JEW HEAR GENERAL GRANT ISSUE THAT ORDER, OR DID I JUST IMAGINE IT?

The Treyvon Martin and Ferguson murders have once again made me think about growing up Jewish in America. I'm lucky enough to never need to be frightened for "walking while black." But I do vividly remember my mother telling me something (from the time I was a baby) that I have always remembered : "Jews" she said, "even in America, live in a country at the whim of the majority culture. At any time (especially when things become difficult economically and politically in that country) 'permission' can suddenly disappear. Sometimes it's an unexpected, arbitrary withdrawal (which usually manifests itself on the individual level, with a surprise anti-semitic remark like 'Jew him down' slipping out from someone you previously felt comfortable with) but most dangerously, it's withdrawn systematically amid hysteria by the surrounding culture when it feels threatened, no matter the reason. So Denny, you may believe you are fully acculturated and accepted in America, but you're not viewed that way. You're not viewed as a Jewish American. You're viewed as a Jew living in America. ALWAYS be vigilant no matter how 'comfortable' you may feel." 

My wife Pat (who is not Jewish) understands this phenomenon perfectly and describes it as follows: "Being Jewish is feeling welcome but not really safe." She is exactly right. If you think the advice my mother gave me is paranoid hyperbole (based on the fluke behavior of countries in the world other than the United States) you are dead wrong. I recently read a book about something that happened in our country's history that I did not know about until a few years ago, and which I bet hardly anyone reading this blog has ever heard of.  This book is about the fragility of my welcome.   General Order No. 11 was the title of an order issued by Major-General Ulysses S. Grant on December 17, 1862, during the American Civil War. It became notorious for its instruction for the expulsion of all Jews in his military district comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The order was issued as part of a campaign against a black market in Southern cotton, which Grant thought was being run "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders." Grant later claimed it had been drafted by a subordinate and that he had signed it without reading. The order has been described as the "worst official anti-Semitic act in American history." 

JOBS SATISFACTION

I SO VERY MUCH WISH I HAD BEEN ABLE TO HEAR THE CORE MESSAGE OF STEVE JOBS' STANFORD UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT SPEECH WHEN I WAS YOUNG. IF YOU ARE YOUNG, LISTEN. HERE IT IS......"You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you."

T. M. FUCKING I.

I'm awestruck by something Marshall McLuhan said years ago (he died in 1980, over a decade before the internet exploded into our lives) that predicted the horrific nature of our public discourse today: "When people get close together they get more and more savage, impatient with each other. The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations." As the N.Y Times book review said of this quote: "Placing that in a more contemporary milieu, what happens now that everyone is a broadcaster? Ubiquitous, cheap technology (digital cameras) and a friction-free route to an audience (youTube) means that people might broadcast images of their closeted gay roommate having sex and that the unwitting star of their little network might subsequently, tragically, jump off a bridge."   

This led me to the conclusion that when we know everything about everybody, everywhere, all the time, we are bound to consume one another at the same rate we consume the information we get. Or, to put it non-electronically, a wildly overcrowded room inevitably leads to wild altercations

The Bleeding Smart Liberal BEGINS TODAY!

FINALLY....A HUMANE ALTERNATIVE to having your Facebook Newsfeed clogged with my endless posts.  AT LAST....A Choice!  Where YOU decide (not a goddam faceless algorithm) what you want to see or hear without the stealth cruelty of unfriending or blocking me.