Category: Seeking Common Ground

My initial inspiration for this post began with Stanford Blood Center’s annual Precious Mettle event. It is an event where speakers offer stories about their experiences as donors or recipients in order to encourage donors to continue to donate and to thank them for their continued support as blood donors.

This is important. Especially considering that of the 38% of Americans eligible to donate, only 10% of that 38% actually donate. So, we are a valued commodity. More on donating blood in a future posting.

Subsequent inspiration is coming from a Netflix series on Medal of Honor recipients. I watched the first four stories as my way of remembering our military veterans on Veteran’s Day. What I learned about these heroes is that their stories were similar in one very important way. They cared more about others and their wellbeing than they cared about themselves.

Sgt. Sylvester Antolak (WW 2), Sgt. Edward Carter (WW 2), Sgt. Clinton Romesha (rome-eh-shay, Afghanistan) and Sgt. Hiroshi Miyamura (Korea) are not exactly household names. Nor would they or any of the 3500+ men and women who have received the Medal of Honor want to be household names.

In their minds they were helping their mates and in so doing their duty, they performed acts of courage and bravery that earned them the attention of grateful comrades and their country . They put their comrades and friends before themselves in extraordinary ways in military combat situations. These stories have been so moving that I decided to post my thoughts on what I call the culture of giving.

The Culture of Giving can take countless forms. For example, to donate blood a person must often overcome a fear of needles. They do it because like the Medal of Honor heroes, they are willing to overcome their own personal fear in order to help someone else. Someone else that they likely will never meet. But they do it because they have been taught that being of service to others is the greatest goal in life.

First responders, doctors, nurses, health care workers of all kinds, elder care workers immediately come to mind as people who most obviously share this Culture of Giving. Teachers come to mind as well. In fact I would say that we are all come into this world with this characteristic.

Psychologists and counselors correct me if I’m wrong, but all people are born good. It’s our nature. Simply by the act of being born, we default to the Culture of Giving. When faced with the opportunity to help out in a difficult situation, we instantly start asking what can I do to help. Then we act on that impulse and help those in need or danger.

But it seems that the process of living or our “Nurture” has an affect on this giving culture. It can be taken out of us. The different human nurturing experiences that each of us grows up in has an impact on how we feel about giving later in life.

Let me take myself as an example using the Culture of Giving idea. I can honestly say that giving for me is a way of life. The things that I do are done out of a sense of mission that I started learning as a child at home, at church and at school. I simply don’t know any other way to be. It took me awhile, but I found my life’s work as a middle school teacher. I volunteer with my church choir because I am a singer. I donate blood platelets because it is another way that I can give. I ride my bicycle and practice yoga so that I am physically and mentally prepared to give the most that I can.

I view all things that I do, the teaching, the donating of blood, the singing, the cycling, the serving on the church board, the writing of get out the vote letters for the recently completed election and anything else that I have the privilege to do as merely another opportunity to give back to my communities and my planet.

This is what I call the Culture of Giving. This is the time of year when Americans lift up giving in the form of “Thanksgiving.” Giving, of course, is not limited to one day of the year. It comes out of a deeper, internalized Culture of Giving which I mindfully adhere to with a loving sense of thanks and giving every day.

Happy Thanksgiving and may you be aware of the Culture of Giving around you.

I lean significantly to the political left. My posts make no effort to hide that bias. Quite possibly the largest contributor to my political bias (and yours) are where we go for our news and entertainment.

In the aftermath of the 2020 Election, those media biases are on full and stark display. Yesterday, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that an early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine trial was “robustly” effective in preventing COVID-19.

Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham ran clips of Dr. Anthony Fauci and another prominent physician making statements about the vaccine being six months to a year away. She then ran a clip of a post election celebration which she said indicated a double standard in media coverage of Republicans not wearing masks and Democrats wearing masks. In the clip, she was attempting to show that people participating in the Biden celebrations following the election call on Saturday morning were not wearing masks. The clip went by very quickly and was shot from some distance away that made it hard to see if people were wearing masks or not. Ingraham has a sarcastic delivery style. She was using the Pfizer announcement as a way to poke fun at the doctors saying that the vaccine was still six months to a year away. Ingraham also suggested that the timing of the Pfizer announcement was saved until after the election for political reasons. This was a clear example of media bias.

