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Why Do White Males With No College Degree Support Donald Trump?

October 27, 2015 By paulosophia in Politics Tags: politics

It’s a honest question. Why?

Because without the votes of men without college degrees — particularly white, blue-collar workers — Donald Trump would have no chance. All the current poll data makes this very clear.

For obvious reason, Trump is highly unpopular with women voters (here is something I posted on but a few of his misogynistic comments). And men with college degrees (like myself) are far more attracted to other intelligent voices, such as Marco Rubio or Chris Christy or John Kasich. (Yes, I leave out Ben Carson off because of his pathetically desperate-fear-mongering attempts to compare the US with Nazi Germany, under Hitler.)

By no means am I suggesting that people without college degrees lack intelligence. I’ve know some remarkably bright and competent people who have no college degree. Lots.

But why do men without college degrees so overwhelmingly support Donald Trump?

What do you teach your kids about money and education?

October 26, 2015 By paulosophia in Parenting, Teenagers Tags: parenting, teens

What do you teach your kids about money? What do you teach them about education? We all have our different approaches. But I’m absolutely certain that many parents are screwing up their kids. Big time. Many of the kids are killing themselves, as reported by Diana Kapp in her piece Why Are Palo Alto Kids Kiling Themselves.

In her remarkable book, The Little Virtues, Natalia Ginzburg says this:

“As soon as our children begin to go to school we promise them money as a reward if they do well in their lessons. This is a mistake. In this way we mix money — which is an ignoble thing — with learning and the pleasure of knowledge, which are admirable and worthy things. The money we give our children should be given for no reason; it should be given indifferently so that they will learn to receive it indifferently; but it should be given not so that they learn to love it, but so that they learn not to love it, so that they realize it’s true nature and its inability to satisfy our truest desires, which are those of the spirt.”

Too many parents today have it so wrong. For them, education is about grades. Education is about test scores. Education is about the flipping joke of the “top university.”

At any cost, they treat the wondrous virtue of learning as a means to a more important end: money.

I indoctrinated Bree and Edison and Elliot, since diapers:

“Leaning and education are good, in themselves.”

“Learning and education are not ‘for the sake of’ making money.”

“We go to school and read and study because we choose to be enlightened.”

“We will never be ignorant because we are lifelong learners.”

“We read the views of our ‘opponents’ because someone once said, ‘it’s easer to hate your opponents than to understand their views.’”

I think Bree agrees with my indoctrination. Edison, disagrees, wholeheartedly. He has no use of theory, and wants in and out of college so he could pursue a career in finance — to make money.

I don’t argue, but he is wrong. 😉

But let’s agree on this. Today, the view of educating our young is in a largely dismal state, tattered by the ignorance and greed of misguided parents that only care about their own status symbols — again, the “top university” bullshit. Few seem to truly care about their children’s innate intellectual curiously and development.

I’m interrogated all the time by these parents that only want “what’s best” for their kid.  So at every stop they find a way to discover my “secret,” because Bree is at UCLA (my alma mater).

I just stare at them and mumble some vague nonsense and get them good and confused until their heads tilt and they go away.

Who the hell cares about college, anyway? College is great; but I’m more for education than college.

I’m all for education, but I don’t want it to get in the way of learning.

Sorry to be a downer, but fell into one of these interrogations earlier today.

We all need to wake up because life is, in the end, about the things money can’t buy.

Education is one of those things.

 

I’m going to church, because?

October 25, 2015 By paulosophia in Parenting, Religion, Teenagers, Uncategorized Tags: my life, parenting, religion, teens

Should you make your kids go to church? That’s a common question these days. The boys are 14 and 17, respectively. Elliot sleeps. A lot. He’s always been a morning person, but not anymore. Edison was out last night. Late. Boating and barbecuing and celebrating with friends after months of cramming for the ACT.

Neither of them are keen to get out of the house this morning for church.

And I have this value in me, handed down from Mom and Dad. And the scriptures. And culture.

Take your kids to church.

Many disagree with this value. We need God, not church. We need spirituality, not church.

I’m a hawk eye for false dualisms. So when I hear those false choices (God or church and spirituality or church) my logical mind asks, “Why not both? Why not God and church? Why not spirituality and church?”

Old fashioned? Legalistic?

(Oh, and the bribe to get them donuts didn’t work.)

Should we take our kids to church if they don’t really want to go?

What I saw today at Kéan Coffee and why it mattered

October 23, 2015 By paulosophia in Parenting, Teenagers, Uncategorized Tags: my life, parenting, teens

“Younger children don’t let you sleep; older children don’t let you rest.” A Yiddish proverb. I remembered this quotation. Just now.

