Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Woods Drive a Snapshot of Arlington's History

I am a board member of the Heart of Arlington Neighborhood Association in central Arlington, Texas.  I was asked by our board president to write up some information regarding the history of our neighborhood, and this is one of my efforts:



(In the photo: Long-time next-door neighbors Billie Farrar, Eleanor Grace Martin, and James Martin, at Dallas' Meyerson Symphony Center, circa 1990)


Woods Drive Housed a Generation of Arlington's Merchants

Arlington used to have a real downtown that was the growing city’s central business district. 

Those were the days of the local merchant, before Amazon, before Internet retailing, before Walmart, and before shopping malls.  The days of raw entrepreneurship, or what we nostalgically call “mom-and-pop’ and “brick-and-mortar” commerce. 

The merchants in central business districts also tended to live in clusters.  Throughout history, actually, around the world, merchant classes operated economically and socially in relative proximity to each other.  And of all the streets in Arlington that have housed this city’s ever-changing roster of civic leaders - streets like West Abram, West Park Row, South Center, Southwood, Meadow Oaks, and Shady Valley - perhaps none has been home to a larger concentration - economic, educational, cultural - than Woods Drive. 

Woods Drive runs through what was the historic Elm Shadows Farm between Johnson Creek and Center Street.  Elm Shadows Farm was the Moore estate, named after the family which subdivided it during the 1950s, although most people now popularly call it “the Goat House”.  You can’t miss it, since its current owners have maintained their farmstead exemption by perpetually housing goats, geese, and other barnyard animals on what remains a large property. 

Although the street is admired for its tall trees, Woods Drive is technically named for the Moore family’s patriarch, Woods Moore.  Virginia Lane is named for the Moore's matriarch, and Thomas Place, Patrick Drive, and Michael Court after their three sons. 

Originally, Woods Drive ran from a cul-de-sac behind the Moore estate to a dead-end where Mill Creek Drive now intersects.  As Arlington grew, and the Moore's further developed their farm, Woods Drive was extended in the early 1960s to include a connection with Center Street near Pioneer Parkway. 

By today’s standards, the houses may not be opulent, but at the time, they were larger than conventional ones and loaded with features we take for granted today.  Two-car attached garages, sliding-glass patio doors, at least two living areas, and at least two bathrooms were common amenities of these homes. 

If that wasn't enticing enough for you, consider who your neighbors were: 

F.M. "Tiddle" and Hazle-Vern Terry.  They owned Terry Brothers Pharmacy, which was something of a landmark near Arlington’s iconic mineral well.  Their house, built in 1954, is still owned by an heir.  For the record, the very first home to be built in Elm Shadows is on Virginia Lane, and only recently changed ownership to a family outside of the original owner’s heirs. 

Hayden Johnson.  He was related to the Terry’s, and owned an appliance store where the Flying Fish and other restaurants are now located.  A subsequent owner of his house was George S. Wright, while he served as dean of UTA’s architecture school. 

J.C. and Lillie “Bill” Watson, co-owners of an upscale chain of fashionable department stores in Arlington, Hurst, and Grand Prairie.  Their house, designed by Mrs. Watson herself, is still owned by an heir, and their former store on Arlington’s West Main Street, with its wavy Mid-Century Modern awning, is now an office building for UTA.

H.E. and Burney Pearl Caton, owners of both a popular “five-and-dime” retail shop downtown, as well as a company that manufactured decorative clothing ribbon downtown.  One of their customers was Macy’s department store in New York City.  Heirs of theirs still live on Woods Drive. 

James and Eleanor Grace Martin.  James served as a long-time AISD superintendent, during most of the district’s rapid growth, and Martin High School is named in his honor.  Eleanor Grace opened her art space above the store owned by their neighbors, the Caton’s.  She called it “the Upstairs Gallery” for obvious reasons, and kept the name when she relocated to a house on W. Abram St., as the Caton’s store would be demolished for the construction of Arlington’s original Central Public Library.  A Martin heir still lives in the neighborhood, and heirs still run the gallery. 

Happy King.  He was a long-time builder and developer in Arlington.  His company constructed several of the houses in Elm Shadows, and most of what are now called “the Air Force Base streets” clustered around Park Row and Collins Street.  One of his downtown projects, at 300 W. Main St., remains mostly intact. 

William “Bill” and Billie Farrar.  They first owned B & B Supermarket (for Bill and Billie), at the southeast corner of Park Row and Collins St.  Billie eventually went into real estate, becoming a pioneer of the industry in Tarrant County.  She was the first Realtor in Arlington to complete a $1 million sale - a farm where Highway 360 and Sublett Road now intersect.  Heirs still own her office building on Park Row near Cooper Street. 

Catherine Coulter.  Okay, so she never owned a business in Arlington, but she’s our neighborhood’s bona-fide celebrity.  She is a famous novelist and long-time resident of the San Francisco Bay area who spent part of her growing-up years with her family on Woods Drive.  Her father, Charlie, was an aeronautical engineer and her mother, Betty, was a musician who wrote and published her own educational books for piano. 

Lena Hornaday. She owned a popular restaurant, La Tapatia, for 27 years.  Hers was widely reputed to be Arlington’s first and, for a while, only Tex-Mex restaurant.  She retired in 1974, and a Comet Cleaners now occupies the 2-story building at Division and West streets.  Her house is still owned by an heir. 

Dan Burkholder.  He was a noted jazz musician who conducted bands and orchestras for celebrities such as Bob Hope and Dean Martin.  He also taught at UTA, and was a philanthropist to UTA’s music department. 

Howard “Gumpy” Moore.  He was an heir of Arlington’s fabled Moore Funeral Home family, and namesake of Howard Moore City Park off of Davis Drive, in honor of his long-time chairmanship of Arlington’s parks board.  For the record, Moore family heirs also built a house on Patrick Drive, and they were not related to the Moore family which owned the Goat House. 

Judge Bill and Barbara Hughes.  Bill was a lawyer and a widely-respected Tarrant County judge.  Barbara was a longtime public school teacher, and both were prolific philanthropists.  Their house is still owned by an heir. 

James and Bea Horsman.  It wasn’t downtown, but in a strip shopping center at the northwest corner of Park Row and Collins, where the Horsmans owned an upscale childrens clothing store.  After Six Flags Mall opened in 1970, their store began to fade in popularity.  Bea eventually worked for Billie Farrar as one of her agency’s Realtors.  Their address technically was on Michael Court, but their long side yard ran parallel to Woods Drive. 

