An Angry Black Man

I started writing this blog because my personal journey of discovery has taken me down many roads. I began my journey in a rough area of South Central L.A. and today I essentially find myself living a modern European lifestyle in the Netherlands. Believe me when I tell you, those are two vastly dissimilar roads. When I started high school, my world consisted of an approximate area of 5 square miles. Beyond that I knew nothing. As a sophomore, I learned to use the L.A. rapid transit to traverse the L.A. basin, which expanded my “sphere of influence” to a 15 mile radius within South Central. That was quite a lot for a 16 year old with no car. The lack of a car was an impediment I overcame as a senior. Getting my first car (a 1976 Cadillac, Coup de Ville on its last legs) expanded my reach to the Valley and Orange County. This made me one of the most powerful kids in school, except for those on the varsity football team of course. You could see that I was a kid on the move with growing influence. For a 17 year old with a Cadillac, the sky was the limit.

At 19 I got a job stacking trucks at UPS. You thought I was influential in high school? At UPS, I was in charge of stacking all boxes going from L.A. to Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming. Yep, nothing was more powerful than a 19 year old who has memorized all zip codes in those 3 states along with selected bits of Utah. You see where I’m going with this right? My world influence and knowledge was growing…uh, from a certain point of view.

Then I joined the military. Got the opportunity to sleep in a small 7′x3′x3′ “pup tent” on a snow-covered hilltop in Northern Germany during the Cold War—and all in defense of freedom. Imagine rolling out of your sleeping bag in the middle of winter, in sub-zero temperatures at 0530 in the morning with nothing more than a paper-thin sheet of cloth between you and the elements and a tiny green-chemical glow rod for light. And oh yea, you are in your underwear, your ass sits on a similar green lining and under that, is the snow.  At 3′ tall, the tent won’t let you stand up but you need to put on your uniform and get to work before hypothermia sets in. Now THAT will give you world perspective or if you’re not fast enough, will freeze your ass.

Now imagine you are sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft flying a mission you can’t talk about other than to say, you are flying at speed, 200 ft. off the ground, in the dark under black out conditions, and can’t see a damn thing. The only one who can see is the pilot who is wearing night vision gear. You see wisps streaking by the window and understand that if any of those wisps glance by at an altitude higher than what was anticipated, your entrails will be evenly distributed across a 5 mile radius. But you don’t complain. You do it in the name of freedom—many times.

Imagine you are flying over war-torn Bosnia on your way to Sarajevo. The Serbian anti-aircraft batteries have been positioned on your route and you have word that they just fired on the last formation that passed this way. Your mission is to drop a couple tons of food out the back of the plane and the parachute will deploy and deliver the food, medicine, and supplies to the French soldiers waiting below. You get this surreal feeling as the pallet falls out the back of the craft. The only thing you still see is the little toy teddy bear you tied to the pallet with parachute cord falling until out of sight. You hope it will find its way into the hands of a Bosnian child—a child who has had little hope, food, or water for the last 3 years in this war-torn land.

Imagine having no social life for 8 years because you are in a unit of first responders and you have broken your last 8 or 10 first dates because you are in a critical position within this unit—and any time anything happens, your phone is always among the first to ring. In your experience, women always assume the worst when a man breaks the first date, so you try again and again to no avail.

Then imagine you finally leave that unit for a fresh start elsewhere only to end up in Afghanistan. Five times. Imagine you just arrived on station and are placing your body armor on the floor when you hear your first IED go off, killing the 2 Canadians traveling in the convoy behind you and realizing, that could have been you. Also, you have to take that same trip again—MANY TIMES. Then there was the time you flew from Kandahar to Kabul and an explosive device, which luckily failed to explode, was found near your aircraft’s parking spot.

Imagine trying to get an education during this active time period. Having to drop class after class due to mission requirements but hanging in there until completing 2 of 3 degrees on your itinerary. Meanwhile, you discuss, debate, and share ideas with people from all over the world. You have coffee and discussions with Dutch, Germans, Canadians, Americans, Spaniards, Danes, Norwegians, Turks, Italians, Greeks, Britons, Austrians, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Mexicans, Venezuelans, Columbians, Russians, Saudis, Israelis, Pakistanis, Afghans, and yes, I could go on.

