Maybe Good Writing is More Sweat than DNA

I was just thinking of two great writers--Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Conrad. Both wrote in a language that was not their first language; indeed, Conrad didn't even know English until he was an adult.

So many writing books push the idea that anyone (or almost anyone) can become a published writer. I used to think that was just boosterism so as to sell more copies, but Nabokov and Conrad have convinced me otherwise.

For up-and-coming writers, this can be kind of encouraging.

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The Article, "Billionaires Desperately Need Our Help"

I just read a delightful op-ed by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. It was funny and insightful. It was titled, "Billionaires Desperately Need Our Help," and it sardonically lambastes the Grand Old Party's recent tax plan. Probably the most pointed and poignant line in the piece is, "The tax bill underscores a political truth: There's nothing wrong with redistribution when it's done right."

Damn, that's true. Many conservatives get riled up when they see the government helping the poor because they deem that to be income redistribution, but when phenomenal tax breaks are given to the wealthiest people in the U.S., they see this as perfectly kosher.

 Also true is that many in that party rail against the federal debt. Yet, this tax bill could raise the national debt by 1.7 trillion dollars;the rationale, they say, is that we have to temporarily owe more to let the tax cuts for the wealthy spur on the economy.

There's only one problem with this thinking: It's never worked in the real world. Some might say it's never really been tried, but if that is the case, do we really want to gamble with adding nearly two trillion dollars to the national debt on a hunch that is, well, a hunch?

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Mass Shootings and Mental Illness

I have continued to read on the topic of my last post. That is, the comment the president recently made about the mass shooting in Texas: "Mental health is your problem here. This was a very, based on preliminary reports, a very deranged individual, a lot of problems over a long period of time. We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries. But this isn't a guns situation."

I have mulled that comment over in my head for a while and I'm still not able to refute it. Yet, I do feel confident in saying that any country that has about one firearm per citizen is a scary place to be. In other words, if China had one firearm for each person (they have around 1.4 billion people), I wouldn't be excited about visiting that country. If I did decide to visit it, I would make sure to bring along one thing--a truckload of Kevlar.

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"It's All About Mental Health, Not the Guns," He Said

I just read an article at www.usnews.com concerning the recent Texas shooting. It's about the president's view on the shooting. He said the mass shooting in no way relates to guns; it has to do with "mental illness at the highest level."

As a licensed therapist, I don't see that. In fact, I'm not entirely clear on what he means. Does he mean because we have so many mentally ill people in our country that is why we have all these shootings? Or, if we had a better mental health system, there would be less of these mass shootings?

I guess a lot could be said on the intersection of mental illness and gun violence, but I think any time a country has over 300 million firearms, people are gonna get shot--a lot. It could make the average person feel, as the joke goes, like a hemophiliac in a razor blade factory.

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