Because I see a mother. Pregnant. Late 20’s. Classy, but disheveled with jeans ripped the designer way. Prideful walk — good pride. And poise and confidence and such a pleasant face.

And I see tiredness on her face. Because younger children don’t let you sleep.

She walked right by me with her two-year-old gem — her son with darker skin and blondish curls (and my heart skipped a beat so I started writing this). He just stumbled past me. Following mommy because she’s pulling the chubby left arm along. Pigeon toed. Right index finger in mouth. With that kind of walk, where the distracted brain swivels the head left and right and up and down and the eyes dart back and forth every two seconds.

Toddlers don’t need no drugs; just give them a coffee house.

And they arrive at the coveted open table because Kéan Coffee always bustles. And dad, dressed for a day at the office. Slim. Together. Confident. A gentlemen, waiting at the bar for the coffee and hot chocolate. Brings to the table. Smiling. They sit down. Junior is the center of their attention. He almost falls off the chair haphazardly reaching for mommy’s croissant. Dad grabs him by the collar of his plaid shirt. Saves the day. One giggle and two sighs of relief.  I continue to watch the trio’s dance. Bring me the popcorn because I’m watching a movie — the life of a young mother and father and toddler and baby in tummy. The bursting newness of life. What a movie.

I do remember those days. I can feel them. Here. Now. Bliss and joy and elation and that feeling of purpose you get when you know you’re truly needed. I remember all those public outings and all that attention from onlookers. Smiles and gawks, as if all our fans were all screaming inside “You’ve done something so right!”

I remember lack of sleep. But I can’t feel that. We can remember our pain of yesterday; thank God we can’t feel it.

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I remember those days. Life back at home. Hundreds of innocent children’s books. Dr. Seuss. The innocent children’s TV shows. The innocent smell of the sweet skin and double-dose of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo and Baby Lotion. PBS Kids at six in the morning (Sesame Street and Clifford and Blue’s Clues). Apple juice. Onesies.

“Daddy, let’s play ‘boo.’”

The memories of younger Bree and Edison and Elliot.

Those memories are tangible things. Here at Kéan. Right now. In the eyes of the toddler with the curls.

Those magical years are not gone because the past resides in the present, if we want it to.

I want it to.

Oh. I do get to more sleep now.

But I rest less.

Coming Out Of The Closet On The Limits Of Faith

October 21, 2015 By paulosophia in Relationships, Religion, Spirituality, Uncategorized Tags: my life, relationships, religion, spirituality

 

“Paul, you sound like an atheist.”

A friend said this recently. After my mother’s massive brain hemorrhage. I posted my thoughts on Facebook. Unedited thoughts. And my feelings — what I truly felt.

Some didn’t like what I said.

I expressed confusion, sadness, despair. Blood trapped in her brain, the size of my fist, producing such pressure that her sole expressions were the frailest moans. And then I would cry and leave the room. Leave the dirty work to my amazingly brave sisters. And her prognosis was unknown. She could die. She is my best friend. And she lay nearly lifeless. Day after day after day.

You think I was going to give thanks to God? Like the pastors tell you in those awful sermons? Smile, and tell of his amazing wonders?

Not this time.

You see, my failed marriage chiseled all that away. Stripped me. Shattered into the tiniest chards all the Magical Thinking — the Christian Magical Thinking, to be precise.

You know what I mean: That tall tale that, executed correctly, your faith can move mountains.

When it became clear that my marriage could end, I got very serious with God. I decided to get on my knees every morning. While my wife and young children were still asleep. For an hour, reading scriptures, prayer, and faith — positive thinking and the actual belief that such faith would made a difference.

On top of the prayer, I’d give myself pep talks throughout the day. “You could do it, Paul! Go for it! Believe! Hope! Trust! ‘God’s promises are new every morning.’ Pray without ceasing. And knock. And ask. And be holy because God hears the prayers of a righteous man. Claim it. Bind Satan. Oh, and be thankful. Thank God that you’re cancer free and the kids are alive and you’re not a Somalian refugee with AIDS being raped every day.”

Faith and prayer and positive thinking. I implemented all these Christian methods and techniques for years. YEARS.

It didn’t work. None of it worked.

I learned the hard way that God ain’t no genie and my marriage and our coastal home — with the two native California Sycamore trees, side by side, the ones I planted, his and hers, the symbols of life and unity from which we would swing our grandchildren one day, surrounded by the white picket fence, the redwood one that I built with my own two hands, because redwood would “last forever” — gone.

