Approaching problems with Tea Party tear downs is no solution

Those who expected more specifics from President Obama's speech are expecting something that is not possible at this time.  Obama can not declare programs, lay out specifics, knowing that his congress has a two year record of blocking initiatives.  With congress more polarized today, Obama needed first to get cooperation and bipartisanship going.  Then hopefully the work of fashioning programs can move forward. 

Obama was clear where the jobs would come from... New industry, new infra-structure, new trade agreements, reallocated taxes that move from tax breaks for the excessively rich to incentives for employment among business, elimination of subsidies and earmarks for the few in favor of programs for the many.  If that isn't specific enough, then I am not sure you were listening.

What President Obama didn't say is that the economy he inherited was brought  by the previous Republican administration to the verge of collapse, bank failures, voiding of insurance coverage for millions of individuals and businesses, Wall street collapsing to a low point almost half what it had been.  By his actions he has stabilized the banks, restructured and assured the basis for insurance, has nudged the stock marked up 40% or more reflecting a robust business environment.  These things had to be done to set the stage for recovery and jobs.  Again, people need to understand that jobs are the result of a strong economy.  Jobs can not be magically set up.  People go to work when there is money to be made.

President Obama needs to be given credit for rescuing America from the brink of complete collapse and he needs to be given the time and cooperation to carry the momentum forward into the next phase which will be jobs, and increase in both economic and personal security.  Simple minded solutions that say simply  hands off, bug out have not worked in the pre Obama years and will not work now. 

Tea Party beware.  You are pushing an agenda that has wrecked the economy before, and if you prevail it will wreck the economy again.  Yes, cutting back on excessive government and excessive taxes are ways to help.  These are approaches as part of a plan, not cure-alls to be used with blunt force.

Whiner Nation - Time for real problem solving

From time to time I feel the need to put some views down.  Real world views that interject themselves into my preferred pursuit of fiction writing.  Here's some notions for your comment.

Whiner Nation:

When I was a kid, there was one sort of kid everyone disliked – the whiner.  This was the kid who was always complaining, always saying that things weren’t fair, always making excuses, always objecting and never just joining in.  That kid was viewed as weak and useless. Now, it feels to me that a growing percentage of Americans on the Left and on the Right are acting like that friendless malcontent.  And now these disaffected elements seem to be forming their own social groups to hang with and to push their complaint agenda forward often screaming at the top of their lungs.  At least in the past whiners tended to speak in small voices. 

Whiners on the Left make excuses for people who aren’t doing their share, who aren’t pulling their weight, who act like victims, and who demand to be taken care of.  The Right complains that the disadvantaged and the poor are leeches, and  that they have to pay too much for the benefits of society, taxes are too high, too many regulations keep them from just doing what they want. “Immigrants go home,” “Hard working Americans don’t get no respect,” “Guns don’t kill, people do.” The Right protest in a society where hard working Americans are often the very immigrants they hate,  where gun violence is rampant, and far exceeds such violence in nations where guns are restricted.  Taxes, they say pick the average guys pocket, and redistribution of wealth is unfair.  Incredibly they make these claims as they support the free market that puts 95 % of all of the money in the hands of a fabulously wealthy few while many remain un-employed or under- employed.

The Whiner groups are obsessed with their favorite activities - name calling and stone walling.  They seem to want to win their point rather than to accomplish the hard work of problem analysis.  They can’t or won’t make the tough decisions to do what is needed for the good of the nation.  In their view, they are right and anyone who holds a different opinion is wrong.  Unreasoned and simple minded ideas are put forth as if they were facts.  Half baked theories and untested solutions are put forward as if they can magically fix the monumentally complex problems of a modern society.

Where true revolutionary change is needed, where historical perspective needs to lead to creative synthesis, these folks prefer knee jerk tearing down and put their faith in the notion that it will work out in the end if they are just given their way.

I’ve worked with lots of people like this in the past and results are always disastrous.  The whole approach reminds me of a group of teens who worked for me one summer.  They complained when I supervised them as they worked and demanded that they be given the respect to “Do it their way.”  What was the result, as they took on the task of repairing a horse barn so we could bring in horses?  They tore down the stalls to get the wood to build the ramp into the barn.  They ripped down the failing hay loft and then couldn’t figure out how to build a new one.  They left untouched the pile of new timbers where they had been delivered, because it was too much work to cart them across the property to where they were needed.  And then these self righteous geniuses painted the barn a garish patchwork of every color in the world, letting everyone have a section to paint, because they didn’t want anyone to decide on the colors.  To finish it off, they wrote “Fuck the fascist rednecks” on the wall… even though the facility was intended to be used by poor farm kids… I guess you would call those farm kids “red necks.” 

