My mother always said that I didn't suffer fools gladly. When she first observed this about me, I was so young I was not sure what it meant.

Now, of course, I know.

It's simply hard for me to understand why people do what they do, especially when it seems so obvious that doing something else would be a much more productive and reasonable way to proceed. I am constantly shocked at clearly I see the truth and others don't, or even worse, they see if but they won't act on it.

Now that I am older, of course, I understand that everyone believes that she knows the best way to go and that I don't have a monopoly on said truth.

Still.

Take monogamy for example. It seems to me that all signs point towards the obvious fact that pledging to remain sexually faithful to someone is tantamount to asking if it will be ok to resent them someday and even perhaps end up breaking that promise or else having to destroy the original relationship in hopes of being able to keep that promise better with someone else. So the obvious thing to do is to question compulsory monogamy as the basis of marriage, right? Noooooo. Apparently the obvious thing to do is to pretend that monogamy is the only worthwhile practice and then to vilify individuals who break their fidelity pledge, holding them personally responsible as weak people and ignoring how the very system invites adultery, constructing us as either prisoners or adulterers.

Just ask Gavin Newsome.

Astonishingly, our television news today is filled with images of a grown man mea culpa-ing because of where he placed his johnson. (Note to self: Does one capitalize Johnson?) I am sure that if he made a promise to keep it parked in a certain garage he ought to have told the attendant he was going to relocate it, but of course none of that is any of my business. (Ditto for the owner of the new space.) Perhaps he didn't take that first crucial step and get honest before performing the act because, like other people who commit "adultery," he may have wanted to retain the original relationship because it was valuable to him. I am not sure if that's the case with him—or with the woman who chose to enter into the sexual relationship outside of her marital promise not to-- but I know it is with many couples who have all kinds of great reasons to stay together even if a scintillating sex life is no longer one of them. They feel stuck, unable to speak their own truth or act on their will.

Of course the original impulse for forbidding us to freely express ourselves sexually comes from an ancient mythological text clearly outdated, outmoded, and untrue. So the logical thing to do would be to chuck it, right?

Oh, noooo. Waaaay too logical. Let's keep branding people as perverts and waiting for Jesus to come back.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

As Elvis Costello says, "dear Lord, I sincerely hope you're coming 'cuz you really started something." Meanwhile, couples find themselves forced to break up or become liars because they feel responsible for maintaining the untenable requirement that their only intimate adult relationships be with one person. Forever.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And then there's our foreign policy. Foreign, yes, 'cuz it's foreign to me why doing the same thing that has worked so poorly is being embraced as a way out of the morass caused by the failure of that exact same policy. Hey, this isn't working, so let's keep doing it! And let's send even more men and women to die because of it! Hey! Great thinking! And while we're at it, let's have the guy who did such a terrible job and made really horrible decisions in Iraq be the new chief of staff! And first let's have him sit there while we tell him how bad of a job he did and what a disaster everything is thanks to him. And then let's promote him!

My mom was right. I don't particularly enjoy watching people be stupid.

It happens in my daily life as well of course. For example, I belong to a community service organization that decided to take some group money and purchase a big screen television. So the people doing the shopping went out and bought a state of the art flat screen, right? Those beauties on sale for Super Bowl Sunday, yes? Noooo. They came back with huge carbunkle projection screen, cutting edge technology circa 1984. So I said, hey, I know, let's take it back and get this better t.v. that's $500 cheaper and won't take up so much room and will have a clearer picture. Nooooo, came the reply. This is our tv. This is it. Reason? 'Cuz. This. is. it.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Before he died, dad often to referred to my "executive" personality. In using that term instead of the one usually used to describe powerful women, I imagine he was trying to accept and perhaps even admire the fact that he'd birthed a daughter who saw what she thought needed to be done and then started trying to get everyone to see it and do it her way. I've actually been able to persuade an awful lot of people to do an awful lot of stuff, so much so that sometimes I think it's actually me running the show. Then I see that fugly t.v. and remember that I am powerless. Ooof! Then I get to accept—one more time--the fact that I won't always get my way, that people don't see the world the way I do. And that they deserve to be here just as much as I do.

This surrender to reality isn't hard when it's something as trivial as a t.v. bought by some people I ultimately admire and love, men who work to make themselves and the community better. But sending more troops to Iraq, spending more billions on Iraq--when we've already spent HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of billions—and watching it done by someone who does NOT seem willing to look at his part, well it just gets my revolutionary blood boiling.

Why can't adults admit when they are wrong?

And why can't they see that I am right?