I think back on how I viewed the world when I first left home and I realize I knew nothing. In fact, less than nothing. My view of the world with L.A. as its center was skewed to say the least. I thought I was well informed because I watched the news everyday and read a paper several days a week. Then, during a certain moment, I happened to be in a room fixing a radio when 1 high-ranking individual (who didn’t seem to notice me) walked into a room and said to another, “There is a CNN crew at the gate. They want a statement about ‘blah blah’.” The other said, “Ok, so what’s our angle.” Later that night, I saw a reporter that I watched on TV every night, give a report on CNN about this event in very matter-of-fact terms, all of which sounded quite plausible but which were nothing more than the “angle” I had heard earlier, regurgitated verbatim. I sat in amazement thinking, “But for the grace of God, I would be just like them,” with “them” meaning those sitting at home who were taught to believe what they are told. Those who don’t have a clue what’s REALLY happening in the world except for what journalists write, and the Brian Williamses, and Dan Rathers, and—sadly—Sean Hannitys and Glenn Becks of the world, tell you is happening. After CNN broke that story, all the news wires and networks just mirrored it. To the world at large, there was no question that it was true. All I could do was laugh sardonically at this. This single event, changed EVERYTHING about how I see the world.

How have I learned to mitigate the risk of being duped?

1. NEVER rely on just one news source. ESPECIALLY FOX NEWS!!!!! Trust me!
2. Avoid relying on news services that are affiliated with each other. Example: Fox News gave us the tax day tea party. The Wall Street Journal criticize the Obama tax, health care reform, and banking strategies and the New York Post printed an article by Betsy McCaughey—one of the architects of the health-care-will-kill-your-grandma “Death Panel” theory—that directly attacked the President and his administration. What do these entities have in common? They are all supporting the narrative disseminated by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. You can mitigate the bias of any one of these by balancing it with other sources but getting news from under this corporate umbrella alone will leave you with a warped, overly conservative view of “normal.” If you know ANYONE who gets all of their news from Fox, you can believe they will have a totally screwed world view and also, they are completely immune to facts of any kind because Fox has convinced them that all other sources are compromised, hence–LIBERAL MEDIA.  It is also worth saying that I would not trust a left-leaning news organization exclusively either.

   Note: A correction was made to the previous paragraph. The Washington Post had been erroneously linked to News Corp. The new version corrects this error.

3. News suggestions: Google News aggregates news from hundreds of sources. You are safe with them. Did I mention that Rupert Murdoch has attacked Google News several times recently. Because according to him (and others too BTW), Google is single-handedly destroying the newspaper industry and preventing anyone from making a profit by stealing content and redistributing it. Yea, poor Rupert. My heart bleeds. No mention of the 15 years that newspapers watched the Internet grow hoping it was a fad and restricting content rather than adopting and getting out in front of it. Others: BBC, NPR, NBC Nightly News (independently rated very low bias and not to be confused with MSNBC), AP news, the New York Times. These are all good sources. Use as many as possible.
4. Watch for scapegoats. Often, politicians will divert your attention from their own failings by giving you a bogeyman who is responsible for all the ill that ails your country, or social unit. Hugo Chavez is the best example of this. He multiplied his global presence a hundred fold by telling Venezuelans that the US was responsible for all the poverty and corruption that has plagued Venezuela for the last hundred years. G.W. Bush was all too willing to propel Chavez to a top level, cold war style adversary. All Bush had to do to prevent this was shut up—but he couldn’t. The point: We do it too. What do you think the whole “Axis of evil” nonsense was about. It was a bait and switch. Another example is Iran blaming the West for unrest after its recent fake elections. An allegation doesn’t have to be true. You just need enough people to believe it.
5. If you like opinion journalism, that’s okay. Just make sure that whoever you watch always gives sources of their information and always allows adversaries they attack a chance to defend themselves in person. I watch Rachel Maddow because she always cites reputable sources, offers airtime for rebuttal, always asks guests if she has misrepresented their position in any way and gives them a chance to respond, and generally provides excellent investigative analysis. Has Glenn Beck ever done any of these things?

What is the significance of all this? What have I described? It’s called life experience. Credentials are simple. I have a piece of paper on the wall that a university gave me. So what? It gives those to anyone who fills all of the check-boxes on the application. Want to know something a certificate can’t replace? About 4 years ago, I was in Sarajevo to help some organization with some IT problems they were having. Years after the war, the city had grown stable enough that we were able to go out on the town for dinner and some beers. I was with a friend and colleague who is a member of the German Luftwaffe and a Turkish Air Force NCO.

After dinner, we went to a cozy little bar the Turk was familiar with to have some beer. A group of 4 young women entered and sat at the table next to ours. After hearing us speak English they decided we were interesting. I guess that I in particular, stood out due to the obvious absence of black people there. One young lady struck up a conversation with me. In short order we got to, “Where are you from?” “What are you guys doing here?” “Ever been here before?” I said, “Yes, I’ve been here many times starting around 1993.” She said, “Oh really? And how do you…Wait a minute.” “That’s impossible,” she said with her most sincere ‘you’re full of it’ face.

