What it will take for a better life- January 21, 2016

I wanted to write a piece at the start of this year that began with New Year’s resolutions and went on to examine what and why we resolve certain things every year at the end of the year. Some weeks have already passed into the new year and the result of my intention has remained incomplete. I couldn’t write a piece on resolutions without falling deeply into sarcasm or snarky commentary so I have abandoned the project altogether. I think I secretly intended this from the outset simply because I’m so bored with New Year’s resolutions, the childish wish list that results from it, and the subsequent dissolution of those well-meaning commitments days or sometimes weeks later. By now, enough time has passed for most resolutions from most people to have been forgotten or dropped. Fine. We are now in the midst of the first month of the year and we are all back to business with our more ludicrous resolutions forgotten. No matter what they were. 

I also wanted to write something about Change as the new year is indeed a moment when change is most noticeable. Most resolutions are about changing something not surprisingly. Changing how you look is the most common. I’ve been going through several changes myself during the waning months of last year (none of which has anything to do with how I look) and I’m still going through them now in the first month of the year. In my own limited way, I have come to the conclusion that some of what I believed were the facts of life are born and occasionally die off. One of the most striking ‘facts’ that is beginning its death process in me is the perspective on life that I’ve carried with me for the better part of four years. Since the financial meltdown of 2008 and the end of a way of life we thought would always be, and the subsequent localized financial meltdown of my own life, I’ve been carrying a belief that somehow I can get through this period of having to do without by remaining where I am both geographically and rationally. Somehow, yet no evidence exists to support this, I believed I could live in poverty and come out of it all the better for the experience simply by staying who I am. It was a sort of experiment, I made myself believe, yet circumstances removed any choice of opting out so it was not really an experiment in living in poverty. My belief was more a justification for the situation I had found myself in.

For nearly all, poverty is not a choice. However, I wanted to believe that I chose this period of poverty, that my decisions had led me to this place and they could lead me out just as easily. I’m finding this to be my own particular version of hubris. My life now is not all ashes and rags, however. We have enough food (most of the time), enough heat during the winter, enough fuel for the car, etc. Moreover, my partner Robin and I share openly with each other one specific dream. We both want to own the home we are now renting. It is a common dream and, in fact, the basis of what most people would call the American Dream. Both of us hold this dream very close and it is the center of what we want in terms of material growth from our relationship. But to make this dream a reality, many things will need to change - most of them are ironically the root causes of our need to rent instead of having an ability to own. All of these things, call them belief systems or individual perspectives, stem from our belief that we don’t have much, we don’t earn much, and poverty is a fact of life. So much so that neither of us will openly admit to the other that we are in fact living in poverty. Purchasing a house while living in poverty seems to be, and undoubtedly is, diametrically opposed to one another.

If there are changes afoot for her and I, neither of us can imagine all of them. There will be changes in the coming eleven and a half months that neither of us can imagine, and I’m not talking about bad things exclusively. Some will be wonderful and shockingly celebratory. If there is one thing that needs to change in order to make all the other things that we dream about possible, it is changing the implicit acceptance of poverty in our lives. The abundance I seek for both of comes from doing those things that create abundance but, more so, it comes from seeing our world for what it really is now and consciously making the changes that will result in what we want it to be. It started several months for me when I could no longer continue to believe that the experiment would result in anything other than what it already had produced: specifically, nothing.

Even though I began this piece with the assumption that New Year’s resolutions are silly at best, and a waste of time at worst, I did make one resolution to myself at New Year’s and I have held onto it vigorously. It is neither silly nor a waste of time. I will make the changes that are necessary to get Robin out of the job that is so unsatisfactory to her by the end of the year. Having a job that does not pay you enough, wears you down at the end of each and every day, and keeps you from finding and exploring what it is that you should be doing in this life is what I believe I must remove first before anything we dream of can happen. I must find a new job or other means of earning an income that will allow her to leave; in other words, provide us with enough money to make it possible. I have no idea what that will be. The challenge for me is going to require some of the most profound changes that I have ever experienced. I will need to open my mind, and creativity, in ways I never thought possible, but surprisingly were always quite within the realm of my abilities. I will need to accept circumstances that I believed were out of reach. I will need to go further than this as well. I will need to grow and that often takes a willingness to let go of things I thought were real. The New Year is a great time for that to occur.

