Cynicism Today

What is a cynic?  A cynic is someone to whom nothing can be proved.
  

They do not need proof because they already believe it.  If they believe it, then it cannot be disproved.

Even if they believe something else that is exactly opposite of something else they believe, that does not make it false.  Because the cynic believes both, then there is no argument because to the cynic, both are true.

There are two explanations for this kind of thinking.  One, it is genetic and there is no hope of changing the person.  The Greeks must have believed that because they executed their greatest cynic, Socrates, because his students brought Greece wrack and ruin.

The other is environmental, that the cynic has power, prestige, and possessions.  With power, there is no argument.  The powerful wins every time no matter what the argument.  With prestige, the issue is privilege of place which wins every argument.  This kind of cynic answers to no one beneath him/her.  With possessions, the cynic buys whatever s/he wants to be true.  Who can argue with success?

I suspect  both explanations are true.  But either way or both ways, philosophers had better start protesting the cynics of whatever stripe because cynics do not live in a truth-based universe.  If they are in authority over us, they cannot help us or anyone else but themselves.

The Florida Republican Primary

I’ve been a poll worker since 2006 but this was my first experience with a Republican primary. This year I have had the privilege of working on two early voting days. I feel odd saying this but everyone looked alike.

I might not have noticed their similarity had not one looked especially concerned and asked me if I was sure there was no fraud going on. That got me to paying attention. Three people were later turned away. All three were tall and slender, unlike the voters who tended to be heavier though not unpleasantly so. Not being the clerk, I don’t know why they were not allowed to vote. Frankly, I could not answer the concerned man. Everyone who voted looked like someone else who had already come through.

During the two days, I saw one Asian American and four who by their accent were Hispanic but did not really look it. There were three older women in wheel chairs and two older men who needed some special attention because of infirmity. And there were maybe eight young people in their twenties, all of whom looked like siblings. Beyond that, of the 528 voters who came through, it seemed like a social club of twenty couples just past middle age who took turns. I could not tell them apart. One woman made the mistake of wearing the same pink jersey with very distinctive embroidery twice within an hour.

They were all pleasant people, friendly and intent upon making their vote count.

The new voting system with paper ballots to back up the count of the scanning machines is close to fool proof as is the registration by drivers’ licenses. I trust the system which is a great improvement over the touch screens and chads of previous Florida elections.

I’m sure I’m wrong. But honestly, I couldn’t tell.

O. J. Simpson’s “Confession”

Two years after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, a book came out entitled KILLING TIME by Donald Freed and Raymond Briggs. It was the first book I bothered to read about the sensational crime.

Having investigated much less traumatic events, usually cases where a minister was accused of sexual misconduct, I wasn’t about to immerse myself in a major crime like that. I watched bits of the trial, scanned some of the articles in the papers, even read an article or two in TIME or NEWSWEEK. When the glove did not fit and the jury voted not guilty, I was satisfied that OJ didn’t do it, though I had no idea who else might have done it.

I saw an interview on TV with Dr. Briggs who described the book. I decided to read it because he brought up the importance of developing a chronology of events, something I did on the church cases.

The book was more than a “how to” book on trying to sort out the facts. It included, among other information that had not been published in the news, evidence of a number of smokers in Nicole’s garage, the fact that she and Ron had black belt karate skills, that there wasn’t a mark on OJ except for a minor cut on his finger which bled because he had taken Nsaids for his arthritis for many years and would have bruised and bled very easily, and, most important, the autopsy reports on the two victims which showed the probability of four different size and shape knife wounds, indicating at least four assailants.

The chronology I developed also showed he couldn’t have done it.

I was writing a novel about an adult Sunday School class that solved crimes and decided to integrate what I read into the story. To be fair, I read all kinds of other books, mostly against OJ. When I got done, I was most moved to believe the jury. Some of them had written a book about what they heard and saw during the trial that persuaded them OJ was innocent.

