Suggested Answers to the Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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Question 1

Did we study last month, among other things, that while the European Union may be experiencing difficulty in assimilating its Muslim population (which per http://www.CIA.gov is only 2% of its population), America has failed for more than a half century to assimilate its Permanent “Untouchable” Under-Caste?

Answer 1

Yes.

Question 2

Have we also studied on many occasions that a good estimate of the size of America’s Permanent “Untouchable” Under-Caste is the 30% of the population that the U.S. government has constantly and consistently reported for more than half a century is illiterate in terms of the ability to read the warning label on a can of rat poison?

Answer 2

Yes.

Question 3

Does our focus book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” get away from seemingly-sterile statistics and provide us with examples of actual members of America’s Permanent “Untouchable” Under-Caste and describe in painful detail their struggles just to survive?

Answer 3

Yes.

Question 4

Many of the book reviews for “Evicted” proclaim that it is so shocking, it is bound to confront Christian America with its hypocrisy in NOT loving its inner-city neighbors as themselves -- is this realistic or only wishful thinking?

Answer 4

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 5

Did we also discuss last month how the first religion based on “from each according to her/his ability, to each (because everyone is loved as much as one’s self) according to her/his need” was, 18 centuries later, famously called “The Opiate of the Masses” by Karl Marx because he was so frustrated that the proletariat would NOT rise in revolt because they were too busy “laying up for themselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal”?

Answer 5

Yes.

Question 6

And did we discuss how, just like 2% of the European Union’s population that comprise unassimilated Muslims, America’s 30% Permanent “Untouchable” Under-Caste might have been better served by the militant “Nation of Islam” of Muhammad Ali rather than the Christianity (aka Opiate of the Masses) of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

Answer 6

Yes.

Question 7

Could MLK’s famous non-violent resistance based on The Opiate of the Masses have been more effective if it had, instead, been based on one of the world’s other major religions?

Answer 7

Please read on.

Question 8

Who was Siddhartha Gautama?

Answer 8

He was a Hindu Monk but is considered the founder of Buddhism.

Born in 563 B.C. (though the date is not certain) to the King of the Sakyas in what is today Nepal, he lived a princely life for about 30 years.

Whereupon he became a Hindu Monk and, for the remaining approximately 50 years of his life, lived a pure and ascetic existence in what is now Eastern India.

He left behind him a legion of followers who spread his teachings which became nearly universal throughout Asia and well represented in the rest of the world. Today, Buddhism is practiced by approximately 500 million people, about half of whom are in China.

However, no written records have been found from his lifetime or several centuries thereafter.

The oldest Buddhist manuscripts, the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, date from the First Century B.C. to the Third Century A.D. They are preserved in the British Library which is the National Library of the U.K. and the world’s largest library.

Question 9

If you had asked Siddhartha Gautama on his deathbed what his religion was, what would he have replied?

Answer 9

That he was a Hindu Monk.

However, Buddhists consider him The Buddha or A Buddha.

[“Buddha” is Sanskrit for “Awakened One” and Buddhists believe that following Siddhartha Gautama, there have been additional “Awakened Ones.”]

Question 10

Digressing for a moment, does Buddhism have an unwarranted reputation as a peaceful religion?

Answer 10

Please read on before you formulate an opinion.

Question 11

During the 1930’s and 1940’s, was the Japanese population SIMULTANEOUSLY more than 90% Shinto (essentially ancestor worship though respectful of all life) AND ALSO more than 90% Buddhist?

Answer 11

Yes.

Question 12

Did Japan’s overwhelming Buddhism prevent it from what historians call “The Rape of China” which had already lasted for a decade before Pearl Harbor?

Answer 12

Obviously not!!!

Question 13

Despite what might be viewed as a Buddhist aberration regarding Japan’s Rape of China followed by Japan’s joining with Hitler and Mussolini to wage the Second World War, could Buddhism otherwise be considered a peaceful religion?

Answer 13

Please read on before you formulate an opinion.

Question 14

What was the turning point of the Vietnam War?

Answer 14

Please see Q&A-15 through Q&A-17.

Question 15

Do some historians fatuously claim that the turning point was the Tet Offensive which, despite being a military disaster for the Viet Cong, drove many members of the American news media to despair over the obvious failure of America and the South Vietnamese Government to “win the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people?

