Companies, the new Golem

In Citizen’s United, the Supreme Court awarded citizenship to corporations. Now, the same majority on the Court ruled that family-held companies, whatever the size, can have a religion.

The golem of the corporation as a person arises, one step at a time, from the nightmares of dystopic fiction into the Koch-fed reality of our purchased Congress.

It’s not just Hobby Lobby. It means that family-held Desseret (aka LDS) companies may apply their religious strictures on womens’ health to their religious doctrine. Scientologists owning business can refuse to pay for mental health care.

Jehova’s Witnesses? No surgery, blood transfusions, or any other invasive procedure for their employees. Charismatic Christian? Excellent: just prayer and the odd rattlesnake for you. Their employees don’t need no stinkin’ “modern” medicine.

This is a boon for insurance companies: the less they cover, the more they rake in. More irony: that’s something that President Obama counted on for insurance company support for the bill in the first place: requiring healthy younger folks to pay into a system to help those less healthy. So now insurance companies get money from the young, encourage smaller, closely held companies to “stand up for their religious principles,” and up the costs for healthcare a smidge because of “all the bureaucracy” with the law and its court-ordered complications. More than one someone is laughing themself into a cerebral hemorrhage — all the way to the bank.

Ironically, church-based hospitals can’t use the narrow Court ruling.

It’s a pity progressive religious such as those worshipping the Flying Spaghetti Monster can’t discriminate against deists: “No oxygen consumption allowed for our employees who believe in anything other than physics. And pirates. Arrrrrr, matey!”

On “Truth” in the Triumvirate of the “American Way”

Dr. Tyson’s latest edition of Cosmos focused on leaded gasoline and a scientist’s unanticipated fight to stop it’s use as a side-effect of his work on cosmology. It’s a quaint, simplistic and, with the animation, almost naive approach to the story (although I’ve never seen an animated short quoting articles from Nature). While the primary important issue was Dr. Patterson‘s “aha!” moment on lead in gasoline, the subtext, as Mother Jones pointed out, was corporate greed.

In the context of many changes we Americans have encountered over the past twenty years, it’s worth revisiting Superman’s credo:

  • Truth
  • Justice
  • The American Way

97% yes, 2% unsure, 1% no.

Truth: Hitler made the ‘big lie’ a key weapon in his propaganda and brainwashing of Germans and the rest of the world. That lesson has been learned well by those in the US who believe that the “truth” is the lie spoken most loudly.

The truth is objective, not subjective. Fact, not opinion. Data, not belief. In the America of 2014, this means… not much. Politicians big and small make poisoned statements, disclaiming their need to stand behind them. Cue President Obama.

supermanJustice: Justice has always been a squishy thing. It’s injustice for the loser. And what is just? Sure, property claims, business liens, tort law… these all apply. Justice as in “let’s kill the murderer to serve justice” is a hairsbreadth away from “eye for an eye.” (Don’t get me wrong: if we had a working justice (sic) system, I’d see the necessity for putting down a human animal. Not for justice, but to keep them from hurting society.) Is it just when a court orders putting down a religious artifact on public grounds because the majority of the local powers believe it’s the just thing to do? Justice in the time of Superman was decidedly on the white, male savior side. While justice occasionally rears its head in the form of marriage equality, the injustice of perverted law claimed as justice is the travesty of our time on the public national stage.

Now we’re left with “The American Way:” Which should be interesting given that we’re teetering at the cusp of a white minority in these here United States. So what’s the ‘American Way’ going to look like in my grandchildren’s time? (Kids, please don’t get any ideas!) Apple pie replaced with flan? A chorizo wrapped in a tortilla? A quiet, calm Tesla in lieu of a muscle car?

 

Bottom line: TJaTAW is a product long past its expiration date in America circa 2014. A pure truth today invalidates many of the initiatives and their idiot religious sycophants on the Justice side. And practical demographics will lay waste to the white, male, Christian ‘supermen’ that keep minorities and women economically beneath them.

ArmadilloCon & Fast Drafting

 

ArmadilloCon 36 Logo

ArmadilloCon is one of those events I kept promising myself to attend, but for which I never chose to make time. I thought I had an out this year: I didn’t have any 5k word writing samples, which is the limit for the the workshop component of the Con.

Whew!

Then I rifled through my stories. Ah, From Generation to Generation. Fantasy. Jewish mystical fantasy… Oh, good: almost 6,000 words. Won’t work.

Good.

Um, well, maybe if I gave it another editing run-through…

It’d been long enough since I’d last read it not to wince at the trimmings of word and scene. A couple of ‘ritas later and 4,998 stood the word count.

Now I have no more excuses. And am looking forward to all manner of critiquing late next month.

Sassy, Bossy, Sluts & Bitches

The culture “war” (to besmirch Rupert’s pet yellow rag) continues. This time it’s “Ban Bossy,” an alliterative sound bite. Proponents of putting “bossy” in the same isolation ward as “retarded” say it’s because the word is fundamentally pejorative and used in conjunction with girls.

Unlike the “R” word (thanks, Tali, for being early in the game in having that banned in our households), “bossy” isn’t an objectively difference in a person from the perceived physical or psychological norm, it’s the user’s subjective opinion of another’s behavior.

Bosses should be “bossy.” In a random grouping, there will be leaders and followers. Leader frequently “boss” others to achieve their — and hopefully the group’s — goals. Bossy is a power term: this person directs others.

In the warped world of misogynistic etymology, “bossy” is the new “assertive” (trans: “aggressive”). Should we ban “assertive?” How about “pushy?”

Let the words roam free, I say, and attach the meaning to the speaker and context, and not the sequence of letters. And if that makes me bossy, or a pushy bastard, so be it.

Deserters, Traitors and Captives

The US wrangled the release of Bowe Bergdahl, a US Army soldier. Handily it also got rid of five Taliban folks who’ve been out of circulation for 13 years, and had nothing to do with the Afghan war. (I’m not saying they’re not bloody murderers, its just that we haven’t been able to convict them, deport them, or do anything else with them.)

Some military folks are saying he was a “traitor,” that he “went AWOL.” I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the joy the family has of his being returned. I’m sure the military court of justice will do what it does with all soldiers: try the facts of the case.

I don’t pretend to know what really happened the night he was captured. I _do_ know that PTSD has terrible effects on soldiers: getting drunk, suicidal actions, running away… these are all part of that kind of reaction. What was he like before this? A sane person would not go past the fence into enemy terrain just for giggles. Something drove him, if he indeed did this, out.

The politicians, safe and smug, are throwing stones at President Obama’s actions. Leaving no one on the field of battle is immensely important, no matter what the circumstances. The Israeli army went to great lengths, returning literally thousands of dangerous prisoners to their homes, to regain the remains of soldiers.

I say welcome home, Bowe. You’ll have your day in court, but also the rest of your life as a free man. And to your former comrades-in-arms: take a step back and think about all your partners who killed themselves, instead of “just” walking out into the night past the fence.