“Actually,” she added, “you could not have been here in ’93 because we had a war going on.” She and her friends all had the look on their faces that said, “Yea, worm your way out of this, bee-yotch.” Of course I knew this is what she had been thinking.

I explained to her my missions flying food, blankets, and medicine into the city. Sometimes we landed, sometimes we had to drop a pallet from 12000 ft. I explained about the anti-aircraft batteries. I told her about a special mission when we flew a formation to pick up an 8 year old girl badly burned in a mortar attack on a schoolyard and how we took her to Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. I told her how pleased we were to track her progress on CNN and to see her progress and eventually, get released. I told her about the teddy bears falling from the aircraft and into the abyss and at that precise moment I looked at her face. She looked like she was a million miles away. I could tell she was reliving some intense memories.

Then she said in a small, distant voice, “I remember.” –pause– “We—we were…SO hungry.” “My father could no longer find us any food. We knew, if he went out…he would be killed.” “Then the winter came—and we…were SO cold.” –pause–”so cold.”

“Then one day, my father said he heard the Americans had come.” “He said that food was falling from the sky. This seemed magical to me I mean—I was only 8 or 9. ” “That night we had food. The next day we got blankets. One day my father came home from meeting with the French and he had a such a toy as you describe. I think I still have it.”

Mind you, we all tied teddy bears to every single pallet. So there is little chance the bear she got was one of mine, but still.

Suddenly, without warning she flung her arms around my neck and kissed me. Then she backed up a step to look in my eyes and asked, “That was such a wonderful thing you did for us. Why would you do that?”

I said, “We were all happy to do it.”

She said, “I always regretted that I never got a chance to say thank you to the people who fed us. It was you.” Then she took both my hands in hers and while looking into my eyes said with great passion and emphasis, “THANK YOU.”  She really meant it.

This was probably the proudest and most intensely gratifying moment of my life. I know—for a fact—that I made a difference in this world.

It was not without it’s cost to me personally since the deployment during which I had flown those missions, was the one during which my ex-wife had left me. As traumatic as that had been, they say everything happens for a reason and after this beautiful experience I never again had any regrets about anything that happened during that difficult time. It is all just LIFE EXPERIENCE. Life experience teaches you things you cannot learn any where else.

Do these all sound like rich experiences that in conjunction with academic credentials and professional certifications and qualifications might enable a person to offer bits of wisdom that may be of value to anyone who has not had such experiences? Well I think so and it is why I started writing this blog.

Several of the articles I have written were a result of frustration over people who have relatively little life experience and therefore believe whatever they are told on conservative talk radio (which includes Fox News in my book). These people find it painful to even allow those of differing ideas to voice their opinions. If people debate the issues on the basis of the facts alone, the Right loses and they know it. That is why they filibuster and attempt to bring all dialog to a halt. Of course this is not true of all conservatives and thus it is not entirely fair to generalize but the conservative movement has been co-opted for the moment, by radicals. Until moderate conservatives step forward and take their mic back and make it clear that radicals do not speak for them, we will have to lump them together until they differentiate themselves. It is not our job to do that for them.

Now I’ve been saying this for a while. I have also put my sources out there for general consumption and have asked for feedback and discourse from conservatives. I get little or no responses on the website. What I DO get are people who tweet me on Twitter to say I don’t know what I’m talking about, or that deny the accuracy of the Pew Research data I cite, or they say the authoritative sources I reference are biased. I ask where is their proof? I get no response. They deny the voracity of every source except the Lewin Group. This is the think tank that Republican Senators and Representatives have been citing for months about the health care debate. They are financed by United Health Group and other of the largest insurance companies in the United States.

Remember what I said about using only one source? It goes double for surveys. Anyone can pay for a tailor made survey. When you only use one source because it’s the only source whose numbers are consistently favorable to your position, they are using what we call funky math. Simply put, they are not to be believed.

Does any of this sound reasonable? Does my life experience seem pertinent? Are the facts in question? Are my sources bad? Okay, here is what I wanted to say about messages and messengers. A conservative friend who has read many of my articles said to me today, that my blog reads like that of a typical angry black man. I asked if he disputes any of the data. He said no, it all seemed quite logical, but that was what came to mind.

Whatever papers I have on my wall, whatever studies I have done, whatever countries I have visited, whatever discussions I have learned from, whatever missions I have flown, whatever perils I have faced, whatever lives I have helped save—in the end it is easier to dismiss the points I have made by believing that I am just an angry black man, than to believe that the reason the Right has no answers to the questions of our day…is that they are simply wrong. If they can read my articles and find no fault with them, and even acknowledge the logic therein but still refuse to believe, where do we go from there? For once, I am at a loss.

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