I sent my book to friend for his critique. He didn’t accept my analysis. I showed it to a crime lab specialist and he didn’t either. Another friend who is probably the most intelligent person I know was still convinced OJ did it after reading my book.

It must be a lousy book because no one agreed so I never tried to publish it.

Some dozen years later, I added as a PS to the first friend I’d showed my book, “OJ didn’t do it.”

He wrote back immediately, “He confessed. He wrote a book about it.”

---To be continued--- (See the posting below.)

O. J. Simpson’s “Confession” Part 2

Five years ago, OJ tried to publish a book that told his side of the story and included a “confession” which he called “hypothetical.” The last I’d heard, the book was not published because of the Goldman law suit against it.

Turns out that the Goldmans were given the rights to the book and decided to publish it after all.

The library had a copy so I read it this past week.

OJ spent 90 percent of the story describing his marriage to Nicole and its break up. His story was what had been pieced together by Freed and Riggs eight years earlier but had more details which I found persuasive. He was married to an energetic, confrontational, and caring woman who got caught up with a crowd of drug-users and partiers. I do not think he was the spouse abuser poster boy he was made out to be by the anti-abuse movement peaking at the time.

He spent a few pages on his early life and first marriage and a few pages on his reactions to the news of the murders and the police arresting him. The slow “chase” in the white Bronco was revealing because he said why he decided not to commit suicide.

The “confession” chapter was pretty lame because it really did not fit into the narrative, ignoring such facts about his arthritis and his incredible patience with Nicole based on his commitment to parenting established in the rest of the book.

The “confession” also included things that could not have happened.

I reported my findings to my friend who said he was not surprised. “You wouldn’t believe it if OJ came up to you and said he did it.”

He was right! I’d have asked him a ton of questions because I did not think the facts I had would support a confession and he would have to show me how it was possible. I could be persuaded but, for example, he would have to tell me about the cobwebs he encountered just hours before Mark Furman went through them during his investigation.

My friend didn’t think I could ever be shown OJ did it so I challenged him if he was open to the possibility that OJ was innocent.

“Only if someone else confesses,” he wrote back.

I think the killers are long since dead just to prevent that from happening. Besides, can anyone get past the roadblocks to the evidence held by the LAPD. Is anyone else even interested because of the overwhelming prejudice against OJ?

Thoughts on 9/11

Many people were asked this past weekend what they were doing on September 11, 2001, and what they thought about the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. Even though no one has asked me, I wish to offer my answers to those questions.

But first, a little background: I had just finished writing a novel which included a lot about Israeli-Palestinian relations. My views had sharpened considerably from the typical pro-Israel stance most Americans take to one sharply critical of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians and of the American government giving Israel carte blanche.

For instance, Israel persisted in maintaining its military occupation and building new settlements in Palestinian territories. They were taking over all water sources from Palestinians. They were building highways that split up the occupied land so that Palestine’s economy and social matrix were physically disrupted (farms were separated from the farmers’ residences, commerce between towns was disrupted by forcing Palestinians to drive many miles around the obstructing highways, schools were separated from their communities, etc.). All ports of entry into Palestinian territories were controlled by Israel. No matter what agreements were negotiated, Israel dragged its feet or completely refused to implement what they had officially agreed to.

By 2001, the Israelis had established, as former President Jimmy Carter observed, apartheid in the Palestinian territories.

It had not always been like that. Palestinians, Jews, and Christians had lived side by side in the Holy Land for more than a thousand years. Even with the early influx of Jews seeking to return to the land of their forefathers, even with those financed by the Zionist movement, there was relative peace.

But that all changed. Following WW II, Zionist squads began systematically forcing Palestinians out of their villages using bloody tactics. In response to the flood of refugees coming across their borders, neighboring Arab states sought to halt the flow and demand that the refugees to be returned. Israel ignored them and continued its campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinian territories so that new Jewish settlers coming from Europe, the Asian subcontinent, and Africa could have some of the better land on which to settle. Despite winning acceptance into the United Nations based on promises to repatriate the refugees, Israel never did.