Answer 15

Some historians make this claim.

Whether the claim is fatuous is arguable.

Question 16

Is it true that “a picture is worth a thousand words”?

Answer 16

So everyone says!!!

Question 17

Isn’t the real turning point of the Vietnam War in terms of American public opinion the zillions of pictures that began to occupy the front pages of America’s newspapers on a constant basis, showing Buddhist Monks who had doused themselves with gasoline and then set themselves on fire?

Answer 17

Absolutely!!! At least in terms of American public opinion!!!

Question 18

Didn’t all the front-page pictures of the self-immolation of Vietnam’s Buddhist Monks have the same effect on American public opinion as the front-page pictures of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s peaceful marchers being ripped apart by police dogs?

Answer 18

Obviously!!!

Question 19

So, even putting aside the aberration of Buddhist Japan’s Rape of China followed by joining Hitler and Mussolini to wage World War II, doesn’t the PASSIVE AGGRESSION of Vietnam’s Buddhist Monks portray a stark contrast with the Opiate of the Masses practiced for the last 48 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King by America’s Permanent “Untouchable” Under-Caste?

Answer 19

So it would appear!!!

After all, the Buddhist Monks of Vietnam were committing suicide.

And very few of those who marched with Martin Luther King were actually killed by police dogs, so that it would be quite a stretch to claim that they were committing suicide -- though there is no denying their bravery in recognizing that they might well be killed.

BTW, when we studied Assisted Suicide for our 1/9/2013 meeting 3 years ago, we studied how suicide was extremely prevalent in the early Christian church to avoid persecution.

[The Christians who were actually “thrown to the lions” in Roman Amphitheaters were the small minority who were brave enough to face such torture.]

And we studied how, following Emperor Constantine’s outlawing the persecution of Christians in his 313 A.D. Edict of Milan, St. Augustine denounced Christianity’s pervasive culture of suicide --but for practical reasons and NOT for theological reasons.

Accordingly, nearly 1,000 years went by before suicide was first denounced AS A SIN on theological grounds. This was first done by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th Century A.D.

The Roman Catholic Church today views suicide as an Unforgiveable Sin, even though Christ said that there is only one unforgiveable sin which is blaspheming the Holy Ghost (which, ironically, the RCC does NOT recognize as unforgiveable, effectively calling Christ a Liar).

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The Buddhist View of Suicide

Suicide is often thought to be prohibited by Buddhism.

For example, there follows immediately below these Q&A’s, an erudite discussion by the BBC of Buddhism’s view of suicide and euthanasia.

In considering it, however, the reader should keep in mind that the earliest written records of Buddhist theology date from AT LEAST 4 CENTURIES after the death of The Buddha.

And that Buddhism did NOT prevent many Japanese soldiers in WW-II from committing Hara Kiri. Or prevent many Japanese pilots in WW-II from becoming Kamikazes (pilots whose sole mission was to crash their planes into American warships, rather than trying to bomb or torpedo them).

Moreover, as discussed above, Buddhism did NOT prevent Buddhist Monks in Vietnam from immolating themselves!!!

The following was posted in the Discussion Outline section of our website vis-à-vis our 1/9/2013 meeting exactly one month later on 2/9/2013 --

“A recent conversation reminded me of what Lori Noda, one of our three regulars who are Assistant Utah Attorneys General, said at the meeting concerning suicide in Japan, the country of Lori's ancestors, and other Eastern cultures. I am posting it belatedly, because her comments are worth preserving. She said that suicide is quite common in Japan and other Eastern cultures, and that it is viewed as the proper thing to do when one's honor is involved. She even said that when a person becomes old and believes s/he has become a burden to others, it would be considered honorable to commit suicide. She also said that when anyone commits suicide, it is presumed that honor was the motive -- and there is ABSOLUTELY NO INQUIRY whether the suicide's perception of what honor demanded was appropriate. [An inquiry regarding honor, of course, is different from an inquiry regarding whether homicide or suicide was involved, but such an inquiry takes place only if there are suspicious circumstances suggesting there has been a homicide.] Finally, Lori said that Japanese and members of other Eastern cultures cannot fathom why there is such a fuss in the West about suicide.”

Question 20

What does our focus book “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” tell us about the suicide rate in America’s inner-city ghettos?

