Inalienable rights? Ha!

I had an interesting conversation with someone just now that included a brief discussion about 'inalienable rights'. My offering: any right (in this case, the right to safety) is entirely alienable. It's a dangerous to conclude that because the UN says a right is inalienable it actually is. Saying so, don't make it so. Any right can be taken from you in the right set of circumstances and by any person with just the right amount of power and control.

In Trinidad & Tobago, we are currently watching the unfolding of the Sheron's Auto situation. Mr. Sheron is an alleged spousal abuser whose wife posted pictures of some recent 'alleged' abusive event on the man's company's FB page. (Serious points to her to coming all the way out of the closet.) It occurs to me though that there have to have been people who knew this was occurring and yet, she stayed in the spousal home likely thinking she had no recourse. Any inalienable right she might have had to physical and emotional safety was taken from her the minute she ceased to feel that there was anyone anywhere who could or would help her break free.

No right is 'inalienable'. Inalienability is a great concept but we're not there yet. Until we get to a place where anyone who feels at risk of personal or psychological harm can quietly and safely walk away from the dangerous situation, we're just not there yet.

I have similar trouble with the concept of 'fairness'. That's another great idea but we ain't there yet either. 'Fair'? Where does this 'fairness' exist in the natural order of things? Is there 'fairness' in the animal kingdom? Nope. There is eat or be eaten; dine or die. This is no less true among humans. In the US we're still arguing over whether health care is a human right, whether a living wage is a human right, whether access to potable water is a human right and evidence clearly shows that the answers to all these are: maybe, sometimes and it depends.

Inalienable. Cool word, great concept, but no, ain't nothing that you cannot be alienated from if the circumstances are just right. Ask the Native Americans, ask the students in Detroit and the children, prisoners and pregnant women in Flint, ask 12 year old Tamir Rice, 6 year old Jeremy Mardis, Sandra Bland, Janese Talton Jackson, Emmett Till or any one of the thousands of people lynched at the beginning of the century, Troy Davis, Richard Glossip (both executed though the cases against them had largely fallen apart. Thank you, Supreme Court.)

As I said, there are no inalienable rights. Once someone has the power to strip you of your mythical rights, it's all over. It ever was thus, and it appears, it ever will be.

That's entertainment?

There is a troubling aspect to this year's election race. Well, troubling to me. It may not cause anyone else the slightest distress but it distresses me endlessly and it is that some folk seem to be looking at it as though it's entertainment. That worries me. A lot.

Over the past several months, Donald Trump has said some things and done some things that have horrified a fairly wide swath of the American electorate. Some reporters have themselves, broken with their professional standards to point out how horrifying his behavior has been. None of that has changed  how voters have felt about him, except to strengthen his standing in the polls.

It seems not to much matter what The Donald says or how he says it, or who he mocks, folk seem to think it either (i) appropriate to say these things, the general sense being that he refuses to be cowed into being PC; or (ii) that he shows strength. Yet when I see articles, as I did quite recently, where reporters are talking about being 'entertained' by the Trump Sideshow that I grow concerned.

We have a leading candidate for the presidency calling for folk in his audience to beat the crap out of protesters or those with dissenting opinions and we are 'entertained'? We have a leading candidate mocking a reporter with physical disabilities, and we are 'entertained'? We have a leading candidate who talks blithely about making one religion the standard of truth for an entire nation - never mind that nation was born out of an insistence on religious freedom, and we are entertained.

I watched with some horror some weeks ago, when one reporter was gleefully describing the antics of one of the leading candidates and all I could do was cringe. Clearly, he didn't have to worry that his bread and butter would suffer should that candidate be elected but what of the rest of us? Or perhaps it is that the rest of us are but cannon fodder and so much grist for the mill eh? I wonder how gleeful, how 'entertained' he would be if his bread and butter or his life were at stake in this election.