Dr. Mo-Shing ChenDr. Chen was an internationally-renowned electrical engineer who taught at UTA for over 40 years.  He began several programs in the electrical engineering department that still exist today, helping to give the department its impressive global reputation.  He and his wife, Dr. Flora Chung-Hsia Huang, raised their two daughters on Woods Drive, and both of them are now doctors as well. 

Gene Allen.  He started a popular 3-store Hallmark greeting card chain in Arlington, with locations on Park Row, Randol Mill Road, and Little Road.  His home was designed with a flat roof to give it a West Coast aesthetic.  It is two doors down from another flat-roofed house on Woods Drive, designed by and the personal home of Alvin Mikusek, a local architect. 

And speaking of architecture, it is believed that 2003 Woods Drive was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West studio in Arizona. As one of America’s most influential architects, Frank Lloyd Wright helped invent and promote the “prairie style” design movement and the long, low ranch style house, which became a favored residential model during the Mid-Century Modern aesthetic, not to mention most of the houses built up and down Woods Drive. 

The first homes on Woods Drive were constructed in 1954, around its northern cul-de-sac.  Ironically, the last home built on Woods Drive, the Watson home, was constructed just up the hill from that cul-de-sac in 1966.  Four years after that, Six Flags Mall opened at Division Street and Highway 360, and Arlington’s downtown would never be the same. 

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Leaving Antidepressants Isn't Easy


My crystal Swarovski "Volcano Pyramid" prism with a damaged edge
(the puffy-looking shape in the middle - a significant imperfection)


Last October, I posted about my decision to stop taking my antidepressant prescription medications.

Several months later, I'm checking back with an update to that post.  I don't want to be melodramatic, but I also don't want to minimize the struggles of going without antidepressants.  

The summary version is that I'm not doing as well emotionally as I was when I was still taking my full antidepressant dosages.  The only two benefits I can see are that, one; I haven't yet returned to any of my antidepressants since last fall.  And two, I've lost more weight, and appear to have plateaued in terms of my weight loss.

So, I've lost emotional ground, but I've also lost some physical baggage, meaning my slimmer appearance hides what's going on inside.  I'm also finding that as I lose weight, I'm getting more wrinkled, which is making me look older!  I used to enjoy looking considerably younger than my years, but now, it seems the inverse is happening.  So in terms of aesthetics, my weight loss has become a net neutral. 

Anyway, the bigger story is inwardly, since I'm struggling more with my depression now than I have in decades.

Turns out, in terms of masking my depression and helping me be more productive as a human being, those antidepressants probably were far more effective than I thought they were.  The longer I go without them, the less competent I am at adjusting to negative things and surprises.  And whereas I used to suspect my antidepressants of sabotaging my joy and peace, I now realize that without antidepressants, I have even less of either joy or peace.  I used to scoff at the notion of emotions governing so much of my behavior, but now, I lament how so much of my logic, industriousness, and discipline gets eroded by emotionalism.

I've tried to modify my behavior to accommodate my deteriorating emotions.  My biggest change:  I've stopped most of my news consumption.  American politics, Christian nationalism, the Israel - Hamas war,  all sorts of racism, and hatred in general have taxed me emotionally.  Suddenly, I find I simply can't absorb it all.  My fearfulness factor is sky-high.

While I used to regularly and verbosely blog here about news items and current events, I no longer can stomach even the most cursory glance at the headlines.  I  have an acquaintance who is a professional journalist, and he confirmed that disconnecting from the news is a prudent move for me, at least for now.

As a person who used to seek out the news, especially looking for stories about which I could blog, that has been the biggest change for me.  A dear friend of mine in Dallas used to tease me about "doom-scrolling", since he's long said the news media revels too much in life's horrors and tragedies.  Now I realize how even trolling basic headlines has become a form of "doom-scrolling", since the Internet appears to have forced the journalism industry into competing for the most salacious stories.  News outlets survive today by trying to generate views and click-throughs, because those are how they calculate online advertising rates.  

I reported back in October that I seem to always be on the verge of crying, and that has only become a more pronounced sensation.  Loud and sudden noises also distress me more than ever, while crowds of people - no matter who they are - intimidate me. 

Apparently my antidepressants were my go-to coping tools.  Some things did upset me, but not to the degree they do now.  It has been discouraging for me, as supposedly a "person of faith", to realize that after all these years, I apparently don't trust in the God I've claimed to embrace.  After all, if I did, would I be so incessantly anxious, even as a chronically clinically depressed person?  

Realizing how desperate I was becoming, I reached out to the senior pastor of the Dallas church in whose choir I used to sing, and we've met a few times for some counseling sessions.  Even though our church numbers about six thousand members, we've known each other for quite a while, and I'm grateful he makes time for me.  He's not a therapist, but as a theologian, I'm asking him questions about faith that he's answering with candor and grace.

It's too early to know how much of a help he's been, but even knowing he's willing to try is itself helpful.  I'm not paying him, he knows I'm neither wealthy nor influential, and he's not anti-antidepressants.  He attended my father's memorial service so he knows all about my concerns regarding dementia.  Nevertheless, he warned me I might still have to go back on antidepressants depending on how things evolve.

So obviously, I have no cheerful update here.  No philosophical or theological insights.  No profound one-liners.  This is simply a status update of where I am at this moment, approximately six months after stopping my antidepressants.  People ask me if losing all this weight (85 pounds total since the start of Covid) makes me feel more energetic, but no, I feel even more lethargic than ever.  You see, I haven't lost weight in a healthy way - it's all been through stress.  

There have been a few days where I almost caved and started taking those "happy pills" again, but - for better or worse - the ominous specter of dementia has proven stronger.

Even with my problems, there are other people who are living with griefs and pains far worse than mine.  My pastor calls these "bitter providences" of God, Who, although He is good, certainly allows plenty of bad things to happen to His followers - even through no fault of their own.  

Saying "things could be worse" may not necessarily be a healthy response to anyone's crisis, but it can be helpful to keep some of these considerations in perspective.

So for now, I'm staying the course, away from antidepressants.  I'm finding that this is not the easier path, but perhaps its benefits will come in the long run.

_____


Tuesday, October 10, 2023

No More Depression Meds for Me

 

Lantana in our backyard... just because it's colorful and happy!


Depression denies delight.

Nobody likes talking about it.  It is often misunderstood, and sometimes exploited.  It can be taboo, controversial, and destructive.

