Whodunnit?

Damn it! My brother has forced me to think about what I think about the Kennedy assassination. And why I think what I think.

He thinks I'm an idiot for believing Oswald acted alone. I may well be.. and for a lot of other reasons, too. But it's not easy being in the minority, and I only take small comfort in the fact I'm not totally alone in my belief.

To be honest I'm guessing that what I think and believe is based mostly on fear. I don't want to be more afraid of my government than I already am. I don't want to believe the absolute worst. I don't want to be paranoid or begin to feel that things are hopeless and that the bad guys are so all-powerful that any opposition is useless.

I ask myself, why do so many people believe that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, a conspiracy, if not arranged by people within the government, then at least covered up by the government?

Obviously they believe it for a lot of reasons. Besides all the books making the claim for a conspiracy, and all the so-called witnesses, there are plenty of reasons to suspect the government. Didn't the government overthrow the Iranian leader in the 1950's and lie about it, organize central American death squads and lie about it, lie during the Tonken Gulf resolution to get us deeper into a war in Viet Nam, break into Watergate, deceive us about Iraq, lie to us time and time again? At this point we'd be crazy not to be more than a bit paranoid. Hell, going back to the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana's harbor, concocted misinformation has been used by our government time and again as an excuse for mischief, war and invasion.

But what is equally important to remember is that along with cases of real guilt, malicious accusations have been made throughout our history. Accusations that Roosevelt was a secret Jew, that he knew in advance of the attack on Pearl Harbor and wanted the fleet wrecked and thousands killed to get us into war. At this point, in the fifth year of his presidency, yet another “witness” has come forth to claim, along with the testimony of others, that Obama is a Muslim, a communist, a Kenyan, he is now accused by a woman of being a homosexual prostitute. She knows.. she saw it with her own eyes!

In the case of the Kennedy assassination, there are several degrees of belief. The “Little” conspiracy, the “Bigger” - as well as what could be termed “The Illuminati Did It” giant conspiracy.

Examples of the last two contain some degree of certainty that the murders of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and the attempted assassination of George Wallace were all part of the same conspiracy. However, proponents of the Little Conspiracy are less all-encompassing in their claims.

When discussing the possibility of a conspiracy to murder JFK, I think it's vital to remember that the hundreds of lies perpetrated by the government from the 1950's until today, go a long way to explain why so many people think the Government killed Kennedy. Where there's smoke there's obviously fire, most people think.

But sometimes most people are wrong.

In a concrete canyon, for example, is it not possible for a number of people to be confused about the direction of gunfire, because of echoes? Unlikely some say, but impossible?

One of the things that irritates me most about the whole conspiracy business, is that those who have become absolutely convinced, and usually convinced many years ago, refuse to read the so-called “debunking” material made available the last ten years. They regard any statements made by “witnesses” favoring a conspiracy as true, honest and accurate. And any “witnesses, investigations, evidence” debunking the theories as simply malicious lies concocted by the bad guys as part of the continuing cover up. It's all black and white. The angels versus the devils. And to read anything written by these devils is as dangerous and heretical as fundamentalist Christians reading about evolution. Don't do it or you'll be tainted - or at least put in doubt. (..again, let me confess. I'm no better. I'm reluctant to read much of the conspiracy literature, for fear of extra paranoia.)

At the moment there are thousands of sites on the Internet, and hundreds of books written which claim Bush and Cheney blew up the Trade Towers – or the Israelis did it – weren't the Jews warned to stay home that day? We have witnesses who will testify to it. We have metallurgists who say the jet fuel couldn't have melted the steel beams, we have physicists who say the building couldn't have fallen naturally at that speed. We have the facts! We have scientists who saw the alien bodies in Area 51! We have witnesses!

For the last 50 years the Kennedy Conspiracy believers have been like a religion, more like Protestants than Catholics, Protestants in the sense that there are Methodists, Presbyterians, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses – and a dozen sects of snake-handling Baptists. And they agree on almost nothing. LBJ ordered the hit. No, he didn't. Jimmy Hoffa ordered the hit. No, he didn't. It was the Mafia. It was the Mafia and the CIA. It was the Mafia and the CIA and the Pentagon. It was right-wing Texas oil money men. (LBJ thought Castro did it, but didn't want to start a war with Russia to punish Castro.) Four bullets were fired, five, six. There were two, three, four gunmen. Every book had to justify its existence with new or contrary revelations. Ruby was obviously in on it – but why did they let him live another 3 years in prison if his existence was so dangerous to the other conspirators? Yes, but a jail house witness said Ruby confessed to being a part of a conspiracy – but wait – another witness said he confessed on his death bed that there had been no conspiracy.

Every claim made which supports a conspiracy is accepted by the believers, and every claim debunking a conspiracy is dismissed. Witnesses are always supplied, despite the fact that witnesses, especially to events of high drama and confusion are notoriously unreliable. Yet these legions of witnesses are given absolute credibility, despite the fact that many of them look and sound like rejects from Jerry Springer's show – lonely, deluded people hungering for attention. But could these hundreds of witness all be wrong? Even doctors and nurses? Yes, technically speaking they could.

