The attachment to flag and country is a unique bond that requires a special language of its own…Reciting the pledge doesn’t teach kids anything about the meanings of its words. But learning to speak American involves something more than that — it’s knowing how to incant them, too.

Why do we want an attachment to flag and country? Why is it important to “speak American”? Are these good things? These questions aren’t given any thought. But somehow it’s a net positive that people say pointless banter.

The US is not a club. It’s not a fraternity that one gains entrance to by repeating meaningless nonsense. More importantly, it shouldn’t be a club, it can’t be a club. There is nothing to “being” an American. I’d argue with the linguist that “American” is supposed to be a descriptor of where you where born, grew up and nothing more. The point of America is that you’re allowed to be whomever you want. The Pledge of Allegiance and this idea that we have to have these national commonalities is the anti-thesis of that promise of individuality.

]]> http://lynchmj.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/this-is-really-stupid/feed/ 2 freemariner pledge http://lynchmj.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/what-do-i-want-to-do-i-dont-know/ http://lynchmj.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/what-do-i-want-to-do-i-dont-know/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:46:55 +0000 freemariner http://lynchmj.wordpress.com/?p=69 ]]> On Monday, I came across a Master’s program at American University in International Media. I think, that sounds like a good career builder.

Tuesday comes and I thought I should spend $70 on a Holga camera kit. Because it will be fun and interesting to develop film with a funky camera. I really need to get my photography going full tilt.

Then on Wednesday I thought, I should join the Peace Corps, because I’ll get to learn another language and do some good work in a foreign country.

Then on Thursday I wake up with thoughts of buying a new guitar. Where do I come up with this stuff?

And I realized something must be wrong with me. Am I trying to fill a hole? What. the. fuck.

Is it because I’ve been freaked out about what I am going to do when I grow up? Will buying stuff or making a big decision make me feel better about it? Fuck this quarterlife crisis.

Now I’m taking a Kaplan LSAT class because I think that law school might be a good fit for someone who is half smart and interested in society. I’m a Political Science major who did fairly well, loved learning the subject material, and currently deals with contracts, and sometimes even talks to lawyers. I can figure out the grueling ridiculousness that is law school, right?

Well I’ve realized something during this first couple weeks of test prep. You know what’s wrong with me? I’m actually retarded. Yep, down syndrome-drooling on myself, retarded.

I’ve decided Peter Gibbons is my hero. What would I do with a million dollars? “Besides two chicks at the same time…nothing.”

I’m tired of hearing conservatives scream Obama is going to socialize the healthcare industry. There seems to be a basic fact here that supposedly small government conservatives forget. The health care industry in the United States is already socialized. That’s right. We do not have and have not had for generations a free market in the health care industry. The HMO Act of 1973 tied your health care to your employment. End of story. It was socialized then. No more argument. Sorry. Now we are just talking about the degree to which we want socialization.

Some history–The HMO Act of ’73 said that employers must offer some form of health insurance to their employees. The act gave grants and loans to companies looking to start and expand an HMO company. The government simply decided this was the best way to do it and forced it to be profitable. There was no free market that came to the HMO conclusion. There is absolutely no logical reason why your job should have anything to do with taking care of your body. The reason we even have this notion is because of silly government mandates! During World War II, wage controls barred companies from offering their employees more than a set ceiling. Since a company couldn’t offer a job candidate more money BECAUSE OF THE WAGE CONTROLS they started offering other benefits such as health insurance. So it is the government that created the system we have today. No free market gone wild here.

Pro free market types who forget this fact are accepting what I call “the progressive story of America”. That capitalism, left to its own devices, causes price fixing, monopolies, trusts, child labor, and a slew of other evils that but for our benevolent government coming to save us would consume and destroy society. If you accept that we have a free market in health care and it also needs fixing; then you are conceding this progressive story of America and undermining your own argument.

If not for the federal government’s intervention, companies would not have had nearly as strong — or as bizarre — an incentive to develop the SUV. Manufacturers might have continued producing the already-popular family-oriented station wagons, whose emissions, while higher than a sedan, are lower than an SUV. Yet, environmentalists still argue that raising CAFE standards will accomplish the very goals the standards have failed to improve in the past 25 years.

