People in our culture are trained to believe a test can detect any problem and a pill can fix it. The pharmaceutical industry makes certain that we get the message that pills, not prevention or caring for our health, is what normal people do when they do not feel good or get sick.

I wonder how many of the doctor’s mosquito bitten minor ailment-reporting patients have had the luxury of life-long open access to a nurse practitioner or family doc. I doubt many. Where do people without a healthcare provider learn about their bodies and how to take care of them?

Healthcare is as much an approach to living well as it is treating disease. Commercials, medical drama shows on television, and watching everybody they know take pills, smoke cigarettes or marijuana, drink, or otherwise ingest something to feel better. And when they get confused about a bump that itches, and whether or not it is cancer like that person got on some show they saw, who are they going to ask?

People with no money and no doctor go to the only place that cannot turn them away — the emergency department of the local hospital. Why do you suppose some patients are rude and demanding? Because they are spoiled selfish little brats? No, they are obnoxious because they learned a long time ago being pushy is the way to get service at a place that, were they polite, they would not be seen.

Entitlement the doctor speaks about is not what people feel when they visit his department looking for some professional insight into their bodies so much as the entitlement that those of us lucky to have access to healthcare seem to have when somebody mentions universal health care. “Oh, no, watch out for encroaching socialism!”

No wonder some emergency patients are rude. Too many of us with jobs and healthcare are so far removed from what life is like to go without healthcare that we are unable to imagine it.

The doctor might be ready for a vacation. He probably means well and does his best to hide his bitterness when these frequent flyer patients return with another stupid demand. Yet I would bet a paycheck these cretin patients of his detect his scorn and react accordingly.

This is not about bad attitude. This is about bad situation. If the doctor would step back a bit he might envision how universal health care can virtually eliminate such emergency department visits that drive him to apathy.

Remember. Attitude is almost never expressed in a vacuum. Attitude is determined by the person’s subconscious awareness and assessment of the situation – most of which happens without our knowledge.

Let’s think more about the situation in our culture. Attitudes will improve as a result.

Gay Closet from Tim Moore on Vimeo.

The only time I sag my jeans is when I try to fix the plumbing around my house. My sagging isn’t intentional – it just happens. Sagging – you know, the intentional art of wearing ones pants lower than ones boxers and prone to exposure of one’s crena analis when bending forward at the waist by more than 10 degrees. Plumber’s crack isn’t a pretty view as I am sure our Sunday evening dinner guest can attest if they saw mine when I worked on a clogged a kitchen drain before dinner.

I might have been arrested had I lived in another Michigan town whose new police chief is on a mission to end sagging in his town. Or maybe he just responds to kid crack since the town’s kids are the object of his crackdown. Frankly I am a bit surprised today’s youth haven’t moved on to something else to express their rage at their situation. Wasn’t sagging started by people who now have grandchildren? Even so some kids in this particular Michigan town sag and the chief thinks it is a crime.

Chief David Dicks is putting an end to the fashion. The city counsel likes Dicks and supports the hard line Dicks is thrusting at juvenile crack. You see at the bottom of this particular city’s problem is image. The city counsel is aroused and taking action.

The city is Flint Michigan. Flint, in case you were really busy or not here yet in 1989, scored some national attention when Michael Moore released his first big documentary “Roger and Me.” In his film Flint native Michael Moore obnoxiously pesters a guy named Roger, the head of General Motors, for leaving Flint barefoot and pregnant by skipping town and closing the car factory. General Motors essentially screwed Flint and left her without so much as a kiss. Now the kids are getting big, strong, and unruly. And you know what else? They sag. That’s right. The kids lower their drawers in protest of their rich life.

Key to understanding this situation is blame. Flint knows about blame. Blame Roger. Blame the big business. Blame General Motors. Blame the politicians. Blame the state. Blame the neighbors. Blame the economy. Blame the bank. Blame the music. Blame the media. So, naturally a town that knows blame attributes at least some of its unpopularity to the way the kids dress. If only the little thugs would cover their asses everybody can get back to eating happy meals and visiting the Big Mart without the godless trouser-slippage keeping Roger from bringing back the factory.

It reminds me of a single mom who works two jobs so she can keep food on the table for her teen kids whose father abandoned them to start a family in a better town with some hot babe barely old enough to buy booze. When the kids talk to him once a year around Christmas he promises to buy them stuff or maybe take them on his new boat. But, he never does. One day the kids forget to do their chores. Mom gets pissed and takes away their Nike’s for a week. Having nothing to wear to school they skip classes. Again. See the lesson here?

Flint hasn’t learned to live without big Roger. Recently the State of Michigan, acting like a foster parent, for a while took over city management. Its African American mayor was a few years ago recalled in an atmosphere of relentless racial bickering. From a safe distance way up here in the Upper Peninsula I view the leaders of Flint, perhaps unfairly, as keeping a town from discovering its potential. Visitors and potential businesses are skittish about going on a date with Flint, much less moving in with her. She seems so stressed and her kids don’t behave, but she is a cheap date so they keep in touch.

