This past weekend, I watched a short segment on CBS about a young trumpet player from Afghanistan who now attends music school in the United States, thanks to the efforts of a professional symphonic trumpet player who mentored him and spurred fundraising efforts that allowed the young man to get to the U.S. What amazed me was that, according to the story, and to the young man, playing trumpet in Afghanistan is viewed as anti-religious and that even carrying the trumpet openly would have been dangerous to his life.

Now, for decades there have been news stories and reports about how various religious leaders, largely fundamentalist Islamic types, decry and frown upon the licentiousness of Western popular music, and frankly, some Western popular music is licentious, but how is wanting to be a symphonic trumpet player anti-religious?

All this raises in my mind the issue about how many “fundamentalist” or evangelical religions approach the arts. Some Christian denominations decry dancing, and one popular evangelical Southern Baptist preacher, years ago, declared that “a dancing foot and a praying knee don’t grow on the same leg.” Certainly, most of the books that have been banned or found objectionable have been singled out for “religious” reasons. Certainly, within the “Christian” world, at times, certain paintings and sculptures, if not entire schools of art, have been found objectionable.

Yet I have to ask why any religion should want and be able to forbid activities that are not physically dangerous? Dancing certainly doesn’t disrespect a deity, and is actually considered worship in some faiths, nor does playing a trumpet or any other instrument convey theological disrespect. Bad dancing and bad playing are certainly painful to eyes and ears, but why should any deity even care?

That fact is that religious doctrines reflect an attempt to unify believers in a common doctrine while gaining power for the leaders of that doctrine. And for some religions, free expression, particularly in the arts, is considered as a threat to either the doctrine or that power, if not both. And that’s not only a shame, but a good reason to question a faith that insists on such prohibitions.

Lots of people have hidden agendas, and baser feelings that they wouldn’t like known, especially attached to their names… and elections and politics have a way of bringing them out, sometimes openly, and sometimes anonymously.

Immigration is one of those issues. While Donald Trump and many of his supporters have expressed violent anti-immigrant statements and proposed punitive and often impractical if not impossible anti-immigrant proposals, this isn’t a new phenomenon in the United States.

The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 restricted the rights of immigrants. Then, in the early 1850s, immigration to the United States quintupled, an increase fueled by poor Irish and German peasants, the majority of whom were Catholic, and urban crime increased dramatically. The high crime rate and the rising fear that the increasing number of Catholics would turn the U.S. into a “Papist” nation controlled by the Pope inspired the creation of the American Party, whose members were also called “Know Nothings,” and who espoused an anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant political philosophy, while paradoxically also opposing slavery. In the Congressional elections of 1854, the American Party actually won 22% of the seats in the U.S. House, and captured the legislature in Massachusetts, but failed to gain further ground and largely faded away after the election of 1860. Later movements opposing immigration were the Immigration Restriction League of the early 20th Century and the anti-Asian movements in the American west, which resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act and an agreement with Japan to restrict Japanese immigrants. The 1920s saw the imposition of immigration quotas and other restrictions, many of which remain in effect.

All of this ignores, of course, the basic fact that every single individual living in the United States is either an immigrant or the descendent of immigrants. Does this mean that only “our” ancestors were the worthy immigrants? The virulent anti-immigrant agenda not only denies our heritage, but also implies an unfounded elitism, yet generation after generation, it persists, and often some of those of the present generation who are most violent in their attacks on immigrants are the very ones whose ancestors were denigrated.

Another issue is that of women’s rights and gender equality, not so much a hidden issue, but one where the Trump campaign is appealing to another set of prejudices that many people don’t want to acknowledge. Although Abigail Adams wrote her husband in 1776, begging him “not to forget the ladies” and not to put unlimited power in hands of their husbands, women didn’t receive the right to vote until a hundred and forty-four years after her letter. Even today, the fight for gender-equal pay and rights continues, and not just in the Presidential campaign, but even on the local levels, as in supposedly progressive Seattle, where earlier this year, a highly sexist and vicious barrage of letters and emails bombarded the five female members of the Seattle City Council who voted against selling a city street to make way for a new sports arena, and outvoted the four male members of the council. The comments ranged from suggesting that all five women commit suicide in highly graphic ways to brutal comments on their appearance, the sort of personal comments that are seldom if ever applied to male politicians. These sorts of comments have become even more common this year, possibly as a result of the misogynistic comments of Trump himself, and just indicate, again, the fact that more than a few men do not want women exerting power, let alone having equal pay and rights. Trump’s rhetoric, the bumper stickers proclaiming “Trump the Bitch,” as well as even more obscene and graphic pins and stickers, polling data, and the clearly sexist (and successful) appeal to “traditional” male supremacy make it clear that Trump is making an appeal to the sexist male, and I find that approach offensive. Obviously, a lot of Trump supporters don’t.

