Caucus time means getting serious

Every four years it seems as though the next presidential election season gets started earlier than the last. Candidates from both major political parties began announcing their candidacies and stumping for votes a year ago. Several nationally televised debates have been held, too.

But all of this activity has really just been a long preseason leading up to the real race, which starts February 1 in Iowa. The presidential primary season is when all of the stumping and campaigning really counts. It’s when the things candidates say—or don’t say for that matter—either pays off or works against them.

From here on out, the primary debates will determine each party’s nominee for President of the United States in the fall. It’s when the men get separated from the boys, or—for the benefit of feminists like Hillary—where the wheat gets separated from the chaff.

All of that having been said, the next month or so will answer a lot questions have I concerning each party’s leading contenders.

On the democratic side, the primaries will show whether Hillary Clinton is the real deal this time around for her party, or if she is yet another bridesmaid. Is this race hers to lose, or somebody else’s to win? Eight years ago, the primaries started out hers to lose. But after Iowa, the race suddenly became Barack Obama’s to lose. He stole the limelight and the media attention right out from under Hillary like a magician pulling the table cloth out from under carefully set crystal and china.

At this point, no one in the Democratic Party seems poised to pull off an Obasm this time. Bernie Sanders is no Obama. He’s not the charismatic snake oil salesman that Barack is. And I just don’t sense the same energy from him that I did from Obama in 2008.

None of the other candidates have shown the same zeal for the nomination that Hillary has, either.

So, for now, the 2016 Democratic nomination is Hillary’s to lose. And lose she still could. Her latest campaign focus shows just how far out of touch she is with mainstream voters. Sure, hardline feminists love and applaud Hillary’s “equal pay for equal work” campaign. But, begging everyone’s pardon here, this argument is about a quarter century behind the times. Maybe longer.

The issue was originally raised in the 1970s, and its banner carried through the 1980s. Anti-discrimination laws passed 25-30 years ago and vigorously enforced since then have mostly made wage discrimination a non-issue anymore. Certainly, the problem has not been completely eradicated; but it is so rare these days that it makes little sense to turn it into a major presidential campaign issue. Especially since matters like foreign trade, the stock market, jobs, terrorism—both foreign and domestic—and national security are at the forefront of concerns most Americans have in 2016.

Hillary’s focus on something that affects comparatively few women these days than it a quarter century ago demonstrates how out of touch she is with the issues that drive voters today.

Though energetic in her public speaking, Hillary’s voice is mostly monotone and fails to inspire the confidence that Barack Obama was able to elicit eight years ago.

Hillary is the quintessential professional politician whose resume clearly shows she is trying to move up the proverbial career ladder yet again. It began as First Lady next to President Bill Clinton, then continued to the U.S. Senate after a calculated move to New York State to curry favor and votes from people more sympathetic to her views.

After just one full term in the Senate, she launched her first presidential campaign, and was rewarded with a concessionary gift of the Secretary of State cabinet post in exchange for conceding her primary race against Barack Obama.

Now Hillary is back again trying to reach the apex, the zenith of political power. She wants the Oval Office for her very own, and she is going to try every trick in the book this time to get it. Hillary’s two greatest virtues are her tenacity and willfulness. Those also have the potential to become negative traits as well.

Plus, there are voters who have grown both tired and weary of the Clinton name in national politics; a name that has some negative connotations attached to it. There are democratic voters who are as tired of hearing “Clinton” in the presidential races as there are republican voters tired of hearing “Bush.”

It remains to be seen whether or not Hillary has what it takes—the blessing of the DNC—to go the distance this year. Or, will some dark horse suddenly emerge in the next month or so to steal the spotlight from her yet again? We’ll see.

As for the GOP, will Donald Trump surge the republicans to a victory in November, or doom it to failure? Trump is a controversial candidate, and those individuals can be like sticks of wet dynamite: unpredictable, unstable and dangerous.

Trump talks too much, and that is saying something in a field cluttered with career politicians. He flaps his gums more often than a gossip at a bazaar. Worse, he says what he thinks, but he doesn’t think what he says.

The biggest detriment to Trump is his popular reputation coming into the presidential race. On the one hand, he has developed a reputation over the years as a financial cutthroat. He has also come to be known as an arrogant jerk on his former reality television show, “The Apprentice.” He’s also been known in the past as a social playboy, a jet-setter, and a prideful rich guy. As a result, many people already have a preconceived opinion of “The Donald.” His bombastic style on the political stump has not helped to improve this reputation.

It is true that millions may vote for Trump on notoriety alone. But millions more may not for the same reason. He has the potential to really polarize GOP voters and make the choice clearer than ever for those sitting on the fence.

This can have both positive and negative consequences for the Republican Party, and it may be why someone like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has been gaining steadily on Trump over the past month. The party’s conservative base, although energized initially by Trump’s hardline stand on immigration and terrorism, may be growing weary of “The Donald’s” bombastic rhetoric and tired of his self-serving showmanship. They appear interested in fielding a candidate with similar conservative views as Trump, but without the same offensive style and without the same negative aura that “The Donald” comes with.