Some claim it is a figment of one's imagination.  Others seem to let it crush their soul.  It is impossible to quantify but easy to use as an excuse.  Approximately 12% of Americans take antidepressants, and are therefore considered to suffer from some degree of "clinical" depression.  And while an antidepressant prescription requires a medical doctor's authorization, no benchmarks exist for determining who really has the medical condition termed "depression", who doesn't, and how bad or mild a person's depression may be.

Back in 2014, I outed myself on this blog as a person struggling with chronic clinical depression.  I was taking at least two medicines commonly prescribed for such a diagnosis.  However, my history with antidepressants had begun years earlier when I lived in New York City.  While the prescriptions themselves had changed over time, I was taking them daily, year after year - until this past summer.

I am now clean of those anti-anxiety prescription medications.  

But that's not because I'm cured.  Chronic clinical depression is real for many people, and I remain one of them.  And while my depression is characterized by extraordinary anxiety, that actually explains why I've stopped taking my antidepressants.

I'm not anti-medicine, or anti-big-pharma, or anti-science.  In fact, technically, it is the emerging science related to dementia that convinced me to wean myself off of my antidepressants.  Turns out, evidence has begun to accrue regarding a likely link between antidepressant use and one's chances of developing dementia.  And since profound memory loss runs in my family, it looms large as something for me to fear, looming even larger than depression.

During the past several years, I often wondered how effective my antidepressants had become anyway.  I began Googling my way around the Internet, and discovered that other patients - as well as scientists and doctors - were also beginning to express skepticism regarding antidepressants.

Then I discovered something especially troubling:  As science completes more and more research with dementia, the impact long-term antidepressant use has on future memory loss does not appear to be insignificant.   Please notice, however, my cautious phrasing of that sentence, because I don't want to be alarmist.  You see, from what I've read, the research and its findings are not yet conclusive, and they do not currently appear to be stark enough to bring antidepressant use to a standstill.

Of course, I am not a scientist, nor a doctor.  I am not a clinician, a mental or emotional therapist, or a person with any vested financial interest in any individual, company or entity that is.  I'm aware that science evolves.  There are valid reasons why medicine is called a "practice".  Big pharma has been accused of greedily foisting prescription antidepressants onto gullible patients and their doctors, but I can't deny that for a while, it seemed as though my prescriptions did provide some sort of help. 

And I'll admit, I weaned myself off of my antidepressants without consulting my primary care doctor (I haven't seen a psychiatrist or therapist for years).  But when I did tell him, close to the end of my weaning process, he wasn't alarmed.  He listened to my rationale and agreed that antidepressants can lose their efficacy over time.  He also acknowledged that the growing body of evidence regarding dementia is concerning.  So he didn't try and talk me out of my decision. 

I've been completely off of my antidepressants for three months now.  And just to prove I'm not endorsing any similar actions by anybody else taking what I call "happy pills", I'm not going to detail what medications I was taking.  Or how I weaned myself off of them.  

But I have to admit (or boast!):  I've lost over 20 pounds since starting the process.  I think I look the best I have in years, if vanity counts for anything.  Considering how much weight I'd acquired at the height of my antidepressant use, I enjoy looking into mirrors now and not seeing some obese person staring back at me in dismay.  

I'm still not thin, but I'm not trying to be thin.  I didn't do this to lose weight, although losing weight has been a nice bonus.

And for the record:  I haven't been exercising more, or making any concerted effort to lose weight.  Quite simply, my appetite seems to have changed the longer I've been without "happy pills".  From my research, I've learned that this type of weight loss can happen to folks who come off of antidepressants.  Today, I do not crave food, although salty foods can still seem to beg for more!  I'm not as tempted by sweets as I used to be.  I find it bizarre to approach mealtimes now with a bland acknowledgement that my body basically needs some nourishment.

So, bottom line:  What are the pros and cons of what I've done?

PROS:

  • Possible reduction of future dementia risk - or at least, I'm no longer contributing to that risk.  For me, this alone is major, and worth more than all the pros and cons to follow.  Yes, I still may end up developing dementia, but at least I'm trying to avoid it.
  • Weight loss and a better appreciation for my own physical appearance, which is encouraging.  I know looks aren't everything, and I don't want to be vain, but it certainly seems counter-productive for antidepressants to prevent weight loss, thereby compounding things for people who've been prescribed them in the first place!
  • Relatively improved diet, since I'm not strongly craving junk food like I used to.
  • I have far less vertigo than I did before, especially when standing.  It really had gotten annoying.  Vertigo can be a side effect of antidepressants.

CONS:
  • More fitful sleep.  I've lost about an hour of sleep a night, what sleep I get isn't high-quality, and I never feel refreshed when I get up in the morning.
  • My energy level seems lower than before (and I can't remember when it was ever very high!).  Maybe because my body is adjusting to having less food to process, thanks to my diminished appetite.
  • Conversely, my inertia level is higher, and inertia - or disillusionment, apathy, lethargy, lack of ambition, or whatever it is - has unfortunately been a deepening hallmark of my depression journey. 
  • Often I feel as though I'm about to burst into tears.  This has never been a regular issue before.  I haven't had a crying episode yet, because I fight them, but it is not a sensation that inspires confidence.
  • I'm no less anxious than I was when I was taking "happy pills".  More proof that I'm not cured.
  • My temper is noticeably stronger, while my patience is noticeably weaker.
  • I still get dizzy, especially when standing (yes, in addition to the vertigo).  Dizziness has long been a side effect of my antidepressant use, but my research says it can also be a side effect of going OFF of antidepressants!
  • Occasionally I get painful cramping in my abdomen, which can be a side effect of stopping antidepressants.  Nausea can also be a side effect of leaving antidepressants, but fortunately, I haven't had that.


Maybe you've read this far and are wondering what role psychotherapy - either with a PhD/MD, a psychologist, or a certified psychotherapist - has played in my treatment.

I attended psychotherapy for a number of years, both in New York and here in Texas, with a variety of credentialed providers.  Perhaps they worked for a time, but finally, my last psychotherapist was the one who called it off.

"Why do you keep coming to see me?" he asked bluntly during what turned out to be my last session.  "I ask you all these questions, and you always give great answers.  I don't think psychotherapy is doing you any good anymore."  

So that was that.

Again - not that my journey with chronic clinical depression is typical, or replicable.  I'm just journaling about it here, chronicling what it's been like for me thus far.  Besides, since my overall functionality has not improved, and there is no definitive proof I've genuinely decreased my risk for dementia, maybe all I'm really doing is bragging about losing so much weight!

However, if you are a person who is taking antidepressants, maybe what you've read here rings a bell with you.  And if so, I recommend that you talk with your doctor.

You may have something to lose, too!

