One, two, three

1 Comment April 16, 2021 Steve Wiggins

The danger of statistics is that they turn an individual into a number. A few days ago an article in the New York Times addressed the rare blood clots that some women develop after receiving the Johnson and Johnson covid vaccine. The response of the cited physicians was telling. Many praised the decision to halt use of the J&J vaccine immediately. Others, however, point to the numbers. If a vaccine is halted many more could be exposed to and contract Covid-19. It is better, they aver, to take the statically smaller risk and use the vaccine. While I understand the logic here, I do wonder if the side effects occurring primarily in women has anything to do with the reasoning. Why not save this vaccine for the men instead?

This raises once again the specter of consciousness. Statistically the odds are small that a woman will develop a clot. What if you are the woman who does? This dilemma always bothered me while camping in the woods. Statistically black bear attacks are rare. How does that help you if your tent is one that looks like a candy wrapper to a bear of little brain? You become a statistic instead of a living, breathing, feeling, blogging person. Statistics. There’s a reason some of us identify with the humanities, I guess. I can imagine what it would be like to have your doctor say to you, “Sorry, this is rare, but look at the bright side—you now become a statistic!”

The fact is we’re all statistics to strangers anyway, the government above all. We are vote-bearing numbers to be gerrymandered and prevented from voting. Beyond that we’re merely annoying. This pandemic has introduced Stalin’s accounting with a vengeance. 542,000 is a big number. Unless you know one or more of them personally. Then the statistics seem to melt. Life is full of risk, of course. We’ve barricaded ourselves in our homes for over a year now, eating things that are likely more dangerous for us than a rare complication. The virus, and perhaps some vaccines, are among various killers on the loose. Nobody can declare with any certainty the correct course of action. Actually doing something about the virus when it was first a known threat would’ve helped, of course. We find ourselves on the brink, it seems, of getting Trump’s disease under control. Would that we all could do so, without having to worry about lying down to be counted.

Please Vote

1 Comment November 3, 2020 Steve Wiggins

If you haven’t done so already, please vote. This day has never felt so portentous before. I’ve been voting since the 1980s and we’ve had some real unsavory choices in some past years. Never had we had a monstrous incumbent set on destroying the very nation that made him what he is. Those who don’t, or won’t read the facts haven’t learned what’s obvious even to lifelong Republicans I know—Trump cares only for himself. His family confirms it. His policies, such as they are, show it. He provides lip service to anti-abortion while using stem cells from fetuses to cure his own case of Covid-19 that he caught only by ignoring the science that tells us masks and distancing are necessary. Even as our infection rates pass what they’ve ever been before, he fiddles while America burns.

Some of us have noticed a profound quiet for the past week or so. It’s like the country’s running a low-grade fever. Republicans have been attempting to prevent people from voting, wanting a country more like them, mean and unforgiving, that they can call “Christian.” To me this feels like 9-11 did, only we have known the plot all along and have been too stunned to do anything about it. Democracies are founded on the principle of the choice of the electorate. The only way that we can make that choice known is to vote. It’s the only way left to be a patriot.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was faced with a similar situation in his native Germany. An evangelical Christian, he didn’t acquiesce to Hitler, glorying in the rush of power. He wrote that when a madman is driving the wheel must be wrenched from his hands. Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis he tried to displace, but his spiritual eyesight was clear. Faith can blind believers to the truth. We’ve seen this happen time and time and time again. Instead of condemning we need to help them since they cannot help themselves. This is the truest form of what Jesus stood for. Read the gospels if you doubt. This year the decision isn’t for Democrat or Republican, it’s for clear-eyed assessment or self-adoring narcissism. If a mirror’s held too close, we can’t see what’s truly reflected. We must vote today to show what we want America to be. The eyes of both the past and the future are upon us. How will we want them to be remembered?

Moral Imperative

2 Comments October 24, 2020 Steve Wiggins

It was a walk up a long, steep hill, but it was worth it. Last Saturday my wife and I voted. It had the feeling of accomplishment. The long, steep hill was also a symbol. Wearing masks, sucking breath in through fabric in the single nation hardest hit—this great rudderless ship—we went to say “enough.” The clearest indication of evil in the present administration (and here we’re starved for choices) is the open attempt to sabotage voting. Some GOPers are placing fake ballot boxes in public locations while the pretender-in-chief has encouraged his followers to vote twice and has tried to prevent his “fellow Americans” from having their legitimate say. Sometimes you have to climb a high hill, but the view from the top may just be worth all that effort.

We are a suffering nation. Not only have we become divided, that division has been stirred, and prodded, and poked by a man who knows the only way to win is to divide and conquer. Untie what used to be the United States for personal aggrandizement. Voting is more than a right, it’s an absolute duty. All who do it are patriots. In this we can be united. Perhaps a bit winded, stop to take a look at the trees on the hills showing their true colors. We woke up stuck in a nightmare four years ago. We’ve lost four years of our lives. We’ve climbed so many hills and sunk into dark, deep valleys. Does that flag look a little tattered to you?

