John Kerry, Secretary of Ambiguity.

I like John Kerry as Secretary of State. His ambiguity over Viet Nam marked his character. He wanted to serve his country and yet, when he did, he found it was senseless. He fought and earned his medals, then threw them away. He could not resolve his inner conflict on the war. With far less effort, other people formed positions pro and con, but they did not find the truth.

The War in Viet Nam was maddening. You were damned if you fought it, and you were damned if you ducked the draft and stayed home. If you were a young man in those years, you were bound to lose. There was no path to honor. John McCain may have believed in the mission, but no one else did.

John Kerry, from his privileged family, could have avoided military service quite easily, but he joined up and saw what he saw, and came home conflicted. As such, he is a man after my own heart, and he might finish his career well by this last good service to his country as a diplomat.

Women in Combat. One things leads to another -- this is the law of social dynamics. Acceptance of same-sex marriage has led to the admission of women in combat. The broader trend is the battle against gender distinctions. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is not at issue here, but we ask a related question -- "What happens next?"

Target. Three exclusively male institutions remain in this country, standing as pillars of patriarchy. The Boy Scouts of America are reserved for male leadership and male membership as well as a prohibition of homosexuality. College and NFL football teams are exclusively male. The third and biggest pillar is the Roman Catholic Church with its all-male priesthood and hierarchy.

Prediction. The Boy Scouts of America is the smallest and weakest of these all-male citadels. Sex abuse law-suits will impoverish them. Their prohibition against homosexuality will banish them from most meeting places. They're going down, to put it bluntly, to be resurrected when they decide to invite women and girls to join the troop -- women as Scoutmasters, girls as scouts, and gay men and women as leaders. It will simply become the all-inclusive Scouts of America and go on from there.

As for football, the sheer bulk and muscularity of college and pro players will prevent females from joining the team -- but a campaign of awareness about head injuries will lead to changes and new rules. Hard-hitting will be discouraged. Women will qualify as referees and coaches, if not players, and an 11th player position will be created -- a no-tackle position, suitable for women and even disabled players. Even now, it is conceivable that a woman might qualify as a punter or field goal kicker........But, one way or the other, football is not going to about brawn, muscle, and gladiator combat any longer. They will learn to play nice and the "hits" will become ceremonial and symbolic.

Finally, the gender equality wave will crash against that bastion of faith, the Roman Catholic Church and it's all-male priesthood. This is where feminist leaders will encounter serious resistance. The Church is global in reach and vastly wealthy. Billions of dollars in pedophilia court settlements have not threatened the church's foundation. Traditional forces will rally around the Church and make a last stand. I don't expect a significant change here in my lifetime.

Well, that's the forecast. There's been quite a debate over same-sex marriage, but having gone over that hump, the admission of women in combat seemed the next obvious thing. So, not to discuss the right or wrong of these changes, but to examine the social dynamics -- what happens next? These are my predictions. What do you predict?


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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001




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A Message for Charlie Krafft

A Message for Charlie Krafft

Charlie Krafft is a well-known and well-liked Seattle artist with a penchant for notoriety. Charlie's appearance is courtly and his manners are thoughtful. He can be quite good company at a dinner in Chinatown -- a part of Seattle that he knows very well.

Then of course there is history -- his sojourn in Fishtown back in the misty dawn of hippies days, when he lived his monk-life in a small cabin on the North Fork of the Skagit River.

But the problem with Charlie -- this is a recent development -- and why beat around the bush -- Charlie has become anti-Semitic. He doesn't yell or scream or say he hates Jews. No, not like that, much more quietly. He might say it's research or just following his curiosity to peer into various websites which preach the Holocaust denial and warn of the Zionist conspiracy.

Charlie has over 2,000 friends on Facebook -- a good place for him to promote his art. You can cruise his Facebook page and find links to all kind of websites. Just this morning, I found a link he had posted to a YouTube video about how the Jews had masterminded the opium trade in China at the end of the imperial age.

Why is that so important to Charlie? He wanted to investigate the behavior of Jewish merchants in the previous century who were doing something they shouldn't have been doing -- it being fairly easy to discover Jewish (i.e. human) transgressions against the common good.

But, Charlie, why are you so interested in Jewish behavior?

He has told me in person that he advocates a "genteel anti-Semitism" -- sort of a high-church Anglican snobbery, as if it were a harmless custom.

I don't think it's harmless. I think it's bad and wrong and nasty and a debasement of Charlie's own character.

He should stop doing this.

Here's another one -- Charlie just sent it to me yesterday, headlined "The Jewish Mafia and Their USA Bankers." How does Charlie find the time to do all this research?

This is nasty stuff. There is nothing good in it.

A lot of people know and like Charlie, including myself. We've been saying for years, "Oh Charlie, that's just the way he is." Why did we ever tolerate this?

I'm not in the habit of fixing someone's life, but here I make an exception. I want this to stop.

Charlie, give it up or be gone!


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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

Frida Kahlo.

By chance, I was in New York City in November of 1990 and I
visited the Metropolitan Musuem of Art to see an exhibit of Frida Kahlo's
original paintings. Few people in this country had ever heard of her, but
she made a splash in the world of art and the world of Hispanic culture,
becoming a feminine icon, her image silk-screened on t-shirts and coffee
mugs from Seattle to Tierra del Fuego, to become as over-exposed as she had
once been hidden......There's some politics in all of this, and I will stay
one hundred miles away from that.


Instead, I am composing a work of the imagination on Facebook starring
Frida Kahlo, the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, director John Huston,
Moses, King Solomon, Queen Nefertiti, Pope Pius XII, Modjadji -- the Rain
Queen of South Africa, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. And others. I am
thinking I will need a comic character, so that will be Albert Brooks
.

The work is exploratory but it has three unquestionable premises -- that
America is the New World, that Africa is where the human race began, and
that the Matopos Hills in Zimbabwe are the site of King Solomon's Mine.

The work bears a distinct resemblance to my previous effort, the Story of
Jimmy & Hitch, re-titled the Fishtown Blues, which I wrote last summer.
That work placed real and historical people in a fictional setting, with
characters such as pharmacist and former Mayor Fred Martin, plus
quasi-fictional characters such as Aurora Jellybean. The story was tightly
focused on a journey of one day's duration in July, 1982, when Jimmy
Kuipers woke up from a night's drinking and headed into town to buy more
beer at the Frog Hospital. Jimmy hooked up with his pal Hitch and they had
adventures and went out to Fishtown to confront the face of evil and the
death or disappearance of a woman they knew only as Lisa. It was a good
story, and those who have read it asked me to write



--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001