets an inch and they’ll scorch the earth.” (This was back when Russia was our enemy.) It was also a notable campaign because it introduced the phrase, “Let’s Make America Great Again,” though no one wore hats that said that. And for a little more nostalgia, let’s remember that Reagan was 69 when he was elected. Back then, we thought that was old. (An underground slogan was “Reagan in ’80. Bush in ’81.” But I digress some more.)

Speaking of Bush (H.W., in this case), he took a vivid and vicious swipe at Michael Dukakis with his “revolving door prison” ad. This was the heyday of attack ads, which I think we’ll see a resurgence of this year. It could be both entertaining and appalling, as well as full of rhetorical flaws. (Also, Dukakis didn’t help himself with a commercial showing him driving a tank, which was supposed to be patriotic, but just looked silly. It was described as “The Photo Op That Tanked,” which I have to admit was a clever headline, unlike so many others that try to be witty. But I digress even more.)

I also love seeing how many times the candidates use the words “patriotic” and “freedom” without ever defining them and whether they refrain from talking about re-education camps or death panels. What I really love about election season, though, is one when there’s no violence. May it be so.

There’s Prayer in Schools

Christianity, education, etc., government, religion, social policy, , ,

Despite what you may have heard, there is prayer in public schools. It’s totally legal.

You don’t think so? The government forbids it?

Not true! Students and even teachers pray in school every day. They always have and they always will. Pray all you want.

A student can pray before a test or just because. Groups that meet for that purpose can pray—during a free period, for example. (There was a group in my high school that did this. I attended a few times but left when they started planning a book burning.) There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from praying like this.

The only thing that’s not permitted in schools is requiring anyone else to pray with you or telling them how they have to pray. A principal or teacher can’t start class with a prayer. You can’t insist that students pray over lunch. You can’t base grades on whether or not a student prays. If a student chooses to pray, you can’t tell them which prayer to use. All those things fly in the face of the Establishment Clause of Freedom of Religion in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is what it actually says. That means that there can’t be a law that makes one religion the official religion of the US. And it means that, if you do have a preferred religion, the government can’t prevent you from practicing it. It’s left up to the individual what religion—if any—they practice.

The problem comes when we’re discussing public institutions, which include public schools. (Obviously, students in religious schools can pray whatever the school says to.) The first part of the clause says that the public institution can’t declare an official religion. That’s why there’s no compulsory prayer in schools. The second part, “prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” says that everyone is free to worship in their own way. That’s why students are able to pray in schools during their free time, by choice, without an official such as a teacher or the principal leading it. The government can’t forbid it.

If prayer were to be required in schools, there would be any number of cans of worms opened. Let’s take a basic Christian prayer—The Lord’s Prayer.

Which version of the prayer would everyone be required to say? There’s a difference between the Catholic version and the Protestant version. But the wording also differs among the Protestant denominations and individual congregations. Debts and debtors? Trespasses? Sins? Many churches specify in the church bulletin which wording to use so that they can pray in unison.

Another can of worms is that not all Americans are Christians. Increasingly, children from other faiths are entering the public schools. Why should they be required to pray a Christian prayer? But what’s the alternative? Couldn’t they just sit quietly while everyone else prays or pray their own prayer silently to themselves? No. That establishes the prayer of one religion as the official classroom prayer to the exclusion of the others. Anyone who doesn’t share that religion gets treated differently. Their prayer is not the one being said for everyone. That’s the establishment clause again.

Then, think about what it would be like if Christians weren’t in the majority in a school. (For the moment, let’s suppose that the majority rules, which is many people’s assumption.)

But Christians aren’t always in the majority in a public school. I always think of the example of the followers of the Bhagwan Rashneesh. A religious community in Oregon, they incorporated as a city, Rajneeshpuram, which had around 7,000 people. Nearby Antelope, Oregon, had a population of about 60.