What I can’t figure is what to call the collection of destructive, unruly, lazy teens who did such a useless job in renovating the barn.  The other thing I can’t figure out is why these teen seem to remind me more of today's politicians than of statesmen.

What I wish at this point is that rather than so damned much Republican vs. Democrat fervor, we could muster up some statesman-like leadership and actually do some problem solving with the best outcome being decisions forged through thinking and compromise.  Let’s get the job done.  Cut the cost of health care and improve heath outcomes, eliminate waste, cut down the debt, but provide essential services to people who genuinely need help.  Let’s build a military that knows how to work in targeted actions for maximum effectiveness and end the ineffective and draining deployment of troops and resources around the world.  Let’s solve the energy problem with ingenuity, and mobilized industrial capability, and end our dependence on foreign, polluting fossil fuels.

In short, let’s mobilize the brightest and best to achieve real solutions and turn away from the whiners and stone-wallers who are stuck in their agenda and can’t see the solutions for all their complaints.  working against one another leasds to bad legislation and bad policy.  Time and money is wasted.  And the solid strength of cooperative planning is left in the rubble.

email me at gargoylegar@gmail.com

Amanda Should Have Died - excerpts

Hey readers.  Please read over these excerpts.  Leave a comment so I can tell how many folks have read this.  If you'd like to be a reader and see the whole manuscript e-mail me at gargoylegar@gmail.com

Amanda Should Have Died –A Novel by Gar Roper –

Chapter 1 - Amanda

            “I’m not going to say anything with him here.  Get my father the fuck out of here.”  With that unexpected and vehement outburst my relationship with Amanda began just minutes into our first therapy session.

            I’m normally accustomed to teen aged girls refusing to speak when they come in for their first session with me.  At the start of the hour Amanda sat in typical muteness, her arms crossed across her jacket, which she had refused to take off.  Her father sat uncomfortably next to her on the sofa, while I sat in the old leather chair by my desk. I had just concluded my remarks offered in my best avuncular therapist voice… “We are here to set a safe place where feelings can be expressed…No judgments…everything stays here in complete confidence…etc.”   I did not follow with a direct question, but simply allowed a few moments of silence.  My technique involved watching to see who would speak first, and how would they begin.  Often the first remark defines the problem, or at least the starting of what isn’t working.  But at this point no one had spoken.  The room was, nevertheless filled with tension and the scent of nervous perspiration..

            I looked at Amanda and her father to take in the external clues of body language and facial expression.  Mr. McLaughlin was solid built and apparently in good physical shape.  About 45 year old, I would have judged, he dressed like a workman – contractor, perhaps.  He kept his eyes down, giving the appearance of sadness or guilt.  His hands were placed awkwardly on his knees. 

            Amber, his daughter whom I had noted from the intake sheet had just turned 16, sat forward on the edge of the couch.  Her dark red hair was accentuated with a blaze of purple die.  Her eye brow was pierced with a vicious looking pointed stud.  Her nostril was pierced by a round stud, her lip by two rings. 

            But what stood out along with her pretty injured face, was the way she was dressed.  She wore black fishnet stockings, and a very short black skirt of a crepe material.  Her body was squeezed into a tight leotard.  Around her neck she had a chartreuse scarf wrapped twice around and hanging long down to her waist. Over the leotard she wore a black leather jacket – an expensive one I thought.  Amanda’s mouth was set in a tight expression and she glared straight ahead, not really looking at anything – her eyes unmoving, unblinking.

 “ Would one of you like to tell me why you are here?”  I opened with the standard question.  And that’s when Amanda shouted her opening salvo out at me, her eyes now fixed directly on mine. . “Get him the fuck out of here!” The depth of the anger she put in her words is difficult to convey, but I could feel the impact of it in my gut. (continued.)

Chapter 2 – D.O.A. 

The Emergency van had arrived two minutes before. Already the sense of hopelessness lodged itself down deep in the driver’s gut. The young girl’s near lifeless body had been put on board and the gurney secured.  The driver climbed behind the wheel.  Looking back he received the “go” signal from the EMT in the rear and he started to move the van slowly forward, four wheel drive in place to pull out of the rutted ground. Grabbing the mic, the driver reported in.