If there was indeed a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, it would have required planning, execution, and cover up.

It would have required using Oswald – how? Shipping him to Russia years before as a false defector? Having him pretend to shoot at General Walker? Getting him a job months before in the Book Depository – after finding out Kennedy's travel plans and route months before? Him killing or not killing the police officer, him being found with the pistol that killed the officer?

What about the witness who claimed to have seen a bullet hole in Kennedy's car windshield, the witness “certain” the bullet entered from the front? If indeed the bullet entered from the front, it would have hit one of the four people sitting in front of Kennedy and his wife. Did it? No. Everyone agrees that Kennedy was fired at from above, either solely from the depository or from the Grassy Knoll as well. A downward shot striking the windshield would not have hit Kennedy, so why the relevance? Believers say it proves more than one shooter. Doubters say where did the shot go? It clearly didn't hit the four people in the front, and logically could not have hit Kennedy. But the bullet broke the window and then disappeared!

But for me the three central issues are motivation, competence.. and longevity

Let's start with competence first. Since no one has ever gone to jail for conspiring to kill Kennedy, a conspiracy to do so must be judged to have been a success. A conspiracy and cover up involving hundreds, if not thousands of people. But what is the track record of the American government and the CIA? One botched operation after another. Either the CIA has gotten something totally wrong, its agents incompetent at information gathering, or it has left a trail a mile wide, as in the case of Chile, Iran, Nicaragua and Guatemala. If anything the last fifty years have proven the government agents are mediocre employees with a poor track record. And they have kept almost nothing secret for very long. To believe in a successful conspiracy we have to remember that any instigator was likely in his 40's, 50' or 60's in 1963.. which would make him long dead today. To continue the conspiracy three generations would have had to take over. Imagine being called into your boss's office and told, “Now it's your turn to take over this treacherous conspiracy that you knew nothing about and run it for a generation..” It would be like the Illuminati, Free Masons or Rockefeller and Rothchild never-ending conspiracies.. Possible..? I suppose.. but how likely?

..and why is there no mention of a cover up in the hundreds of thousands of secrets exposed by both Snowden, Wikileaks and countless others? Because killing Kennedy was vital and easy to hide while bugging Merkel a trivial thing? ..yes.. possibly..

And why has no Kennedy screamed bloody conspiracy the last 50 years? Why has none shouted “Who killed my brother/uncle/father/cousin?” Because the whole family was afraid to admit there was a conspiracy? Did they all think they would all be killed? Or have they believed the conspiracy stories are myths? Just recently a Kennedy niece was asked.. she had not come forward with an announcement and a call for an investigation. She had simply been asked during an interview about other things, whether there had been a conspiracy. “I don't know,” she replied. “I just don't know.” Hardly a firm belief in a plot, or a cowardly avoidance of all mention of a plot. For after 50 years of conflicting “facts” she's just as confused now as the rest of the population.

For me the central issue in discussing a conspiracy is what would motivate the conspirators? Hate might have motivated Jimmy Hoffa. A possible return of huge profits might have motivated Mafia leaders if Castro was overthrown and they could somehow regain control of gambling and prostitution in Cuba. But would that have been enough motivation? They already had Las Vegas and gambling and the heroin trade. And why would the Mafia trust the CIA? They didn't even trust each other. Most of the aging Mafia leaders had already spent years in prison. Why would they risk life sentences or the electric chair over a possible increase in revenues that their successors would be the first to enjoy????

What would motivate the CIA - or elements within it? Their pride was hurt when Kennedy wouldn’t give them full support for a plan he inherited to invade Cuba? If they could just get rid of Kennedy then they would be allowed to try again, prevail and be heroes?!? They also couldn't wait for all that extra work in escalating a war in Viet Nam???? Oh boy! Yet another chance to show their mediocre abilities! As has been noted elsewhere, most government workers like as little work and responsibility as possible and like to keep their heads down. But for some reason the CIA longed for extra headaches!

Remember one essential element to the story. If a conspiracy did occur, not only bosses and instigators were involved, but middle-level management and foot soldiers were required. These people had little personally to gain – a promotion? - when compared with the risk of humiliation, their families destroyed - and the electric chair if exposed. Were hundreds of conspirators tempted with millions of dollars each? If not, what could make the attempted murder of an American President so tempting?

Was there not a single person in the government who liked Kennedy??? Not one patriot who wouldn't put up with treason???

(..for me the most logical candidates for conspirators would be the Joint Chiefs - as they were hyper-patriotic and terrified of a first strike from Russia, and pushed incessantly for a first strike of their own. But why would they plot a shooting when the shooters could have so easily missed? Why not another poisoning? They had aides in the White House. So did the CIA. The CIA had a stockpile they were eager to use, and an undetectable poison would have been easier to administer and wouldn't have required three dozen operatives and a huge cover-up! ....yeah.. I know.. guys who play soldier all their lives need to shoot things.. ..And wouldn't the all-powerful all-knowing CIA know about Doctor Feelgood - Dr Max Jacobson's regular visits to the White House ..and trips aboard Air Force One where he often shot Kennedy up with illegal amphetamines and morphine? Surely it would have been child's play to ensure Kennedy got a no fuss no muss overdose????)

