My response to a person on Facebook who asked what liberals are fighting for.

You asked what Elizabeth Warren, “liberal nut” as you called her, is fighting for. If she were writing this, she would make it much more clear than I will, but you have challenged me, not her, so I will respond.

What are liberals fighting for?

We liberals fight for justice, not because we think our society, government and its people are awful, but because we revere them and want to see them reach their full potential. By society, I mean individuals and collectives who interact to create values, norms and expectations for human thought and behavior. By government I mean the democratic republic that was and is our national choice which relies on direct and indirect participation by the citizenry, direct being serving as representatives in elected or appointed offices and indirect being engaging in public debate over issues, voting your conscience and serving as called upon on juries or in other occasional capacities-e.g. as a party participant or leader. And by people, I mean citizens who seek information to help them stay current on the issues of the day so they can be ready to engage individually or collectively.

These three groups are not inherently good or bad, right or wrong; but rather they sometimes work at cross purposes. Sometimes our societal norms, institutions, values, laws and policies are such that they benefit a distinct minority and underserve the interest of a distinct majority. In the last several decades our government has moved away from protecting the interests of ordinary citizens to serving the interests of the powerful: corporations, the wealthy, the politically connected. Many individual citizens are not fully informed as to prevailing norms, values, policies and may not even know how their government works for or against their interests. Unions have historically worked on behalf of the working class to help inform citizens and to influence norms and governmental and corporate institutions.

Unions have been successfully characterized by those who would like to keep the average person in our country in the dark as to the prevailing cultural norms, corporate actions and the extent to which the government is under the influence of the powerful, as enemies of the economy. Unions are seen as dangerous by those who would keep you ignorant and out of power as a working-class person, and so they cast them in a bad light as often as possible.

What Elizabeth Warren means is that she is willing to fight against the powerful 1% of Americans who now receive 20% of the income, because those people have taken over the government, they own the corporations and they have created a condition in which the norms, institutions and values of our society are distinctly against the interest of those who are in the economic middle class or lower.

Conservatives say they are fighting for traditions and against change advocated by liberals, but in fact, over the last forty years our nation has changed dramatically in favor of the wealthy, so the conservative cause currently is to keep the change coming, and preserve the changes that have occurred during that span of time. Since 1973 the income of the bottom 98% has stayed roughly the same while that of the top 2% has risen by many fold. If productivity gains during this time had been passed along to you and me, you and I would be making around 30% more than we currently do, per year. It's not a coincidence that the middle class in the U.S. was strongest when unions were strongest, during the middle part of the 20th century.

You will not be told this type of thing by Fox News, talk radio and the typical protestant minister in the southeastern United States, three of the most powerful, largely white/male political forces in our country. To learn more of what the liberal cause is, you need to do what you did right here on FB, ask a good question.

Welcome to Walmart, young man.

It happened again yesterday, I walked into Walmart and the greeter reminded me of my father who died on mother’s day in 2006. The greeter- an older gentlemen- looked at me and said: “Welcome to Walmart, young man”, but as he looked at me, I got the feeling he was scrutinizing me as a person.

My dad was not one of those people who could be said to not judge others, in fact, quite the opposite, he judged everyone on everything from their appearance to their choices to the people they hung around with. If it was something on which someone could be judged, he did it, despite the fact that his guru, Jesus, once said: Judge not that ye be not judged for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” [KJV of Bible]

Before you accuse me of “dead-father bashing”, let me add that my father judged people mainly with an eye for diagnosing their spiritual condition so he could talk to them on his favorite subject: how a relationship with Jesus would fix whatever ailed them, whereas a lot of people judge others and conclude they themsleves are better than the other person or that there is something deficient in the other person. Dad had the world in two groups, those who were saved and those not saved and if you professed to be saved, you might make all sorts of mistakes in your life, but at least you would go to heaven when you died, and to him that was pretty much all that mattered.

But it was not just that I thought the Walmart greeter was judging me, it was that like my father, he seemed to be the sort of man who deeply loved other human beings. I inferred from just his brief attention to me that he was not only acknowledging me, but processing me deeply. Do you know people who seem to pretend to acknowledge you or those who are paying attention to you only at a superficial level? This man did not seem to be one of those just as my dad was not one of those types.

A dear friend of his came into the bedroom in my brother’s house where he would die the next evening and dad looked at him, smiled and pumped his fist up in the air, feebly, but still, as a dying man, he brought his fist up toward the ceiling to say he was praising the lord to see his friend. At this point dad had completely lost his voice due to his lungs being taken over by small-cell tumors. I will never forget the look of joy on his emaciated face at seeing his friend, no more than I will forget the look he wore the next evening when me and my three siblings stood around his bed and he opened his eyes, stared at my brother for several seconds, opened his mouth and then stopped breathing, with his eyes and mouth both still open.

My point is, in the presence of some people, I get the feeling I am barely registering, but with others, I get the feeling I have their undivided attention. Dad had a highly-developed capacity to attend to the presence of other people.

I will never know if I come across that way to others – I hope I do – but when I am in the presence of someone who processes others the way my dad did, especially if that person is an older man, I am reminded of dad and I start reflecting on how much I miss him, for better and for worse.

You see, I was fortunate enough to be the son of someone who deeply loved and attended to ALL people, so you can only imagine how laser-like his love and attention were in my life. For most of my adult life, no matter how far from him I lived, I would reflect on a regular basis how he might respond if he could see me as I was doing whatever I was doing.