Back in high school we all wondered how autocrats like Hitler and Mussolini came to power. We’ve watched it happen in a nation that was the avowed enemy of fascism within living memory. And for what? The right to wear red baseball caps that claim our nation wasn’t great to begin with? Great is not the same as perfect, to be sure. We were producing the technology (that is by definition “progressive”) that the world craved. We were ensuring the rights of all people. We were cleaning the environment. What within all of this isn’t great? How has it become better in these four misspent years of worry and weariness, bringing us to the brink of nuclear war without a thought of the incredible effort it took to build all of this. Or the effort it took to walk up this long, steep hill.

Mail In

Leave a comment May 29, 2020 Steve Wiggins

As the Republican war on democracy continues, I’m wondering about mail-in ballots. The good news is that I live in a state where such a thing is possible—there are just enough Democrats left to ensure that people can vote—but when you read of close races, particularly in Republican districts, disregarding mailed in ballots you have to wonder. A few weeks ago on national television Trump said that if everyone was allowed to vote Republicans would never be elected. It seems the alternative—cheating, that is—should be the game plan for retaining power. We tend to think of such things being employed by the many pseudo-democracies of the world. And I wonder who steps in to intervene when officials cheat.

Many world governments are dictatorships. The GOP would like that to be the case in the United States. Perpetual power where you don’t have to worry about women or African-Americans getting elected. It’s the rule not of law, but of complete and utter corruption. It’s rule that permits 100,000 people to die rather than being bothered to try to put safeguards into place. It’s rule that places the economy over the lives of those it’s supposed to benefit. No wonder it can’t be legitimately elected! Those of us who’ve been trained in morality, and who’ve even been schooled in it at work are told we should obey our leaders. Even if they wish to kill us, I suppose.

So I’m sitting here wondering if I’m throwing away our one chance to ousting such dangerous ideas from Washington if I send in my ballot by mail. The party in power has openly admitted that it cheats to win. On the other hand, there are plenty of sick people out there, particularly in these parts. Do I want to stand in line with them, hoping they’ll keep six feet away? Are you allowed to vote wearing a mask and gloves? Where is the Lone Ranger when you need him most? My grandmother had a saying, “Where was Moses when the lights went out?” I often wondered what it meant. Said when someone walked into a room just too late to help, it seems to imply that even a miracle worker does no good if s/he arrives too late. Even Moses wore a mask when he came down the mountain with his face all shiny. But then, he didn’t have to worry about those in power cheating, and the orders came, so they believed, directly from above.

V November

Leave a comment November 5, 2018 Steve Wiggins

“Remember, remember the fifth of November,” begins the parable V for Vendetta before opening on a government not unlike our own. Fascist, built on hatred, an angry white man speaks for the few who worship nothing but power and call it God. Tomorrow is election day, and V can also stand for Vote. Two years ago our nation awoke in shock. Since that day we’ve seen hate crimes transform from illegal to commendable as Neo-Nazis are described as very fine people and those who actually do the labor for the nation have been disenfranchised so the uber-wealthy can have tax cuts. Violence isn’t the answer, but voting can be. As soon as the GOP sensed it might lose, it began voter suppression measures. They have never watched V.

The hope for any democracy rests in the volition to vote. We have to be willing to inconvenience ourselves to get to the polling station tomorrow for an outcome that will decide the fate of this nation. We’ve had “fake news” spewn out at every fact that is distasteful. Open, bald-faced lies backed up by sycophantic adoration of a non-charismatic hater—well, have you watched V for Vendetta? Graphic novels, it turns out, can indeed be prophetic. And since there are other nations out there that look to emulate the land of Amerigo Vespucci’s legacy. We have forgotten what it was like to be a colony. Instead we prefer following blind leaders—those who can’t understand that hateful words lead to hateful deeds. Those who can’t understand that a terrorist can be an elected official.

I’m describing V for Vendetta, of course. The coincidence of the Roman numeral five and the word “Vote,” however, hasn’t been lost on me. I’ve talked to those displeased with the results of election day two years ago who hadn’t gone to vote. What we see as V designs his intricate plan is that the will of the people still matters. But for your will to be known, you must use your voice; you must vote. Or be victims of our own system. We’ve had two years to see what damage can be done—a constitution treated as a napkin and due process subverted in order to ensure ill-gotten gain. Vivid colors have been used to stain this canvas. We don’t often receive a chance to correct imbalances but there’s a lot at stake this time. If you doubt me, at least watch V for Vendetta and remember that parables are, by definition, true.