Finally we have to confront the people who say “What about the mountains of evidence pointing to a conspiracy? Surely they prove something?”

Perhaps. But is this mountain fundamentally different to the mountains offered by the Moon-Landing-Was-A-Fake people? Or the Queen-of-England-Sells-Heroin people? Or the Bush-and-Cheney-Blew-up-the-Towers people? Area 51 aliens?

As has often been mentioned, many people believe in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy because they cannot bring themselves to believe that such a imposing figure could have been brought down by a single pathetic loser. Perhaps. I think the more convincing explanation is the Where-there-is-smoke-there's-fire tendency in all of us. Just present us with enough “evidence”, manufactured or misunderstood or not, and we'll be inclined to believe it.

To dismiss so much would require our own research and would be exhausting.

Whew.. I'm tired out already.

(P.S. ..the caption of the above cartoon is: "Back off! It's ME! I'M THE LONE ASSASSIN!")

Guns & Drugs – The American Dilemma

America is at war with itself, and it has always been. Ever since the kill-joy Puritans left England in a huff because not everyone there would agree to their desire to forbid all music and dancing, and their subsequent attempt to make the exciting New World the dullest place on earth, Americans have been at war with each other over the concept of freedom. We Americans love freedom. But it's usually our own selfish personal freedom, and we're remarkably ungenerous in wanting to afford freedom to our fellow Americans.

Right now two old wars have flared up. The war over the right to have guns and the right to have drugs. Engaged in these wars are people of extremes, as well as more moderate people, sensible people of good will who are trying to make some sort of sense out of highly complicated issues with no easy answers.

On the extreme sides in the gun debate we have people who believe that all weapons, no matter how lethal, machine guns, napalm, portable atomic bombs should be readily available and sold in your local 7 Eleven – to the other extreme, those who believe that guns along with sharp knives, sticks, skateboards and the running with scissors should be forbidden. Stuck in the middle are those who believe that having a small pistol at home to protect oneself from home invaders is not only a good idea but a human right. People living in rural areas, where it might take police a half hour or an hour to arrive, especially feel this way. One woman I heard interviewed commented, “Why do we call the police? Because they come with guns. So why not just cut out the middle man and have one yourself? Why depend on others to do your dirty work for you?”

Those in America who do not get a firm and happy erection at the sight of a gun, tend to explain their support for gun ownership from purely practical reasons. Guns, simply, are tools. And perhaps that famous practitioner of all things American, capitalistic and freedom-loving, Al Capone said it best: “You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.” He was simply pointing out that in any dead-locked situation a gun is a tie-breaker. Might always makes right.

Another reason for the popularity of guns in America is the idea that they are the executors of the ultimate justice. Hollywood did not originate the idea of guns as judgment day, but it certainly has packaged and sold it to the whole world. And the same people all around the world who scornfully decry the primitive and vulgar aspects of American culture none-the-less love the exploits of John Wayne and Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Swartzeneggar. America's commercialization of violence has been and continues to be a resounding success, as sadly proven by the fact that arms and Hollywood action movies are America's two biggest export successes.

The idea of guns as justice in these movies is best illustrated by the fact that in every movie the villain must be killed by the hero. It is not enough to be captured or even badly wounded before being taken away to jail to spend many decades locked in a cage. No, audiences demand to see the villain die, and to suffer as much as possible as he dies. Trial by jury and incarceration please no audiences. An eye for an eye is still demanded by the descendants of puritan America (..and don't Danish viewers prefer it, too?)

The debate over drug possession is perhaps less heated in America but none-the-less quite extreme at times. On one hand we have the puritans who want to keep all so-called narcotics illegal – and a few of them even long for the days when alcohol, too was prohibited. At the other extreme there are those who would like to see pot, coke, L.S.D. and heroin sold at every gas station and McDonalds. For these people freedom to choose is everything, and any possibly unfortunate effects of widely available drugs, even on our children, is of negligible or no real importance, they say. The advocates of free pot, for example point out that not one person has ever been reliably reported to have died from pot smoking – from subsequent car accidents, yes – but not directly from pot smoking, while countless millions have died from tobacco and alcohol. They also point out that insane areas of America, like Texas, once gleefully handed out 10-year prison sentences for the possession of just one joint! How, the free pot advocates ask, could pot possibly be as dangerous as such a crazy and cruel legal system? Opponents of pot usage, however, usually make the point that experimenting with pot will all too often lead to the experimentation with more addictive and debilitating drugs.

Predictably the debate over guns and drugs all too often lines up with a Right Wing-Left Wing chasm. A majority, but not all, of the most rabid gun freedom advocates, tend to vote Republican, often voicing fear of - and contempt for - the government. “We need guns,” they often say, “to protect us from a tyrannical Washington” as if automatic rifles of even the largest caliber will successfully fend off a Pentagon armed with drones, tanks and tactical nuclear weapons!