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My mom lay in ICU and this time I had no stomach for silly Christian Magical Thinking. No more bargaining.

And I came out and admitted it on Facebook.

Immediately, I began receiving instant messages and text messages and calls from concerned friends and family. All were deeply respectful. The intentions seemed pure. But the words were more of the same. Remedies. Quick fixes. Methods on how I should be dealing with it. “Paul, you need to be positive.” “Paul, you need to have hope.” “Paul, you’ve got to have faith.” “Just believe.”

As if her recovery would ultimately be determined on how I behaved — that I could, singlehandedly, undo the damage with a particular mental state I could create.

Joan Didion knew of the temptation. In The Year Of Magical Thinking, she writes, “There was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible”

“Paul, you sound like an atheist.” I listened and said thank you and then escaped back to hopelessness and despair and this soothing force called reality.

I was once a preacher. With total certainty, I delivered dozens of sermons to that poor flock about the power of prayer. About the power of faith. About “moving mountains.”

As if I knew anything about loss.

A few years ago I was having lunch with a friend. My gay, wealthy, humanist, atheist, rich young ruler friend from Laguna Beach. We sat in poshness in Newport Beach. Fashion Island. And I couldn’t hide it. I opened-up. Told him about my loss of marriage and home and of ensuing struggles with joblessness and being a single dad with three minor children attending three different schools. About having to keep it together for my kids to try and create a “positive home environment.”

Some of the best advice I’ve ever heard. Honesty. No candy coating. No facade. No religious bullshit. From the oracle of atheist-mega-rich-humanist-homosexual-Tim came words rippling with spiritual content: “Paul, I was suicidal. I lost millions and millions during the great recession. Living in Hollywood, the most exquisite dinner parties like you could never image. Jetting around the world. Empty.”

“I went to the very best therapists and read every book and became born again. Twice. You want advice? Here it is.”

“None of it works. It sucks right now. Paint your windows black. Paint your mirrors black. Feel it. It’s f***ing  horrible. Just quit trying so hard to repress the feelings. Feel it while it’s here. You’ll wake up one day and realize it’s over.”

No Magical Thinking from Tim.

And no Magical Thinking from Jesus.

He didn’t want to be tortured and killed. He prayed with quite a bit of passion that his father would spare him.  Yet, God didn’t answer his prayers.

And in his despair he didn’t jump to silly notions of hope, giving thanks, and positive thinking. Just tears and lament. Just like his heroes David and Jeremiah. And Job, who, in his despair, blurted, “Cursed be the day on which I was born!”

Lament is just too vulgar an idea in a society addicted to just-add-water techniques, and horrified of honesty and vulnerability.

Christians might be the worse addicts.

C.S. Lewis understood. His wife lost a battle with cancer. He kept it real. No giving thanks: “Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like.’”

Dreadful things about God.

Kiran Sidhu understands. She lost her mother. She spent months concealing her despair.  In her piece in The Guardian, A Dirty Little Secret Called Grief, Sidhu writes that displaying your pain forces others “to look in the mirror and confront their own mortality. Thinking too much about grief is maudlin and thinking too much about death seems macabre and wasteful.”

Mom has improved. On a scale of one to ten, ten being perfect health, she’s a three or a four. Week after week, we see progress. And I do have hope. Not because I believe God is going to restore her to perfect health. I have hope because she’s showing progress.

“All things work together for the good.” But if we’re going to be good students of scripture, the question to ask is whether the good happens in this life, or the next.

If you think it happens in this life, tell that to refugee families fleeing Syria in desperation or the traumatized children living with disease and famine and sexual abuse in Haiti, or my friends who recently lost their 17-year-old son to a freak car accident. Dad at the memorial service: “I never even knew what grief meant.”

Mary was my mom’s roommate in the nursing facility. Ninety years old. Inoperable hip cancer. Frail and sallow in appearance, but a razor sharp mind. “I’m alone. I have nobody. My only daughter died 11 years ago. My husband died five years ago. We were married 51 years.”

“He was my purpose.”

I stared into her deep blue eyes. In her pain: “This is no way to live. This is not right for an old lady. This should happen to crooks. I want this to end.”

I wasn’t about to shame her with BS about faith and hope and positive thoughts and Magical Thinking.

She died a few days later.

Life is one grand mystery. Bursting with paradox.

Dangerous.

I have a rich Christian faith today. A complex one that allows for mystery, paradox, and even heartache.

But no longer do I drink the Kool-Aid of Christian Magical Thinking.

And I’m out of the closet.

Faith doesn’t always work.

 

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