_____

Check out my update here.

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Token Help for Un-Fare Jumpers

OLI Snippets

(from my short posts on social media)

_________________________



How convenient - they've even provided orange lines
to show turnstile-jumpers the height they need to clear while jumping.



One of my friends who relies on mass transit in the DC area regularly sends me updates on the joys of not owning a car in our nation's capital.

What he avoids in car repairs, insurance, and traffic gridlock he makes up for in transit delays, reductions in service, and rising fares with what is supposed to be an economical, efficient way to get around!

Now DC's transit professionals are trying to foil fare-beaters - or what we New Yorkers call "turnstile jumpers".  And yes, transit riders need to pay their fare share (pun intended).  Some selfish urbanites figure their income taxes already pay for mass transit, so why should they be responsible for shelling out even more at every point of use?  But they fail to recognize the reasons:

- Because per-use paying riders help to provide more money to balance transit budgets;
- Fares add an element of fairness regarding taxpayers who never ride mass transit vs. those who do;
- And per-ride fares require non-taxpayers (like tourists) to pay at least a token amount - pun intended again! - for the ride that is being subsidized by local taxpayers.

NEVERTHELESS... How much of the rising costs in transit ridership are associated with all of the tinkering, technology, and implementation of newer and newer turnstiles?  Turnstiles that in a few days, fare-evaders will have figured out how to exploit.  I remember when NYC's MTA installed the first of their tall turnstile fare-jumper-foiler things back in the 1990s.  I think it was a matter of hours before local news crews were filming kids leaping over and through them - fantastic feats of agility, considering how low many subway ceilings are.  Even using the turnstile guards - the very equipment newly-installed as an ostensibly preventative measure - as leverage for their jumps!  I mean, it was like the Olympic track & field competitions were being held in some stations. 

I'm looking at the orange lines on those plexiglass guards of DC's new turnstiles, and I figure any kid with strong hands could easily - EASILY! - jump over them by using a quick push off of those guards as leverage.  I mean - just LOOKING at it, evading it seems so easy.  Do transit officials have zero amount of physical dexterity themselves, and no imagination?  They've even brightly marked out the top of the guard so fare-jumpers know where to look as they sail through the air.  Sheesh...

Meanwhile, who pays for all of these ever-newer turnstiles (that don't work as intended)?  TRANSIT RIDERS, of course!  What dysfunction.  This is why conservatives dislike government, and unions.  Both governments and unions - which comprise the machinery behind all transit agencies in the Northeast - become entities unto themselves.  Their focus turns inward; they forget that they're supposed to be serving the public, not creating their own little empires.  And they regularly display stunning lacks of logic.  It's not the bureaucracy itself that is at fault - plenty of large corporations have quagmires of bureaucracies themselves - but private industry has the inherent competition of capitalism to better enforce logical strategies and weed out inferior ideas.  Governments and unions don't have competition.

In a way, I sympathize with the folks who don't want to pay their fair fare.  The costs associated with transit ridership only go up, while service rarely does.  And along the way, goofy stuff gets perpetrated on whomever gets left holding the bag - namely, taxpayers.  

Granted, most fare-jumpers are themselves acting selfishly and being belligerent; they're not concerned with macro or micro-economics. But at some point, mass transit advocates need to realize that the more money they spend trying to defeat people who don't want to pay, the more they're increasing costs for people who pay because they have better moral fiber.

_____

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

History Chronicled With Religious Architecture

OLI Snippets

(from my short posts on social media)

_________________________


St. Stephen's Catholic Cathedral; Passau, Bavaria, Germany
Photo credit: my friend Mary Bryant McCourt, May 2023


For all my preacher friends:  How's this for a church pulpit? 

Preachers speaking from such an opulent elevated platform needn't worry about their sermon getting boring - because if it does, congregants can just let their minds wander over all that gold leaf!  

I only hope the theology preached from it is more valuable than its gilded ornamentation.  I mean, seriously!  I'd never have guessed this audaciously decorated tableau was a historic German church.  I'd have guessed France, or maybe even Russia, but not the country that has given us the austere, clean-lined BMW and Mercedes-Benz brands.

As an architecture student in college, we studied many religious structures because throughout history, they often represented the pinnacle of their respective society's ideologies and abilities.  The sociological cynic would categorize religion as a form of folkloric storytelling, or cultural assimilation, or moral dogma, or a primitive way of explaining how people groups interpreted their natural environment.  But some cultures - generally the ones with more sophisticated religions - eventually came to dominate entire regions of the world, and have played significant roles in developing construction methodologies and aesthetic principles that we still incorporate today in our built environment.

Up until the Industrial Revolution, whether in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America, or Europe, religious structures such as this one were lavished with a panoply of human resources to inform their own culture - and their enemies - who and what their society represented (whether everyone believed the same thing or not).  Religious structures were literally the brick-and-mortar of their community.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution - which brought unprecedented wealth to our planet - the amount of resources we spend on our religious buildings has paled by comparison.  Hardly any society today expends the type of effort - in money and labor - that used to be spent on religious structures.  Many reasons exist for this, such as: 
- a continued splintering of various sects from the larger body of beliefs (particularly within Islam and Christianity), meaning religious groups are smaller and less willing to share resources;
- few monarchies and political dynasties powerful enough to force subjects into religious submission
- changing aesthetic tastes (such as severe Modern and Post-Modern minimalism within Judaism);
- advanced construction technologies that can actually lower overall costs by making formerly prohibitive designs relatively accessible (and therefore, less remarkable);
- a lack of interest by most religious leaders and their adherents today to create monolithic memorials to their faith and deity, and/or a preference to spend money in different ways;
- and yes, the drastically-lower reliance people across the globe have on religion and deities.  These days, we have easy access to so many devices, ideas, and other influences to help us feel more self-actualized.  Religion, which almost universally involves a certain level of adherence to a thought structure we have not created ourselves, seems so antiquated and bothersome to many people.

Whether they're religious or not, very few societies now use buildings as their main source of pride and identity anyway (with the possible exception of Persian Gulf states and China, homes to some of the most audacious new buildings on our planet).  I've written before about my Mom's childhood church in Maine, once the beacon of her coastal village, now rotting away atop a hill with millions of dollars worth of stained glass windows disintegrating in place, no services or any public use for over 15 years now.  

We all are aware of how much society is changing, and one of the values in architecture is that it helps tell us where we've been, and maybe even what we're missing today despite all our "progress".