The State School Superintendent visited the district’s high school and found that it was “permeated with religious symbolism” and “did not look, sound, or feel like a public school.” The religious symbolism was Rajneeshee, of course.

Now imagine those people from nearby Antelope. If their kids had to attend the Rajneeshpuram school, which was officially a public school, how would their parents have liked it if the students were required to say the Rajneeshee prayers? Not so fond of required prayer in public schools now? Ready to take the Rajneeshees to court to prevent their prayers as unconstitutional? That would be my guess.

In other words, be careful what you pray for.

Political Noise

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USA Flag Man YellingThis was written seven years ago. Unfortunately, it’s just as relevant today.

A friend of mine started a Facebook page called Political Noise. I wish he hadn’t.

Oh, I don’t mind that he (mostly) keeps his political rants on a separate page from his puns, movie reviews, and discussions of pop culture. What I mind is the title. There’s already too much noise in politics.

So much noise that the signal can’t get through.

Wikipedia defines signal-to-noise ratio (or SNR) as “a measure … that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise.” Think of an old-fashioned television set or radio.  When there’s too much static, you can’t get a clear picture or clear sound. At most, you get a snowstorm of non-information or a meaningless buzz.

That’s what’s happening in interpersonal communication these days. It’s worse because of upcoming elections, of course. It seems that whoever shouts the loudest gets the most attention. The content – the message – has become irrelevant.

In fact, the content has dwindled to nothing. Words that no longer retain any meaning are flung at the heads of those who are supposed to be recipients of the message. Patriot, citizen, terrorist, liberal, fascist, tyrant, and other, cruder, forms of common words no longer have denotations (agreed-upon definitions), but only connotations (emotional content). Linguist S. I. Hayakawa nailed it back in 1941:

[W]e discover that these utterances really say “What I hate (‘liberals,’ ‘Wall Street’), I hate very, very much,” and “What I like (‘our way of life’), I like very, very much.” We may call such utterances snarl-words and purr-words.

Then there’s the problem of who’s supposed to be receiving the message, the snarls and purrs. Sadly, the answer seems to be, only those who already agree with you. Try as they might, nay-sayers’ voices will not be heard – certainly not understood. Multiple viewpoints are not welcome.

We are all shouting across an abyss and can neither hear nor be heard. The only response is an echo.

If ideas are not in play, surely facts must be. Alas, not. Facts are fungible and loaded with political opinions. Want a fact about climate change or voter suppression or welfare, or, god help us, guns? People on both sides can rustle up some statistics from somewhere. There is always a scientist who’s an outlier, or is funded by someone with an agenda. Cherry-picking and rhetorical fallacies (strawman, slippery slope, post hoc ergo propter hoc, appeal to the common man or to authority, etc.) have become Olympic-level sports.

Not only is this cacophony damaging, it is counterproductive. No one convinces anyone of anything by shouting at them. The goal isn’t really persuading anyone else – you can’t do that by telling people they’re evil and stupid. The only goal is reinforcing oneself and one’s own worldview – intellectual masturbation.

I do not think that the situation will change for the better once the elections are over. I can’t believe that people will stop, take a step back, and lower their voices or the heat of their rhetoric. The only solution offered for noise is louder noise.

Some of us wish for clearer signals, less interference, a volume knob that begins at less than 11. Less shouting and more hearing. Listening. Thinking. Considering. Compromising. Maybe the secret is asking questions instead of yelling slogans. What do you suggest? Why do you think that will work? Whom will that help? How can we best use our time, our resources, our selves?

I’m not a little old-fashioned lady asking for a little old-fashioned civility here. Empty politeness is not the solution. Real work is – the extremely hard work of true communication. Sharing ideas, not screaming them. Trying solutions, instead of dismissing them. The mental work of trying to understand; the physical work of acting locally; the emotional work of finding common ground; the spiritual work of valuing one another. These are ways to get signals through the noise.

If what we really want to do is communicate, not pat ourselves on the back and vilify others, that is. But all I hear are snarls and purrs.