Wish me luck. I have already started. I have created a website focusing on journal writing. Writing in my journal has produced a great many benefits so I believed it was a good place to start. View it here at: http://penandjournal.com/

Looking For The Republican Party

Looking For The Republican Party

     “ . . . the national party is made up of all registered Republicans in all 50 states. They are the heart and soul of the party. Republicans have a long and rich history with basic principles: Individuals, not government, can make the best decisions; all people are entitled to equal rights; and decisions are best made close to home.” 23 words out of 705 words are used on their Facebook page to describe their values: 3.26 %.

     Over the last several months, I have been searching for what makes the Republican Party worthwhile. This is an ongoing and honest and open-minded search for values. The word “values” sounds corny but it is a good place to start if candidates from either party can be judged at all. I understand the word “values” to mean the principles by which we make decisions. (If you have a different definition then we can deal with that at another time.) Granted, most of us do our best. We make decisions based on the available information and proceed accordingly with the help of our “values”. In other words, judge me by my actions, not my words.

“The national structure of our party starts with the Republican National Committee.”

     The excerpt displayed above is from the Republican National Committees’s Facebook page, under ‘about’. I thought this was a good place to start no matter how naïve I was purposefully approaching it. Anyone can view this. All you have to do is get through the five or six paragraphs of historical summary. Then, you come to the only declaration of “values” the party seems concerned about offering.

   Total number of words used in About for the Republican National Committee:  705

   Total number of words used to describe values:  23 (3.26%)

   Total number of words used to describe their history:  461  (65.4%)

     Staying with the open-minded approach, I was impressed with their declaration of acceptance of people’s choices on Election Day; that is, this site said it was expected that people might choose to vote either Republican or Democrat, depending on the candidate or issue. However, there is an implied conclusion that if you are a real Republican, you will vote Republican no matter what. This implied message doesn’t sit well with me.

     “Voters don't have to do so, but registration lists let the parties know exactly which voters they want to be sure vote on Election Day. Just because voters register as a Republican, they don't need to vote that way - many voters split their tickets, voting for candidates in both parties. But (italics mine) the national party is made up of all registered Republicans in all 50 states.

     The other thing that impressed me was the declaration that “all people are entitled to equal rights.” Sounds good. I agree with that, for the most part. However, what those rights are, and where they come from, remains vague. That’s ok. This is not the indication of some fault in the Republican Party. It is just the conditions of the limited space available to describe something ‘about’ them. After all, they needed to spend nearly 66% percent of the available space describing what the Republican Party was, once, long ago.

     In the end of my brief search for something concrete from the Republican Party on the Republican National Committee’s Facebook page, I have not found much. This is a disappointment for me. I am truly in search of something I can use to determine who these people are, what they stand for, and be open to the idea of voting Republican. It is the Party of my father. I believed in my father while he was alive. I still do. I wonder what he might make of the Republican Party today, however. I do believe that he would agree that “all people are entitled to equal rights.” I also believe that he would find it vague and open to interpretation, as I do. My father was not a fool. He was a very intelligent man who did a great job raising his children, providing for them, and being a very good husband to my mother - all Republican ‘values’ or so I was led to believe as a young man. My father could also spot bullshit as well as anyone I ever met.

     Let’s take this one step at a time and, as always, with an open-mind. Let’s start with the word ‘entitled.’ Yes, all people are entitled to equal rights, but more specifically, people HAVE equal rights and those rights are not the choice anyone has to bestow or withhold. Somehow, the word ‘entitled’ implies that the Republican Party is bestowing those rights on all people; something given if the citizen so chooses to accept them. And bestowed on an ‘entitled’ citizenry as long as circumstances warrant.

     The Oxford American Dictionary lists the word ‘entitle’ with the following definition: “1. Give (someone) a legal right or a just claim to receive or do something: employees are normally entitled to severance pay. 2. Give (something, esp. a text or work of art) a particular title: an article entitled “The Harried Society.”

     Since when does the Republican Party give rights to anyone? Well, maybe I’m just going off on a tangent or a knee-jerk rant. Perhaps, here the use of the word ‘entitled’ means that rights of equality are bestowed on the individual by the Constitution, not anyone in particular or any political affiliation in particular, which is something we can all agree on, right? So, why not say that? Why not say, instead, “all people are entitled to equal rights by the Constitution.” I’m sure there was enough space available in the ‘about’ section of their page in include three more words: 0.43%.