Some things change. Others do not. The details in the article may be outdated but the general thrust is still there. Government screws things up and then attempts to fix its screw ups by doing the very thing that caused a problem. It. Grosses. Me. Out.

And I don’t understand what the big deal is with the endless articles and posts. What tI don’t know, maybe I’m fortunate. Maybe I just have really cool parents. Maybe I work at the hippest place on the entire globe. Or maybe I just don’t give a care.

Here’s a gem from a Post article:

“Don’t get me wrong…I love my parents, but there are some parts of my college experience that I want to keep to myself. I chose to go away to school so I could experience a little freedom.”

Let me get this straight. You want to keep certain experiences to yourself, so you enshrine those experiences on one of the most heavily trafficked websites in the world. Umm yeah…What do you want to hide? Do your parents not know that you drink? Maybe even sometimes to excess? That you make crude jokes to your friends? If that’s the case the problem isn’t your parents’ Facebook presence, but your lack of an honest relationship with your parents. And so be it. If your online brand makes your off-line relationships more honest; isn’t that a good thing?

Besides, for your own good you shouldn’t be posting anything you wouldn’t want an employer to see. So get over it, this is an interconnected world and people are going to find things out about you through your online brand.

Look, Tim Geithner, Nancy Killefer, Tom Daschle, and Hilda Solis are not stupid people. They haven’t gotten to the top levels of government by being dumb. And since we don’t have any evidence of intention, I’m assuming that these were simple mistakes. So tell me; how four perfectly smart people, who are otherwise ready to take the reins of power in government, are unable to figure out how to pay their taxes correctly? Is it them or is it an unfair, complex, and ridiculous system?

What exactly did they do? Former Senator Tom Daschle failed to report that the company he was doing lobbying work for sent him a car and driver resulting in about $128,000 owed in taxes. Maybe Daschle should have realized or his accountant should have caught it, but think about it. If your company sent you a car to take you to meetings where you were doing work for them; would you think of that as income? Sending a car is rather standard practice for the high and mighty. Senators get into cars to be taken places all the time. The news networks send cars for on-air guests ALL THE TIME.

The fact that our laws call “company sending a car to pick you up” “income” is nutty.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner failed to pay $34,000 in taxes. How did he do that? The IMF doesn’t take out taxes from it’s employees paychecks, so it is up to the individual to pay the IRS. So Geithner didn’t write the checks for the years he was working at the IMF. Now let me ask you. If you had to write an actual check every year to the government, wouldn’t you be appalled? Wouldn’t you be disgusted with how much money the government was taking from you?  Wouldn’t you consider simply not writing that check?  We’d all be tempted. You can’t blame the poor guy.

Nancy Killefer hired people to clean her house. That’s all she did. Honestly, that’s it. What she forgot to do was pay the District of Columbia some $900 as part of the DC unemployment tax that you are supposed to pay as an employer. How many people in America do babysitting and cleaing jobs and don’t report it? Why should Killefer have to pay this tax? She was hiring someone to do a job, why is it any business of the governemnt?

So there you have it. Not paying your taxes doesn’t make anyone evil. It’s not Democrats, it’s the screwed up, complex, unfair, insane, theivery that is the US tax code. The conservative blogosphere, talk radio, and Republican party heads are missing out on a grand opportunity.

I work for a small radio syndicator called Radio America. We have about thirty independently produced programs on our network. Like most smaller businesses, employees wear a lot of different hats. I work in the Affiliate Relations department where I work on marketing, customer service, database management, and radio production.

So when Radio America was first attempting to get into social media last year an engineer came across info on the Kickbee. Basically, a soon to be father developed a device for his pregnant wife to wear that sends a message to Twitter every time the baby kicks. Using Twitter’s mobile settings, the father gets a text message on his phone about it. This got our Director of Radio Operations thinking.

It takes a lot of people, computers, machines, and technology to keep a 24/7 radio network running. It’s not an easy task and like anything else sometimes things don’t go as they should. Sometimes a commercial doesn’t play when it’s supposed to. Sometimes Airplay(the software we use that runs all our audio) freezes and we have dead air. Sometimes a relay (an electronic message that tells the computer system to start a commercial break) doesn’t fire. And a million other things that cost the network money, time, and affiliates.

