Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Protesting Patriotism

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

The last year has been a show of some form of protest mainly with the NFL players.  First and foremost, everyone has a right to protest.  No matter the cause, gripe, issue, statement or whatever we don’t like, democracy (the oldest) allows us to express our displeasure to the act that we believe that is not defending the equal rights to everyone.  Democracy and freedom of speech go hand in hand, and it’s given to every citizen in the USA.
Going by the NFL players protesting the flag and national anthem, it can be a simple solution for these highly paid players, and overly expensive franchises.  The fans in the stadium and the viewing public pay huge amount of money to support their favorite teams, and in turn the teams pay huge money to players and over the top amount of public funding, tax dollars and support to each of the sports franchises.  Respecting the nation, its national flag and anthem and the fans who support the franchise/s should be a priority for the players and owners of each franchise.  There are many instances where the local teams support many causes and charities in their markets, and participate in good citizenship in their local societies.  Suddenly, these guys (who are overpaid) started to kneel or not show due respect to the national anthem and the national flag as a support to protest.  The problem is whatever they wish to protest can be done without disrespecting the nation, and the audience; who are the citizens that support their hugely inflated paychecks and much bigger egos, which are filled with the money made from the fans.

Hey! Why don’t you spend your inflated pay checks and huge profits in supporting the causes that you feel need support?  Why are you protesting (insulting) the national anthem and flag, and the public that feeds your pockets and egos?
With fans forking out billions in support of their favorite teams, they don’t need to witness disrespect to the nation at their cost.  Each of these players could simply stop playing and forego their (inflated) salaries as protest any issue they support.  Remember many union members march and support their causes while giving up their wages, the same can be done by the athletes.

I like my team.  The Chicago bears.  They have not won anything good in a generation, but I still wear my bears shirt and watch or listen to every game, and even pregame and post-game commentary.  I don’t understand any of the analysis, except my team constantly is in the loss column.  We pay hundreds of millions to players, and they are worthless in delivering wins to Chicago, but I still love them, they are my football team, as they are to all Chicagoans.  I love all our teams, Bears, Cubs, Sox, Blackhawks, Bulls and any team that represents our city.  Their losses don’t matter as in my life time, they have all been champions, and one or the other make the city proud and smile.  After all this is the city where Michael Jordan played, and what more can I ask for.  This city is where Harry Carry announced every day for the Cubs, and who really cared if they won? (I did, but was a fan even when they lost every day).  But I am also a citizen, and I love my country.  Every time national anthem plays I stand and wait until it is done.  Whenever I see a flag, I see it with pride.  I am an immigrant, nevertheless a proud and good citizen, who respect the nation and its citizenry.  As much as I love my teams, my loyalty to the nation comes before my love for the local teams, and while my heart is always with my local team/s, my love for the democracy is of greater value to me as a common man.
When I see the huge deal being made from the cause and disrespect, why not these overrated, over paid guys protest by not playing a game or a season (give up the inflated paychecks), or spend all their paychecks in supporting the cause they support.  It’s not good to alienate or disrespect the law, and it is equally stupid to disrespect the national flag, anthem and the citizens, and not taking a pay cut or using their wages to fund the cause or educating the nations about the root cause for their protest.

I am only one of the 300 million citizens and I am sure the nation looks at these payers with dismay when they disrespect the nation and the viewers, who all support the right to protest.  The forum is not where a few guys get paid huge amount of money and show no respect for the viewers, and have no intention of foregoing their inflated paycheck to protest, but insult the viewers.

All those players who protest or wanting to protest.  Please do it, but at your own cost and time.  Use can use the airtime (where we listen to your stories and the commentators dissecting the losses for hours and offering their theories and making us listen, and you can certainly protest, but you don't) The challenge is for you to show that you not only respect the public that supports you and your team, but you really mean to help your cause by stop playing or using your pay check (all of it) to help support your cause, then you are not just a good citizen but also a true protestor.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Nature’s Fury and Human Resistance

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

I love Florida. Although I only spent very few years in South Florida, I still am very fond of my old place, friends and associates and everything I could see, visit and explore in Florida.  Just mind your own business and enjoy the place, and you would be just fine.  For someone who likes the water, beach, great food (not expensive) and people, it’s a wonderful place.  Things were quiet, and everyone minded their own business.

It is a quiet and peaceful place.  While the tourists flock form all over the place, the locals like the weather, locality and peace.  While I also appreciate many places on earth with similar weather and conditions, Florida is a place for 6 million people, and it is wonderful.

The keys are my favorite part of Florida, along with Miami beach and Everglades, Disneyland, shopping and just about everything.  Just driving in Florida is relaxing, and often adventurous.  I don’t know how to swim, but my home pool was good enough for me to enjoy the water.  While the life itself is quaint and relaxing, it is also not that expensive, and all said stress free.  The very rich to people with limited resources still have the same beautiful ocean, sand and views.

As the water, sand, sun, smiles, style and people (food is included) all get used to each other rather quickly, Florida is also in the zone of sea levels that are precarious.  The eco system is precarious.  Even a little bit of sea surge will overtake much of the beautiful and enjoyable space of Florida coast, and this is something no scientist must provide any evidence to support.  It is simply that people love the sea and sand and the pleasant weather, and they will build as close to this is as possible to enjoy the nature’s goodness as possible.  No one stops us, and no one worries about the eventual fury of nature, and no one thinks in their life time any massive natural disruptions in their community.  Florida and its cities have had some massive natural disasters, and as they escaped catastrophe last week, they have done so many times.  It’s only natural for human beings to hope for the best, and riding out hurricanes is one of those things we seem to believe that we will escape, unscathed.  We have from the beginning of time, both respected and ignored nature’s ability to do what it pleases, and we have well recorded instances of populations getting wiped out.  We still try to ride out the natural disasters (despite the warning, including some who suggest ignoring the warnings) with bear bones of our homes.  One thing to ponder is what good is a single home, if the whole neighborhood is wiped out?

There is no science or politics involved, only perhaps the profit.  When you keep suggesting that human interference into nature will cause more natural disasters, and the bigger and bigger natural disasters will become a normalcy.  Whether we like it or not, any major change to any life style has consequences, and the whole human population makes every effort to add their part to the earth’s constitution.  With 13 billion making small adjustments (corporations make huge adjustments) there is bound to be a huge overall impact on how Earth handles the change.  So, we can think of a hurricane or two or three, every year and the damage done to our state, or start combining the effects of severe weather around the world to accept our contribution to the changes to the weather.

We only have one Earth, and its ability to sustain and reestablish the natural balance for all of us is limited, and time consuming.  We really are not allowing for sustainability nor replenishing the natural abilities.  We can think of what next with severe weather (while continuing to argue) or come up with the ingenuity to sustain our earth.  The choice is clearly ours.

Sunday, September 03, 2017

Inimitable and imaginable thoughts


Vasu Reddy from Chicago

Throughout childhood and adulthood, I have lived a life of my own.  Essentially meaning that always life in a hostel, shared accommodation, rented and shared apartment, life with aunts and uncles, and my own apartment, home or condo.  The ability to move from place to place, share with schoolmates and friends, and eventually with family and children.  The moves and folks I shared with my accommodation and food, have never impacted what I was and how I behaved.  I simply was myself, irrespective of where I was and who I was with.  I am very sure there were times I was not the best roommate or a welcome guest or the best family member, as I simply like to mind my own behavior, and seldom wanted to involve in matters that of not personal.  This might have been just the way I want others to be with me, and I try to behave the same with others.  I care and feel with my heart, and the impact of life’s events are hard on my system to handle events, so I also try hard to not be impacted as I suffer personally by taking things to heart.
In the USA if you lived if I have, there are many people you come in touch with, your own family and friends, community, fellow nationals and may immigrants just like you.  They are all like your own journey, working, students, families and relatives and sometimes just friends.  I have these and a lot of new associates, acquaintances and new members of the vast and common core of immigrants.
In all these years of being by myself, in India or outside it has not been on mind to worry about who I associate with or who I wanted to be friends with.  I don’t think I will do so in the future.  What I have noticed is that even the very well educated, well acquainted, well healed members still show the imaginable thoughts on their affinity to communities.  I notice this more with the freewheeling comments on social networks.  While we are all entitled to opinions (I have mine at least once week on something), the most well-established members of the community have prejudices of others with different names.  This has become more obvious with movies and their content and names.  People are becoming experts on the community by writing their reviews (on community rather than movie) and somehow associating to their displeasure on what others are.  Lately the social media accounts and many opinions on community and caste have become commonplace, but pertaining to communities that are not their own.  Arjun Reddy movie is one such example, where the opinions have been so much to just the name of the movie and how it was directed.  I finally saw the movie, and felt it was another movie with a simple story of love and physical and self-abuse, ending with the routine ending of the lovers being united.  Although critics and moviegoers find it different, I found the movie a simple story of love with perhaps current Indian setting.  It was not a ground breaking or trend setting movie, but was different than Telugu movies.  The social media and the promotions have been focused on the hype of the language and movie making, and how the actor/s are taking the movie to the stage.  I would believe that creating the hype is to sell more tickets, and all the actors and makers will probably have moved on by now to their next movie.  What has been uncommon is how people have taking extreme opinions on this single movie.  Especially for those in the USA, who have the luxury of so many various languages and options for moviegoers.  For a cheaper price, your theatres have multiple choices.  Anyone who likes movies have an enormous choice of movies that you can imply pick to watch.  Each movie is made with some conviction by the makers and language and genre are simply a choice of the audience.  Indian moviegoers should know this as we do make regional language movies and many of them are translated (dubbed) into all major Indian languages.  And moreover, they are of different concept and genre.  No one is asking the moviegoer to see a movie that they are unwilling to watch.  But the ability to write on social media is allowing for everyone to find something negative to comment on.  It is a phenomenon that has no logic.
First you are not forced to watch a movie.  Then you interject the community or negativity to the making of a simple movie.  (we no longer have pathbreaking concepts, just mashups).  Then you put it out and a lot of your followers then start to add their own take on it.  Many of them not even watching the movie, but just for opinion) and the trial of comments continue until they end up being a critic of something the movie has nothing to do with.  This typically starts with someone who is educated and has been a part of a large immigrant community.  Anyone who is reading this can associate with my imagination, and start to write something good, something sensible, something endearing, something encouraging, or simply don’t write.  No one in 21st century America should worry about last names, rather the future of their children and families and their future generations.  Not some dumb title of a move or content of a movie.  You have better and more important things to worry about.

Cinema and its Magic

Vasu Reddy from Chicago vasureddy@aol.com   While in my college days in India, there was no internet, not much television except single chan...