Making Choices

It embarrasses me to admit this, but back in 1982, I took the infamous est training, the Werner Erhard-created sicko, confrontational human-potential workshop that cost several hundred dollars and wasted numerous hours over a couple of weekends. My excuse is that I was living with a man who was an “est graduate” and, as you may recall, those estians were relentless about getting everyone they knew to “take the training.” Doing so was one of those stupid things most appropriately filed under “what I did for love.”

I was supposed to come out “transformed.” But apparently I didn’t “get it.” In truth, I got it perfectly; it was a lot of double-talking, manipulative garbage aimed at uptight middle-class people who had trouble expressing themselves and communicating with others. This was never my problem. It was created from a smorgasbord of extant philosophical ideas by a Philadelphia man who had one evening told his wife and children he was going out for a newspaper and never went back. He then showed up in California a couple of years later as a self-invented guru promoting the idea that nobody “does” anything to anybody else, we do it to ourselves; whatever we feel (abandonment? betrayal?) comes from us; nobody is responsible for how anybody else feels. It was self-justifying crapola of the highest order.

However, one of the more interesting estian concepts was that we choose the things we choose because we choose them, that’s it, there’s no particular reason, there’s nothing that makes them good or bad choices, right or wrong choices, we just choose because we choose. I remember frightened-looking people trying to explain why they preferred chocolate ice cream to vanilla, and whatever reason they came up with was dismissed until they conceded that their preference meant nothing except that it was their preference. I think this is bullshit, but it’s interesting to contemplate – especially now.

I’ve thought a lot about this concept while watching each painful, slow-motion moment of the Presidential Campaign Without End unfold day by nitpicking day. People who support Clinton vs Obama or Obama vs Clinton justify their choice with numerous reasons that they get very worked-up about: she lied about such and such, he’s a closet Muslim, she carries the baggage of Bill, he doesn’t have a clearly-defined plan, she’s a closet hawk, he’s an elitist, blah, blah, blah. Why are we still bothering with all this? What does it mean and where does it get us at this point in the game?

All politicians lie about something at some point or another. Whether or not they have game plans, it’s always a whole new ballgame once they get into the Oval office. They’re all for peace until they feel they’re driven to war; they’re all just regular folks whose personal fortunes are of no consequence; they all drop their ending g’s when talking to actual regular folks. It’s politics.

But if we Democrats, Independents (and even a few Republicans) are, in the end, supposed to vote for whoever the Democratic candidate turns out to be (and we better, lest we set ourselves up for four more years with someone with whom there are enormous, very real differences), why are we still trying so fiercely to perceive madly important differences between Clinton and Obama? Is it so wrong to say “I like Clinton because I like Clinton”? I can give you reasons for why I choose Clinton over Obama, but in the end, what difference does it make if I’m going to vote for Obama anyway, should he become the official Democratic alternative to McCain?

For the record, I like chocolate better than vanilla – but what’s most important is that I like ice cream. May the winning flavor win.

Is the Tide Turning?

While the Obama camp would have us believe that Clinton’s win in Pennsylvania on Tuesday was of little consequence, it looks to me – and, apparently, to many in the media who started to sing a somewhat different tune this week – that the tide may be turning in Hillary’s favor. For awhile, I was among those who felt she should quit lest the party become hopelessly divided. Then, I decided that was bullshit and the interminable length of this campaign should not stop us from seeing the election process through to the end. What’s wrong with giving every state an opportunity to have its primary, then choosing a candidate at the convention? Isn’t that what conventions are for?

With each passing day, The Pragmatist is looking better than The Idealist, mostly because Clinton has never said she wants to transcend politics; she wants to play a good political game, fight a good political fight. Obama, on the other hand, is starting to fray around the edges. His fatigue is showing and his strategy is weakening. We now know that when things don’t go his way, he can be petulant and imperious. And when political push comes to political shove, his team will try to play a traditional political game, even if he resists. Earlier this week, Hillary told Larry King she’s been enjoying the campaign process, which is entirely believable, given her history, perspective and style. She likes it in the trenches. Barack clearly does not, he prefers it in the bully pulpit – but he hasn’t won that prize, yet.