It makes me wonder if Cruz or Rubio will emerge as the frontrunners after February. It’s possible.

But I don’t see Carson there after New Hampshire or South Carolina. He is quietly slipping in the polls and out of the spotlight. Carson, a genuinely nice man, lacks an edge to his campaign that has energized those of Trump and Cruz.

Nice guys are fine, but as president, voters generally prefer a Chief Executive with an edge. Someone who’s got the moxie to stand up to our country’s enemies, both foreign and domestic. I’m not convinced Dr. Carson has that trait, and it will ultimately doom his run for the White House.

Jeb Bush is running such a bland campaign that it has never gotten off the ground. I’ve not even seen one ad of his in my neck of the woods. I think he is acutely aware that the voting public has grown tired of the Bushes in the presidential culture. That is why he postponed his run until 2016. He needed to give the public time to get used to politics without either his dad or his brother. But I’m not so sure enough time can elapse after 12 years of a Bush in the Oval Office.

Not terribly bad years, for the most part, mind you, but still tiring nonetheless. Few people get excited about supporting a family oligarchy, and a presidential pedigree.

But the fact remains that Bush seems to have no real intention or motivation to win the party’s nomination. Otherwise, there would be some energy coming from his camp; some effort to market him up against Trump, Cruz, Rubio and Carson.

As for Fiorina and the remainder of the field, they are just there to add color to the race.

The nomination, for now, is Trumps to lose and Cruz’s to win.

Trump has the stuff—the money and the moxie—to go the distance into November. But does he really have the backing of the Republican Party? Or, will the GOP decide to play things safer with an alternative like Ted Cruz?

We’ll find out starting in Iowa.

Locker rooms no place for press

In spite of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press, there are some places where journalists don’t belong and are simply not allowed: At times inside a court room with closed proceedings, a jury deliberation room, a medical exam room, and in a legal consultation.

I’d suggest adding locker rooms to this list.

I have multiple reasons for this argument, but one is enough: An individual’s right to privacy, guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. There is also something to be said about plain, old-fashioned common decency respecting another person’s dignity.

Popular culture has gotten so wrapped up in media access that it has lost any sense of conscience. The only thing on our minds in this modern age seems to be whether or not we can do something, rather than asking ourselves whether or not we should.

The landmark 1978 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Ludtke v. Kuhn opened the door for female reporters to enter the locker rooms of male athletes, granting them the same equal access as their male counterparts.

Most people today feel equal access is a good thing. No harm, no foul, right?

But then there were sexual harassment incidents that followed in consequence to this equal access. The most talked about of these events was when Boston Herald reporter Lisa Olson was harassed by members of the New England Patriots after a 1990 NFL game.

Suddenly, the issue of female reporters in men’s locker rooms became a hot-button topic, and the debate over how to accommodate female press members lasted for months.

The topic, though, has seemed to wax and wane over time. It only becomes important when another harassment incident occurs, like when TV Azteca reporter Ines Sainz was the subject of comments made by members of the New York Jets while she waited inside the locker room for quarterback Mark Sanchez after a 2010 NFL game.

I’d like to preface what I’m going to say next by emphasizing that there is no excuse for the behavior of anyone who harasses someone else. They need to own their behavior and accept the consequences of their actions.

However, general common sense would tell a person that a locker room is really no place to conduct any other business than that of the athletes themselves. It is full of smelly, sweaty bodies and rank clothing. It is a loud and obnoxious place, full of chaos and no general order to things. The locker room is a place where a bunch of athletes are just trying to clean up and unwind from a hard day’s work.

As an athlete, the very last thing I would want in the locker room is a reporter waving a microphone in my face, eager for a scoop or an emotionally charged quote. Frankly, the locker room is no place for reporters of any gender. Period.

It is a place where individual privacy ought to be respected, and a person’s sense of dignity preserved.

That is really the best way to settle any debate over whether female reporters belong in men’s locker rooms. Should they be allowed? Per the U.S. Supreme Court, that question has been moot since 1978.

But do they belong there? Categorically no. Not any more than male reporters belong in women’s locker rooms. It is inappropriate to say the least. But it is also a reckless exercise that has trouble written all over its face.

I feel that encouraging women reporters to enter men’s locker rooms to get a scoop for a story is irresponsible, too. It sets up a dangerous precedent that puts these women in precarious, high risk situations where their chances of being harassed are increased.

While we have every right to expect male athletes to conduct themselves as gentlemen at all times, we must also acknowledge that this expectation is simply not realistic, either. The locker room is really the last place one should expect chivalrous or gentlemanly behavior.

And, by the way some of these women dress, I can only shake my head and wonder silently, “what in the world were you thinking?” Who are you trying to impress, and why?