On the free pot side its advocates usually vote Democratic, favoring a strong central government that tells us how to keep water and food pure, but otherwise stays the hell away from our bodies. New York's mayor Bloomberg's advocacy of stricter gun controls is appreciated by those on the Left, but his efforts to forbid public sale of large container sugary sodas has had a more mixed reception from freedom loving Lefties. His intentions are good, we Lefties agree, but his methods seem silly and ineffectual.

Which is how the defenders of gun possession would describe gun opponents' suggested solutions – silly and ineffectual. Just as the opponents of the war on drugs in America point out that despite billions spent on the decades-old war on drugs you can still buy them on nearly any street corner at ever cheaper prices, the advocates of gun ownership could, if they wanted, point out a war on guns would be equally ineffectual. Why continue a hopeless battle, they could well argue.. but they generally don't. For the gun-loving portion of the Right Wing in America is still bound by the puritanical dictates of fundamental religion, in which sex and pleasure, pornography and the intoxicants brought to our shores by dark-skinned people – as opposed to brewers and distillers from white Europe – continue to be a taboo. So they never equate gun freedom with drug freedom.

Only a tiny minority in America, often calling themselves Libertarians, favor both the legalizing of all drugs as well as the continued legalizing of most guns. Perhaps the reason, however, that Libertarians remain so few in number, is the fact that in order to be consistent in their proclaimed desire of freedom from government nanny state dictates, they are forced to say, “Yes we want private roads only, private schools only, private fire departments, private police forces. All taxes and government organization is oppressive!”

Thankfully such extreme independent thinking doesn't go well in America, as most Americans know quite well that to live under such a truly dog eat dog scheme would require great effort and constant alertness – something few Americans are prepared for at length, our laziness fortunately in this case inclines us to prefer as little effort as possible.

While there is no need for a debate about guns in Denmark (knives do pop up from time to time, as well they should) Denmark has a continuing debate about the legalization of hash. Proponents correctly point out the considerable added tax income to the nation and the inconvenience to drug dealers who would be forced to switch to other products and markets. The opponents of the legalization of hash fear that it would become even more readily available to children and young people.

Not so.. I claim! If we were to restrict the sale of hash to pharmacies I am sure the use of hash by young people would fall dramatically. Why? The most disgusting place in any city for most young people is a pharmacy with its slow moving collection of wrinkled and diseased relics clinging on weakly to their pathetic lives. Pharmacies, to the young appear to be God's waiting room. (Perhaps if we restricted the sale of rap music to pharmacies we might do away with that pestilence, too?)

As far as drugs are concerned, and especially hash, Denmark should continue its efforts for progressively building a sensible society. In the past Danes were sensible enough to control guns and to free sex from religious and government taboos. Now is surely the time to do the same for the consumption of drugs less harmful than tobacco and alcohol!

But what about America and guns? Can anything sensible and effective ever be done? (News flash: Danish police recently charged eight Danish men with the illegal import of 158 weapons – everything from pistols to machine guns, proving that Americans aren't the only potentially dangerous gun-loving idiots.)

The comedian Chris Rock had a solution for so-called drive by shootings, in which gang members would randomly shoot at anyone on the street in their rivals' neighborhoods. “Make bullets cost 100 dollars each,” Rock suggested. “Then no one would waste them that way.”

Rock was making a point, however humorously. In a country that already has 300 million guns in private hands, what can America possibly do in the future to exercise an effective control over guns and their usage? The professionally cynical like the National Riflemens' Association (..and their cowardly and paid-for congressmen in Washington) make this exact point. Nothing at this stage can be done. As long as any guns exists they will be traded or even stolen, as was apparently the case in Newtown, Connecticut where the killer stole his mother's legally owned guns.

Some have suggested that future guns all have a chip so that the weapon is programmed only to be fired by the registered owner, and perhaps only at certain places. Perhaps future guns can be programmed to only be fired on one's own property? But that still leaves 300 million that will continue to be lethal for hundreds of years. Ban bullets and bullet bootleggers will quickly begin production to meet the illegal demand. The same goes for clips for rifles and pistols that hold more than 10 rounds. Such clips can be mass produced in anyone's garage.

Those of us who can see no effective way of making a dent in the number or types of guns easily available in America, have to resort to other ideas. Better mental health checks in schools, a more watchful eye for early mental health problems. A much greater focus on effective anti-bullying education in primary schools.

The only problem with this approach is that America is a profoundly juvenile society. The things that make us the entertainers of the world, the clowns, the rock and rollers, the Youtube providers, the teenage maniacs, the fun-lovers, also make us kings of teen angst, spoiled resentment and bad behavior. To always tell the difference between a teenage Bob Dylan and a teenage Charles Manson is never easy. Would a teenage Andy Warhol have behaved much differently in school than a Jeffrey Dahlmer who cooked and ate dozens of young boys? Is it ever possible to differentiate the altruistic rebels from the mean-spirited and destructive Hitlers-to-be?

