Fairness

When I was pretty young, maybe around that nebulous area from 3rd to 5th grade, my old church had a talent contest. No categories, no rules except, of course, for basic decency... any child who wanted to show up was welcome to come up on stage and do something for the crowd. Prizes were given out. They were pretty dinky prizes, of course, but I wanted one badly.

I was a piano player, and a good one, too. I selected a challenging piece that I loved, something beautiful, and I learned it by heart. I played it over and over. I worked through the rough spots over and over. I mastered that piece and learned to play it with emphasis.

There was another girl in my neighborhood who also played piano. She was a born genius. She was incredibly gifted. She taught herself how to play from a very young age. When she entered the competition, I knew one of the prizes would be hers. On the day of the competition, she played a song that she had written herself.

At my turn, I sat up there feeling nervous as anything, but I made a good start and carried it through brilliantly. I didn't miss a single note. I remembered my emphasis. I picked a darn good song and I played it well. I left the bench knowing that I had done as well as I could have hoped for. As I heard the others, mostly singers, do their piece one by one, I knew I had done well enough for a coveted prize. Most of the singers flubbed their parts. Few were on tune. Some simply got stage fright and refused to perform at all.

Then the prizes were given out. My neighbor got one, of course. The other five or six prizes were handed out among the singers, several of whom had made huge mistakes in their parts. After the show, I asked, politely and curiously, why my piece had not been good enough to merit a prize. I was not being rude or demanding. I was confounded, and I was seeking understanding.

"Oh, you were definitely good enough! But we got together and decided that since there were only two piano players, it wasn't fair to give both of them prizes. There were a lot more singers, so we gave the rest of the prizes among them. It was only fair."

This was my first experience with the term "fair" as it is now used in political discussion, and I learned a great deal. I learned that everything I was taught in inspirational movies and stories did not count. I learned that it didn't matter how much I dreamed, how long I practiced, how hard I tried, or how well I did. A society built on "fairness" could simply decide to deny me anything I earned for relatively arbitrary reasons.

Now I could look back at those cheap silly prizes - my neighbor got a simple curly drinking straw - and laugh that it ever meant so much to me. Truthfully, it didn't matter if the prize was a piece of paper, or simply a verbal "well done". From that day on, I never, ever regarded the argument "it's only fair" with anything but hostile suspicion. And to this day, the easiest way to turn me off to a proposed law or regulation is to use the phrase...

"It's only fair."

Bathrooms and Locker Rooms

I have a new thought on the "bathroom bill" making its way across various American cities in recent years.

For those of you not in the know, the "bathroom bill" involves any variant on this theme: permitting 'transgendered' people to use whichever gendered bathroom with which they identify. The opponents are concerned that, since public areas (unlike workplaces) won't be able to keep track of their customers, any person (usually male in the example) can decide that he's going to pretend to be female that day just to get into the ladies' room.

Proponents argue that a man who wants to rape a woman is unlikely to do it in the ladies' room where they can be easily discovered and multiple women might overwhelm him. But, frankly, he doesn't have to rape her to do her harm. Men have been caught hiding cell phones in a bathroom to record women undressing and then selling the video to pornography sites. (Are you a porn actress? Are you *sure* you're not?) There is also a growing problem in society in which a strange man gets hold of some partial-undressed picture that a teen girl carelessly left on an unlocked profile and using it as blackmail to make her send him nude pictures and pictures of her engaging in sex acts. If a man can go right into a ladies' room for no other reason than that he claims to be female today, such material will be much more accessible.

But that's all beside my actual point. None of those thoughts are all that new. This is the new thought:

Proponents claim that life is hard for a male-to-female transgendered person, being not safe to use the men's room and not allowed to use the women's room. They fear that angry and disgusted men will attack them in the relative privacy of the men's room. For them, I have this question:

If the "bathroom bill" is in effect in a given locality, what's to prevent those angry and disgusted men from following you into the ladies' room?

What a mess.

Obamacare and the Flu Season

In my state, Influenza is now supposedly "Widespread". The number of reported cases approach a tenth of a percent of the general population in some areas. The news media, however, apparently does not find this to be terribly newsworthy. Their stories are focusing in another area; the effect of influenza on hospital admissions.

WFSB News, located in Hartford, says that ten percent of emergency room visits are from people with influenza symptoms. In the previous two seasons, the percentage never topped eight. Over nine percent of hospital visits are from patients with pneumonia. This percentage usually does not top six percent. Of course, WFSB is a CBS station and, as such, is part of the mainstream media. Therefore, these high percentages are attributed to a seriously terrible pandemic, something on the order of the Black Plague, perhaps. I see a different story, untold.

Democrats are not focusing much on the CBO report estimating that tens of millions of people will lose their health insurance under Obamacare. This statistic, however, hit my family and a few others whom we know personally. Our insurance premium doubled for Year 2013 to 12% of our income. Unable to afford the expenditure, we had to switch to an Obamacare-friendly catastrophic plan. (Long story. Needless to say, if we want a doctor's office appointment, we have to pay the entire thing ourselves.)

Now, I have needed medical help once for influenza, and other members of my family have had pneumonia problems several times over the years. We did not once go to the hospital. Who needs to? The doctor's office can diagnose and lay out a treatment plan with no problem at all. So who goes to the emergency room for something that can be treated at the doctor's office?

People who cannot afford healthcare.

We already know that healthcare spending is on the decline, yet the cost of actual healthcare has not waned. This piece of information fits into the same puzzle. Obamacare was supposed to lower healthcare spending. Now we know how.

Extremism

Beware extremism in all its forms!

The extreme opposite opinion of "Outlaw guns in schools" is *not* "Permit teachers to be armed". The extreme opposite is "Force all teachers to be armed".

The extreme opposite of an alcoholic is a teetotaler, not someone who has half a glass in an entire week and puts a little sherry in the stew.

The extreme opposite of nationalism is anti-nationalism, as was seen by a teacher in South Carolina who stomped on the American flag and told his students that it meant nothing.

The extreme opposite of racism against blacks is affirmative action, not equal access for all.

Why should we beware the extreme opposite in all forms? Because the extreme opposites are, in their way, *identical* problems. The person who throws acid at women for wearing skirts above the ankle is just as consumed by lust as the one who gives women free drinks for exposing their bodies. The person who rages at his child for not being good at sports is not different from the person who rages at his child for not being good at music.

Why am I saying this? Well, it seems that, nowadays, the conservative viewpoint is being described as the "opposite extremist" from liberalism. This is most certainly not true. Increasingly, the conservative viewpoint is the one demonstrating moderation, and the exact opposite from liberalism is not being expressed at all.

Here's another example. The extremist on one side says that gays should have their relationships labeled and honored by the government and society as 'marriage', and woe to those who disagree however politely. However, they claim that the extremist on the other side is the one who simply allows the gays to live their lives in peace. The real extremist view is one that few, if any, Americans would tolerate... that of putting those who engage in homosexual behavior in prison or to death. And so people are called extremist because they do not think that a man and a man engage in the exact same kind of relationship as a man and a woman.

The budget is another matter. Those who want to streamline programs, cut spending, and run fewer services more efficiently are being labeled as extremists, with the exact opposing viewpoint being one of more power, larger programs, higher taxes, and more debt. No, the exact opposing viewpoint from Obama's is that of libertarianism, which believes that even the police department should be privatized.

Beware extremism in all its forms! Beware doubly, in this day and age, labeling the moderate and reasonable viewpoint as the extreme opposite of the only other viewpoint offered!