Answer 20

Our focus book mentions suicide only once. On p 298 it says:

“Then there is the toll eviction takes on a person’s spirit. The violence of displacement can drive people to depression and, in extreme cases, even to suicide. One in two recently evicted mothers reports multiple symptoms of clinical depression, double the rate of similar mothers who were not forced from their homes. Even after years pass, evicted mothers are less happy, energetic, and optimistic than their peers. [Citing, by way of footnote, a ‘U.S. National Co-Morbidity Survey’ published in The International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research 7 (1998) pp. 33-53.] When several patients committed suicide in the days leading up to their eviction, a group of psychiatrists published a letter in ‘Psychiatric Services’ identifying eviction as a ‘significant precursor of suicide.’ The letter emphasized that none of the patients were facing homelessness, leading the psychiatrists to attribute the suicides to eviction itself. ‘Eviction must be considered a traumatic rejection,’ they wrote, ‘a denial of one’s most basic human needs, and an exquisitely shameful experience.’ Suicides attributed to evictions and foreclosures doubled between 2005 and 2010, years when housing costs soared.”

It is easy to become jaded about these horrific conditions because American society drives to suicide so many of its citizens under radically different circumstances for radically different reasons. For example, the U.S. CDC’s “Suicide: Facts at a Glance – 2015” (currently available at cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicide-datasheet-a.pdf) reports that although there are about 40 thousand suicides/year in the U.S. and about 500 thousand Americans/year treated in ER’s for self-inflicted injuries, the percentages of adults 18 or over having suicidal thoughts during the previous 12 months were only 2.9% among Blacks, contrasted with 3.3% among Asians, 3.6% among Hispanics, 4.1% among Whites, 4.6% among Native Hawaiians, 4.8% among Native Americans and 7.9% among adults reporting two or more races.

And you don’t even want to know how much higher those rates were for adolescent students!!! And, for the curious, approximately 80% of all suicides are males, though females are more likely to have suicidal thoughts.

Nonetheless, America’s refusal for more than half a century to mainstream its 30% Permanent “Untouchable” Under-Caste, which would require the “heavy lifting” of providing our inner-city children with a decent education, is one of the greatest tragedies in human history. Because it would have been so easily prevented by even a small amount of Christian love. Especially since Identical Twin Studies (the Gold Standard for determining what is genetic and what is environmental) have continuously and consistently shown over the decades that our inner-city children have the same IQ as suburban children, and whether that IQ is developed is wholly attributable to environment.

Accordingly, even though a cynic might say that “each of us has a cross to bear,” the crosses that have been imposed on our neighbors that we have herded into our inner-city ghettos by our lack of a mere modicum of Christian love should be one of the worst accusations against us if there is a God and s/he has a Final Judgment!!!

Question 21

What would be the effect if America’s Permanent “Untouchable” Under-Caste abandoned Christianity’s Opiate of the Masses and converted to the passive-aggression of the brand of Buddhism practiced by Vietnam’s Buddhist Monks?

Answer 21

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 22

In other words, what if the residents of America’s inner-city ghettos whose despair drives them to suicide, decided to commit their suicide by self-immolation on the steps of America’s iconic buildings that house government, business and the news media? After mailing their suicide notes to members of the media (if any) who are willing to publish them?

Answer 22

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 23

Did Yours Truly opine, after 43 news media superstars refused to permit $84 billion of private funds to be used to benefit the education of 10 million inner-city children, that his greatest disappointment was NBC’s Chris Matthews rather than PBS’ Gwen Ifill? Why did Chris Matthews edge out Gwen Ifill?

Answer 23

Yes, Yours Truly did so opine.

The reason why Chris Matthews edged out Gwen Ifill is explained at length in the materials posted in the third and fourth sections of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org regarding “Inner-City Holocaust and America’s Apartheid ‘Justice’ System (In Honor of Jonathan Kozol and In Memory of John Howard Griffin).”

FAQ-11 from “New FAQ’s and FAQ Index” posted in the third section is entitled “Who Is Your Biggest Disappointment Among The 43 News-Media Superstars?”

For your convenience, it is reproduced as the second item following the end of these Q&A’s (the first item is the BBC’s Discussion of Buddhism and Suicide).