America consistently supported Israel in the United Nations, vetoing nearly every challenge the UN mounted against Israel’s behavior and practices. We also provided billions of dollars each year to Israel’s military support. It is no wonder America joined Israel as targets of radical Islamic sects' and organizations' wrath-filled rhetoric.

In 1993, one of those radical organizations, Al Qaida, truck-bombed the World Trade Center in New York. A number of people were killed and injured by the blast. The damage was serious but could be repaired. The perpetrators were caught and tried in American courts and life went on.

On September 11, 2001, I was mowing my front lawn when a car from further into our sub-division stopped. The driver told me that the Twin Towers had been hit by airplanes. Since they had been targeted in 1993, I just knew that Al Qaida was looking for more payback.

The attack on the World Trade Center, even if the Twin Towers had been full to their normal complement of 33,000 workers, would not have come near comparing with the thousands of Arabs killed in the various Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza and the hundreds of thousands they had displaced through ruthless treatment of Palestinians, both Arab and Christian, over the previous 60 years.

Americans do not realize just how cruel the Israelis have been to the Palestinians. Bin Laden tried to tell us but his actual words rarely got through the American media. His writings were always described as crazy talk or pure hate speech. But he was trying to point out how America showed no inclination to deal fairly with the Palestinians and only continued disrespect for Arab culture. To Bin Ladin, the American presence in Saudi Arabia added insult to injury.

While a few extremist groups kept some violence going after Israel soundly defeated the handful of Arab nations that threatened them militarily in 1967 and 1973, the political use of fear in Israel overwhelmed the large number of peace-seeking Jews, Arabs, and Christians who were citizens of Israel. The assassination of the last Israeli Prime Minister who actually worked for peace, Yitzhak Rabin, by a right wing Zionist was the decisive moment when the conservatives took and maintained power undermining all peace efforts since.

So, this weekend as the TV, newspapers, and local groups all were remembering the ones who died, especially the first responders, mostly presuming the nineteen men who hijacked the four planes were terrible people who hated us because we love freedom, I prayed for the government to be more aggressive in holding Israel’s feet to the fire and working with other nations to bring about some decent resolution so that there is less reason for the extremists to hate us. . . and just maybe begin a new era of peace in the Middle East.

I wonder how long it will be before there is a national interest in the hijackers, an exploration of why those intelligent, educated young men were motivated to do the horrible deed they did and the impact on their families and friends.

Their unspeakable action should never be trivialized to be understood as the use of a 2-by-4 to get our attention. But neither should the Israeli occupation and suppression of Palestine be interpreted as Israel's "manifest destiny." Nor should our turning a blind eye to Israel's behavior be left unchallenged.

Unless America becomes realistic in viewing the Israeli-Palestinian problem and understanding our policies which fed into that conflict, there will be no chance for a peaceful solution to the Middle East Crisis.

Art Davis' book of poetry

As I've blogged before, I love the off-beat poetry of Art Davis. We have been after him to organize his lifetime trove for publication. His children also pushed so he pulled together over 200 of what he liked best and self-published. If you would like a copy, send $12 to him at his home, 3006 Caring Way, Port Charlotte, FL 33952.

Just to remind you of his quiet wit and wordsmithing, here's one printed on page 169:

GROWING OLD

Chromosomes begin to tarnish,
my neurons start to rust.
The spice of life no more the garnish,
my engine's losing thrust.

Sadly now I've lost my flair,
creativity is lacking.
I've no longer dapper air
and my memory's sans tracking.

What is left to be desired,
where to travel. what remains?
Ambition lags, now I'm retired,
all that's left are pills and pains.

Medicines do miracles,
prolonging day and night.
Health guided by empiricles,
to pharmacist's delight.

If growing old is such a gift,
why carry vials or pills,
to calm us down, or give us lift,
to greet dementia's ills?

Alas, forgetting comes with ease,
and not without chagrin.
"Has anybody seen my keys?"
a daily-facing warp I'm in.