They are certainly not trying to win brownie points with their editors.

Although it would be wrong to assert that a woman asks for harassment by the way she dresses, common sense dictates that when a woman dresses provocatively she should not expect benign or platonic reactions from members of the opposite gender. Ines Sainz and Erin Andrews tend to dress like they are on their way to a catalog shoot for Venus or Frederick’s of Hollywood. I see more legs and skin on them than I do male basketball players. They both seem to dress in ways that do not convey a sense of journalistic integrity or professionalism. If women like them are truly all business as sports journalists, then they need to dress ready for business, instead of seemingly dressing to impress the visual appetites of male athletes from whom they can gain an exclusive interview.

It is common knowledge that men are generally very visual, and are easily stimulated in this manner. No one knows this fact better than men; except maybe women.

When a woman wears a lot of liberal, skin-bearing attire, she sends a message—intentional or not—to men with whom she comes into contact.

Considering how brazenly Sainz dresses, I’ll wager she is not only quite cognizant of this fact, but it may, in fact, be a motivation of hers to attract attention so she can get to popular male athletes first.

Assuming that is true, then she and other women who may think the same way deserve the consequences of their actions. I know that sounds harsh, but when one makes waves, expect your boat to get rocked. Dressing with a measurable degree of sex appeal isn’t going to get a woman respect from men, either. Short skirts and short-shorts, very shapely skinny jeans, platform-sized stiletto heels, and halters or low-cut tops that display obvious cleavage conjure up images of street walkers, clubbing co-eds, or groupies more than they do professional journalists who deserve to be taken seriously; and have their jobs given equal billing.

I submit that athletes and their jobs need to be taken seriously, too. Invading their privacy and sense of personal space by converging in a locker room is not very respectful of professional athletes who are still on the clock.

The Constitutional right to privacy is just as important as the right to free press and the right to equal protection under the law, including Title IX equal access.

The media needs to honor and respect this right as much as it trumpets its right to free press.

The locker room is no place for any member of the media, male or female. It won’t kill reporters to have to wait for athletes to undress, shower, re-dress, primp and unwind for a few minutes before facing the cameras and microphones. Just as reporters must wait for a jury to deliberate before getting the verdict, they also should wait for athletes to finish their business before sharing it with the world.

Just as reporters must wait for a police investigation to be completed before information is released to them, they should also wait until athletes are prepared to face them.

And, just as reporters must wait for the team physician to complete his or her examination of an athlete before their conditions are released, so, too, should reporters be made to wait a few extra minutes for athletes to have the opportunity to exercise their right to privacy.

Verily a scoop, and who gets it first, is not as important as respecting the privacy of the individual. Simply having access to the athletes and coaches should be enough. Where and when that access occurs should be less important.

I’m thinking that if the shoe were on the other foot, and athletes were pounding on the doors of the news room demanding to be the first to read the final draft of a story, reporters might feel a little uneasy as though their right to privacy was being disrespected.

I say all of this as one who has some authority to do so. I spent ten years in the print journalism business, including several years on the front lines of a sports desk. I know about the pressures of deadlines. But I never let that effect my judgment or my perspective. I was a human being first, and a journalist second. I valued my personal privacy as much as the next person, and I had a fiduciary responsibility to honor the privacy of those from whom I sought interviews and information.

Removing all reporters from the locker room isn’t just the right thing to do, it is also a prudent solution to a recurring problem.

Rather than having to revisit Title IX all over again the next time a female reporter feels harassed in a locker room, how about we take the locker room out of the equation entirely? Let’s stop the victimization before it has even an inkling of a chance to start.

And, let’s stop playing the victim, too. Female reporters are guilty of this more times than not. Instead of crying foul in complaint, or in reminiscence of the good old days when athletes got away with brutish behavior, let’s move forward as professionals.

Frankly, I am tired of reading the blogs or columns of female reporters who seem to relish in recalling their own personal brushes with inequality as though they are swapping war stories. They tend to wear these experiences like badges of honor that entitle them to moan, groan and complain about injustice.

How about we get beyond victimization already by reducing situations and scenarios that naturally seem to lend themselves to bad behavior?

Kick out all of the reporters in the locker room, and maintain exclusive privacy for the athletes, coaches, and other team staff. Just because business on the field has concluded doesn’t mean it’s over in the locker room.

Let the athletes finish their business before doing business with the media.

And, most of all, let’s all try to observe the Golden Rule of “do unto others.” If we all tried to practice this a little more often, issues like sexual harassment and locker room access might not be debated.

Climate change remains an unproven theory

Science is a process, not a doctrine. It asks questions and sets out to test them for answers. But our culture seems to regard science in an animate form, like a guru seated atop a mountain.

We put science on a pedestal and submit to it as the final authority on all of our problems and important questions. We rely on science to give us all of the answers.