One gun advocate claims that mass murder didn't occur in the years before the spread of drugs. He points out that many of these killers had been on long term medication, and suggested that these medicines prescribed by medical “experts” are to be blamed – not guns, of course. But no one, except for perhaps yours truly, blames the male sex, despite the fact that women make up a tiny percentage of murderers, drug or sex addicts. It is men and not women who abuse freedom!

Bob Dylan once famously sang, “To live outside the law you must be honest.” Many have speculated as to what he meant by that exactly. Was he saying that if one doesn't want society making the rules then one must make one's own and stick strictly by them or else be equally lost?

The writer, Hunter S. Thompson seemed to live by such rules. He was perhaps the first modern Libertarian, an equal lover of guns - the more lethal the better – and vast quantities of drugs and alcohol. And when he had had enough of all of them he ended his life by blowing off his head with one of his favorite guns.

Others beside Dylan have written songs about freedom. Kris Kristofferson wrote, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

But perhaps the 1980's Techno-pop Devo said it best when describing the times in which we all continue to live - “Freedom of choice is what you have. Freedom FROM choice is what you want.”

In previous Danish essays I've pointed out that many problems have no palatable solutions. In one I humorously(?) suggested that all men be chemically castrated ..just a little.. to dampen our violent tendencies. Perhaps America's gun problem could be solved if everyone there is issued a pistol at birth right there in the hospital and then given an education later as a lawyer. An equal playing field for everyone!

How many of us truly want to live in a world of absolute freedom? Most of us don't really want it for ourselves. And we certainly don't want it for the other guy.. he's crazy!

A World Turned Upside Down

Mitt Romney is not alone.

In a world of increasing Internet addiction, the only exercise most of us get these days is from flip-flopping. 

Lately an unexpected  change in attitudes and beliefs has been thrust upon us, as many of us so-called liberal/progressives currently find ourselves in the strange position of having to defend the American government against the bitter onslaught of Right Wing forces determined to cripple or castrate Washington's ability to monitor and regulate certain types of behavior. The last four years we on the Left have grown increasingly tired of having to explain to older family members or the rural residents of Know-nothing Arkansas that we lefties are not in favor of big government. We want instead good government.

But all our protestations fall on deaf ears. The Right hates the government because the Right enjoys hating the government. As we, too, not so long ago once did.

Many of us lefties, currently intoxicated by the re-election of a smart, decent, level-headed black man to the Oval Office, have forgotten our decades of fear and contempt for, and opposition to a great deal of what the American government has done to Americans and to the citizens of dozens of other countries.

We lefties all too easily seem to forget the American government's liberal use of napalm and Agent Orange on helpless villagers in southeast Asia, resulting in massive cases of birth defects and continued genetic destruction, as well as relative bagatelles such as our wiretapping and attempted blackmail of Martin Luther King and thousands of other citizens. America's long and shameful support of Right Wing death squads in Central and South America, too is well known, all in the name of cheaper bananas, tin and coffee!

The list of American governmental mischief seems endless. Check out a little known episode in American history called Operation Northwoods, a hideous plot devised by the Pentagon in the early 1960's and presented to a horrified John Fitzgerald Kennedy by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These noble warriors actually suggested that American government agents bomb and kill American citizens on American soil in order to blame Castro for the attacks and thereby justify an invasion of Cuba!

The American government has not suddenly become benign and trustworthy simply because a good-hearted man is now at the helm. The Right is right to distrust the government. But unfortunately what they seem to prefer is a government who will gleefully persecute those the Right loathes – gays, minorities, liberals.. and do it cheaply.

We on the Left, instead want a government that behaves decently. Is that really too much to ask? 

The Right says yes. That our sappy sentiments are just more naive wishful thinking. Government's true mandate, they tell us, is to spy, punish and prohibit the activities of certain groups of people, while leaving other types of people free to buy, sell and manipulate in peace.

Perhaps we of the Left should listen to one endlessly repeated Right Wing mantra – Guns don't kill people. People kill people.

In this case Government doesn't hurt Americans. Right Wing governments hurt Americans... and everybody else.

..but perhaps there is some reason for hope? Perhaps, in the current (naive?) spirit of outreach and compromise, in exchange for the Right Wing's acquiescence to slightly higher taxes on the very rich and an effort to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, we liberals can agree to ban marriage between humans and goats? 

Why not, when such a ban seems so important to these moralists?

The Blessed Closet

If I were gay I would not march in parades. Instead, in an act of reflecting a truer expression of pride, I believe I would march quickly and resolutely back into the closet. And I would slam the door behind me.


We have entered an era, fostered and nurtured by the great racial and sexual liberation movements of the 1960's, when gay people are now no longer non-existent or hounded, murdered and tortured as they were in previous generations and centuries.


Instead gay people are now tolerated. No, more than that. Instead of being objects of societal revulsion and scornful contempt, they have now become a source of entertainment and good-natured contempt.


