Who Has the Special Need?

The National Down Syndrome Congress was a life-changing event. Surrounded by hundreds of dancing and laughing children, sharing meals and engaging the children and parents in conversation refocused everything in life.

At some point during the weekend, I began wondering what these children see. So many of them have eyes that drift upward and even some parents told me that they wonder how the children seem things. The closest way to describe the look on their faces is to imagine the look of people that are deep in prayer. I am not talking about endless repetitions of the Lord’s Prayer, but the type of prayer where one feels to be in communion with God. That is the look of these children.

We refer to these children as ‘special needs’ children, but I wonder. . .

Perhaps they can see the angels and see God in ways that we cannot imagine. Perhaps everyone else is really the ‘special needs’ person.

Certainly, these children are instantly trusting of everyone. They seem to just exist to love and to be loved. How odd that we others think that these children have ‘special needs’ when it may be that we have the real special needs. Suppose, as fanciful and Pollyannaish as it sounds, everyone trusted everyone and all we needed to be happy were to love and be loved. Perhaps a more accurate way of stating it would be to say, suppose every person recognized that all we needed to be happy were to love and be loved.

Violence in Mexico

The horrific acts of violence committed by the cartels are done so to intimidate the public and to project their image as powerful and beyond the control of the government. The U.S. media helps the cartels to project this image and we are too lazy to examine facts that put things into perspective.

First, almost every news article about violence in Mexico contains references to many previous stories about violence in Mexico. Suppose that were the policy for your city? If every murder, rape and robbery were reported on the front pages of every news paper in America; if every crime were the lead story on every news program the world would view your city as a horrible place. Recently, there were multiple murders in American cities. Although the news was reported, there were no references to earlier killings, rapes and robberies in these cities.

Searching for facts to put things into perspective, I read that some media sources believe as many as 40,000 people have been murdered in Mexico since 2006, largely due to the drug war. The fact is that most were murdered because of the fighting among the cartels and most of the dead were involved with a cartel.

Search for this fact. How many people were murdered in the USA since 2006? Over 70,000! Yes, we are twice the size with a larger population. However, most of our dead were not involved in crime. Most of our dead were innocents.

Instead of this comparison, the media compared the number of people killed in Mexico with the number of U.S. military killed in our current wars. A more realistic comparisons puts things into a more realistic view. Are there places in Mexico that are very violent? Yes. Are businesses in some cities paying 'protection money' to criminals ? Yes. Do I travel every two weeks and walk the streets in a Mexican border-city? Yes.

Although I do not see evidence of violence I do see evidence of the impact of our skewed reporting. Tourism along the border is gone. Both U.S. and Mexican border cities suffered huge losses in jobs because of relentless reporting in ways to terrify the public.

Class and Style

During an interview on BBC today, the person being interviewed said something that caused the host to interrupt. As the host realized that the person being interviewed was not finished speaking, he apologized and asked the speaker to please continue. When common polite behaviors stands out, we may be in trouble as a society.

Name-calling and being so uncertain of one's opinion that one must 'win' every argument is commonplace, especially on 'talk' radio and the Internet.

Too many people search for sources to confirm their prejudices or flawed beliefs. Often they fail to realize that the multiple sources that confrim their belief are all based on a single root source. People need learn how to search for facts.