PS
- when I checked out my blog on my smartphone, and saw Mary's photo, the pulpit, resized for a smaller screen, looked more like a snake's head, or maybe one of those ceremonial Chinese dragons.  That jagged-edged canopy and wrap-around stairway - Yikes!  Now I can't help but see it as fearsome - awe of a negative sort.  It reminds me of the dramatic pulpit and canopy of a much newer church, a rare example of extravagant contemporary evangelical Christian architecture:  Coral Ridge Presbyterian in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  I've never been in person, but from the videos and photos I've seen, their black snake-like canopy over the pulpit seems straight out of the Garden of Eden - in a bad way.

_____

Saturday, April 8, 2023

Tennessee's Gun Battle Shows Who's Wrong

 

As if last week's shooting at Nashville's Covenant School wasn't bad enough, this week, politics subverted humanity on both sides of the aisle in Tennessee's legislature.

Here we had on the left some folks screaming stale gun legislation rhetoric, and on the right, we had folks voting them out of the legislature for using a bullhorn in their chants.

Bad form all around.  Grandstanding, exploiting fear, and tossing racism into the mix just to stir the pot even more.  It's an embarrassment for Tennessee, and for everybody who's taken sides in this charade of governance.  

No, seeking to incite or thwart elected officials on the literal floor of any statehouse through incivility and crass disruption is not democracy, it is chaos.  Doesn't matter if it's Republicans doing it to the US Capitol, or Democrats at Tennessee's, although at least Tennessee's chaos wasn't violent.  Propriety is still relevant, regardless of your age or the issue.  Sure, censure the legislators who participated in the obstruction of legislative affairs, but kick them out of the offices to which they've been duly elected?  For yelling through a bullhorn?  How can that not look anything less than malevolent?

By now, we Americans should recognize that politics and legislation are NOT the places where we will find sustainable, fair solutions for everything.   And yelling louder (even metaphorically) to make it so... doesn't.  Especially if you want to enforce variant degrees of "morality", from a left-wing or right-wing perspective - you still can't legislate it.  Look at the colossal failure of Prohibition.  Yet we groom our politicians to be noticed and essential, the leaders and enforcers of our particular worldview.  And the media - we've got bad media actors on both sides of the political aisle - is more than happy to help politicians duke it out in the public square.

Respectfully negotiating an issue between sides is difficult, boring, often time-consuming, and thin on headlines and meme-able photos.  Staging a crisis creates far more immediate, provocative digital content. 

I suspect when it comes to the specific topic of gun-involved violence, politicians actually prefer to pick fights among themselves because they probably already know... shucks, there are no laws to stop gun-involved violence.  In our country, that horse bolted long ago.  Even if all assault rifles were completely banned starting right now, there would be about TWENTY million of them in circulation just in the USA.  And folks who oppose banning them have a valid point:  How many assault rifles have been used in gun violence?  A fraction of a percentage of the total number out there.

That doesn't mean we don't have a problem with gun-involved violence in America.  And it doesn't mean that laws preventing the future purchases of more assault rifles are a bad idea.  Why do so many Americans think they need to own an assault rifle in the first place?  Many surveys indicate that assault rifle owners like the raw power embodied by such weaponry, even if they never plan on killing anybody.  Which, if you follow that logic, also means assault rifles aren't necessary to normal, everyday American life.  Which begs the question:  Why do so many gun owners get so anxious and angry when the topic of gun control comes around?  Some gun owners say they fear martial law, but when they say that, the irony is lost on them that other Americans fear gun owners!

As for the folks who are guaranteed to scream (literally) for more gun control after a gun-involved violent incident, their reliance on their pet brand of politics to protect them is as illogically placed as it is for right-wingers and their politics.  For all the gun-control advocates out there, I'd simply ask you to consider the staggering gun-involved violence statistics for cities like Chicago, which already has a lot of gun laws on the books.  Laws don't stop the violence.  The simple fact of the matter is that if somebody wants to shoot somebody else, they're gonna do it.  And that's why focusing on guns misses the mark.  Pun intended.

Nevertheless, the media can't bring itself to let society even try to pivot away from conflict.  No matter their flavor of partisanship, it's in the media's interests to keep badgering society into believing politicians can fix things.  And sure enough, those politicians, to stay in office, have to look like they can, and are.  

But they aren't, and they can't.  Not everything.  Especially not people who want to kill other people.

That's what's getting lost in all of this grandstanding.  Why are some Americans bent on killing people?  Other countries have similar ratios of guns to population, but they don't have this murderous violence.  Is the way we're running our society to blame?  Let's take the Covenant shooting as an example.  While gun-control advocates have made it all about guns and laws, shouldn't we be having a hard conversation about being respectful of people who are different from us?  And people with whom we disagree? 

And what about bullying?  I was severely bullied in junior high, both emotionally and physically.  Those scars have run deep in my life ever since.  And many schoolyard bullies turn into adults who bully, and bullying takes all sorts of forms, from taunting fellow legislators with bullhorns (in Nashville) and death threats (in DC), to levying supermajorities against elected officials, to teasing people who struggle with the transgender zeitgeist.  And maybe I'm wrong to see bullying as a likely culprit behind the Nashville (alleged) shooter's motives, but it doesn't sound like the person reveled in respect throughout their life.  

Bullying in school, and at the workplace, and on social media are huge problems that few people seem interested in genuinely addressing.  Maybe because lots of people own guns and they like the swagger guns can give them... and maybe that swagger has a bullying component to it?  Like "I'm better than you, I'm stronger than you, I'm more protected than you, and I can prove it."  But do we ignore bullying at our collective and individual peril, since it seems to crop up a lot in the backstories of gun-involved violence?  

So, might harping over gun laws be distracting society from far more pertinent issues?

And there's more.  Because it's not just politicians and the media, unfortunately, who are to blame here.  Can you see it?  Neither politicians nor the media exist in a vacuum.  They exist as extensions of... all of the rest of us. Those of us who consume the media we prefer, and who vote for the people who get elected.  Who parent the kids who bully.  Who want to think they're more virtuous than their neighbors.  Who want others to defer to them.

Because in the grand scheme of things, in a democratic republic, with even our media creating content in a consumer-driven marketplace, we all share in the problem.  Whether we want to admit it or not.

_____

Friday, March 31, 2023

America's Epidemic of Selfish Victims

 

Are Mom and I "victims" of explosive population growth in Arlington, Texas?  We've lost half of our backyard to a flood-prone creek, including about 8 mature trees, our back fence, a concrete walking path, a greenhouse, an in-ground irrigation system, and this concrete box, which used to be a fishpond.  It's all gone due to flooding and erosion.  So we're victims, right?