Hollywood and the gods of television now present gay people to us as one-dimensional objects of good fun, the peripheral figure, the silly clown in nearly every sit-com cast since the early 1990's. Gay people, Hollywood assures us, are flighty, hyperactive, non-reflective – and as non-athletic Hollywood writers constantly assure us that all straight American men are obsessed by sports, these same straight writers hammer home again and again that all gay men are obsessed by Broadway musicals. And Hollywood producers, in their effort to make sure that these stereotypes are sufficiently hammered home, more often than not, cast straight men in the role of gay men, as if gay men cannot somehow give a convincing enough portrayal of these quirky and laughable creatures, and deliver today's equivalent of Al Jolson in black face.


Hollywood producers and writers haven't gotten where they are by being stupid. They occasionally, as a matter of politically correct necessity, feature a gay figure showing some back-bone, standing up for himself against prejudice.. for about 15 seconds, before lapsing back into mindless obsession with fashion or some other cliched frivolity.


And when Hollywood decides to milk homosexuality for drama, the love between men must be offered to us with as much macho angst as possible as in Brokeback Mountain. No simpering limp-wristed figures here mincing around the campfire. For how could straight audiences be expected to sympathize with forbidden love if the lovers are made to seem silly and pathetic? Hollywood moves us from one extreme to the other, from the prancing fairy to the repressed Republican without ever showing a hint that gay men and women are anything but flamboyant or castrated cartoons.


Minorities have all been through the wringer, Jews, blacks and now gays have all made the transition from the hated and the persecuted to the comical and contemptible. Hooray for progress. I suppose it's better to be poked fun at than poked with spears and other sharp objects.


But it would be heartening to detect some sign that we are approaching the end of a hopefully transitional phase. But sadly I see no sign that Hollywood and society in general are growing tired of portraying gay men as anything but ludicrous objects of condescension.


The closet may have been a confining and claustrophobic place, but at least it was safe and free from  Hollywood's “tolerant” help-mates.

Plan C

As we ever more desperately scrape the bottom of the peanut butter jar we must acknowledge that the last few years have taught us that encouraging economic revival has proved extremely difficult. Plan A (A for Anemic Accommodation?) has obviously gotten us nowhere.

Hundreds of Plan Bs have been suggested and a few tried, with President Obama proposing yet another one, Plan Barack, to Congress and the nation. But no matter how many Plan Bs are proposed or even successfully implemented – which is highly unlikely in the current climate of bald men fighting over a comb – the underlying economic problem will continue far into the future – for no matter what Americans do Asians can do just as well and cheaper. And what possible help is it if Americans are, in fact, better innovators, if Asians can steal patents as well as patenters - for now they are even stealing the very best jobs from those very best minds we brag about having?

Here in tiny Denmark electrical and computer engineers are losing their jobs by the hundreds as their jobs are being farmed out to Asians. A good education, a highly skilled technical education, is now by no means a guarantee of a job or a comfortable life in the West. Chemists, metallurgists, computer programmers, engineers, aircraft, car and windmill designers are all now joining the ranks of the unemployed in America and Europe.

The hideous choice the Western world faces is to either accept lowering our standards of living to that of the third world, with the accompanying total lack of unions, job security, health care, decent pensions, pollution and job safety controls etc – or to bravely resort to perhaps the only thing that will work – Plan C.

Before we discuss Plan C let us acknowledge that the globalization of business has helped bring countless millions out of abject poverty and possibly mass starvation in the East. Never have so many people risen from below the poverty line so quickly. A miracle unmatched in human history is occurring. Yes, many would also point out that what Asians have risen to is also a life of factory slavery where they are treated as less valuable than the machines they man.

Be that as it may, a bad job is better than no job, just as bad food is better than no food. But while the East rapidly changes for the better – at least as far as employment is concerned - the West is collapsing just as fast. The West can now offer the world nothing that East cannot produce cheaper – and soon even better? But as for now, what good does it do the West monetarily if our faltering innovations can be so easily stolen and replicated? And perhaps more importantly, what real good does cash-rich Apple mean to America and not just to Apple's shareholders, if all of Apple's products are made in China? Pride of inventive accomplishment puts food on only a few tables.

Perhaps the only thing that can save jobs and ensure a decent standard of living, not only in the West, but in other non-Asian areas of the world, is Plan C.

C in short stands for Cure, for Containment, for Continents and for Container ships.

Although it may seem like biting the hand that literally feeds me, I must mention here that the biggest container shipping company in the world (..or second biggest.. the ratings change..) is the Danish Maersk line (which also owns Denmark's biggest super market chains.)

Although this company is the pride of Denmark, its pale blue ships crowding every major harbor of the world, the line is working hand in hand with Walmart to destroy every decent job in America and the West.

Can anything be done? Yes, something that is as effective as it is unpalatable and unlikely to be implemented. Yet it is the only thing that might work.