We even permit science to be the driving force behind public policy, in spite of the fact that science is a search for questions that remain unanswered.
Take the issues of climate change and global warming.
The predominant theory is that man is the chief cause behind both of these phenomena.
Certainly there is plenty of evidence to suggest man-made contamination has influenced the atmosphere. But nothing has been proven yet. Science has not been able to say either conclusively or by consensus that global warming and global climate change are man-caused and man-made.
Even though the American Meteorological Society (AMS) has endorsed the theory that these atmospheric phenomena are man-made and man-caused, not every meteorologist agrees or is ready to stake his or her professional reputation on that. In other words, there isn’t a consensus among environmental scientists.
There still exists skepticism and doubt, which is what science is really all about. It is about not wholly or solely investing in one finding, but instead demands more tests and asks more questions.
But the few skeptics who dare to express dissent are often silenced by the louder voices who have jumped on board the “blame mankind for everything” bandwagon.
Frankly, I don’t know the answers behind the problems of global warming and climate change. I don’t claim to know, either. But one thing I do know is that mankind tends to display a sort of arrogance in thinking that not only is he to blame for all of the Earth’s problems, but that he alone has the power to fix them, too.

If modern science is correct, and the Earth really is 4.5 billion years old, that means it has existed and evolved over eons of climactic changes to emerge in its present state as a globe bursting with diverse life and the means to support it.

The Earth has weathered cataclysmic collisions with meteors, devastating earth quakes resulting in the separation of entire land masses, life-altering Ice Ages, immense and expansive volcanic eruptions, and many more events that, frankly, eclipse in severity and scope anything that insignificant little man has done in the past two centuries since carbon-based fuel sources began spewing smoke into the skies above.
Mind you, I’m not trying to minimize the impact of air pollution. Clearly, polluted air and water have had negative, even devastating effects on the health of humans and animals alike.
But to suggest that man has the power to destroy the very planet that theoretically gave him life is as arrogant an assumption as a suggestion that man can also save the Earth, which is responsible for sustaining, perpetuating, and even selecting the life within it.
Despite the high opinion that we have of ourselves, mankind isn’t really all that.
Should we be responsible stewards of our environment? Absolutely.
Should we be careful instead of careless in the natural resources we use? Certainly.
And, should we do our part to take care of the Earth that takes care of us? Yes.
But that doesn’t mean it is within our power, or even in our charge, to save the Earth.
I’m suggesting that we approach the science of global warming and climate change with a tad more humility than we have.
Perhaps climate change and warming are a little less influenced by the ways of man than the ways of the solar system at large. Maybe El Nino is more of an historic weather pattern dictated by nature than by little, insignificant man.
And maybe, just maybe, mankind happens to be along for the ride.

And my presidential endorsement goes to...

Dr. Ben Carson.

There is something about this man that’s gentle and genuine. I cannot put my finger on it, but let’s just call it a hunch.

I inherited from my father an innate sense which he called a “gut feeling.” I call it a hunch. Same thing.

And, my hunch is that Dr. Carson is the type of person I would feel most comfortable with in the White House. Sure, he is a hard-liner on many issues, and sees a lot of things in black and white. But I can’t fault him there, because admittedly I do, too.

He is running his campaign less as though he wants the office of President of the United States, and more like it is a civic duty or responsibility.

This is in stark contrast to the obvious zeal with which Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are running their campaigns. They clearly want the Oval Office the way a child wants a toy he or she sees on the store shelf. Enthusiasm is not so much the word I would choose to describe their interest. Zeal and want hit closer to the mark.

And, frankly, I get easily offended by candidates who seem to want to be elected to office so badly.

What is it about elected office—and especially a room at the White House—that makes some candidates become so overzealous in their campaigns? Is it because one enjoys long hours reading and writing bills, in complex negotiations with foreign leaders, or handling a diplomatic crisis?

I’ll wager not so much.

Rather it is the appeal of the office, its luster and attention, its dozens of little perks that add up, and, of course, its power. Many individuals aspiring to political office have an ego to satisfy. They want the attention, the glamour, the power, or a combination of all of those. Histrionic and narcissistic personalities seem to mesh well with political office; especially that of Chief Executive, the most spectacular of all of them.

But Carson’s quiet demeanor is a refreshing change from the “yell and sell” ways of conventional candidates.

Trump has tagged Carson as unenthusiastic. Compared to “The Donald,” I’d say Carson definitely lacks the former’s histrionics and narcissism. He’s a much more reserved candidate who doesn’t make his campaign out to be some desperate power grab.

Trump, by contrast, is overly vocal, bombastic, in your face, and is about as graceful in public speaking as a bull in a china closet.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for plain speak. But I tire easily of political candidates who seem to do so for their gain; and not so much for the benefit of others.

There are those concerned about Dr. Carson’s qualifications for executive office. He’s a physician, after all, and not so much a business man like Trump or a career politician and lawyer like Hillary and most of the other candidates.