It's commonly held that Americans want to vote for a guy (or gal I assume) they can see themselves having a beer with. That's an idea that has always seemed odd to me. Is that what a good president looks like? My beer buddy? A good presidency is just a series of beer summits? Because as I recall it, the current president took a lot of heat for the ONE such summit he had, but then that Obama..........

It seems to me that there's nothing about running a nation as large and complex as this one that could possibly be accurately assessed by who I'd prefer to drink a beer with. Nothing. And yet, that's still a measure. Or it used to be. Given Mr. Trump's solid second place finish in Iowa and a strong first in New Hampshire, nowadays it looks like we not only want to have a beer with our president, we don't mind doing  so while he roasts many a sacred cow and every last shred basic decency cuz yunno  it'll be 'entertaining' and we have to be entertained. Here's to entertainment then! Lemme just get my popcorn ready.

Staying 'woke!

My goal this year, is to write once per week. Last week is done and I haven't written a thing. I'm asking myself why that is.

Typically, I'll read or hear something during the course of the week that will set my mind racing along some path. Eventually, the words and thoughts will cohere and I'll have a piece. That hasn't happened this week. But why? Snowpocalyse 2016. Job interview. Research. In other words, life.

It occurs to me that there are people for whom life sucks up all the space and they never come up for air. They are so overwhelmed by their own life stories, that they never manage to see or experience others' lives or pain; they never connect with what else is going on in the world; they never become aware that there is a world beyond their own nor do they realize that their neighbors' issues are connected to them in any way. There's a lot of that about. I was waist deep in it myself this past week. It happened so quickly, so easily, it's a little frightening.

I have never been that person, the person who really couldn't be bothered with what was going on in the world, or who could easily disengage from it. I like knowing what's going on. I like thinking about what's happening and thinking about how it affects us all. but look at how easily an entire week went by and I had no idea what ailed the world or excited it.

This will happen again, I'm sure, but I'm writing about not writing to remind myself that there's a world outside my Snowpocalyptic universe and that in it, awful & great stuff happens. Among the 'awful stuff' that happened, a woman by the name of Janese Talton Jackson was killed for rebuffing a man's advances. Also this week, while I was sleeping, children in Michigan were being exposed to toxic water and dangerous schools.

Even as we were appalled at the level of malfeasance and/or incompetence involved in the water situation in Flint, there was another Michigan story unfolding in Detroit that of the schools. The same Darnell Earley who so successfully handled the water in Flint while Emergency Manager for the city, was later appointed as Emergency Manager for the Detroit Public Schools. Two tasks, two fails. Where's this guy's pink slip or his orange jumpsuit, one or the other is urgently needed?

I am all horrored out. I have no horror this week. All I have is awareness of my unawareness. All I have is the knowledge of how easy it is to slip into a state of ignorance.

My guess is that there are those of us who are so taken up in our own worlds that we have no room, no thought, no head space to spare for consideration of others' woes. All we see or know, is our own fate. We have no time for the lady down the street; the people in New Jersey dealing with flooding or the people in California fearful about the escape of three dangerous criminals or those living in another Cali community that seems to be on the verge of tumbling into the sea.

I slept through last week and as a result, the horrors that have gone on around me, have been largely unremarked by me. That's a dangerous world to live in. Too much time spent sleeping makes us (morally) sluggish and (intellectually) lazy. Too much time spent navel-gazing leaves us far too concerned about the dangers of navel lint and blithely ignorant of the dangers of lead in our neighbors' drinking water or black mold in our neighbors' childrens' classrooms.

I slept through last week and awoke with a jolt aware that something important had occurred and I hadn't noticed. I slept through last week, but I won't sleep through another one because awareness is key, to everything. As the Black folk say, I gotta "stay 'woke"; awake; aware; engaged in more than just my navel gazing.

Stay 'woke! My new motto. Stay 'woke because there are things happening everywhere, every day and without the eyes and ears of a 'woke populace, we will all find ourselves on the verge of tumbling into the sea. Stay 'woke. I'm up. Are you?