Plan C calls for the containment of container shipping and the containment of continents. If the world were to initiate, let us say, in ten years time, a system where the only shipment of goods allowed between continents is raw materials.. if factory-made products are confined to their own continent, each corner of the world would be left to develop in an equal way. Why shouldn't the residents of South America build their own TVs, computers, cars, plastic sandals? Why shouldn't the Africans, the Europeans?

By stopping all manufactured trade between continents we ensure that the best minds do not fear the loss of their jobs, nor will one area of the world become solely dominant both politically as well as economically.

The East now knows how to grow and prosper, so a quarantine will not permanently derail progress and growth. They have enough citizens to satisfy demand for their products.

Plan C's call for the end of container shipping between continents is the only option and alternative available to the loss of jobs to an area of the world where workers toil in sweat shops for pennies, and force us to pinch our own.

Finally, a containment of container shipping would save the world millions of barrels of oil burned and wasted by these highly polluting ships – and as we commemorate 9/11 – possibly decrease somewhat the risk of terrorist madmen smuggling nuclear bombs to our shores in a container.

What is so hare-brained about a scheme that would save millions of jobs, promote equal and balanced economic as well as political world development, save enormous amounts of oil, as well as cut back drastically on air pollution?

Plan C is unlikely to ever be implemented. But not because it wouldn't work.

The Greatest Inventions

Most people, if asked to name the two greatest inventions in human history would no doubt point to fire and the wheel.

I wouldn't.

To me the two greatest are obvious – money and taxation.

Money, most of us would agree, is something both convenient and essential. Money eliminates the necessity of paying the dentist with live poultry or hookers with nuts and berries.

The invention of money has led to the establishment of trust between strangers. You and I both believe the green piece of paper has more or less the same value to us, so when I hand a stack of them to you, you happily accept them and hand me the iPad I don't really need from the trunk of your car. And we both walk away happy, me however briefly.

Capitalism and credit are based on trust between strangers, something that never occurred in the millions of years of pre-human history. They are the sign of the ultimate optimism.

But what about taxation, the annoyed reader asks between clenched teeth?

Let us take a brief look back in time, using British history as an example:

Three hundred years ago in Britain there were more than 30 different crimes punishable by death – everything from pick-pocketing to poaching the King's deer (..all the deer were the King's deer.)

Why did the Brits back then execute so many people for what we would regard today as minor crimes? Were they crueler and more sadistic than Newt or Rush today?

No. It was because they had no prison system. Why did they have no prison system? Because they couldn't collect enough taxes to establish one. Why couldn't they collect etc ect?

Because the vast majority of people had no money, only chickens – and the wealthy aristocrats wouldn't cough up money but would instead arm their reluctant serfs and send them out to fight the King's wars in place of taxes. Kings had dungeons to hold their well-off and ransom-paying hostages, but they never housed or fed poor prisoners. There were too many of them.. and so the chopping block.

But once capitalism kicked in, trade and the middle class increased, so did taxation. And so prisons and schools (same thing?) and hospitals, police and fire departments were established. Taxation made civilization possible. It paid for the disposal of waste, the more successful fighting of wars, eventually the protection of the environment, minorities, free thought and free speech.

In doubt? The Danes, for example, are known to be the heaviest taxed people in the world, with income taxes averaging 46% and sales tax at 25%. New cars have a 200% tax. Yet poll after poll taken by outside observers have shown the Danes to be the happiest people on Earth?

Why the happiness despite the massive taxation?

Because the 5 million Danes, by pooling their money have bought themselves an army, a navy, an air force, free schools, universities and medical care, pensions for all and housing for the homeless.

Danes are happy and proud because they know they live in a decent society where no one will be left to starve or die for the sole reason they have no money.

Look at any map and you'll see that the countries who tax the most have the most advanced societies. Afghanistan takes in little tax money and suffers, and the Greeks are experts at avoiding the tax man, which has brought their country to near-collapse.

Can taxation get out of hand? Of course. One only has to look at a communist country like North Korea where everyone works for the state, the ultimate taxation, and surpluses are never produced or true incentives allowed.

But a look at Scandinavia will show many things, all signs of truly civilized thinking: high taxation, extremely low church attendance and superstitious beliefs, the greatest degree of free thinking, free speech, and free personal behavior – as well as strong and responsible capitalism and extremely low political and financial corruption.

And all proving that an effective system of taxation and a wise use of taxes leads to the building of strong and free societies..

Paradoxically, Right Wingers not only want to keep your taxes low, they want to make sure you get nothing of real value from your tax dollars. Their gift to us is the freedom to go to hell all by your lonesome.

Us Bleeding Heart Liberals

I'm going to attempt the nearly impossible. I'm going to try to analyze only the flaws and foibles of my peer group, without any regard to our opposite numbers – that is to say I won't be balancing and justifying by saying “..right, okay, but the Right is even worse.”

First of all, I call myself a bleeding heart liberal for several reasons, one of them, of course, being I wish to seem modest and self-effacing – but also because I do recognize many of the sillier thought processes and motivations of people like myself. We are, admittedly, often all too smug, prejudiced, naive and lazy in our thinking.