But one reason why Carson has attained and maintained at least No. 2 in the GOP polls is because he is very different from the candidates voters have gotten used to over the years. Voters have grown tired of career politicians simply looking to move up the proverbial ladder on their way to the top spot in representative government. They have also grown weary of politicians who talk a good game, but do not play one. These candidates make big promises, but fail to deliver the goods. They are long-winded, big-winded, and talk a lot better than they walk.

There are just too many of those types of candidates in the race yet again, and voters are fed up with having to choose between the lesser of two evils. They want a candidate they can truly believe in, stand behind, and feel confident about.

Very few of the 2016 presidential candidates can deliver what the voters really want.

But my hunch is that Dr. Ben Carson will hit closer to the mark than any of the other candidates vying for the Oval Office.

He is, in my estimation, at least an honest and decent man who not only has built a professional reputation on doing the right thing, but he wants America to get back to doing what’s right, too.

I cannot advise anyone else on how he or she ought to cast their vote, but as for me at this moment, Dr. Ben Carson has mine.

How many more?

A lot of people are asking themselves and the society in which we live this question hours after a fatal mass killing at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.

I’m a native Oregonian, born and raised just an hour or two north of Roseburg. My parents called this mill city, situated between the North and South branches of the Umpqua River, home for a few years a decade back. I know the area fairly well.

Like so many other people, whose local communities become the latest casualties of mass killings, I was naturally taken off guard. It was hard to believe that such a tragedy could occur in little, old Roseburg, Oregon.

I’m sure the folks in Newtown, Connecticut, said the same thing. So did the folks in Aurora and Littleton, Colorado, Marysville, Washington, Charleston, South Carolina, Blacksburg, Virginia, and even in my current hometown of Carson City, Nevada, to name just a few.

But happen they did.

The question on all of our minds is why? We ask ourselves and each other this question every time there is a mass killing incident.

For some reason, though, we aren’t comfortable with the answers, so we settle for asking and answering a more obvious question: How did this happen?

That’s a much easier one to field. The “how” is the process or manner in which something is done.

We know how the killings were done, how they were carried out.

Guns.

That may be sufficient for someone like the President of the United States and other politicians who are looking to make a brief sound bite or two on their elected stage. But it isn’t sufficient for me or most other people who want to know why. The only “how” we are interested in is how to stop these killings.

For that, we must summon the courage to look deeper than the surface. We must not be content with scratching the top of the problem and saying that’s enough digging; I’m fine with blaming these incidents on guns.

President Obama, on the other hand, wasted little time pointing his finger at the inanimate object, the tool of destruction, used to carry out the crime. I find it hard to believe that a man with a Harvard education is willing to stop there, and not consider the deeper, more pervasive problems that exist.

To conclude that guns are the problem, and more control or regulation over them is necessary, is to ignore our nation’s more endemic cultural problems.

I doubt Tim McVeigh and his co-conspirators would have agreed that guns are the problem. They didn’t fire a single shot in carrying out the mass deaths in Oklahoma City two decades ago. All they did was load a few trucks with fertilizer, mix them with common chemicals, and boom.

I don’t think Dylan Quick would agree that guns are the problem, either. If you recall, he’s the perpetrator who in 2013 stabbed and seriously wounded 14 people at a community college near Houston, Texas.

Certainly the two brothers who carried out the massacre at the 2013 Boston Marathon would have disputed that guns are the problem. In spite of the fact that they engaged in a shoot-out with police following the bombings, the means of destruction were backpacks stuffed with pressure cookers and loaded with explosive material. Several people were killed and dozens more maimed and severely wounded by the blasts.

Even James Holmes, the shooter convicted in the 2012 massacre at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theatre may not agree. Investigations revealed he had a much greater repertoire of weapons at his disposal than just guns. He rigged his apartment with explosives. So, what if Holmes had decided to plant a bomb or two at the theatre instead? The result would be gruesomely similar: A lot of dead people. And we wouldn’t have raised the old specter of debate about guns, either.

Guns have been used in the vast majority of massacres in the United States. That much is true. But they are not the only common denominator in these attacks.

There is something eerily similar about so many of the perpetrators of public massacres. They have very nearly all been young males teen-aged to thirty-something. Most, though not all, have been Caucasian. Near as I can tell, virtually all of them have been the loner types, either preferring isolation by their own choices, or else bullied into it by others. And, they all have appeared to have some rather deep, pervasive internal problems.

Let’s see what we know so far about the Roseburg shooter. Chris Harper-Mercer was a young, white, twenty-something male. He was single, though he was looking on dating sites. In all likelihood he was a loner who felt alone.

In his own blog, Harper-Mercer lamented Vester Flanagan, the shooter who recently killed a television journalist and new photographer in Virginia by writing this:

“People like him (Flanagan) have nothing left to live for, and the only thing left to do is lash out at a society that has abandoned them. On an interesting note, I have noted that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”

To me, this is a very chilling statement filled with more truth than even I would care to admit; having come from the mind of a loner nobody who is now an infamous killer.

