Category: Politics - Page 18 - UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

Two critical reads for anyone who’s planning to vote (and even moreso for those who aren’t!)

I just read a couple of great articles on Alternet. Now before you (as a McCain supporter) go dismissing Alternet as liberal fringe media, I would ask you to just carefully read the following two articles.

First, a roundup of excerpts from newspapers and news magazines around the country calling the McCain/Palin campaign to task for some of the egregious lies they’ve been perpetuating lately, both against Obama and for themselves.

And second, a very well-thought-out article debunking conservative myths about national security. This brilliant article shows us what’s wrong with our current administration’s clumsy assumptions about the threat of Islamic terrorism, and also points out the things we should be worried about, but aren’t. (Or at least, aren’t worried enough about.)

Historic first now inevitable

One of these people is absolutely, positively going to be in office come next January.

I was initially nonplussed when I heard the news early this morning that John McCain had selected Sarah Palin (who?) as his running mate. I know a lot more about her now than I did twelve hours ago, but nothing that’s been added to my brain in that time span has done anything to change my opinion that this was a move that was at best cynical, at worst a sign of utter desperation (and/or utter cluelessness).

Along the way the geeky but not terribly profound thought occurred to me that (as I’ve always liked to think anyway) the Democrats are like Apple in this election, and the Republicans like Microsoft. Apple delivers true innovation while Microsoft plays copycat and catch-up. But despite offering what the people really want and need, Apple usually loses to Microsoft and whatever appeal it offers. (Really, I don’t know. Why do people like Microsoft? And why do they think the Republicans represent their interests? Unless they count themselves among the select group of Americans who think people making $4,999,999 a year aren’t rich and are even more self-centered than that would suggest.)

But then another thought occurred to me. A non-partisan thought (for once). History is going to be made in this election. History has already been made of course, but nominating someone who’s not an old white guy is not so new (1984, anyone?). Having someone who’s either non-white or non-male (or both, but Oprah’s not running this year, and I don’t mean that to be as glib as it sounds) actually win election to either office, president or vice president, is something that’s never even been close to happening before (again, 1984?). But it is definitely going to happen this year. There will be an African-American president. Or there will be a woman vice president. One of the two of these things absolutely is going to happen this year.

Wow. Of course I have a preference. And I suspect that accusations of racism and/or sexism are going to be flying for the next couple of months. But in the end, history is going to change, and we don’t even need a flux capacitor to do it.

Deep thoughts… maybe

I used to spend a lot of time on deep thoughts. Or at least, what I thought was deep at the time. When you’re in high school and college, you have lots of time, more than you can possibly realize. Gradually it dawns on you that your time isn’t so infinite, but by then it’s being squeezed in both directions… it’s running out and filling up simultaneously.

As I’ve gotten older (now unequivocally in my “mid-30s”), I’ve come to see the world in ways I could never have understood when I sat around indulging my erstwhile sophistry. But the opportunities to really explore my own thoughts are almost nonexistent, occurring mainly while sitting on the toilet (the fortress of solitude) or sitting up in a caffeine-induced zombie state in the middle of the night after the kids have — finally — gone to bed. (Right now it’s the latter, in case you’re curious and/or grossed out.)

Every stage in life seems to pose its own challenges, and presently for me it seems to be about finding a way to just slow the whole damn world down for a second and catch my breath. There’s a precarious balance in your 30s, where the wisdom of age has at long last begun to crack its way through your impenetrable cranium, yet you still have enough youth and health to get out there and do something with it. If only you weren’t consuming 99.999% (give or take a thousandth) of your time and energy on the mind-numbing banality of driving to work or sitting through pointless meetings or trying to keep the kids from eating plastic toys or cutting their own hair.

Are we humans or hamsters? Sometimes I’m not so sure. When we spend our days sitting in a little box, endlessly engaging in routine tasks as pointless as running around a little wheel, sipping at our water bottles and taking our food in pellet form (well, some of it might as well be), it’s hard to see much difference.

It doesn’t have to be that way, of course, but we get into the groove (or is it a rut?), bear down, and charge ahead without really looking around us. After nearly a decade of fairly anonymous apartment dwelling, SLP and I finally settled into a real house in a real neighborhood nearly four years ago, but it still took until this summer, and another looming (although ultimately scuttled) relocation for us to really make a connection with our neighbors.

More and more these days I’m starting to see the third dimension of strangers. It’s kind of like shattering the ancient understanding of the cosmos. I used to see the world with myself in the middle, the small group of people who really mattered to me (first my parents, then school friends, later SLP and now our kids too) orbiting in their perfect spheres, and finally on the outer sphere the vast array of everyone else — tiny, immobile pinpoints of light. Of course it hasn’t taken me 34 years to realize the world doesn’t revolve around me (regardless of what SLP might tell you to the contrary), but it can still be incredibly difficult to process the depth that exists in every face you pass by day after day.