That’s certainly not to say that all men who oppose Hillary Clinton are sexist, but I’d wager that a high percentage are. I’d also bet that some of those are unconsciously sexist, who will protest to their dying day that they’re not, that they’d vote for the “right woman” in an instant, except for them no woman will ever be the “right woman” … because they still believe, deep inside and hidden from scrutiny or self-examination, that politics, business, and government should be a man’s world.

And the funny thing about all this is that it still is and has been largely a man’s world, even in the U.S., and pretty much all of the problems have been caused by men. So… why are so many men, and even quite a few women, so convinced that a man, particularly one like Trump, can do so much better than a woman, especially when his personal record suggests otherwise, and when so much of his appeal is based on anger and issues unworthy of the country we’re supposed to be?

Last week Bloomberg Businessweek published an article on how the lack of new helicopters and inadequate resources for maintenance of aging helicopters, in particular the Sikorski H-53E, were killing Navy helicopter pilots. The story saddened, but didn’t surprise me, since some 45 years ago, when I was a young Navy helicopter pilot, the Navy faced the same problems, except, if the Bloomberg report is correct, the problems may well be worse now than they were back then.

The H-53E entered service in 1981, and production ended by 1990, meaning that the oldest H-53Es are older than many of the pilots flying them. Because of the usefulness of helicopters depends in large part on their operation under conditions that create the most stress and strain on the airframe, including high levels of vibration, helicopters require continuing and extensive maintenance, but maintenance was slighted in all too many instances because of funding shortages created by Congressional budget caps and sequestrations. Then after several disasters in 2014, the Navy and Marines scraped up more maintenance funds in an effort to keep the H-53Es flying safely. But even with good maintenance, helicopters wear out quickly. The Navy was well aware of this and had planned to replace the H-53E initially by 2005, but had difficulty getting funding for the H-53K, so that the first H-53Ks will not be delivered until 2018, at the earliest.

Today, according to Bloomberg, Navy statistics show that there have been at least 19 non-combat disasters with the H-53E involving loss of life or damages in the multi-million dollar range, and the H-53E’s rate of major failures is three times the naval aviation average. And it’s likely that all the H-53Es cannot be replaced until 2029, at which time the “newest” H-53Es will be almost 40 years old.

This is just another example of something I see everywhere. Everyone wants the new aircraft, the new highway, the new bridge, the new building, the new stadium…and almost no one thinks of or budgets for the maintenance of these “new things” once they appear. In the case of the military aircraft, the failure of maintenance often results in spectacular crashes and pilots and crews dying… and in weeks those are forgotten, especially by the time the appropriations bills come up. But the Congress and the military aren’t the only example. Here in town, some fifteen years ago, the town built a badly needed civic theatre with function rooms that could handle very small conventions as well. The town has grown by almost 30% in that time, and theatre is booked close to year around… and, guess what, the theatre needs maintenance and replacement equipment – and the city council has never budgeted for it.

The United States has a highway and bridge infrastructure funding gap; the national parks system needs billions of dollars of repairs; and the list of maintenance and replacement projects in all areas is getting endless… and at all levels politicians can only insist on lower taxes, regardless of the costs in lives and national productivity, and each year the amount of deferred maintenance increases.

Of course, when someone is killed, then a multi-million dollar lawsuit is filed, but that money doesn’t bring back the dead or keep the next death from occurring. So, by all means, vote for lower taxes and convince yourself that you’re being fiscally responsible… and, by the way, supportive of the military pilots who fly the the H-53E and the crews and troops they carry.

A number of times in past blogs, I’ve often pointed out that one of the problems with politics in the United States today is political polarization and either the unwillingness or the inability of the two major political parties in Congress to compromise in order to accomplish constructive ends.

A recent article dealing with game theory and radical religious extremists, especially Islamic extremists, gave me definite pause for thought, because the author pointed out that compromise is impossible between a secular government and any group whose defined goal is destruction, whether that destruction is aimed at a concrete object, a society, a country, a government, or a way of life, because total destruction is an absolute with which there can be no compromise and those pursuing that goal will give their lives before accepting any compromise.