Mercer-Harper seemed to acutely and intimately identify with the perpetrators of public massacres. He appeared very aware of the “why” question that we all want answers to. And, even in the face of his own warped conclusions on how to deal with feeling lost and alone, he managed to express the ugly truth that has been a bane of America society for decades now.

“For so long we have been taught that what’s important in life is to buy this and have that,” Mercer-Harper wrote in one of his first blogs. “To always have the latest fashion, biggest tv, fanciest car, nicest house, and blah, blah, blah. Well, the truth is we’ve become so attached to these things, our spiritual development has been halted. … This attachment produces so much of the stress and worrying in the world today.”

I really cannot argue with that.

This leads me to the “why” question as I have been pondering it for years now.

Modern society has fostered a culture of hopelessness. Perhaps not on purpose, but in consequence to other messages we have been sending new generations of people, of citizens.

Mercer-Harper spoke of a loss of spiritualism, which is ironic considering that he allegedly targeted Christians in his rampage.

But he was right about spirituality.

America was once heavily spiritual. However, in the last century, American culture has gradually become increasingly secular and agnostic. Our society has gone to great lengths to not only kick God out of school, but to silence Him in public. We have chosen to ignore Him, turn our backs on Him, and declare that He doesn’t exist. With that, we’ve also tossed out the hope that He brings multitudes of otherwise lost souls.

Spirituality, whether Christian or Hindu, Islamic or Buddhist, takes care of what is inside of us. While food and material provide for our physical human needs, spirituality nurtures the “being” in all of us. When we take that away, we remove the hope that our “beings” also require.

I’ve heard modern Christian theologians sum up the definition of hell as being without God; eternal separation from our Creator. If this is accurate, then American culture has created its own hell by turning its back on the one true Hope, the one genuine Comforter to whom we can turn in times of trouble.

Without hope, one becomes hopeless. When one is hopeless, he or she is at high risk of feeling desperate. Desperation leads to irrational thought and action.

Just look at what our culture has promoted in place of hope: Moral relativism, a chance existence, no boundaries, material importance, and male insignificance.

All that matters is what we can see, hear, touch, taste and smell; those things that appeal to our five senses. That’s all that exists anyway, so it is all that is of any significance or importance.

Right and wrong are relative. If it feels good, do it. Gray is the new black-and-white.

Self-control is just another word for social inhibition.

Our existence is by accident, a big bang that happened to lead to the universe and the Earth as we know it today. There is no design to the physical world around us. It’s just matter, that’s all.

Men are losing their places in the family, in the home, and even in their communities. Generations of little boys have been raised by mothers only, and they have learned through observation that they don’t have an important place in the family or in the home. They have been taught in their communities that male leadership is really chauvinism, so there isn’t any place of significance for them in their neighborhoods or cities.

There has even been a trend of single women choosing to become pregnant and raise children without a father, further cheapening and devaluing what it means to be a man in our culture.

Anymore, men have become pixelated on a screen, shooting enemies in a video game, blowing things up in a movie, or fulfilling carnal needs.

Imagine the conclusions that scores of young males are reaching when they observe all of this.

I once worked at a behavioral treatment home for adolescent boys. I remember seeing the boys play video games in their free time, blankly staring at the screen while turning pixelated humans into bloody messes.

Has the value of human life really been summed up in this manner? Has our culture become so desensitized through entertainment media, and digital fantasy, that killing just means earning points in a game?

I am, frankly, chilled to think that I may yet have an understanding of what Harper-Mercer was venting about in his blogs.

His rant about materialism is spot-on, too.

Consider how insane the lines are at Apple stores every time a new iPhone is released. Or the mania, the frenzy of store doors opening on Black Friday. Or, awaiting the release of a long-anticipated movie. I can only imagine that lines for the new “Star Wars” trilogy are probably already forming. Scores of people will camp out for days, even weeks, just to be among the first to get the latest and greatest, the best deal, or see the movie first.

Is our appetite for materialism really this bad?

Are we actually placing all of our hopes and dreams into little electronic devices that will crack and break if you drop them?

What happens when our material hopes do break? Are our hopes shattered with them?

I could go on and on here, literally filling pages of my thoughts on the matter of public massacres, what they mean, and why they happen.

But the bottom line is that our culture has decayed.

Young, impressionable men are feeling devalued, worthless, hopeless and alone. There is nothing to look forward to but the next iPhone, the next great deal, or the newest “Star Wars” movie.

I submit that human beings were meant to be deeper than this. There is supposed to be more to our substance than the messages conveyed by popular culture.

I personally don’t believe we exist by chance, but by design, and with a purpose. I don’t believe men have no place of significance in the home or in the community at large. I don’t believe in moral relativism. Black and white do have their places alongside gray. Feeling good doesn’t always make what we are doing right. Self-control is the key to individual liberty, not a method of inhibition.