Question 24

If the Chris Matthews’ and Gwen Ifill’s of the world were willing to constantly cover the self-immolation of the Buddhist Monks of South Vietnam and they refuse to cover the self-immolation of America’s Permanent “Untouchable” Under-Caste who are driven to suicide by despair, would it be fair to say that the Chris Matthews’ and Gwen Ifill’s of the world are racists?

Answer 24

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

This should be an interesting topic because most accusations in the U.S. regarding racism are aimed at so-called Caucasians.

And because the additional question is involved vis-à-vis Gwen Ifill whether an African-American can be a racist with regard to other African-Americans.

Question 25

Last month we studied The War On American Workers and The War On America’s 30% Permanent “Untouchable” Under-Caste, both of which have been conducted for decades by The Establishment which was defined as the billionaires (A) who “own” virtually all of the politicians of both political parties as a result of campaign contributions, (B) who “own” many members of the media and many members of academia, and (C) who “own” political “think tanks” such as Brookings, Heritage, CATO and AEI -- and this month we are studying “up close and personal” the real-life stories of quite a few members of America’s 30% Permanent “Untouchable” Under-Caste and their unspeakably-painful struggles just to survive -- so why do you think The Establishment believes that, per the famous saying, "their shit doesn’t stink”???

Answer 25

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

[johnkarls]

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bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/buddhistethics/euthanasiasuicide.shtml


Buddhism, Euthanasia and Suicide


Buddhists are not unanimous in their view of euthanasia, and the teachings of the Buddha don't explicitly deal with it.

Most Buddhists (like almost everyone else) are against involuntary euthanasia. Their position on voluntary euthanasia is less clear.

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States of Mind

The most common position is that voluntary euthanasia is wrong, because it demonstrates that one's mind is in a bad state and that one has allowed physical suffering to cause mental suffering.

Meditation and the proper use of pain killing drugs should enable a person to attain a state where they are not in mental pain, and so no longer contemplate euthanasia or suicide.

Buddhists might also argue that helping to end someone's life is likely to put the helper into a bad mental state, and this too should be avoided.

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Avoiding Harm

Buddhism places great stress on non-harm, and on avoiding the ending of life. The reference is to life - any life - so the intentional ending of life seems against Buddhist teaching and voluntary euthanasia should be forbidden. Certain codes of Buddhist monastic law explicitly forbid it.

Lay-people do not have a code of Buddhist law, so the strongest that can be said of a lay person who takes part in euthanasia is that they have made an error of judgement.

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Karma

Buddhists regard death as a transition. The deceased person will be reborn to a new life, whose quality will be the result of their karma.

This produces two problems. We don't know what the next life is going to be like. If the next life is going to be even worse than the life that the sick person is presently enduring it would clearly be wrong on a utilitarian basis to permit euthanasia, as that shortens the present bad state of affairs in favour of an even worse one.

The second problem is that shortening life interferes with the working out of karma, and alters the karmic balance resulting from the shortened life.

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Euthanasia as Suicide

Another difficulty comes if we look at voluntary euthanasia as a form of suicide.

The Buddha himself showed tolerance of suicide by monks in two cases. The Japanese Buddhist tradition includes many stories of suicide by monks, and suicide was used as a political weapon by Buddhist monks during the Vietnam war.

But these were monks, and that makes a difference. In Buddhism, the way life ends has a profound impact on the way the new life will begin.

So a person's state of mind at the time of death is important - their thoughts should be selfless and enlightened, free of anger, hate or fear.

This suggests that suicide (and so euthanasia) is only approved for people who have achieved enlightenment and that the rest of us should avoid it.

[johnkarls]

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FAQ-11. Biggest Disappointment Among 43 News-Media Superstars
Posted by johnkarls » Mon May 23, 2011 1:03 pm
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Chris Matthews!!!

This despite the copy of the letter sent to 43 news-media superstars included in the package sent to recipients of the other 4 letters being addressed to Gwen Ifill (1) because she has her own PBS program “Washington Week” which airs on Friday evenings, and (2) because she had long been the “right-hand person” of Jim Lehrer on the PBS News Hour when, in the Fall of 2009, the PBS News Hour and the Editors of the NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Wall Street Journal had been requested to shine a spot light on this litigation, and the only response had been from the PBS News Hour which promised only an obituary afterwards (please see the second quotation at the beginning of the letter to the 43 news-media superstars).

So why, on reflection over this new FAQ, did Chris Matthews edge out Gwen Ifill???

On his Sunday-Morning “Chris Matthews Show” on NBC yesterday (May 22nd), he “took a page” from Tim Russert who ended a “Meet the Press” show shortly before his death with a brief announcement with obvious and justifiable paternal pride that his son, an only child, had just graduated from, if memory serves, Boston College.

Chris Matthew’s daughter (he didn’t mention whether she has siblings) has just graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania. [Incidentally, as another proud father, I admire and salute Chris Matthews!!!]

However, my admiration for Chris Matthews in general, and for his obviously-outstanding qualities as, inter alia, a good father, do not obscure a very troubling aspect of his “world view”!!!

Beginning with the run-up to the recent Royal Wedding, he began chiding his British guests with the barb that America is the “land of opportunity” and ANY AMERICAN need only exert her/him-self a bit to become successful (my paraphrasing which, for purposes of this point, does not require going back and obtaining the exact quotation which has become a mantra for Chris Matthews and with which he has even ended at least one of his recent Sunday-morning programs).

As we have discussed on many occasions, the typical conditions faced by the participants in the first 178 “I Have A Dream”® Programs in 51 American cities featured –

(A) 99% of the “Dreamers” coming from single-adult households,
(B) 95% of total Dreamer households headed by a single adult who was a drug addict, and
(C) 75%-80% of total Dreamer households headed by a single-adult drug addict who turned any receipts over to the pusher so that the kids had to steal just in order to eat.

And we have discussed on many occasions how the prevailing High School graduation rates for the classes just before and just after those 178 IHAD classes had typically been SINGLE DIGITS if –

(A) There is added back to the base everyone who had dropped out BEFORE the beginning of high school,
(B) There is added back to the base everyone who is IN JAIL ON THE DATE of high school graduation,
(C) There is added back to the base everyone who had been KILLED BEFORE THE DATE of high school graduation, and
(D) The resulting statistic is not masked by grouping it with the results of one or more other high schools.

So my question for Chris Matthews =

If in a parallel universe, your daughter had been kidnapped at birth and placed in one of these single-adult households headed by a druggie who turned over any receipts to the pusher so that your daughter had to steal just in order to eat, and your daughter had attended inner-city schools where the learning environment included an overwhelming majority of inner-city children from similar circumstances, do you really think your daughter would ever have graduated from High School, much less have graduated Magna Cum Laude from an Ivy League school???

It really “turns my stomach” every time you repeat your “land of opportunity” mantra and your panellists smile to you their confirmation that they are “drinking your Kool Aid”!!!

Because it implies that the 43 new-media superstars and their colleagues truly believe that electing an African American as U.S. President demonstrates that there is no permanent American “untouchable” under-caste!!!

And you, Chris Matthews, are probably the most influential person among your colleagues, since you control the selection of your panellists each week and therefore exercise quite a bit of “thought control” over them – so you are probably the most culpable in perpetrating and perpetuating the myth that America is the “land of opportunity.”

In this regard, it is a tragedy that Tim Russert passed away prematurely!!! Anyone who has read his biography knows that he worshipped “Big Russ” as he called his father. “Big Russ” spent his career on a garbage truck and Tim was proud of also working on garbage trucks during his summers while working his way through college and law school. And at all times during any of the zillions of his Meet the Press programs, Tim was never far from his roots in his outlook!!! (Though he was renowned for being a thoroughly-nice person despite being tougher in his questioning than any other news-media star.)

The reason for mentioning all this about Tim Russert???

Chris Matthews provoked the comparison by congratulating his daughter in Russert-like fashion!!!

But more importantly, can any reader of Tim Russert’s biography doubt that despite his humble background, he would be much more cautious about claiming that America is a “land of opportunity” FOR EVERYONE???

He would have been enough of “a Mensch” to have admitted that even though he had had a very rough road to the opportunity he was able to make his destiny, inner-city conditions do indeed, as described in the 5/18/2011 letter to Messrs. Axelrod and Plouffe, convince inner-city children by the age of 5 that they are ineligible for their dreams because they are not white – and also convince them that they have no realistic career hopes other than runner graduating to pusher or runner’s girl friend graduating to whore.

Shame on you, Chris Matthews!!!