Pfizer’s early results are optimistic, but they don’t mean that the vaccine is ready right now. A corporate announcement doesn’t mean that the vaccine has been independently tested and evaluated for safety and long term effectiveness against the coronavirus. Nor does it mean that it can be produced in the quantities and delivered to the 328.2 million Americans that it needs to reach for 100% coverage of the population. Reality is that the vaccine, as stated by the doctors on MSNBC, is still several months to a year away from reaching people.

The media bias applied to this vaccine story can be easily discerned. But, to discern the bias, you need to listen to different reports of the same story to see that a story can be manipulated to communicate the desired message of the news source. In this case whether it was Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp/Fox News or NBCUniversal’s MSNBC.

So, my message for you is to look at different sources of news. Pick a story and make yourself leave the comfortable source that you agree with and examine the story as told by at least one other news source with a different point of view. This is not to say that one or the other source is right or wrong in this instance, but it will give you an idea where our division comes from.

I suggested in a previous post “From My Almost Daily Journal” of November 6, 2020, that what we need is a “Middle Media.” This Middle Media would be a hybridized news organization that combines these mega moguls into a trusted news source where information is scrutinized, analyzed and factually presented so that we all develop our opinions based on a common news source

Please do pay attention to the links. They help provide some visual perspective to where new organizations fall on the scale of partisanship and analysis of the news. Here are some other graphic representations of news organizations and how they compare with other news organizations in the areas of partisanship and analysis.

I’m a big fan of The News Hour on PBS. One of my favorite segments is the Friday interaction between New York Times Columnist David Brooks and Syndicated Columnist Mark Shields moderated by respected journalist Judy Woodruff.

Today, of course, they were talking about the November 3 Election. I have tremendous respect for the two journalists, the former leans to the right and the former to the left. Brooks was musing about how this race should have been a much easier election for the Democrats to win given the wide spread unpopularity of the sitting president.

Black, Latino, LGBTQ+ voters expressed themselves as individuals showing that they were not homogenous groups that would automatically vote Democrat. Non-college graduate White males voted heavily Republican. The clear message of repudiation that the Democrats were seeking did not materialize in the final vote count. We can debate the reasons why people voted the way they voted.

I want to write briefly about my concern for Brooks’ suggestion that the Republican Party may have found a way to re-define itself by becoming the party of the non-College educated working class. This is a dangerous way to run a country. Divide us on the grounds of education.

Just as I have characterized the Republican Party as the party of the rich, which I still believe is essentially accurate, the Democratic Party would then be characterized as the party of the educated? I certainly hope not. Yale educated, Conservative intellectual William F. Buckley must be shifting in his grave. Buckley was an author, commentator and founder of the magazine National Review that served as a stimulus for political conservatism in 1950’s-60’s before it gained large scale popularity. I think that he would take exception to this characterization of his party.

College educated indicates to me a group of people who, despite their many and varied areas of study, have been trained to think about issues critically, to question and be skeptical of claims made by people and parties. This division along educational lines just simply cannot be allowed to happen in this great country where opportunities exist for every American to advance to the highest levels of their potential and drives.

We will need to put more emphasis on critical thinking skills in K-12 education. This will help foster a more independent thinking and discerning group of American voters without requiring a college education to develop those skills.

Thanks to David Brooks for bringing up this point. It has had a big impact on me. That is a microcosm of what we need in our country right now. The ability to listen to each other and learn from each other. Things that divide us need to discouraged and things that unite us need to be encouraged.

Post Script:

MSNBC called the Presidential Election for Joe Biden at 8:24 a.m. PST. Fox and CNN a few minutes later. Now, we need to allow the legal challenges to go through the process. Then, we can start the hard work of once again becoming the United States of America. God Bless America.

Yesterday was great. I had three Zoom sessions and each one filled a totally different niche in my life. The first was a small group Lunch meeting with our Financial Advisor, Tom Vaughn followed by a 4:30 Yoga session for an hour and the “working” day finished with a church choir rehearsal at 7:00 p.m.