For example:

Many of us BHLs believe that, if not a majority, than at least a large minority of rich people acquired their wealth by underhanded methods. They cheated, exploited. “You must be mean and devious in order to make much money in life,” is our assumption.

Sadly we don't seem to realize that few people would be in business long enough to acquire much success if they were deceiving their business associates or treading on their employees to any great degree or for any major length of time. In other words you can't run a business for very long if trust is often broken. We BHLs tend to point to the Ken Lays and Bernie Madoffs of the world, as if they were the norm and the honest businessman was as rare and as charming as Jimmy Stewart running his tiny ah-shucks no-interest lending bank.

And mega-successes like Bill Gates tend to confuse us. On one hand, while Microsoft has often been accused of devious and predatory business practices, Bill seems to have redeemed himself in our eyes by his generosity, much in the way Carnegie and Rockefeller gave back most of what they earned-extracted-filched. Just as St Augustine once famously said, “Dear Lord, make me good.. but not yet..” many of our towering business figures seem to go through the same transition – when they were simple millionaires they hated paying taxes – but now that they are multi-billionaires, like Gates and Buffet, taxes are less than gnats buzzing in the room and they encourage raising them.

Another unfortunate tendency on our part is to casually dismiss the complaints of business people.

We either don't believe or don't care if business people are burdened with government bureaucracy or senseless regulations. We by and large trust the government to enact mainly sensible and beneficial policies, when it comes to others – especially the well off. When the government regulates us we find it oppressive.

Another example of we BHL's faulty thinking is the blind assumption that few if any poor people are lazy, parasitic, self-indulgent, bad parents and/or violent or awful citizens. This insistence on our parts that those living in poverty are somehow noble and pure, untainted by greed or covetousness, is surely a sign of wishful thinking on our parts and nearly to the point of established liberal dogma.

BHLs of 19^th century England and America looked at the poor and shuddered. The BHLs wanted to transform the lives of the poor precisely because the poor were all too often criminal, self-destructive and dangerous. Today we tend to say they are simply misunderstood or the hapless victims of circumstance, and we also tend to forget that predatory behavior may be more common amongst the poor than the well off. To paraphrase a wise Frenchman (yes, they exist) “..a wealthy man has no need to knock over gas stations nor break the law by sleeping under bridges..” - an observation we BHLs soothe ourselves with. And we tend to too quickly disregard the pain and suffering caused by predators from the underclasses.

We BHLs also regard any skin color other than white as a sign of primitive nobility, Blacks and browns to us have soul ..and yellows have mystic wisdom. White people are bland, heartless and soulless.

We BHLs also tend to mock white Christian fundamentalists while excusing black.. but only because we like the joy, exuberance and music of black churches? If you syncopate your superstition it makes it much better, we seem to say.

As for sexual relations, we BHLs also tend to increasingly shun the claustrophobic links of matrimony while wishing them on our gay and lesbian population. Hypocrisy? Not exactly, more the willingness to say, “You have the right to be as miserable as the rest of us who've voluntarily committed ourselves to a protective(?) institution.”

We BHL's also tend to over-look the fact that much gay public behavior is seemingly endless examples of loud, trite, repetitive and garish exhibitionism, originally done as understandable pride and defiance ..but now something akin to the self-aggrandizing boasting of bling-encrusted rappers.

We BHLs have also decried the loss of factory jobs to Asia and Mexico for years despite the fact that we have been in the forefront of mocking and rejecting American products, preferring foreign cars, foreign coffee, clothes, electronics, films etc.

While we BHLs are internationalists and hate hearing the French referred to as being rude and cowardly, the Germans as humorless, the Italians as corrupt.. and so on and so on.. we seem to have no problem condemning all Republicans as stiff and selfish or all Mormons as mad as hatters. (Prejudice, unfortunately, is a part of life, as it saves us time.)

As for America's place among nations we BHLs have never met a war we liked – except for the war against Hitler, as Hollywood could never in its wildest imagination come up with a comic book hero so vile and colorful. Those Darth Vader-like costumes clearly told the world, “We're the bad guys!” Fighting Hitler gained our approval, while the so-called cold war seemed silly to us and a waste of trillions of dollars. “Ike should have sat down with Nikita and finished that vodka bottle until they were singing in harmony together,” would have been our naive hope at the time.

(To be fair to us BHLs we had enough sense to favor fighting the North Koreans in the Korean war but opposed the fighting of the North Vietnamese. Proof of our wisdom can be found in examining Viet Nam today. Although the government is stiff and oppressive about some things, no one is starving and capitalism flourishes. Napalm helped no one 40 years ago.)

BHLs are often wrong or at least wishful thinkers on economic issues – but to no greater degree than conservatives, as has become abundantly apparent.

Finally, as Churchill said of Democracy, “It's the worse system, except for all the others,” when progressive liberalism is wrong its usually wrong for the right reasons. When cold and clinical conservatism is wrong it's usually wrong out of spite. (Okay, I couldn't resist comparisons and I succumbed to the desire to justify.. but didn't I manage to stick it out for a praiseworthy length of time?)