And materialism has no soul, no intrinsic value. It may satisfy the “human” part of us for a time, but it will never serve our “being.”

Finally, I believe there is hope, because I believe in someone and something much greater than myself. I am not the end all be all of my own existence. I am part of a greater plan.

My desire is that more people will come to realize this truth, and learn to feel this way, instead of feeling hopeless, helpless, unimportant, and insignificant.

I fully expect that someone reading this commentary will dismiss it as just another rant displacing blame for the Umpqua Community College tragedy from where it belongs. To those I say that the perpetrators of these crimes are solely responsible for their actions. Blame for the results of their intentions lands squarely on them.

However, our society must take responsibility for the culture it has fostered to lead these people to reach their hopeless and desperate conclusions about the world around them. I have a hunch, a gut feeling, that the perpetrators of mass killings in our country have something in common, and it is their perception of the world they live in and their place in it. Our culture has sent extremely negative, self-destructive messages about ourselves and the environment in which we all live.

Our fiduciary responsibility is to hold ourselves accountable for this. When popular culture promotes a shallow, self-centered, materialistic world without purpose or hope, then it reaps what it sows.

The most dangerous weapon possessed by mankind isn’t the gun. It isn’t the bomb, the airplane or the automobile, either. It is something we could never create if we tried, but we all have it.

The human mind.

More destruction results from this weapon than any other conceived or contrived by mankind. The mind is what makes destruction possible, after all. The tools of the trade don’t matter. What matters are the choices we make to use them, the will we possess to manifest the hateful thoughts that are conjured up in our heads.

So, go ahead and heavily regulate firearms. Heck, ban them outright. And what will still remain is the human mind and its ugly capability to destroy.

Ban guns, and there will be an increase in knifings, like what happened in Texas a couple of years ago. Ban blades, and there will be an increase in bombings like the Boston Marathon or Oklahoma City.

If Harper-Mercer had instead set a backpack with explosives under his seat in class, then left to go use the restroom, and detonate the bomb, how much destruction would we be talking about?

There’s an old saying: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

As long as human beings possess the will for destruction, regardless of motive, there will always be a way for them to carry it out.

Maybe President Obama is content to scratch the surface of a deeper, more pervasive cancer by trying to remove the tumor he sees on the skin. But I am not.

I see a much deeper problem that has only continued to fester, infect and grow. We’ve done nothing to try and halt the spread of this cancer. We’ve only sought to pluck off the tumors as they surface.

But remove guns from the equation, and the cancer still exists, still grows, festers and infects. The body will die in spite of our efforts to treat only the symptoms.

It takes courage to make an incision and open up the body for a closer look at what is really happening to bring these tumors to the surface.

If these massacres are going to be stopped, then we must muster the courage to go much deeper than we’ve been content doing.

It’s uncomfortable, painful, and embarrassing to find out what really lies beneath; but it is necessary to ward off further destruction.

If we choose not to, yet again, then I foresee incidents like Umpqua Community College happening elsewhere over and over again. Same result. Same reaction to it. Same cyclical pattern.

When will we finally get tired of it? When will enough be enough?

For me, the time was yesterday. For the rest of us, the time must be now.

Palin’s endorsement of Trump trivial

So former Alaska Governor and 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has endorsed Donald Trump to be the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States.

Big flopping deal.

Here we have one political opportunist endorsing another. So what else is new?

In the grand scheme of things, what Sarah Palin does or says these days is trivial and carries little weight with those of us serious about the political condition of our country.

This endorsement is coming from a person who quit her elected post as governor half way through her first term in order to pursue a book deal and a more lucrative career as a television media pundit.

She proved to me that her own self-promotion was of greater importance than the oath she took as governor. That has “opportunist” written all over it.

Trump, like Palin, is an opportunist out to get as much attention on himself as he can. He built a financial empire on his ego alone, and he looks to create a political one for the same reason.

He has more in common with P.T. Barnum than he does Abraham Lincoln. He’s a showman, a shameless self-promoter who will say anything controversial just to get a sound bite, a headline and a quote. It is why he sought his own reality television show. He wanted to stroke his ego, and in a big way.

I think Trump views the White House as the ultimate stage upon which to puff out his chest and bristle his feathers. No other stage can cause an ego to swell quite like the one in the Oval Office.

For Trump and Palin to be spoken of together is kind of like Wild West show legend Buffalo Bill Cody taking a bow with Annie Oakley at his side. No offense to the wild west legends themselves.

Should Trump accept Palin’s endorse and ask her to join his team, then his campaign will come to resemble a freak show even more than it already does. It will become a two-headed monster with double the zeal for self-promotion and attention.

I am saying a prayer that Trump’s campaign will fold sometime shortly after January next year when the primaries hit full swing. By then, the run for president will separate the men from the boys.