If I contemplated telling someone off at work whom I thought had done me wrong, or if I actually went through with it, sooner or later I would have to deal with my reflection on how dad would have taken it, what he might have said, advice he might have given, whether he would have seen me as being right or wrong.

Dad has been gone over seven years and I no longer have to concern myself with what he might actually think of what I am doing. I don’t subscribe to the belief some seem to hold which is that not only is Jesus looking down on us, but those we have loved are doing so as well. I have this relentlessly realistic part of my mind that says, once your eyes are no longer functioning and your body is wasting away in the ground, you are not looking at too many people.

I spoke at his funeral and one of the things I said that day was that all the sinners in Breathitt, Lee and Owsley County Kentucky could breathe easier because Paul McCullough was gone. I might have been talking to myself though. If I were perfectly honest, as much as I loved him and as much as I missed him, I too was, in a way, breathing easier he was gone.

While he was around I tried to live up to his expectations, I tried to not do anything that might grieve him, in short, I was constantly mindful of his love and attention. After he was gone, I found replacements for his scrutiny in other people whose opinions I respect, but there would and could never be anyone whose opinion would matter to me quite as much as his did.

He is not around to judge me and I am probably not as trustworthy or as tightly self-controlled as I was with him around, but I suppose he was in my life long enough that I learned to be my own judge, to exert my own sort of pressure on my decision making. Now, about the only time I remember the power of his influence is when I am walking into Walmart and an older gentleman looks at me carefully as says: “Welcome to Walmart, young man.”

Center of Attention? Yes, please, I mean no,...actually, I'm not sure.

When’s the last time you had the hiccups? I can’t remember when I did, but it’s been a long time. With the hiccups you got to be the center of attention for a little while, with people telling you how to get rid of them, comparing memories of remedies tried, trying to make you laugh, scaring you, or almost choking you with sips of water while you held your nose, or other things like that.

Being the center of attention is not something I necessarily want these days, in fact, I am not sure I have ever wanted it, at least while I was getting it; but after I have had it, I have found myself fondly remembering the feeling.

My freshman year in high school I sang a song behind the stage curtain as part of a school production, while on stage there was a life nativity scene. The song – I think it was called the Magnificat or something like that- went this way: Chorus “As the rain rushes down and the earth blossoms forth and the wind caresses every tree. You can hear the turtle dove singing all throughout the land of the fair young Virgin Mary.” Bridge: “My heart sings out, with praise of my Lord, my soul rejoices in Christ my savior, for he has looked upon his servant tenderly, humble as he is…Chorus: “As the rain rushes down…” same as before. It had a lovely tune.

I bring that up because after I had sung the song, Mr. Stamper called the principals office on behalf of some girls in his class who wanted me to come down to his home-room- we had all gone back to our home room after assembly- so they could talk to me. When I walked into the room, several of the girls swooned in unison, something like: “Aaaaahh…” I can’t really remember exactly what it sounded like, but I have never been so afraid in my life. I had no idea how to react. I could not hold my head up and there was no way I could look at any of them. Pretty soon Mr. Stamper saw how uncomfortable I was and allowed me to leave the room and head back to my own home room, where my face could return to its normal color.

Since then I have often remembered that day as a missed opportunity. I frittered away whatever popularity I had gained by coming across as uncomfortable and too shy to even talk to anyone. I remember being afraid that some of the girls would learn that I lived in a house trailer on a muddy hillside or that my daddy was a religious fanatic. But if I am to be honest, I must admit that even then, I absolutely loved the attention, it’s just that I had no way of dealing with it.

Even in high school after I started singing all the time, in plays, with a group, solos at choral performances or at weddings; I never knew exactly how to react when someone said I sang well. Once as I was driving a girl home from a date, she asked me to sing for her and it made me so nervous I snapped at her and said: “I don’t ask you to play your saxophone when we are in the car, do I?” She wondered why I was so upset and I said something to the effect that I wanted us to talk about important stuff, not have me perform for her. She got out of the car and needless to say, there was no kiss involved. I drove back home thinking what an idiot I was and I still think what a stupid thing that was to do.

I don’t think there has ever been a time when I did not crave attention but at the same time, I don’t think there has ever been a time when I knew how to handle it. It’s like I sit and pine over the fact that other people are getting the recognition and then when I get some, I have no idea how to accept it without being awkward.

It was ironic that when I played the role of Tony Kirby in the play: “You can’t take it with you”, since the girl who had asked me to sing on the date, played the role of Alice Sycamore, my fiancee, and who in the play, was afraid for me to meet her family because they were so eccentric. Her grandfather did not pay his income tax because he did not believe in it; an uncle who lived with them made fireworks in the basement and played with erector sets. Meanwhile, my character Tony’s father was a proper society man and made Alice feel ill at ease. The shoe was on the other foot in real life, where I was the one who felt like a social outcast.

For twenty five years now I have taught at a university and I have no problem talking in front of classes and even hamming it up at times, trying to be entertaining or at least interesting, but after all these years, when the setting is informal - say I am telling a story for a roomful of friends or family- I get tongue tied and begin to feel like a shy little kid again, which throws off my timing, makes me forget key parts of the story and generally would make it appear I would never be able to stand in front of a college classroom and make sense of anything.

I was happy to see someone had posted on Facebook the other day about how they could write excellent fiction or works of literature, but became tongue tied when trying to string together more than a few sentences for friends and family. I suspect this difficulty has something to do with communication between brain hemispheres, but I would not know that for certain. I do know it is likely I will still be dealing with this when I am blowing out the candles on my 100-birthday cake.