The same problem arises even in democratic or republican forms of government when any individual or group insists on an uncompromising “absolute.” This has been demonstrated recently in U.S. domestic politics. For a fundamentalist believer in the “right-to-life” of every fetus, regardless of the cost to the mother, including her life, or to society, or even to a non-viable fetus, there is no compromise. For someone whose faith requires male supremacy, the compromise of equal rights can never be acceptable. For those who believe in the only form of marriage that should be recognized by government as that between one man and one woman, no compromise is acceptable. For those who believe that the only laws are those of one particular faith, no compromise with secular authority, or even another faith, is possible.

Absolutes in religious faith of whatever nature, and in some “secular faiths,” are usually not amenable to compromise, and so-called “compromises” are merely pauses while the absolutists attempt to make further “progress” toward their absolute goal.

While the Founding Fathers, so far as I’m aware, didn’t state that they wanted to avoid religious absolutes specifically, they certainly were aware of the problem, which was why they stated in Article Six of the Constitution that no religious test shall ever be required for public office or public trust and why the first amendment to the Constitution declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

But the problem today is that various groups are pursuing not only religious absolutes, but also secular absolutes, as exemplified by the religious-like fervor over “gun rights,” where the extremists on one side insist on the absolute right to bear any kind of arms in any kind of situation and those on the other side insist that guns have no place at all in a civilized society. Each side demonizes the other’s attempts to come up with a solution to the 13,000 or so annual deaths from firearms, because each believes that the other will not stop until they reach an absolute position.

Absolutism has never worked, and it likely never will, but that doesn’t seem to stop those who believe in absolutes. The problem with that, especially with religion-based terrorists, is that, short of destroying such absolutists, and, in effect becoming another kind of absolutist, there’s no middle ground. In politics in the U.S., however, there should be room for a middle ground. Certainly, the Founding Fathers thought so, but perhaps Franklin was thinking about the tendency toward absolutism when he said that they had created “A republic, if you can keep it.”

…and most of the fuel for the political phenomenon and conflagration that is Donald Trump. And it all goes back to ratings.

Let me explain. Quite a number of books and articles by reputed scholars and others that point out – despite the troubles in the U.S. and elsewhere – that we still live in the most prosperous time in human history, with the longest average life-spans and best health, and a far lower percentage of people living in extreme poverty or dying from violent causes. That doesn’t mean life is perfect, only that for most people, it’s a whole lot better than at any other time in human history. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence, despite the statistics, a majority of Americans feel that things are getting worse.

While there’s no doubt that this is true for some people, the fact is that in any dynamic society, things are getting better for some people and worse for others, and in the last decade, middle class earnings haven’t increased, or depending on the definition of middle-class, have actually declined a few percentage points, which is significant if it’s your income. But… compared to a generation ago, things are a lot better. And the vast majority of people suffer less from infectious diseases and from sicknesses caused by environmental factors.

Yet there are huge segments of the population who talk and act as if the United States is on the verge of collapse, despite having the largest economy in the world, the most powerful military force the world has ever known, and a high-tech industrial base that no one else can match.

Why?

Because every news program, as well as social media, is permeated with problems and disasters, tales of violence and killings, disaster after disaster – and this has become even more prevalent in the last fifteen to twenty years. And this media-blitz does nothing to put this in perspective. Yes, we have terrorist attacks, but so far this year the total casualties in the U.S. are in the low hundreds, if even that high. We kill over 40,000 people on the highways in a single year, and there’s pressure in many states – as in my own state of Utah – to increase the maximum speed limit. Our freedom to “bear arms” results in over 300 million firearms and over 13,000 deaths a year… and we oppose any further gun controls – but the country is going to hell in a handbasket because a handful or two of Islamic or other terrorists kill a few hundred people?

Modern media technology can tell us of bombings and natural disasters anywhere in the world in minutes, when in the past, people didn’t find out for weeks, or even years, if they ever did at all. This contrast makes the past seem so much safer than the present, when in fact, the opposite is true.

Unhappily, this decades-long media diet of gore, violence, and disaster has created a public belief in how bad things are – and Donald Trump has used this to great advantage in stirring up fear, distrust, and anger. What’s most amazing to me is that the fact-checking outfit Politifact has stated that 70% of Trump’s statements are either mostly false, false, or blatantly outrageously false, yet most Americans don’t see matters that way. By comparison, only 28% of Hillary Clinton’s statements fall into the mostly false, false, or blatantly outrageously false category, yet most people think the two are in the same general range of untrustworthiness. And that, I submit, is because of the media slant on the news in general, that is, “bad is good, terrible is better, and the worse it is, the better for our ratings.”

And, one way or another, we’re all going to pay the price for the media’s gorging on disaster and despair in order to fatten their bottom line, not that my observations, or all those of the scholars who’ve studied the matter in far greater depth than the media or Donald Trump, will persuade many people after decades of commercial brain-washing.