     “Individuals, not government, can make the best decisions.” Ok, on the surface, this sounds appealing. I don’t want the government to make every decision for me; decisions, such as, whether or not I can get an abortion, whether or not I need help to feed my family, nor whether or not we should go to war over an oil resource. Keeping an open-mind, I also don’t want the government to decide for me whether they stay open or not. I want the government to do their job as long as I am paying their salaries with my tax dollars. It is not OK with me for the government to shut down if the representatives causing that shutdown are still getting paid. I don’t want the government to decide that the Environmental Protection Agency should be disbanded. The list goes on.

     I do want the government to protect me and this where I openly diverge from Republican ‘values.’ I depend on the government to make decisions for me. I voted for representatives to enact laws, conduct investigations, maintain bureaucracies, etc. in my name. This is what a ‘Republican’ form of government means. A Democratic form of government means I, as a citizen, vote on everything, all the time. Neither ideal exists in America. We have a blend and a blend includes ‘values’ of different varieties.

From The Oxford American Dictionary:

Republican: adj. (of a form of government, constitution, etc.) belonging to, or characteristic of a republic.

Republic: n. a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.

     Ok. So, does the Republican Party believe they are there, in Congress, or the Oval Office, to represent the people? I would have to say no. They don’t really believe this, but not because of current propaganda, or what someone said during a speech, or anything of the kind. They don’t believe this because they have stated that “Individuals, not governments, can make the best decisions.” Their “values” dictate that they cannot make the best decisions even though that is what we pay them for. And that, hopefully, is the end of my hubris. Perhaps, what they mean is that individuals have the right to dictate the course of their own lives; that government is there to serve the people, not the other way around. I am giving them a great deal of consideration here and helping them to flesh out their own definition. I’m still curious why they didn’t spend more time on their Facebook page describing more of their values in detail. It would have made it easier for me to understand.

     “and decisions are best made close to home.” I have no idea what this really means. If, by saying this, they mean that I should make decisions for myself, then I agree. If they mean that foreign policy decisions, or decisions addressing social issues, or choices of candidates should be made by me, then I have to say no. I am not paid to make these decisions, nor am I equipped with enough vital information to make these decisions. That’s why I hire politicians to do it. That is what a Republican form of government is, by definition. Perhaps, they mean something else. Again, I would have expected more narrative here from a national political committee. If I follow through with the value-based logic here, I have to conclude that the Republican Party wants me to go home and leave them in Washington to do whatever they want. In essence, leave them alone.

     So far, in my search for something concrete about the Republican Party, I haven’t come across anything of value except one thing: I do agree with them that I should leave them alone. I will continue my search, however, and not exclude The Democratic Party either. I believe in the two-party system of political process. I just don’t believe one of those parties should be The Republican Party anymore. I am going to leave them alone.

Being the willfully ignorant writer of fiction

As willfully ignorant as I can be

In a moment of flippancy, I was online, on Facebook, going back and forth with a friend. We were trading bon-mots, egotistically generated insights, and simply trying to connect with each other. It was thoroughly enjoyable. Thanks, Lenny. Let’s do it again sometime.

I found myself asking an open-ended question, not necessarily targeting a truth nor was I really trying to out-do my friend in cleverness. It was just a thought. I asked, “What would happen if we stopped spending so much, stopped spending altogether, on the military and used what we currently spend to pay down the national debt?”

He said: “Good question.”

It is a good question because it instantly evaporated any hubris enthusiasm in me. This morning I did some digging with the intention of finding out what might really happen. I restricted my interest by setting aside any and all social issues, such as what would this do to us geopolitically. I ignored the notion that there are service members who need to be paid. There are contracts that are currently due for payment, as well. I ignored these practical and necessary considerations. To not do this, would mire my investigation in an endless search for facts, expertise, and general consensus. Besides, it isn’t my job to make sense of all the government reports, transcripts, bills, etc. (My sympathies to all congress members who actually go through all of this, no matter which party they belong to)

However, without any factual basis, this question turns into a silly ‘what if?’ game. So, I dug into the internet, specifically looking up the facts as I could find them on the US Treasury website. I also looked at the President’s proposed budget for this year. I really shouldn’t have done this second thing. That’s where the confusion started so I am going to ignore it.

