Situational Sexual Ethics

1.  When I worked for state government in Tennessee, all employees were required to attend sexual harrassment training.  Among other things, we were required to watch a video showing possible scenarios of harrassment.  One video showed two men sitting in a break room.  In walks a woman in a skirt that was tight and short.  The first man, Jim, smiles at the woman and tells her that her skirt sure looks good!  She appears to ignore his comment and leaves the room.

The second man, Bob waits until the woman has left, then tells Jim that his comment was inappropriate. Jim replies that if the woman did not want comments like this, she needs to wear more modest clothes.

The narrator then asks us, which man is right? After which we are told that Bob is right, that Jim had no right to comment on her clothes; that women had the right to freely express themselves without fear of unwanted comments from men!

Flash forward a few years:

2. A popular new TV show features an extended family of grandparents, parents and grandchildren.  One of the grandchildren is played by a 10 year-old girl. In several episodes the girl is required to respond to, or speak, sexual humor.  In one sketch she experiences she kisses a boy, then talks about it to her grandpa that that was her first kiss. In another episode she says something her brother doesn't like.  Her brother, played by a twenty-two year old man, responds to her, "At least I don't stuff my bra!"

This show is by no means unique.  On another show whose plots are exclusively about abusers and their prey, a boy who is portrayed as a teenage sex slave, talks of, when he is subdued, gives in, gets down on his knees and services one man after another.

Mandy Patinkin, who was the original star of the show Criminal Minds, left the show because he felt the show gratuitously, episode after episode, displayed sexual and physical violence.

My best friend Brad used to say, "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."

The End of the Nations

The presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested building a wall on the U.S.- Mexico border to keep out illegal immigrants from entering the U.S.

An alternative to this would be to hire more border patrol officers.  For instance guard towers could be placed every 1/10th of a mile along the 2000 mile border, thus requiring an extra 20,000 officers/ shift.  To cover all three shifts plus relief officers for sickness and vacation would require perhaps a total of 100,000 officers.  Salaries and benefits would cost $100,000/officer.Totaled up, this would cost $10 billion/year.  Part of this cost would perhaps be offset by the decreased cost of the "War on Drugs".

This seems like a large amount of money, but as a part of the annual expenditures of the government it is small.  But this will not be considered either.

Other plans surely exist, but would just as surely be demonized by the media and liberal establishment.

The real problem is an increasingly hostile attitude to the existence of the nation-states, of which the United States is one; i.e.a very significant part of the populace believes that illegal immigration is not a problem because all immigrants should be legal.

Questions:  should " illegal immigrants"
1. Pay no taxes
2. Be given free health care, education, and housing?
3.  Be allowed to vote?

If so, why should American citizens
1. Pay taxes?
2. Pay for health care,education, and housing?
3.  Be allowed to vote?

It seems self-evident that all persons were not created equal.

My hard work built this company!

No doubt there are self- made millionares.  Also there is no doubt that some people who are born into wealth are creative and hard workers. But there should be no doubt that those born wealthy have more breaks at work. 
If I am the child of a rich man, I am just treated differently.  My father may put me to work in a menial job in the company and may emphasize that I must not be treated differently than other employees, but even in the very unlikely event I am treated poorly, I know that my livelihood is not dependent on this job, and, more importantly, my supervisors will make sure that I succeed, unlike the other employees who often have every obstacle thown in the way of their success.
A prominent republican politician with whom I am acquainted, is given credit for starting off in a low job in his family's company, ostensibly learning the company from the bottom up, and building it into the megacorporation it is today.Not mentioned is that the company, started by his father, had a hundred stores by the time his son graduated from college. No doubt he is due partial credit for enlarging the corporation, but who can deny that he had less obstacles to success,  less naysayers, and less discouragement? 
Further, it is reasonable to assume that there were young men and women who had as much ability as he, that never made it to the top of the company, because they were not family.
The republican I speak of is a hard worker, hands down.  It is just that his hard work got him more than most of our hard work can ever hope to get.