Last week, Clinton’s campaign sent an email to supporters asking for our input on the campaign so far and for suggestions for the future. I wrote back saying that from hereon in, she should just ignore Obama and go after McCain. A few days later, the Obama campaign announced they would [essentially] ignore Clinton and henceforth go after McCain. Good idea. That’s what they should both do.

Obama is not the enemy, it’s the clueless (and often heartless) Republicans who are. I say again: if Hillary doesn’t make it, I will vote for Barack, because I believe he is a caring person and a true Democrat who can be a good President. I greatly prefer Hillary, but I’ll take any Democrat I can get. In my voting lifetime, I’ve had to choose between far less palatable lessers of two evils. Of course Obama can beat McCain – if Democrats don’t forget on which side they’re increasingly expensive bread is buttered. But Hillary has a good shot now. Here’s hoping she gets a chance to aim at the real target.

Slave Shrimp – Time To Buy American Again

On Wednesday, just a few days after my Passover post about contemporary slavery (see Let All People Go, April 18th), there was an important story on CNN about the horrors of the foreign shrimp trade – particularly shrimp harvested in and exported by Thailand. I learned that America gets a full 80% of its shrimp (the #2 most popular seafood in the USA after canned tuna) from abroad, and a good deal of that from Thailand – where, good authority has it, young women are routinely forced into indentured servitude to process the shrimp and are subjected to cruelty and violence to prevent them from trying to escape and punish them when they do (one young woman was severely beaten and had her head shaved to “make her an example” to her co-workers).

I had shrimp on my dinner menu for Wednesday and promptly examined my unopened bag of frozen shrimp – and sure enough, it was clearly marked as being from Thailand. I cooked 1/3 of the bag that night and will finish it over the course of two more dinners, because I can’t afford to waste it (and doing so would accomplish nothing) – but there’s no way in hell I’ll buy Thai or other foreign shrimp again.

Indeed, I am beyond weary of looking at the labels on everything I buy or want to buy and seeing the words “Made in China” (that’s the one we see most often, of course). I don’t feel any better when I see that products have come from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and other “third world” nations where labor is cheap and human rights are an inconvenience. American workers have their troubles, to be sure, and as I said in Let All People Go, contemporary slavery is alive and well in America, too. But one has to start taking action somewhere.

I will stop supporting the export of American jobs and the importing of foreign goods whenever and wherever possible. I just bought an indoor, reversible, stove-top grill/griddle and found one made right here in the USA by a company named Lodge – and it was no more expensive than the ones made in China and sold with the name of a celebrity chef plastered all over them. From now on, I will be buying American shrimp (online if necessary) and I’ll be looking for other products, from groceries to clothing, from American producers.

Unfortunately, that’s no easy trick – but I’ve located a few Web sites that I hope will make it easier for me, and I’m pleased to share them with you:

Specifically for seafood, check out Wild American Shrimp, Wood’s Fisheries (based in Florida), Pearl/Louisiana Shrimpers, and Fish Ex Alaska Seafoods. For information about other American-made products, check out Made In USA.com and How Americans Can Buy American.

I also plan on contacting all the retailers I patronize, telling them of my preference for American-made goods and sharing with them whatever information I can gather about American producers. I’ll especially make every effort to support local/regional producers, particularly since here in NYC, we’re surrounded by fish and seafood from Long Island and fruit, vegetables and other food from New Jersey and Upstate New York (sorry, couldn’t find online resources for these). Lastly, I’m sending emails to all the Presidential candidates about this issue. It may not be a revolution, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Let All People Go

The celebration of Passover marks the Old Testament-period of Jewish enslavement in Egypt and the Exodus of the Jews, led to freedom by the prophet Moses. There are those who contend that Moses never existed and that Jews were never slaves, who claim there is no historical evidence to this effect, in the annals of Egyptian history, for example. I’m not going to get into that here, since I don’t know enough about this dispute to discuss it intelligently. Suffice it to say that the story of the Exodus is central to Jewish faith and tradition, and that the story of Jewish enslavement has, for millennia, inspired Jews to fight against the slavery of others and to champion human rights. (Yes, there were some Jews who owned slaves in Civil War-era America, but that’s beside the point; fighting slavery/championing freedom is a core element of Jewish morality.)