The facts, as I found them: Current Public Debt owed by the US Government (vis a vis US Treasury) is, as of November 12, 2015, $18,649,024,795,838.78  (That’s pretty accurate!!)

I want to simplify some things for a moment. Let’s make this big number easier to comprehend. The amount of money owed by the US Federal Government, according to the US Treasury, is approximately $18.6 Trillion dollars. Scary but with truth comes wisdom.

I did more digging to find out what the interest was on that sum. The US Treasury provided this too.

As of November 12, 2015 Interest Expense on the Public Debt is: $402,435,356,075.49. They didn’t state it, but I assume this is the annual Interest obligation held by the US Federal Government. Ok. Pretty straightforward. $18.6 trillion owed as principal. $402.4 billion owed annually as interest. That’s just over 2%.

Here’s the other side of the question. How much do we spend on the military every year? Or, to be more precise, how much are we planning on spending this year? The National Defense Budget Authority provided me with some numbers. Currently, the total National Defense Budget (in current dollars) are listed below by year.

Fiscal Year 2013: $610,096,000,000  or approximately  $610 billion

Fiscal Year 2014: $613,619,000,000  or approximately  $614 billion

Fiscal Year 2015: $636,642,000,000  or approximately  $637 billion (Note: a bit of a jump in spending this year. Perhaps, we can scale this back a bit. However, this comment leads me into another discussion, so I will willfully ignore this line of thought.)

Ok. Let’s wrap this up.

There are a couple of other numbers that are equally important. First, revenues from personal income taxes, according to the President’s proposed budget, is approximately $1.5 trillion. Revenues from corporate taxes is approximately $650 billion. Total is approximately $3.2 trillion. That’s a lot of money, and it makes it easier to comprehend the debt owed by comparison.

Conclusion: If we un-funded the US Military our debt would not be reduced by much. We would be left undefended and incapable of exerting any force anywhere. The question I asked earlier was just a thought but the conclusion makes it silly, to say the least. However, it did raise one important idea. Namely, the debt our government, and, by proxy, each one of us owes is easily surmountable. What was paid for by incurring this debt was for the benefit of all so it makes sense that ALL pay it off.

All other things being equal, if we raised the income taxes on the public and on corporations at the same rate we might just be able to pay off the debt. Now, wouldn’t that be nice.

But George, that’s too high. That is simply too much of an increase!

Raising taxes on both entities by 43% would have the following consequences. 43% would equal paying the interest on the current debt and paying down the debt by 5% annually (Don’t believe me? Do the math). What this means to you? If you paid $1,500 in federal income taxes last year, you would be paying $2,144 this year, under this plan. Per month? The increase would only mean approximately $53.70. To put this more precisely, for every $300 in Income Tax you paid, you would be paying an additional $10 (approx.) per month. If this sounds fair, you can expect to pay off the national debt in approximately 18 years without any other changes to the national budget, the military, revenues from taxes, or your favorite government subsidy.

Now, do you understand why we never talk about this???

Go Army! No, I mean Go. Get outta here.

October 18, 2015: Go Army! No, I mean Go. Get outta here.

Either by chance or design, the kind that doesn’t consult with me beforehand, I have fallen into a situation that is often highly entertaining, sometimes scary, and altogether revealing. I took a job at the local convenience market and I am overwhelmed by the humanity buying milk, beer, and hunting licenses.

The local market is just that - a small convenience store set in the middle of a rural community. The owner provides a place where residents can get what they need and, in doing so, has helped create a commonly accepted fixture which is the germ of any community. A crossroads, really, but for me it is a place where I cannot escape the diversity and extreme peculiarities of my fellow human beings. It scares me because, as an employee, I cannot turn away from what is uncomfortable, or abhorrent, and must accept the mirror of my own peculiarities in the faces of my neighbors. Horrifically, I am faced with all the things I find unacceptable or unresolved in myself.

Someone once said that you can never go home. You can never return to the place that holds a nostalgic source of meaning for you and return to living in that nostalgia, but you can find a home for who you are now. For all of us Home is the place where we can get on with living whether it is the place you grew up in or the place you find yourself in today. What prevents us from finding our way home are all the issues we haven’t resolved yet and until we do, going home is not possible. I’ve seen the shadows of issues with my mother, my father, and my brothers in the faces of customers and neighbors handing over money for groceries. I’ve been faced with the ghosts of my past innocently buying snack foods and six-packs. Yesterday I faced a past I had previously believed was resolved long ago and, in looking into the mirror, this customer pointed out who I am right now and there is still work to do on myself if I ever truly want to go home.

