Off This Funk

Can’t seem to fight off this funk today. I only have two reports left to write and the inputting of grades, so that should be manageable tomorrow night and before the weekend. Although we still have another two weeks of school, the end is near and things are wrapping up. So what is it?


I was a bit bummed I couldn’t skate tonight. The conditions were perfect and it was a tease to be there and just watch, but my tendons are still tender and I do not want to risk serious injury before the summer. Maybe I will give it a spin on Sunday. The pain is now isolated just in my wrist and it is almost gone.


There are two factors that have me down today:


1- The Brock Turner case. I can’t seem to shake how awful the whole thing is. I continue to read comments and posts and try to find something rational to say about solutions and what happens next, but I am left with anger and disgust. I still do not have the energy to really capture my thoughts.


In the meantime, there are several articles by people who are getting it right. I guess my main issue is that we need to find way to address privilege and rape culture more aggressively. This behavior cannot be accepted as part of what it means to be a man or what it mans to be in college.


This is criminal.


But the other side that is bugging me is how do we handle crime? How do we met out justice? Would sending Tucker to prison for six years deter rape? Would it teach him a lesson? Would it end rape culture? Is punishment the end result of crime? Is this justice? Do we have a responsibility to teach and rehabilitate? Can we ever teach men that women are not there for our amusement and abuse? When men act as criminals and rape…is there any hope? Do we just lock them up? I feel we need a new approach and it starts like all things in schools and ends with....well I don't know. But I don't think punishment always equates with justice. Prisons will not end crime...schools will.


I am filled with questions and anger.


2. The other thing that has me down is Hillary. I just can’t get myself excited. Sure it is historical that we have a woman nominee, but that doesn’t seem to be enough-she is a center right corporate sponsored hawk. This is status quo America and I was hoping for more. I have never been a fan of the DNC- not with Bill or even Obama, and Hillary is more right-wing than either of those guys. It was so nice to have a politician at least pay lip-service to my ultra-left progressive voice.


I don’t actually live the US, so I don’t have a horse in this race, but I will find it very difficult to get behind Clinton and when/if I ever do, it will feel dirty and shameful, so I actually hope that I don’t.


I do understand that American politics has got to be more than presidential elections. It is clear that we are still a long way from having a viable third-party. The DNC will see to that. We will continue to be distracted by the crazy right-wing dupes and the lesser of two evils.


It appears that in presidential politic, the left has little to no voice. The Bernie Sanders sound bites and primary campaign will be the closest we get to being heard by our government…..unless of course this new movement, this revolution keeps Hillary honest and forces the DNC to move left at the state and local levels.


We need young politicians and union leaders and city council people to push the progressive agenda from the ground up. America will never have a truly progressive president, corporate America and their candidate have made that clear.


Who knows, maybe I need to move back home, roll up my sleeves and fight the good fight, instead of whining and complaining from my privileged seat overseas.


The world has got me down tonight. I understand that some of you are excited about the new Democratic nominee for president, and I hope she is what you want her to be, but we have been here before many times and she, despite her gender, is nothing new. She will pick apart the nation just like her husband did so many years ago. Of course she is better than Trump, but you can say that about a cockroach.


Tomorrow is Thursday. It is June and a new day. I will be ready for it as always.

Hard to Know

Sifting through old posts, it appears I have written quite a bit about Barack Obama on this blog. I have spent the last hour reading old posts, at times feeling proud of my growing body of thoughts on the man, while other times I found myself feeling a bit ashamed for making such rash judgments about him, never having read his books. I am more than half way through Dreams From My Father, (I read and wrote about Audacity of Hope a few months ago) and I find myself torn about Obama and his story.

Before I continue, no matter your political affiliations, might I recommend that you read Dreams From My Father to gain a deeper insight on Obama the man, not the politician. Page after page, I am left in awe of his story, and in a weird way, I have found many similarities to my own struggles, both with politics, but more importantly simply becoming a man. Yes! I am comparing myself to the president of the United States; my ego knows no bounds.

There are many directions this post could take, but I for now, I simply wanted to write about the idea of selling-out. Last night, as I was reading about Obama’s days as a community organizer in Chicago, with goosebumps on my skin, flipping the pages filled with admiration and respect for him, I stopped and said to my wife, “I feel so sorry for him. He is too smart to be the president of the USA.  He is too wise, too kind, too reflective to be a politician. He must be a mess sitting in the White House. Either he has sold out his entire set of values and now deals with the nagging guilt of turning his back on everything he believes in, in order to bow down to his Goldman Sachs sugar daddies, or worse, he sits in the most powerful office in the world impotent and powerless to do the things has worked for his entire life. Either way he would serve the world much better back in Chicago!”