This was a well timed busy day to keep my mind occupied while the wait for the results of the 2020 Presidential Election to be finalized. I’m getting tired of hearing the words “battleground” states. It makes it sound like we are at war. I for one am not at war. I want the Election to be conducted as elections are supposed to be conducted in this country and then let’s get on with the business of making the country great. So much rides on this presidential race. So much rides on this election.

I don’t think that many folks on the Republican/Conservative side have a grip on the true nature of the horse they are riding. My hope is that Biden-Harris can garner the Electoral votes that they need and start bringing us all back in the direction of together. It’s going to take a long time and lots of sincere, focused positive energy to get this country back on track.

The White Supremacist culture must be addressed before this country can be linked to the word great. President Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is simply not a true statement. Greatness has not yet been achieved. It will begin to be achieved as soon as we acknowledge our national problem of race.

My feeling is that we can begin to address the issue of race by creating a process similar to the one used in South Africa after the collapse of Apartheid. South Africans began a dialogue on race through a Truth and Reconciliation Commission which gave people a chance to hear the experiences of others and begin to reconcile their differences. We simply need to start communicating with each other again. This division stuff must come to an end.

Along with a Truth and reconciliation Commission, we need a common media outlet that every feels comfortable watching and listening to with each other. When we have the same basic information, we then have a common foundation on which to debate our differences because we will know what our differences are. I don’t think that we have that now.

My passionate fear of “The Right” is undoubtedly matched by a passionate fear of “The Left.” The way to start addressing these largely unfounded fears is get rid of “Right Wing” media and “Left Wing” media and replace them with a “Middle Media.” It will need to be a place where people all along the political spectrum can gather, listen to, think about and converse about the issues of the day. In the media market we have today, common ground is nearly impossible to find.

We need dialect on guns, immigration, reproductive rights, health care, regulations, law enforcement and so much more. It’s time to get busy. Let’s use this moment in time to get it done.

More specifically, baseball during COVID. I grew up on baseball. When I was in elementary school in the 1960’s, baseball was the sport American boys had in common. I am pleased and proud that girls now enjoy “America’s Pass Time” as well.

Every single one of us dreamed of someday playing major league baseball and being a World Series hero. Maybe it was hitting the walk-off home run in a deciding game 7, making the game saving catch, striking out the last opposition batter. Whatever it was, we all shared that dream together. We didn’t always talk about it, but we all knew what we wanted to do when we grew up.

Well, it’s now 2020 and our playing days are over. For that matter our kids playing days are over, save for those slow pitch softball teams that some of us belong to. But, those dreams never go away. Today they are being lived by a new generation of young boys and girls. The dreams of playing in the “Big Leagues” are now theirs.

I’m inspired to write about this now because the American baseball season ended yesterday as the World Series (not the World Baseball Classic which really is the world series of baseball) of this difficult and trying year of 2020 was decided.

“My” team, the Los Angeles Dodgers won the series in six games over a young and exciting Tampa Bay Rays team. I watched the players, manager, coaches and families celebrate on the field as you would expect them to celebrate during a viral pandemic.

But, underneath those masks were those school boys who, 10-15 years ago, were like me in the 1960’s. Kids with a dream of one day being a hero on the biggest stage in baseball.

This World Series is special. We needed this. We needed this sense of connection to the normal. We needed to see these men go out and play this little boys game with the same joy and unbridled enthusiasm that they played with when they were little boys not that long ago.

They brought me joy. They brought me happiness. They brought me hope for next season. Yes, there will be a next season and next season will be better than ever.

One last thought. The post game celebration for the winning Dodgers and their fans (including me at home). I watched the celebration as braodcast by several different news organizations. Each one had it’s own take and angle on what it looks and sounds like to be a champion.

But, what stood out to me were the names of the backs of their uniforms. Hernandez, Urias, Jansen, Betts, Kelly, Floro, Rios, Gonzales, Kershaw, Roberts. They were a diverse community of human beings coming from many different countries, socio economic groups, races and beliefs. But there they were as a unified group. Smiling, laughing, hugging (yes, even hugging) and enjoying this common moment of celebration together reminding me that we are indeed more alike than we are different.

So, there are lessons to be learned from sports. Many of you probably don’t look at the Sports Pages (I date myself because you find those in newspapers although. I guess you’ll also find them on Web Sites). Sports offers us a chance to be those little kids again, all with a common dream and a color blind eye.