America's infatuation with victimhood needs to stop.

Trans people claim to be victims.  Donald Trump claims to be a victim.  People do all sorts of things from a sense of entitlement because they've been victimized.

The Black reparations debate is degenerating into a mockery of racism - just look at the ridiculous dollar amounts some Californians are publicly floating.  Those numbers aren't for reparations, they're for racist revenge.

And technically, before Blacks get their reparations, what about women (regardless of their race or ethnicity) who were disenfranchised in the New World even before Blacks were?

Some teenagers say Covid victimized them by stealing their tender youth.  They couldn't go to school (can you hear the irony - most kids hate attending school in the first place), they couldn't go to the mall, they couldn't see their friends.  Their parents worked from home, depriving kids of their sacred privacy. As if adults were reveling in all of the Covid drama at their kids' expense.

Victims of bullying, sexual harassment, predatory lenders, rude employees, rude customers, bad drivers, rogue cops, rogue companies, human traffickers, shootings, stabbings, emotional trauma, divorce, adultery... And if you want to get really political, these types of victimhood are also a thing on Google searches:  Victims of communism, capitalism, imperialism, eugenics, groupthink, and the death penalty.  There are "victims of NordicTrack", the exercise company.  Victims of religion.  Victims of circumstance.  Oh, the humanity... we have victims, victims, all over the country.

Yes, relatively bad things do happen all the time to relatively innocent people.  Life seems to be more unfair to some people than to others.  But nowadays, it seems people feel entitled to not having bad things happen to them.  After all, that's the attitude they exhibit when bad things do happen:  "Hey, wait!  I don't deserve this.  So I'm a victim, and I demand restitution."

Not only do we dislike things that are unfair.  We no longer think we should have to accept anything we perceive to be unfair.  And we certainly don't want to forgive anybody for slights we think they've made against us.  We want to be compensated in some way.

I suspect this victim complex represents an infatuation with the self that goes beyond basic self-preservation.  It's a mindset that says I'm not just equal to you, but I'm more important than you.  We're taught that saying "I'm BETTER than you" is impolite, so we've actually twisted self-centeredness to claim a compelling aura of "importance".  

It's a clever trick.  "Importance" is better than "better", because being "better" requires a quantifiable measurement of some value.  

Meanwhile, "importance" doesn't imply that what makes us important can be measured, merely that importance should be conveyed on the principle of some claim of harm.  In other words, "importance" can more specifically imply a need for an offender (whether an individual or society) to construct special mechanisms of deference.  "Importance" can indeed be something important, or it could simply be claimed by somebody, regardless of whether society as a whole, based on conventional metrics, has deemed you to be of importance.  Hence, the victim complex. 

"I'm a victim, so I'm important, and I demand justice, because justice is important." 

Yes, justice is important, but what is "justice"?  And what makes your victimhood more important than somebody else's victimhood? 

Take me, for instance.  I'm a White male, so immediately, many folks in our country view me as an oppressor, and a creator of victims.  Simply because of my gender and skin color.  This is presumed without any consideration of my personhood in the context of my thoughts, beliefs, when I was born, and what I desire for my fellow human beings.  But do you realize I could claim victimhood for myself?

The last church I attended, for over 20 years, is a Presbyterian church.  Early, early Presbyterians were persecuted in Scotland.  One of my maternal ancestors was sent to America from Scotland by the notorious British warmonger Oliver Cromwell because he would not bow to the Church of England.  So in a way, my family history and personal Presbyterianism make me a victim of England.

The only church I've ever joined as a member was a Baptist church, the historic Calvary Baptist, in New York City.  But did you know that in colonial America, Baptists were persecuted?  Rhode Island was formed as a state for persecuted Baptists.  Persecution of Baptists continued in America even after our Revolutionary War.  Did you know that?  The persecution was committed mostly by adherents to the Church of England and Puritans, with Baptists and Quakers most often victimized.  So in a way, my Baptist heritage makes me a victim of early colonists. 

My paternal ancestry is Finnish.  Within Scandinavia, Finland has historically been considered of least importance, with what for centuries was its relatively poor economy and vast rural, inaccessible landscape.  My late aunt told me that Finns who came to America and worked as servants for Manhattan's elite were usually the lowest-paid, hired only for the lowliest jobs, and were hardly ever allowed to serve at table or parties.  So in a way, my Finnish heritage makes me a victim of 20th Century Manhattan society.

My half of the Finnish spoons from Viipuri
My half of the silver spoons my paternal great-aunt saved from their home in Viipuri, Finland. 
My brother and his family have the other half.

Oh, and my Finnish heritage makes me a victim of Russian aggression.  Back at the beginning of the Second World War, everybody was too preoccupied with Hitler to notice Russia's invasion of Finland in what Finns call the "Winter War".  My paternal grandfather's hometown used to be Viipuri, Finland, but that city no longer exists.  When the Russians invaded, they changed the city's name to Vyborg, and literally took over every privately-owned house and gave them to Russians.  My ancestors had only several hours notice to flee, and they left everything - except some silver spoons which they could easily pack as they fled.  Not much of an inheritance, some might say.  So I'm a victim of Russian imperialism.

I've never owned land.  Even after the ratification of the US Constitution, I would not have been allowed to vote, since only landowners (who were men, and White) could vote.  Not all of my American ancestors owned land.  So I'm a victim of America's old voting laws.

I was bullied constantly in junior high.  I'm a victim of the Arlington Independent School District.

Women in Times Square used to ask me for the time when I'd walk by.  I'm a victim of female empowerment.  (I literally used to look at my wristwatch and tell them what time of day it was, in answer to their query, and they'd look at me like I was some kind of weirdo - until a friend finally told me they were prostitutes asking if I "had the time" for sex!)

I'm bald, which most people consider to be unflattering.  I wear glasses.  I'm not ripped or fit.  Yikes - I'm a victim of society's standards for attractiveness.

As far as I can figure, the only people in the United States today who can't claim any victim status are handsome, well-groomed, heterosexual, White, male, married (to a woman), healthy, land-owning Episcopalians whose ancestors have all also been all of the same.  

Which, of course, is an absurd notion, right?  My point is this:  There are all sorts of ways we could claim victimhood, from the way other drivers endanger us on freeways, to the way burglars force us to cower behind locked doors, to the ways politicians of any stripe incessantly foment fear and discord so they can stay in office.

Victimhood happens all the time.  To everybody.  So in reality, victimhood itself isn't necessarily grounds for recompense.  Hey - life is not fair.  It never has been.  All sorts of negative situations impact all sorts of people.  Human history is replete with unfairness, inequity, and injustice.