God help us all if our choice a year from this coming November is either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. We either choose a person with a deep psychological appetite for the White House, or one who wants it to be his biggest stage yet.

I wonder if Mr. T has considered a third party bid.

Green energy requires serious green

Have you ever wondered why there has been such a big push in the past decade or two toward so-called green energy?

I surmise that the reason has less to do with saving the environment, and more to do with saving the pockets of people who have tied up their fortunes in it.

Solar and wind power sources have been around for decades, but they’ve never really caught on. Kind of like electric cars. There have been fads and trends toward them, but none that have been proven to last the tests of time.

But the people who have tried, to their credit, to sincerely sell these products have found themselves knee-deep in capital debt and no way to dig themselves out.

The only answer has been to create a green energy lobby in an effort to gain not only federal dollars but the national attention that goes with it. The natural results have been legitimacy in the popular culture, and acceptance in the marketplace.

Now you have private enterprise and public entities alike literally investing billions of dollars in solar panels and wind turbines in hopes of curbing the high costs of energy consumption. All the while, the makers of these products have breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Their lobby has paid off. Big time.

These days, green energy is as big a business as environmental protection; another lobby that has cashed in on government money and popular culture’s all too willing nod toward anything that makes it feel good.

What I fail to see, however, are the dividends of this green energy. City fees still routinely go up, not down, despite significant civic investments in solar panels. State taxes also keep going up, not down, even though tens of millions of public dollars have been spent on solar panels and wind turbines. My energy bill hasn’t been reduced even though the utility company has supposedly been adding more and more green energy technology to its production lines.

As an individual consumer, the initial costs of solar and wind technology remain prohibitive. Industry experts, of course, claim that although initial costs are high, they pay off in the long-run.

Perhaps.

But, as a low- or middle-income consumer, I still have to contend with those prohibitively high costs of equipment and installation. For me, the bottom line is still the bottom line. We are talking five figures to get started. How many consumers have that kind of money laying around? And, how many are really going to seek the credit for it?

For those who can afford the initial start-up costs of converting to green energy, more power to you. Perhaps solar and wind power are sufficient to meet the energy needs of individual households…as long as those households can afford to make the switch.

However, the jury is still out as to whether or not this green energy is really adequate for meeting the needs of mass populations.

A close friend of mine is an engineer for an electrical cooperative. He has told me that the inherent problem with green technology is that it cannot provide nearly the same quantity of energy that hydroelectric, coal or nuclear power can.

He reported that solar panels and wind turbines measure output in kilowatts, while hydroelectric, nuclear and coal sources measure output in megawatts. In other words, for every megawatt of energy produced at a conventional, non-green power source, a green source must produce a thousand kilowatts.

This means that, in order for an electrical utility to provide green energy to entire communities, exponentially more power structures are required to equal the output of one structure of coal, nuclear or hydroelectric-generated power.

This means acres upon acres of land must been used to install hundreds of wind turbines, and thousands of solar panels.

And, that means governments must be willing to pay out millions, or billions, more in energy costs to convert to green energy that will power communities with comparable output of electricity.

This means an endeavor that is, literally, years in the making and at a substantial cost to taxpayers and utility consumers.

In the meantime, our country’s population continues to grow. It is soaring, in fact, with figures now above 300 million. This means demand for energy is also growing to meet the needs of swelling urban populations.

I’m not convinced that green energy has what it takes, either in resources or time, to meet this demand.

Until green technology can begin measuring output in megawatts, I do not see it becoming the predominant energy sources anytime soon.

You may be able to run your individual property on kilowatt output, but I think it is a mile-wide stretch to say an entire community can adequately run on kilowatts.

The problem is simple supply and demand. The demand for energy is very high, but the supply from green energy sources remains low. Until that changes, conventional sources of energy will continue to meet the demand.

Current electric cars, too, won’t stand the tests of time the way the internal combustion engine has, because their energy outputs are considerably weaker.

Electric cars don’t have near the range that gasoline-powered automobiles do. An average of one to two hundred miles on a charge is about half the distance a car can go on a full tank of gas.

Electric cars are also hideously expensive compared with their gasoline-powered counterparts. If the Chevrolet Volt had a gasoline-alternative model, it would likely cost about $10-$15K less, on average, than the electric version does. Plus, there’s the problem with the battery. It has a finite life, and after so many miles put on the car, the battery will have to be replaced. Only after the warranty has expired. Then the consumer must fork out thousands of dollars for a new battery.

Gas and electric hybrids have had this problem for years. It is one reason why my sister won’t buy another one when her battery gives out. She’ll trade in the vehicle for the conventional gasoline engine again.

My point with this diatribe is to illustrate how inefficient and ineffective green energy really is. It still has miles to go before it can equal the quantity of energy put out by those dreaded carbon-based energy sources. Until that happens, time and demand are the enemies that will determine the industry’s fate.