So our engineer set up an account. And he figured out a way to integrate Twitter into his radio automation software, Rivendell. So when an event described above occurs, Rivendell sends out a tweet describing what happened and at what time. When the event is resolved, a follow up tweet is sent saying the issue has been reset. Our engineers, management, and myself follow the updates on our phones.

Using Twitter this way also allows me to respond much more quickly to our clients. When I get a message about a relay failure, I know that I will have to talk to some affiliates about what happened. It allows me to go to them about the issue–instead of the affiliate coming to me to complain. This helps our brand and reputation as a small customer-oriented network.

The twitter stream also serves as a log of everything that doesn’t go smoothly and lets us more easily diagnose problems we may be having with our audio delivery system. If an engineer is not in the office they will get the texts about the issue and they can call someone on site to see if they can fix the problem over the phone and if not they can come in to resolve the issue.

So the next time you are trumpeting the benefits of Twitter to a newbie, let them know about the very practical results Twitter can offer to a business if used in smart and creative ways.

Can you grow old together?

Dominic Garcia writes about how happy he is to be young and engaged. Well, he’s gotten quite a reaction from people over at Brazen Careerist. His post and the comments section brought a lot of stuff up for me.

Here’s the deal. I was 21. I had graduated from college. I had dated my high school sweetheart for 5 years. I loved her (or certainly thought I did). So I did the next logical thing and proposed to her. She said yes. We moved from New Jersey to Washington, DC, lived together for a year and started to plan a wedding. Then I freaked out. I wasn’t happy. I didn’t really know why, but I wasn’t. All I knew was that I could not get married. So it took some time but I let her know how I felt. And it was hard. REALLY hard. Probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. So we broke it all off.

So I almost did it. I almost got married at a very young age. I don’t think either of us had serious issues with eachother or that we suddenly discovered we had personalities that didn’t match. We just weren’t happy. The best and most honest reason is that we simply weren’t ready. The fact is most twenty somethings aren’t.

Now I’m not saying that Dominic won’t be happy or that getting married young is per se bad. My best bud from high school is now married, has a child, and seems more happy than I can ever remember him being. But there are some definite pitfalls that have to be navigated before saying the big I do.

One thing that stuck out for me–Dominic says:

One of the most important things we learned is that in a serious relationship you really need your partner to be flexible and willing to compromise. I think that is the foundation to a strong relationship that will last.

That’s a nice generalization, but easier said than done. Dominic says he and his fiancé have a long distance relationship. So what compromises have you had to make? I don’t want to sound cliché or callous, but living together is not an easy thing. It’s especially not easy when you are trying to figure this life stuff out. You don’t know the compromises you have to make until you live with someone. I know you read a book, but I’m telling you it’s not the same.

I really want to find that person who I can spend the rest of my life with. I do. I really want someone to value me for the person I am and I want to value someone for the person they are. But that is freaking hard. You need to have dealt with your demons. You need to have talked to your parents about things you wish they did better in your childhood. You need to have figured out who you are inside and out and be happy with that. Most people can’t figure all that out. I haven’t. Then you need to find someone who has done the above AND has similar tastes in art, music, movies, food, etc?! whew!

Gen Yer’s are afraid to make the commitment of marriage and they have good reason. I think I speak for many when I say I want that commitment to mean something– unlike our parents who seem to have made that commitment and then decided it wasn’t for them. In that way, Gen Yer’s are actually raising the bar for what marriage means and that is a positive thing.

One commenter suggested that it’s just because Obama is a celebrity; so that’s why I would do that. But I think that only begs the question; why are we interested in celebrity? Because you like some movie the actor is in? Because a lot of people know the who the person is? Is that it?

I wonder if there is something deeper going on in our psyche. Humans, I think, are fundamentally addicted to power. We want to be in control, to be the dominator, the person others turn to. For all of humanity’s existence; it has lied, cheated, stole, and killed to get power. The “leader of the free world” is commander-in-chief of the largest military, the largest social welfare, and the largest government the planet has ever seen. So if we are addicted to power; wouldn’t we all want to get a glimpse of the man wielding this power?

I’m not saying this is absolute but just an interesting thought. No?