Does that mean we shouldn't strive for fairness, equity, and justice?  Of course not.  But we have to be wise and discerning in how we evaluate our reality, and advocate for all we consider to be good, beneficial, helpful, and kind.

It's called "loving our neighbor", if you are Christian, or Jewish.  Or it's called the "golden rule":  Treating other people the way we want other people to treat us.

Not with revenge.  Not with fury.  Not even with selfishness.

And just because we might be a victim of something, the justice we may seek for ourselves itself needs to be representative of fairness.  We can't presume making a victim out of somebody else can somehow even whatever scores we're trying to keep.  Two wrongs never make a right, do they?

This is is hard, especially since our society has decided emotionalism merits more consideration than facts, logic, and respect for others.  It's now OK to make modern villains out of history's transgressors.  It's now OK to take viscerally the things we've decided are unfair.  This isn't to say that we shouldn't advocate for what we think is right.  But there are positive and negative ways of doing that.

Remember, your life isn't just about you.  My life isn't just about me.  We each live in a context of time and place that has been created through thousands of years of other peoples' mistakes, virtues, inventions, egos, aspirations, crimes, hatred, and beliefs.  

Some people have won wars over other people.  Some people have exercised political power over other people.  Even today, some people are wealthier than others.  Some people are more educated than others.  No society in history has ever had pure equality.  We can legislate for equality, we can fight wars and rage and rant, but there is no perfect society.  Every generation produces yet another crop of selfish people.  And it seems that the more history we humans accrue, we're seeing more and more victims.

And it's particularly bizarre that in America - of all places - with the world's wealthiest and most powerful economy, with no nation physically attacking us, both conservative and liberal pundits rage about being victims.

Perhaps never before in history have "victims" been so spoiled.

_____ 

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Violence, the Self, and Modeling Civility



Another day, another school shooting.  In America, anyway.

Yesterday's happened to be in Nashville, at a private Christian school run by a church pastored by somebody I know.  The Rev. Chad Scruggs used to be a pastor at "my" church in Dallas, Park Cities Presbyterian, before he went to become the pastor at Nashville's Covenant Presbyterian.  Scruggs' only daughter was one of the victims in yesterday's tragedy.

And yes, even though America's schoolplace shootings are now commonplace, they're each still tragedies.  We had a student here in Arlington, Texas, shot to death outside one of our high schools just a couple of weeks ago, making international headlines.  The day after that, a Dallas high school had a non-lethal shooting.  Then, for the third day in a row, it was Denver.  Sometimes I wonder if they're not copycat events.

Most Americans have come to process gun-related school violence from the perspective of their political mindset.  This means there are basically two schools of thought - to pardon the pun - and they both stem from our bifurcated political narratives.  Either the shootings are happening because we don't have stronger "anti-gun" laws, or the shootings are happening because we don't have stronger mental health protocols.  The problem with both political perspectives is that they don't really explain why America, of all the world's "advanced" countries, has such a unique problem when it comes to schools, guns, and violence.

As far as more gun laws go, don't we already have a lot of gun laws?  And still, aren't most of the guns used in school violence purchased legally?  I admit I don't understand why any civilian needs an assault rifle, but still, it's estimated 15 million legally-bought assault rifles are in American homes.  So even though each mass shooting is a tragedy, statistically speaking, it's a severely small percentage of gun owners who abuse their weapons in such a heinous way.  Penalizing the 99.99% of owners who have no desire to kill anybody with their guns remains a proposition that's hard to argue on the grounds of fairness.

Especially since street violence, committed to a far greater degree with illegal guns, rages uncontrollably despite the presence of gun laws.

It's almost impossible to legislate morality, either for gun use, or other things... like mental health, and sexuality.

Mental health has become a talking point for gun-rights activists, but how do we go about legislating mental health matters?  We Americans do seem to lag other developed countries in this area, and part of that might be explained by our country's unique perspectives on personal freedoms.  We're a nation that has particularly struggled with both abusing and protecting rights and power, which may explain why few of us (no matter our politics) embrace the idea of society and/or government meddling into why we are the way we are.

The United States is home to the world's most diverse population.  How do we codify mental health standards in the light of such pluralism?

Simply consider yesterday's "alleged" shooter:  a trans person.  Right there, we're faced with an issue upon which our society at large cannot agree:  Is a person's gender related to their anatomy or not?  It's a polarizing topic rife with emotion, opinion, and rhetoric - even without guns.

Alternatively, consider the reality that of all the trans people in America - experts debate the numbers, but the higher estimate is less than half a million - this is the first mass shooting involving a shooter who self-identified as trans, meaning we don't have an epidemic of shooters being motivated because of their gender identity.  Chances are, even though we don't have official conclusions from this shooter's personal writings, a motive centered more on being bullied makes for a logical conclusion.  And being bullied in school is a problem that has been proven to exist in other mass shootings.  Even the killing at Lamar High School here in Arlington a couple of weeks ago is believed to have been sparked by bullying.

And it's not a stretch to imagine that, no matter your opinions on the trans movement, we should all be able to understand how being bullied over your gender and/or sexuality can be one of the most personal and searing of dehumanizing events.

So, in this case, should biological traditionalists simply cave and let trans people do whatever they feel like doing so they don't want to shoot up their childhood school?  Or does part of being a responsible human being involve helping the people we love be accountable for their whole selves - their mind, emotions, and their body?  Especially if they're being bullied?

Oh.  I used that word.  And it's a word that involves a lot more emotion than many of us apparently know what to do with:  "Love".  

What is love, anyway?  That's a question with which our entire planet grapples, no matter one's skin color, ethnicity, nationality, education, or political affiliation.  And it's a question I can't answer to everybody's satisfaction.  Nor can you.

But I suspect the fact we can't answer that question universally plays a significant role in why America has so much gun-involved school violence.  At its core, love involves respect for others, at least on a basic, intrinsic level of humanity.  We can - and should - "love" people without even having an organic affection for them.  

Instead, it's become vogue in America to be proud of what - and who - we hate.  Which could be a key for why we're so unhappy, suspicious, resentful, and anxious as a society.

It would explain why there is so much animosity in our culture.  We've become so self-centered - a manifestation of love for self that trumps our concern for others - that we convince ourselves our comfort and identity aren't just equal to everybody else's, but MORE important, MORE valuable, and MORE valid.