Growing old, a universal plight,
about it, little can we do.
I think someday I'll try and write,
to share these thoughts with you.


Art understands his place in the universe and what poetry is for him. He put the following in the book as his foreword:

An Ogden Nash,
I'm really not,
Nor Maya Angelou
of hallowed spot.

I write poems
one can understand
of people or
events at hand.

When one takes time
to read my works,
they'll not wonder if
some hidden meaning lurks.

True thoughts on printed page
for all to see;
no need delving
introspectively.


He's in our writer's group which meets today here at my house. He is a delightful and humble friend and I hope I have piqued your interest in his poems.

Substantial Cake

Ann’s cakes are amazing. She bakes chocolate cake from scratch that stays moist and tasty and light for a long time. We do not know how long because it is eaten up within a few days. It is always good.

So I was excited that she was going to bake our son’s birthday cake again this year. This time she chose to do a yellow bundt cake. That’s fun because she bakes it in a round, donut-shaped pan which leaves interesting grooves in the surface. Even though we were not leaving until Sunday, she baked it on Wednesday and when it was nearly room temperature, she put it in the refrigerator. Freezing it too soon would leave crystals that would spoil the surface when it thawed.

She busily prepared some other dishes that we froze over the next couple days.

On Sunday, there was the bundt cake, still in the fridge. We had put it in a two gallon zip-lock bag so it was not likely to dry out. But the gluten in the flour could firm up pretty much. When we got it out to pack to carry over to Orlando where we were to meet our family, we noticed it was, uh, sort of heavy?

The only way Ann could get it into the packing box was on its edge. Ann is a master packer so you know she was left with a desperate decision. Being a circular cake, and being, uh, sort of heavy? Well, you get the picture. We expected it to sag a little and maybe flatten one edge.

At worst, if the travel took a toll on it, we could break up the cake into pieces, mix them with chocolate pudding, cherry pie filling, and Cool Whip and call it a parfait.

As we put that box into the car, we checked the cake and found it held up on its fluted edge very well so far, no sagging or flattening. It still faced three hours travel time with the occasional bumps in the road.

As we drove, I asked Ann about the texture of the cake. I thought it was supposed to be like a sponge cake, soft and light. She said it was more like a pound cake.

The pound cake one gets at the store is a lot firmer than a sponge cake but still is pretty light.

As I recalled, pound cakes originally were a pound of sugar, a pound of flour, a pound of butter, and some eggs. Three one pound loaves could be made. They were not light, either. But they were pretty soft and soaked up strawberry juice if you used them for short cakes.

As we drove, I began to imagine trying to heft that bundt cake. If it was firmer than a pound cake, I thought about it as a hammer for nails. That was a notion about “pound” cake that ever occurred to me before.

When we got to Orlando and to the site where David found adjacent apartments for all of us, we checked to see how the cake did.

It stood on its edges proud and as round as could be. The fluting was not even dented.

When we got it in to the apartment, we put it into the fridge, keeping it hidden from David. We didn’t know if he’d laugh or cry!

After he and his family were in bed, we snuck out to the kitchen to test it.

It was so, uh, sort of heavy? Still! What else? We set it on the counter which groaned a little as it accommodated to the new weight upon it.

I struggled but finally slid the cake out of the zip-lock bag far enough for Ann to cut a small piece from the bottom of the cake.

It was crispy! And delicious!

We still had two days until we were to take it out and present it with candles and frosting, but we were a little more comfortable with the final result, provided our shoulder muscles held up from handling it.

I began to make comments to David about the cake that withstood riding on its edge all the way over from Port Charlotte. But I left in the air whether or not it would be any good for his birthday.

He didn’t bat an eye or even pursue any lines of questions.

He trusted his mother’s cakes . . . and packing.

By the time we served it on his birthday, he cut it, ate it, and then had another piece. Both were bigger than what I usually eat!

We are all looking forward to eating the rest of this, uh, sort of heavy cake?