What is most important on this eve of Passover is that, according to the United Nations, 27 million people worldwide are entrapped in slavery today. In the U.S. alone, the trafficking of human beings for sexual slavery and indentured servitude as household domestics, garment workers and agricultural laborers involves 14,500 to 17,500 new victims each year and is a $9 billion industry annually. Another 800,000 people annually around the world, 80% of them women and children, are forced into chattel slavery, sexual slavery, debt bondage and forced labor, contributing to another $6 billion industry. Contemporary slavery is most prevalent in Africa, Asia and the U.S., but virtually everywhere on earth, someone is keeping someone else prisoner in a horrible, violent way.

There’s a lot of good information on the `Net about slavery today. iAbolish Slavery, America’s Anti-Slavery Group is a good site, as are NotForSaleCampaign.org and AntiSlavery.org, if you would like to know more or contribute to the struggle.

Tomorrow night – whether we’re gathered with family and friends to celebrate the Jewish Exodus, or just having a quiet, secular evening at home – I encourage all of us to remember that slavery is not history and our beliefs (whatever they may be) don’t count for much if we don’t increase our awareness of the contemporary plight and do our part as modern abolitionists.

Going to Extremes

Yesterday’s news brought word that France is outlawing Internet sites that the government feels are promoting anorexia and bulimia by showing photos of super-skinny people and offering helpful hints for effectively starving and purging. They’re known as pro-ana-mia sites by their viewers. Indeed, the people who frequent these sites – primarily tweens, teens and young women – consider anorexia and bulimia lifestyle choices. They want to be extremely skinny, like the models and actresses they emulate. With classic ana-mia vision, many of them, although already quite thin, perceive themselves as fat and are panicked by every morsel of food they encounter. Are they tempted to eat? Yes, of course, which is why they look to these sites for what is known in their world as “thinspiration.”

This story is distressing on several levels. For starters, it’s apparent that many young women around the world have a phobia about being fat – so much so, that they have no concept of being a normal, average weight; only totally skinny will suffice. They've bought into society's strident anti-fat attitudes – to an extreme. Should they be shielded “for their own good” by a government that wants to keep them from killing themselves? France thinks so.

I'm not so sure. As an old-school American, I bristle at the idea of state-imposed strictures designed to save us from ourselves. It is why, as an obese person and a smoker, I rant against anti-smoking laws and society’s rabid fear of the “obesity epidemic.” However, I’m genuinely distressed that the international thin-obsessed fashion industry has, for decades, “thinspired” young women to hate themselves as they are and motivated them to go to shocking extremes in pursuit of a distorted standard of beauty – like the young woman who illustrates this post. Personally, I think super-skinny fashion models should be banned, along with their pop culture entertainment counterparts (but that’s me being extreme).

But it's a quandary. If I adamantly defend my “right” to be very fat, a condition that many people here and abroad regard as even uglier (and just as suicidal) as the opposite extreme of the spectrum, how can I sanction the suppression of pro-ana-mia Web sites? Wouldn’t I be enraged if pro-fat/fat acceptance sites were banned? You bet!

Our culture (ours, the French, almost everyone) has demonized and ridiculed diversity in body size and has thereby created the pro-ana-mia extreme. Millions of young women, and some men, have been terribly victimized. But as I’ve said before, I support the right of suicide. I was suicidal during a darker period in my life and I assure you, making the decision to kill myself and then taking the necessary action was very difficult to do (and, as you can see, I didn't do it). “Passive” suicide – by radical thinness, smoking, or hard drug/alcohol abuse – this can be considered a lifestyle choice – crazy perhaps, even tragic, but a choice nonetheless.

I’d rather be dead than prevented from living as I choose, and I don’t doubt that the pro-ana-mias would rather be dead than fat. I'm reminded that the wonderful Gilda Radner once told an interviewer (during her SNL days) she would rather have cancer than be fat. Talk about be careful what you wish for! Mostly, I’d rather be dead than controlled by government policy (as the old saying goes, better to die on your feet than live on your knees). We are living in mean-spirited, judgmental, oppressive times – and I fear it will get much worse before it gets better. So, I say, let them not eat cake – and let them visit any sites they want to. They may be sick, but they have a right to be sick. Call me crazy, but I call that freedom.