And why schools, specifically?  Maybe because schools are the one place where nearly all of us first experienced a lack of love and a profusion of selfishness from others.  Schools are where most of us can first remember being wounded emotionally, at least by people who weren't family.  Schools also symbolize socialization, inculturation, and "normalization" - three things our selfish souls likely reject, at least subconsciously.

Somewhere along the way, we've gone from at least paying lip service to what used to be cultural norms to openly defying them - making our defiance of old norms the new cultural norm.  And this is being done even by the culture that used to be dominant, the old White conservatives.  It could be what's fueling the MAGA crowd, as well as the wokesters, even though they each view themselves as opposites.  It's what trans activists believe gives their cause legitimacy, especially as heteros tend to take a mocking tone towards them.  It's a lack of respect for other people, a lack of consideration, and an indifference to how different people process their view of reality.

Oddly enough, while some folks complain that they don't have enough freedom in our country, the very ways they voice their presumed oppression flies in the face of those complaints.  Try advocating for any anti-majority view in China, or Russia, or India, or many African countries, for example.  Here in America, we have all gotten so SPOILED by our freedoms that we can't even see them.  And that goes not just for the folks who think they're being marginalized, but also for the MAGA folks who think freedoms are being taken away from them.

Freedoms aren't exactly "disappearing" in America, but change is happening.  And what's changing is the way we're choosing to interact with others.  

Social media probably plays a huge role in all of this.  There are no more gatekeepers guarding (or guiding, or manipulating) our public discourse.  Anybody with a smartphone can say whatever they want, however they want, to ever-broadening audiences.  We like to think that's "free speech", but in reality, it's just cheap speech.  Wise people know we aren't "free" to say whatever we want however we want.  But our pop culture does not value wisdom, it values charisma.  And especially charisma that affirms the self.

Okay.  We still don't know specifics about why yesterday's school shooter did what they did - and no, I'm not being hateful by not referring to them by their "preferred pronoun" (I will concede* to using conciliatory pluralism to acknowledge the person's confusion).  However, I believe it is safe to say that the shooter viewed themself as more important than the people they killed.  That's basically what any murder is.  It's why extreme self-centeredness is considered a mental problem, and why murder is a huge crime in virtually every civilized culture.  We can disagree amongst ourselves all day long, but a responsible human being disagrees respectfully, patiently, and constructively.  We can't simply act as though our life is worth more than another person's.

That's a fact.

Some of us, by our personality, will happily accept that fact.  Most of us will at least begrudgingly accept that fact because we're taught it, or we've become convinced that it's the best way to survive this life we're living.  It's the folks who don't accept it who are the problem folks.

And some of them are the ones who end up making the headlines.

Maybe the rest of us should work harder, day in and day out, at modeling civility ourselves.  Maybe more of us need to show that while it's not easy, it's in all of our best interests.  

It will require some self-denial on our part, but then again, little worthwhile in life is very easy, or cheap, or free.

Seven more families in Tennessee now know the cost.

_____

* Within the zeitgeist of trans-sexualism, part of being respectful involves, I think, a certain level of angst acknowledgment.  Briefly put, I'm more interested in conveying a broader truth about what sexuality is, instead of dogmatically insisting on pronoun purity that tends to obscure the overall point.  So I'm OK with allowing a catch-all they/them instead of a specific gender pronoun in these cases. 

Friday, February 17, 2023

Fox Used Trump to Out-Fox Viewers?

OLI Snippets

(from my short posts on social media)

_________________________
 

Can we finally admit that extremists on both sides of our political spectrum are playing the voting public as pawns?

Newly-released evidence in a key lawsuit about Trumpist conspiracy theories appears to paint several popular Fox News personalities as duplicitous hacks, parroting one theme to egg on viewers while personally believing something completely different.

As shameful as that may be, what's more disconcerting is how willingly people who aren't supposed to put their hope and faith in governments have sold themselves out to partisan political gurus - ON BOTH SIDES of the political aisle, but in this case, the far-right side.  On the left, we have Christians embracing hateful wokeism in order to present their own version of sanctimony within their sphere of influence.

Meanwhile, folks like me who've worked very hard to hold on to the rational, beneficent, respectful middle ground, are hoping that the turmoil rocking our country will be enough to remind all of us that none of us are in control, and that truth isn't necessarily what we want it to be. As I see it, that's not New Age pantheism, that's age-old Biblical reality.

Or if you don't want to accept that, at least you need to consider the ecumenical Golden Rule.

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Prudish Cops Don't Score Big By Sex Trap

 
Here it is, blazing atop most of our local north Texas news websites this afternoon:

"Lewisville coach, youth pastor among 46 arrested in prostitution sting"

On the one hand, this makes for the type of salacious headline that scores easy money for our media machine. 

Nevertheless, while I do not endorse prostitution, I'm not really big on arresting people who seek it.  We all can mostly agree that there are morality issues here.  However, people looking to buy sex, and people using their bodies for paid sex, aren't necessarily an imminent threat to our society.  

This is mostly making criminals out of people who used the Internet to do something most men don't have the guts to do, but about which they fantasize. 

I'm not excusing extramarital sex, or the botched pursuit of it.  I simply don't see a direct connection here between prostitution and "human trafficking" - that big politically-correct catch-phrase that I thought relates to holding victims against their will, and forcing them to participate in an economic activity for which they are not fairly compensated.  What do I mean?  Well, when these men responded to the fake advertisement, were they led to believe the woman they were meeting was being forced to do this against her will?   Because if that's so, it would be really bad.  However, were they merely led to believe this would be mutually beneficial - meaning the woman would keep the financial part of the transaction?  There are moral problems with that, but it's hardly worth having cops set a trap.

Don't misunderstand me:  For cops to try and shut down known brothels is one thing.  For cops to try and thwart actual captors of human beings who force them into sexual servitude also is good.  However, to just advertise prostitution online and then arrest whomever shows up mostly serves as justification for prudish law enforcement to make fun of libidinous men.

In this article, one of the cops said these guys are "the scourge of the earth", but isn't he talking about the people who force women into this activity?  Men who are just looking to pay for sex may be creating a market for prostitutes, but they're not forcing women into prostitution.

Besides, how does this particular trap work against trafficking?  No information on actual sex traffickers is gleaned from it, no sex trafficking ring is broken (because it didn't exist in the first place), and no women are rescued.

Now, for this to have been a virtuous exercise, what should have happened is for the cops not to arrest the guys who showed up, but to give them the business card of a professional marriage counselor or something like that.  As it is, it's far enough outside the scope of human trafficking, it's hollow sanctimonious posturing for cops to presume they're helping to solve the problem.

_____