A possible explanation

A note on the  alleged Batman movie killer Holmes.  His tics and wildly inappropriate behavior such as bizarre facial grimacing and spitting on his jailers, in addition to his predictions about what he was going to do, leads one to think he is having temporal lobe seizures, possibly as a result of a tumor, or arterio-venous malformation.

Military/ Industrial Complex

When I was in college in the 60's and 70's one of the most hated and protested concepts was that of the Military-Industrial Complex. We were told that no less than General ,and then President, Dwight Eisenhower had warned against the collusion of the military and the arms dealers. We were also reminded of an even bigger military figure, President Washington, warning against large standing armies. It was said that this combination would lead to perpetual war, which, of course, would lead to uncontrollable spending on arms, which could be loosely translated as everything from bulletmaking to ship and fort building. College protests against this were happening daily, with marchers carrying signs proclaiming "Dow (alleged maker of napalm) shall not kill)."

Recently we have been told that President George W. Bush spent a trillion dollars on the Iraq War, a war which he lied to U.S. (us) about, justifying it by claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Concomitantly, and subsequently, we started the Afganistan War, which we ridiculously justified by the term "nation building", having absolutely no other excuse to start.

At the same time we are mired in a hopeless recession, which our leaders, and even us, blame on too many entitlements, while the Military-Industrial Entitlement is without a name, and without blame, as we supply arms dealers ( loosely translated as military suppliers of hardware, software, and Personnel), in addition to a large standing army luxuriating in the totally futile War on Drugs.

The military-industrial collaboration does not deserve the name Complex. Let's instead call it the M-I Simple Entitlement, as in the entitlement that is simply destroying our beloved country.

When I was a little child I believed in Santa. My belief was steadfast and unchallenged. At Christmas season our family would go to downtown Memphis to shop at the large department stores. At that time most people's favorite was Goldsmith's; it was the largest and had the best Santa. The other two department stores were not as large and glamourous, and their Santas were somehow not as attractive. We kids inevitably asked how Santa could be at all three stores, and readily accepted without question the explanation that the santas at Lowenteins and Gerbers were "santa's helpers".

Inevitably, as we grew older, there came a day when we talked about Santa at elementary school, and were told by other kids that there was no Santa. We argued with them, didn't believe them when they appealed to reason, and when they said that their parents had told them.

We went home and "slyly" began to challenge our parents about this, being told at first that of course there was a Santa, and then being told .....if you didn't believe in him he will not come to see you.

Challenged with this onslaught of questions, our parent's bravely defended Santa, until one day when my mother was overcome with anger about something else, and told me, "Of course there is no Santa Clause". Crying, I exclaimed, "Yes there is a Santa!" and maintained this stand for some period of time, abutted by threats of no gifts if I told my younger brother.

The tension of maintaining this position being too great and too absurd, in short time I joined the big folks world, proudly proclaiming the non-existence of Santa to my classmates. This position I maintained for many years, letting my own children believe in Santa, probably mostly at my wife's insistense. but making sure that I was the one who broke the news to each of them.

Now, so many years later I look back at my belief, and unbelief, and realize that, sadly enough, all stages were necessary.

Many years ago I asked my very wise father-in-law, Terrell Lott, what I would have to do to join the Masons. To paraphrase, he said, "You have to believe that God is the supreme being...or say you do if you don't."

I believe in Santa.

Ben's leaving

My son Benjamin Terrell Morson took himself away from us last weekend by hanging himself from a tree. Why he did this I do not know, and probably never will, 'cause that is usually the big unknown in suicide; that and the realization that Ben may have been the Big Unknown himself. Ben had been estranged from me for most of the last five years, for reasons I do not know. It is my hope that his friends who knew him better than I more recently, can and will shed light on this estrangement. I intend to write more about him, but it must suffice now to say I loved him very much, and that I believe that I demonstrated that to him. But if I did not adequately demonstrate it to him, I tried, but so much of the time I had no audience in him. At this time I can say that he had a willing audience in me, but he chose, not to perform for this audience: not to hear the applause, (and yes, very seldom, the boo's) ; chose not to see the ovations. The hurt is that I have missed and will miss him, this, maybe the only time around.