“Ambulance team 11, transporting now. Caucasian female, appears to be about 16 or 17 years old. No ID.” The radio transmitter crackled with rude static. “Victim is unconscious. Massive blood loss from wounds to the wrist. Barely detectable pulse, blood pressure falling.”  The driver let out an involuntary groan, “I don’t think she’s gonna make it,” then realizing he was on the radio quickly he added, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” 

            The driver thought he recognized the girl…  He was sure he’d seen her before.  Then the memory clicked in. Yes.  He had stopped at a cross walk near the high school.  He had seen her, but at first he thought she was a teacher.  She walked with such a mature presence.  And she walked alone, conspicuously alone between a big group of kids ahead, and a small group behind.  But he realized then that she could not be a teacher.  Her black silver studded clothes, chains, and piercings didn’t fit. Her red hair with the broad blaze of purple was unforgettable.  This was the same girl that now lay on a gurney in such grave condition.  He recognized her but he did not know who she was.  He remembered mainly that this girl looked so different from his own high school daughter. His mind pulled away from the memory with an instinctive avoidance.

            As often as the driver has dealt with injured and dying patients, he is nevertheless overwhelmed by this night’s experience.  He and his partner were dispatched by 911 to attend an injured girl. A police officer had already placed his cruiser with lights flashing to mark the trail in the wooded area where she lay. The driver came to the young victim lying next to a smoldering camp fire.  Blood from her wrists had soaked into the dry ground and it was difficult to tell how much blood she had lost.  She was nearly naked, and looked grotesquely twisted as she lay there - too young, too alone, too pretty, and too close to death. (continued)

Synopsis: Amanda Should Have Died - Mystery/Detective Novel

Here is a brief synopsis of my newly completed mystery/Detective novel.  In the next few days I will be posting several excerpts.

Amanda Should Have Died,  is a Mystery/Crime novel directed at Detective novel fans as well as readers fascinated by the psychological workings of the hidden mind.  The book is the first in the series featuring Psychologist Dr. Gray Ackerman, and Detective Delilah Savantro.

 If you are interested in reqading more, please contact me at gargoylegar@gmail.com.  I will be sending out pre-publication review copies of the complete manuscript to a limited number of readers who are willing to read through the manuscript and send comments.

Sixteen year old Amanda McLaughlin has a mission.  She is determined to take apart the social structure of the high school Jocks and Pops whose hypocrisy, and viciousness she can not tolerate. 

As a child Amanda suffered the harshness of being the scapegoat - red haired, short, chubby, geeky and smart, she had, by 7^th grade come to see herself as the most reviled person in school.  But with the onset of puberty she had slimmed down to the requisite petite size, her face had taken on a striking beauty, set off by her red hair and blue green eyes.  Now she was invited by word and deed to join the popular set.  The rules were clear, act virginal, and play the game. 

Then at aged 14 two things changed.  Her mother suddenly abandoned the family, to become an artist in Taos, New Mexico cutting off all contact with Amanda and her father.  Then, Roger Slemson, the class president - football hero, asked her out and on the second date made it clear that sex would be required to maintain the status of girlfriend. That, and the demand that  she abandon her long time friend, oafish Jeffery Millwort set her on her high risk course.

Amanda turned 180 degrees joining Jacqui Hopgoode and her Goth friends, forming a secrete club for losers.

But then as the novel itself begins, the secrete hideout is violated, Amanda is brutally assaulted and left for dead.  Brought back to life by a medical miracle, Amanda is shrouded in a loss of memory caused by the trauma. 

The drama of Amanda’s life comes to light as psychologist Ackerman and Detective Savantro piece together the puzzle of what caused the sequence of terrifying and tragic events that occur just after Amanda’s 16^th birthday.  Hidden in the deep reaches of the unconscious mind, or in the forensic clues and linked facts concerning an ever growing list of suspects, the shocking answer for who was responsible needs to be uncovered…As long as the assailant is at large, Amanda’s life remains in jeopardy…and even Dr. Ackerman becomes targeted for death.

Welcome to The Gargoyle:  This blog will explore literary and philosophical ideas and issues through poetry, fiction and essay postings - and through reader responses.  Items posted here will be available for down load in more complete versions from my e-mail:  gargoylegar@gmail.com