When you’re a kid, everything is new. Every person you meet, every experience you have, is something that’s never happened before. There’s no history, for you or anyone else. (And since so many of the people you know are also kids, that’s a literal truth.) But one of the great things about meeting “new” people as you get older is that each person is a walking vessel of history, overflowing with interesting stories and storied interests.

Everything can change in an instant. Somewhere, for someone, it is. Right now. Babies are born. Grandparents die. People fall in love, others get divorced. Most of the time, these things aren’t happening to us or the people we know. And so for a long stretch, maybe from 18 to 34 (is that why the demographics are broken down that way?), it’s easy to feel invincible, even as our knowledge to the contrary becomes ever more acute. I’m on that line now, statistically poised to enter the next phase of life, and the cracks are showing. That long, smooth (well, not always so smooth, but definitely long) stretch of road is coming to an end. I see the curves ahead, but I don’t yet know where they’ll take me, take us.

For now, the best we can do is embrace the moment, and brace for the next.

Waste = Happiness!!!

I have to admit, I’m no great environmentalist. I’m a typical wasteful American, but I at least try to be aware of how wasteful I am. I avoid blatant acts of waste, and in true Midwestern Lutheran style, when I do waste I am overwhelmed with guilt, even if it doesn’t actually stop me from doing it.

But then I see something like I did today. My kids are watching Go, Diego, Go! and then on comes a commercial for Dixie paper plates. The overall message of the commercial is that if a mother really cares about her kids, she’ll use Dixie paper plates, pretty much for every meal, so that instead of spending time doing dishes, she can have “extraordinary moments” with her kids. I’ll try not to fall off my high horse here, but I think it’s shamefully irresponsible for Georgia-Pacific to promote this kind of egregiously wasteful behavior as both the duty and the desire of anyone aspiring to be a good parent.

Changing the rules for biological parents, decades after the fact

A recent editorial in the Minneapolis StarTribune addressed proposed legislation that would change Minnesota’s state laws concerning adoptees’ access to their birth records, without the birth parents’ consent. The point is moot for those adopted after 1982, as laws enacted in that year gave birth parents the choice of whether or not to allow the records to be made available to their children after they turned 18. (And, if I understand the poorly-worded sentence from the article correctly, 90% of birth mothers, given the choice, have wanted to allow access under those circumstances.)

As it happens, I have a particular interest in this matter, as I was adopted in the state of Minnesota, before 1982.

My records are sealed until either I or my biological parents die, but it’s of little matter now, as some careful online sleuthing (along with a good bit of luck) allowed me to find and make contact with my birth mom. Although due to geography and the complexity of daily life, we may never have a very close relationship, we do have a relationship now, and have been a part of each other’s lives for the past five years.

Up to that point, her identity, and truly the very origins of my existence, were shrouded in a mystery that I had long known I may never solve. If you’re not in the situation, I would imagine it is difficult to understand. And for some people, including a good college friend who’s also adopted, the curiosity just isn’t there, which is fine. But for those of us who do need to know, it’s not just (in the words of the article) “genealogical curiosity.” It is a burning hunger to understand oneself.

As I said, I was lucky. Circumstances made it unexpectedly easy for me to locate my birth mom. (Credit goes, too, to three websites in particular: Google, Switchboard, and to a lesser extent, US Search. Avoid giving US Search your information, or worse, your money, unless you find it absolutely necessary. But enlist Google and Switchboard, and watch them do wonders.) We were exchanging emails two short weeks after I first made a concerted effort to find her, in 2003. But the urge to take action had been there for years.

Unfortunately the only avenue open to me in the pre-Google years was to work through the agency that placed me with my adoptive parents. That would have required nearly $600 in fees, along with several notarized documents, all with no guarantee of success. Most adult adoptees who are seeking their birth parents are stuck with this as their only option, however, and the situation is even worse for the birth parents. Mostly they just need to sit back and hope their children want to find them, knowing that they may not even be aware that they’re adopted.

So I see both sides of this story. Birth parents (mothers in particular, it seems) overwhelmingly want to be found by their children, even if they were forced by the laws and practices at the time of the birth to give up all rights to contact, forever. But if they’re in that 10% minority, they do deserve to have their rights protected, too.

Ultimately it’s a good thing that the laws were changed. Adoptees who are a decade or more younger than I am may never have to face the kind of agonizing “curiosity” that my generation and those before me have lived with since we first learned we were adopted. (Again, I believe I was lucky, in that I’ve known since I was a young child — too young to understand the stigma I might have felt if I learned as a teen or an adult.)

Despite the feel-good reunion stories that are, for the most part, the general public’s only exposure to issues of adoption, and ham-fisted legislative efforts to right past wrongs, as is currently underway in Minnesota, the true, anguished story of birth mothers (many of whom in past decades were compelled against their wishes to give up their children) is still largely unknown. I would encourage everyone who has the slightest interest in issues of adoption to read Ann Fessler’s excellent book, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade.