Terry Levine | Noggin Advertising | Copywriter | Digital + Direct Writer | Blogging | Toronto | Canada

BELIEF AND THE POWER OF DELUSION.

I've often thought our most powerful human trait is belief -- be it religious belief, belief that a piece of paper, or certificate or a painting has monetary value, belief that tomorrow will be better than today (or worse), belief that we are loved. We must believe in things. If we don't, fear overwhelms us, we lose hope and the will to carry on. We quite possibly descend into chaos.

But belief has a dark side. A very dark side. When one's belief in the infallibilty of, say, a 2,000-year-old book, compells us to kill in the name of an unseen imaginary entity, we've crossed the threshold of belief into psychopathic delusion. When one's belief in say, the inerrancy of a document written 250 years ago, grinds the political process of a great nation to a standstill, we're beyond belief into the territory of crazy. When someone, for instance, commits a grievous crime, be it murder or rape or fraud, yet convinces himself not only that he is innocent but that he is actually the victim, belief has ceased to be a positive force.

I don't know how one combats this dark side of belief. The challenge is that belief has always been more charismatic than simple science or evidence. In the end, it seems to me, malignant belief cannot be brought down and replaced with just facts. It requires something new, a better story we can believe in.

WHEN IS A PEANUT MORE THAN A PEANUT?

Certainly not all Republicans are racists. I'd even venture to say, a healthy majority of Republicans are not racists. But racists have found a comfy home in the party because the powers that be have winked and nudged to racists for 40 years, ever since Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater launched the Southern Strategy to get white Southern racists to switch from the Democratic Party over to the GOP.

For four years, Republicans have called Barack Obama every name in the book -- from Arab and Muslim to Communist, Socialist and Kenyan. They have absurdly questioned whether he was born in the US, in spite of incontrovertible proof that he was and, ironically, ignoring the well documented fact that it was his opponent in 2008, John McCain who was actually born outside the US. But Republicans never harped on McCain's Americanness because he was white, just like they never questioned any previous President or presidential candidate's Americanness in 230 years. They despised Bill Clinton, led a witch hunt against him, impeached him, but they never sought to deny the man his birthright. That tactic has been solely reserved for Barack Obama. Not because he is a liberal. Not because he was born in Hawaii or grew up in Chicago. But because he is black.

So when two attendees at the RNC Convention last night threw peanuts at an African-American camera operator from CNN and said "this is how we feed animals," one has to wonder when the leaders of the Republican Party are going to unequivocally condemn the racist undercurrent in their party. Instead they will condemn the racism as isolated, or they'll call it a harmless prank. They'll eject these attendees from the convention and continue to applaud self-hating blacks like Condoleezza Rice who speak for them. Then they will turn around and continue to run ads about Obama's Americanness and "welfare" queens to southern racists, and make jokes about birth certificates.

While it's true the right seems to have more of a problem with race than the left, I don't believe this is a left/right issue. This is a xenophobic nationalism issue. It's the same problem the social democratic Parti Québécois has in Quebec. Most Quebec separatists are not racists but an uncomfortable number are and every once in a while some drunk white French-speaking Quebecer says something unfortunate that peels away the thin veneer to reveal the racism lying just below the surface.

But like the Republican Party, the Parti Québécois never admits they have a race problem. In fact, they feign outrage that anyone could every say such a thing.

They say you can't fix your problem until you admit you have one. And the US Republican Party has a big fat one around race. It's time they stop throwing peanuts at the elephant and fix it.

SWITCH THE JURIES.

Recently, CNN resident grouch Jack Cafferty asked viewers the following question: "Why won't Americans vote Congress out of office?"

It's a good question. Most members of Congress are dumb do-nothings more beholden to big moneyed interest than to the people who voted for them -- on both sides of the aisle. So why not just vote them all out of office? Where there's a Republican senator or congressman, vote Democrat. Where there's a Democrat, vote Republican. Where there's an independent, like Bernie Sanders, well maybe he gets to stay. It couldn't be any worse than the deadlock that exists now, could it?

This all reminded me of a great scene from the classic 'The Untouchables' where Eliot Ness, having discovered that Al Capone bribed the jury in the court case against him, convinces the judge to just switch the jury with one from another court case. I'm not sure how legal this is, but it made for a great scene, even with Kevin Costner's abysmal acting.

Maybe it's time to switch Congress with someone else's -- Canada's Parliament maybe, or France's -- Americans would love that. I know I would.

SPECIAL TREATMENT.

On my trip to Greece and Turkey recently, I noticed the following:

• If you're a small child or a person with a disability, you're allowed to board the plane first.
• If you're over 60, you're allowed to push in front without "noticing" the long line behind you.
• If you're kosher or halal or vegetarian, you get to ask for a special meal.
• If you're overweight you get to melt into my seat.
• If you have a baby, it gets to cry on and off for 10 hours.
• If I walk into a mosque, you're allowed to ask me to cover my arms and legs and have me remove my shoes.
• If you operate a church, you're allowed to ring bells every hour and half hour, and if it happens to be a special holiday, you can ring them really loud for a whole minute at 8 in the morning -- and at 8:30.
• If you're straight, you're able to hold hands and snuggle, invariably with an older couple staring at you, smiling and scrunching their noses.

But if you're gay, don't you dare ask to get married, see your loved one in hospital or even hold hands or kiss in public. Shame on you for having the nerve to ask for special treatment.

COFFEE TALK.

The number one comment I get from people I meet who I've seen around but never spoken to is "oh, you're actually a nice guy." In other words, I'm not the douche or asshole they imagined I was. (Apparently I look like one.)

It's human nature, it seems, to trash-talk and demonize who and what we don't know. We do this all the time. Think of Blackberry users who have never used an iPhone, criticize something minor about it, then actually use the phone and eat their words.

We all want to be accepted and liked but our first inclination is often not to accept or like the other. Or to interpret a comment or action on the other side in the most negative way possible.

I bring this up because last week I met a guy in Istanbul for coffee and after asking me my background and telling him I was Jewish, the first thing he said was "so what do the Israelis think about us?" This was in the context of the Mavi Marmara incident two years ago in which Israeli commandos attacked a Turkish ship trying to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, killing eight Turks and one American. We didn't talk about the politics of that incident, he just wanted to know if Israelis hated Turks. Having forgotten to poll my Israeli brothers before I went on my trip, I couldn't be entirely sure, but my guess is Israelis don't feel particularly negative toward Turks. If anything, I suspect they still see Turkey as the enemy of their enemy and therefore, ultimately, a geopolitical friend. And I explained that I was pretty sure that, behind the scenes, Israel and Turkey were still best buds.

But his perception, likely based on what he'd read in the papers or seen on the news, was that Israelis despised the Turks. And to be honest, before I arrived in Istanbul, I was slightly uneasy about what Turks might think of me. Both my tattoos contain Jewish symbols and, at least in the back of my mind, I wondered about whether to display them walking along Istiklal Street or Taksim Square or the Grand Bazaar. Some inquisitive Turks did wonder what the tattoos meant and asked and a couple of smart ones already knew. But never was there a negative comment or insinuation, never a threat. Like the guy I had coffee with, I was relieved the Turks didn't hate me either.

This also all reminds me incidently of the wonderful ongoing social grassroots campaign, Israel Loves Iran/Iran Loves Israel, aimed at diffusing tension between the two countries.

All this to say, the criticisms we voice toward the people and things we don't know are usually just a reflection of our own insecurities. They're, in essence, a defense mechanism and our way to "hate" the other guy before we find out he hates us first. But it's a lot harder to hate when you put a face and a personality and a life on the other, when you simply talk online or over coffee. The other stops being the other and just becomes Cey or Yitzhak or Bahman or Hanan.

THREE WOMEN IN ISTANBUL.

A woman shuffles past as I sit at Istanbul Ataturk Airport awaiting my flight home -- at least I'm pretty sure it's a woman. She's shrouded head to toe in a black burqa. Her husband accompanies her in a Nike T and jeans.

A second woman saunters by in the opposite direction. Her hair is uncovered, long and black and wavy. She wears a low-cut blue blouse, a yellow gold chain, patent leather shoes and matching Vuitton handbag and luggage.

"Whore," the first woman thinks to herself of the second. "Backward," the second says to the first in her mind, in my mind.

A third struts by the first two on her own personal runway. An ebony dress flows down her slim figure, fiery red paints her full lips. She adjusts the scarf around her head, then her Chanel sunglasses.

The first woman and the second stop, turn, watch.

"Git it, girl," they say to themselves and continue on their way.

 

QUOTE OF THE DAY: WHY GRAMMAR MATTERS.

"Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're. [...] On the face of it, my zero tolerance approach to grammar errors might seem a little unfair. After all, grammar has nothing to do with job performance, or creativity, or intelligence, right?

"Wrong. If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use "it's," then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with. So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write.

"Grammar signifies more than just a person's ability to remember high school English. I've found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts."

-- Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit