Desperate times

This will book end my string of haphazards posts. I just have some burning questions to ask.
When someone gets murdered or killed in the District or the Metro area, why isn't there a stop-what-you're-doing, t.v. commercial-interruption, all-hands on deck to find out what went wrong and why newscasts and media reports? Why is it NOT everything anyone talks about for a few days? Why isn't it a colossal tragedy that hurts us all?

Why do the newspapers devote free print to the Redskins, I would argue whorish levels of print to the Redskins, and to sports in general as opposed to, say, another, more persistent feature of the Washington area: homelessness and poverty? How about a poverty section in the paper? On television. Devoted only to that? It's part of our community after all, and in growing numbers judging by Council of Government reports and say, a stroll by Martha's Table.

Why don't we see, aside from on PBS, pictures of people who die in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places where open and covert and proxy wars are being fought in the name of Americans? What is the aversion, aside from the obvious obscenity, to seeing the fruits of our tax dollars?

Not rhetorical. I am genuinely curious what people think the answers to these questions are, and how news directors and agenda-setters would answer these questions. I want to know what everyone seems to think is so obvious. What am I missing?

I'm not asking for 24-hour-a-day outrage at the injustices of the world. I am just trying understand this unflagging ability for people to sleep walk through their lives, as if none of this affects them directly. How long can so many people abide this tacit compliance to ignore and thereby endorse the status quo? How long before their souls start screaming out of the seams? Has it already happened?

I don't know. If you're in a hypnotic enough state where you can't see what's right before your eyes I suppose this will sound like a tantrum rather than what I believe it is. A hope that people, for lack of something less cliche, wake up.

Criminal

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98125240#email

Another classic

Thousands Of Astronauts Cling To Side Of India's First Moon Mission

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/91720

On motivation

I recently received an essay musing on the things that motivate humans. I can't pull it up right now, but the essay gives 10 single-word distillations of things that get us up in the morning, give us purpose and energy. People are motivated by about two or three of them, generally, it varies person to person, but usually there is a top motivator.
Here are some:
Communion
Expression
Exchange
Expansion
Security
Acceptance
Power
Freedom
Adventure

I think what's missing are some negative motivators. For instance, there is the powerful need for some to be pitied or felt-sorry for. I wonder if self-pity is learned or taught? Children, I think, scrape their knee, cry or pout and move on with their day. But adults tend to scrape their knee (figuratively or literally) and add that to their long list of injuries, go into work with a sigh and say "Sigh. Guess what happened to me." It becomes cumulative, a story, a psychological burden they choose to carry, whereas children, perhaps because they are so present, don't accumulate as much. Enviable.

It seems counterintuitive to think that such a thing could actually motivate or give energy, but I don't know, I think it does. I'll post the essay soon.

Update: And perhaps this need is just a perversion of Acceptance? Or Expression?

Ass-hole police officers in Houston, ass-hole Indians in Chicago, I heart Glenn Greenwald

An infuriating story about a Sikh family reporting a burglary in Houston and then roughed up by police and peppered with questions related to terrorism. With the visually distinctive turban and beard, they've been harassed more than most minority groups since Sept. 11 (and no doubt before that.)

The video is good except for the moderator whose delivery is annoying. Nonetheless mad points for such quick turnover. This is where video matters. I hope they jail these fuckers. Can you imagine being twice violated: once from an unknown party and the other time from the people who you not only invited into your home, but who are sworn to protect you?

I'm thinking the desi community down there is big enough to open up a can of whoopass on the Houston police department in the form of protests, and in-your-face accountability. I find it hard to believe these events are spurred by the psychology of rogue individuals. More likely, this type of behavior is institutional.


In other stories, Indians elsewhere fucking shit up. Way to bring down the Jackson family. The gall of these men is unbelievable, but again, you've got to imagine the human in them: they've had to have existed in an environment friendly to this sort of thing.

I know I've gone all-India all the time here, I'm not sure why. I'll try to throw some Bali or Luxembourg in the mix soon.

I have an inappropriate crush on Glenn Greenwald. He's at 02:44 into the clip about closing Gitmo. I wish he wasn't gay. I'm sure he doesn't wish that at all. End.

In Praise of Grandparents

A uniquely awesome aspect of Barack Obama's upcoming move to the White House: the fact that his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, might be moving in, too.
It will take more research than I have time for to figure out at what point in American history the nuclear family was elevated to most-desirable family system. I am guessing it has something to do with economics and the industrial revolution, but I don't know for sure. Either way, after spending years observing multigenerational families in India, I cannot help but think that we could benefit from modeling ourselves after those families. (Of course I'm not including the countless immigrant and African-American families and others who have already embraced this arrangement either out of choice or necessity.)

It seems to me we have unnecessarily shut ourselves off to a family structure that could provides countless benefits, including fill-in-the-gap child-rearing, social contact and a slew of other social and emotional safety nets. The prevailing pop-wisdom seems to associate such an arrangement with dependence rather than interdependence. I believe this is misguided. There are exceptions of course, but I would bet that they are just that: exceptions. And at some point before I have children and move them into my parents' basement, I'll back this up with empirical evidence.

Mumbai Part II

I'm glad to hear there have been concerted attempts by politicians, West and East, to ratchet down rhetoric about Pakistan v. India. It would be ludicrous to start a war over this, particularly since that is apparently the intent of the attacks, at least partly. I've seen a few interviews with Pakistan's foreign minister, and he's saying all the right conciliatory things while pointing out the global scourge that is this type of terrorism. And yeah, to be clear, I'm on board with calling it terrorism.

Words That Should Never Be Used

The first in an occasional series

"Normative."–adjective
1. of or pertaining to a norm, esp. an assumed norm regarded as the standard of correctness in behavior, speech, writing, etc. (dictionary.com)

This is one of those words academics like to spooge all over people, and the vulnerable ones lap it up and spit it back out all too eagerly.

I've been seeing this word everywhere, lately. An example: "Heteronormative dating" -- which means that which is considered standard dating procedure for heterosexuals. You know: how straight people do.

I understand how the word "normative" might be necessary for slogging doctorate dissertations or psychological manuals. But in conversation? In normative inter-communal banter?

When ideas that pertain to the masses use the vocabulary of a select few, it seems to be an exercise in self-love, posturing and general lameness. I won't use the term douchey, or douchebaggery, because these are ugly words, but you get my meaning. Narcissism, however, is besides the point: it does a disservice to whatever the idea was in the first place. Words and ideas should be accessible to people. All people. As in, Homosapien Normative people.