Then I heard Ari’s voice in my head. Speaking about me, “I feel so sorry for him. He is too smart to be the teacher at a private school in Asia.  He is too wise, too kind, too reflective to be a teacher working a corporate school. He must be a mess sitting in his huge house. Either he has sold out his entire set of values and now deals with the nagging guilt of turning his back on everything he believes in, in order to bow down to his corporate sugar daddies, or, worse he sits in the state of the art school impotent and powerless to do the things has worked for his entire life. Either way he would serve the world much better back in the Bronx or Africa!”

"It is hard to know who is selling out and who is doing their best, if that person is not you."

Who am I to sit and judge this man, when I have no idea what stirs his heart? It was much easier to call him a corporate hack, before I read this book, but now that I have, it is much more difficult to understand what he is doing and why.

I know I have justified my move from working on the ground for social justice to a more comfortable situation. We can all justify everything we do and feel fine about it, only to turn around and berate others for doing the exact same thing. It takes an open, critical and objective mind to see yourself in others and others in you.

Perhaps Obama is waiting for his second term to return to his roots. Perhaps he thought that he could do more while compromising with the obstructionist Republicans. Perhaps  I feel that by educating wealthy Asians, I can create a more just and sustainable world. Which one sounds more absurd? You tell me.

The truth is that revolution, while a handy T-shirt slogan, takes a lot of guts and sacrifice. It is easy to sit on the sidelines and cheer and jeer as politicians come up short and disappoint us for not being as revolutionary as we want them to be. But the truth is that the system we want to topple, reform and  change is massive.

I am not sure if writing these little posts and teaching kids about the ills of the market economy, while I myself participate in it whole heartedly, is the way toward this change, but it is the path I have chosen. Who am I to say that Obama has sold out?

All I know for now, is that the man who wrote, Dreams From My Father, has to still be alive somewhere in the White House. You cannot outgrow that kind of passion. He is very different from the man giving the State of Union speeched and sending more troops to Afghanistan,  of that there is no doubt, but something about him has to be the same. I have to believe this to be true, because I know that the pieces of me--the ones that commuted into the Bronx or lived in Africa for two years--are still stirring in me.

More thoughts to come I am sure. But in the meantime, what do you think? How do you deal with the feeling of selling-out?

The Empire's New Clothes

A few days weeks ago, I wrote about an exchange I had with Ari about a book I am reading about Obama. Our conversation, rightfully, caused a shift in my political equilibrium and personal values.  Ari really made me rethink the expectations I have of my politicians  and examine my own actions and morality. Basically he said that, it is easy to rant against X and Y, but we should be careful not to actually be acting like X and Y ourselves.

I have a few new insights on our chat, but will hold on to them until I finished Audacity of Hope, which is now on my bedside table. I will give Obama the benefit of doubt and read his point of view with an open mind. In the meantime, I have scratched out this quick review of the Paul Street book. I hope to revisit my thoughts, our chat, and both books when I finish the Obama book. This review is tepid at best, but I felt I needed to get something now at this juncture.

A review of The Empire's New Clothes by Paul Street

A bit skewed left, but rightfully so, many will claim this to be an unrealistic, utopian rant by a left-wing radical, but really the one question the writers asks repeatedly is this, "Has president Obama moved toward a peace and justice agenda based on the wants and rights of poor and middle clas Americans, or has he been a puppet of big moneyed Wall Street and big industry interests?

The book does a great job of breaking down every aspect of Obama's failure to even come close to the "progressive" agenda his campaign sold to Americans. It would do apologist Obamaist well to take a look at these claims and rather than blindly defend  "Brand Obama's" short comings, start asking new questions: Is this false reform what they want from Obama, or is it time to cut their losses and move in a new direction? A movement that actually force Imperialist, corporate America to shift radically left. Time for us as a nation question the very nature of our values. Time to admit that no man shackled by the office of president, beholden to a broken free market system will ever work for the needs of the people. It is time for us to work actively building alternative grassroots movements...

I know, I know...what the hell am I doing working at a corporate private school in a foreign country? I guess I should just move home and get to work or stop my bitching. I am off to read The Audacity of Hope so as not to be called biased. Let's see what the man himself has to say...