What the Flint City Counsel does is use a lot of makeup. The counsel also does what we all do too frequently. Attribute too much to attitude of a person or group and ignore the situation – the context – where that person or group exists. The Flint Counsel thinks their image problem is their kids’ attitudes but fail to understand that these kids are growing up in a home town without pride for two decades. Who wouldn’t grow up with an attitude in that situation? So we want to dumb down the youth commentary about it?

Instead of building on its people’s strengths, this town’s leadership turns on its young people for expressing themselves. Sagging teens now get to look forward to a year in jail if they don’t keep their pants hiked up like the righteous grown-ups. That’s right. Up to a year in jail or a $500 fine for being caught wearing pants like the town’s favorite son Michael Moore might if he were to fix his own plumbing. (Sorry for the visual there, bare with me.)

Flint throws bliss by proxy – happy meals and discount deals – to their colorful kids and what does it get for their generosity? They get an eyeful of thug sulcus. Sagging economies aside, Flint thinks making progress is about covering up. As soon as the least of Flint’s population – you know, the ones with the attitude problem – are tossed to jail one at a time to join the child molesters, the murderers, the thieves, and the rapists Flint will be safe for you to move in with your family and open a business.

If you do decide to move to Flint be sure to bring the white paint because this town has fences. But remember one thing Flint leadership cannot stand is the sight of independence so forget about moving in if you like to fix your own plumbing. They don’t want to see that kind of attitude.

“[Reverend] Wright’s offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently (than John Hagee, Pat Robertson and Billy Graham). He doesn’t fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone’s neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettles some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. We are often exposed to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I’ve never seen anything like this — this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner — before our very eyes. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said “beware the terrible simplifiers.”

Bill Moyers

See the rest of the 6.5 minute piece below.

It is no secret I am supporting Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for President. But, I want to clearly state my appreciation for Hillary Clinton. I have no doubt that any candidate will have a very tough time. The challenges a President faces continue to expand. I am confident Hillary Clinton is ready and fully capable of doing a fine job as President.

But, there is more at steak than choosing a President. This country is badly fractured by ideology and crippled by fear. Nobody expected a candidate could embrace the entire country and change the conversation to one of empowering each of us to become what we can if we learn to build each other up rather than tear each other down. We have a candidate in Barack Obama that is special. He moves people who would not be moved. He has a gift of connecting and exciting people like no other candidate for President in my memory has had. People are excited about themselves, not against a target.

A good test of attitude is whether it pushes us away from something. If so, it is fear based. Most fear is irrational.

Fear is the challenge we all face in this election. We humans are prepared to do anything and think anything if we are afraid enough. Fear of losing the chance of having our first woman President. Fear of assassination. Fear of tax and spend foolishness. Fear of a black family in the White House. I ask anyone with hostility against a candidate to dig real deep into their attitude and come up with the source of repulsion. I suggest the source is fear, and not rationality.

Fear will destroy America if we keep riding our hostile attitudes to the polls.

Please watch the candidates. If you notice yourself making a sarcastic remark, dismissive statement, or feeling mistrust about this or any candidate I challenge you to diligently face the fear fueling it. Get to know your fear very well and decide if it is based on fact or based on reaction before you vote. I will continue to try to do the same. Good luck to us all as we choose the candidate we think will help us heal and excite us to be our best.

Perhaps experiencing these existential dilemmas at a young age helped me develop tolerance for multiple outcomes. Struggles viewed in this way are not catastrophes, bad luck, fate, or events of anguish. They are dilemmas of choice. And how we struggle with these dilemmas reveals who we are deep inside. So as I learned to make choices in little dilemmas instead of launching into hysterics or shriveling into self-pity. In essence I developed a belief about my world that everything works out and helps fuel my attitude as I move along.

Did you notice the “attitude” word? May I offer a definition? Attitude is not a smile or a snarl. Attitude is how we automatically respond to situations based upon millions of tiny little realities we have over time constructed for ourselves. How someone wrestles with little dilemmas tells us more about who and what they are than any psychological test or “facts” you might think you “know” about them. Such facts tend to be items that fit into our own constructs of reality and are generally a poor way to size up a person.

Dilemma triggers attitude. Core beliefs fuel attitude. Despite our desire to think we’re in control of all this we usually just go along for the ride.

Political seasons are a smorgasboard of human attitude. I have a taste for political seasons. As I watch the candidates I look at their style of speech, body language, defense mechanisms and, of course, how they struggle. Yes, I am interested in their policy positions, but I have yet to find a candidate whose policy positions are exactly mine. So instead I focus on their attitude. Is their attitude consistent with their stated positions? If so, is their attitude toward the people and constitution of this country one of respect?

Now I face a dilemma. This January 15th I will be served a plate of Brussels sprouts. I get to decide between voting for a candidate with an attitude I distrust whose name is on the ballot or vote “undecided.” Should I vote for “undecided” on the chance enough voters in Michigan will do the same with the hope that, in such a case, the delegates will vote for my choice of candidate whose name is missing?

Is this a catastrophe? Should I become hysterical and rant and rave at the Michigan party leaders for making this silliness happen? Should I fire off angry letters to the Edwards and Obama campaigns? Should I stay home and give up on the political process? Should I weigh the cost/benefit and focus on the benefits of making a choice? Based upon what you know about my own attitude, what do you think I’ll do? What would you do?

Photo credit: MassDistraction