In my youth, I accidentally found myself in the US Army. I say accidentally because at that age I had no idea what I was in for. I wanted to serve and, in my ignorance, I enlisted (to this day, I wish I had enlisted in the Peace Corps, or even the Coast Guard). Instead of pulling back, or hiding, or simply riding it out until it was over, I went the other way and became what some believe to be an elite soldier. I volunteered for duty in a Special Forces unit. My experience might seem tame to those veterans returning from a real war, or wars, and I apologize to them if they believe I am comparing miseries with them. I am not. Some of us saw ‘action’ as it is commonly called. Some never heard a shot fired. Still, others heard the shots but were never allowed to shoot back. Every veteran I have met falls into one of these categories in their own measure. The last of these groups suffers the most. After basic training, after the call to serve, some soldiers were never allowed to ‘be’ soldiers as they believed they were being asked to be. They carry with them the unsatisfied urge to shoot back and actualize the objective of the training and indoctrination they received.

Yesterday, I was faced with a former Army soldier of the type I believe was never able to shoot back, and he is still looking for the opportunity as a civilian.

This young man, probably in his early thirties, stepped up the counter and asked me where the local shooting range was located. He stood there with a ball cap on his head that had the current Army logo printed there, and on the brim of the hat was stitched the words “Go Army!” He wanted to know where he could shoot his AR-15 (the semi-automatic version of the M-4, or M-16). I told him I didn’t know and he might have better luck in the nearest metropolis of Livingston, MT. He said he was just as willing to find the nearest National Forest as he knew it was his right to shoot his firearm there. He served for 10 years to defend his right to do so, he went on brazenly. I told him I still didn’t know of a local firing range. No one in the store did nor did anyone in the store offer another solution. As he was leaving, he announced that we were all far too liberal as he must have sensed everyone’s unwillingness to encourage a stranger to go off shooting his weapon wherever he pleased, or wherever he believed he had the right to shoot.

You have to understand something. This occurred in Emigrant, Montana. Nearly everyone I meet here owns a gun, eats meat, nearly all of them go hunting on a regular basis, and the notion that anyone here besides myself could be called a liberal is ludicrous. As he left, I realized he would continue to hold onto the idea of being a soldier, and his weapon, forever searching for the experience he was never able to find. It would be a long time before he found his way home.

I have no idea if he went to Livingston or made his way into the nearest National Forest but I couldn’t help trying to understand why it upset me so much. Something about a former soldier, with a loaded AR-15 in his car, brought up my own experience as a former soldier. I, too, spent some time after my term of service unable to let go of the soldier’s life. Yet after six months, I sold the shotgun, the .45 calibre pistol, and the semi-automatic MP-5. I did so then not because someone was offended by the firearms but because it took me six months to realize that coming home was the end-game. All soldiers need to eventually come home and become civilians again yet, like Odysseus, the journey sometimes takes longer than planned. This customer mirrored the fact that I have not yet come home completely nor have I completely let go of myself as a Soldier.

In the thirty years since I left the Army, I have met many veterans. I have met all three types in varying degrees. I’ve met a couple of former Navy Seals who never saw action and to these men I hope they can eventually find their way home because they have the hardest task of all - resolving their role as an unactualized solider. There is no way for them to go “all the way” now that they are no longer serving. They are the unrequited. I’ve met several former Green Berets who did see action and I even met two recipients of the Medal of Honor. They, ironically, had found their way home. They had made peace with whatever they had experienced. Most of them do not own weapons of any kind, like me, now that they are no longer soldiers.

Maybe it is much simpler than I believe. Perhaps coming home is just a matter of finally letting go. For me, I have let go of much of my experience in the US Army yet the consequence of not letting go of all of it is finding a conflict that is not mine any longer yet holds the promise of one day calling myself Soldier to the degree I so ignorantly believed in once and grasp now from a sense of nostalgia. Instead of looking for that nostalgic home that I once called the US Army and being a soldier, I can finally find a home of my own making, made out of the material I have become, instead of what I believed I needed to be when I was young.

If there is one former soldier who cannot let go, then there are thousands out there, each one still fighting to be called soldier and remaining unrequited.

And I have no way to help them.

G. M. Potter

Emigrant, MT.