From the Rooftops

A few words of humility

2006-03-09T23:23:00.000-06:00

I just want to thank whatever fool nominated me for a Koufax, Jason. But it is true, I have actually had a few visitors from the great beyond.

I just want to say to all you gentle visitors that I know I am not worthy of such an actual honor. I do hope you like my odd little take on things, and hope I can muster something of interest to a few of you during this time.

The blogville sweeps week, heh. Well, anyway, go check out our radio station. They deserve a visit.

Cheers all,
-swift.

Gotta get my two bits in

2006-03-09T00:05:00.000-06:00

So a friend of mine says of the ports deal that there's no question it will go through. He points out that this is just a money grab. $5.6B in cash is already in the accounts of somebody out there, just waiting for a few details before it becomes usable.

He's got a point. Not chump change. Furthermore, it's not as if the owners of DP World are increasing their capital. This is a rights deal. $5.6 billion for the right to operate what, six ports for twenty years? Something like that. For that kind of money, this thing is getting done.

The problem, though, is that this is inspiring cognative dissonance in the group Dave Neiwert called "transmitters" It's very hard for the demagogic, zinger-slingin' right-wing media agents to find an angle to work on this.

Their audience has been trianed for years to be bigots. The verbal onslaught puts the listener in a position of power by highlighting the target's otherness. Almost always. Now, with this deal, the "bad guy" is buying into the system, so you can't attack them from the same angle. The troops still want to, though. For the Fox News set, arab = bad.

But it's the other side of the equation that nobody really wants to talk about. The people who want this deal done are the sellers. By facilitating the diversification of the Sheiks' business interests many ends are being furthered, and none of them are germane to mainstream political converstaion in any U.S. demographic group. First and foremost is the vassal-state relationship (and cash flow) between the Sheiks and the financial hegemons of the West. Second is the gray- and black-market shipping that benefits so much of the political economy both outside and inside the U.S. Third is the further internationalization of trade and labor that so benifits the "ownership society."

There's more, I'm sure, but what's important is that the existence, power and aims of the beneficiaries of this deal make people uncomfortable. That's the elephant in the room. And it's why, even after some face-saving shuffle is worked out, that people all over the political spectrum will continue to point to it as a harbinger of W's decline.

What's interesting is that we have to assume that these "interests" are either politically indifferent to the Republican Party or that they don't mind maneuvering anybody over a barrel. Perhaps especially some boob who actually thinks he runs the show.

Watching rocks wait

2006-03-05T11:20:00.000-06:00

Watching rocks wait
for waves of time and passion
we tilt with the spin of the world

So easy to believe
that rocks feel time slow
they sit with such unambiguous patience

Stillness pervades
The crash of the waves does not move us
Is nowness long? It certainly is lingering.

The seagull dips fast
The wind lifts her alight
We feel the wave rising afore us again.

Gut Feeling

2006-02-22T18:10:00.000-06:00

It's ajust a hunch and you know it would never come to light, but the Dubai Port deal is a setup. S-E-T-U-P.

Check it, everybody is jumping on this guy now. The big question it leaves is not what happens to Bush, his time is over. The question is under what program do we govern? Who determines it?

The Republicans have set policy exclusively for a good while, and this is their failure. But the tendedncy will be to tar and feather Bush but let the basic program keep rolling.

The non-opposition party nominally called Democrats will likely do nothing to establish an alternative narrative but this would be a great time to do so. Strike while the iron is hot.

As for the setup, everybody wanted this guy out, he's been a miserable failure. So he will go down as a very early lame duck. The question for interested journalists and bloggers is who actually put the deal together, especially if Bush officially didn't know about it.

Cheers,
Swift.

Humor as a Force Driving Historic Events

2006-02-17T13:04:00.000-06:00

Who has not made a joke about our Darth Vader-esqe VP? I dressed up as him for Halloween in '04 (I thought it would be my last chance). He is a scary man.

We are emerging today from the first shooting by an office-holder since the Hamilton-Burr business in the very early days of the country, when we were still a Republic.

How does something like this happen? And I don't mean old men drinking and wandering around with guns, although that seems an obvious enough bad idea. What I am getting at is a bit more obscure and bizarre.

When I have been a part of momentous events, I have frequently noticed an aura or "charge" to the time leading up to and during those events. It is almost as if the magnitude of the implications of an event impinge upon the space time surrounding the event.

It is as if, not literally, but with a sense that somehow echoes our more mundane senses, there is a ringing in the ears, a numinous light that suffuses the edges of the field of vision. Actions seem propelled by their inner logics and time slightly distends, leaving a feeling of lag or echo.

So what was the scene of the shooting like? These feelings I am describing surround events that shape the lives of a small group of people. When it is something that shakes the foundations of an empire, what forces are at play?

I would propose that Dick Cheney is so nasty, so without redeeming qualities and so obvious in his avarice that he created a bubble of extreme tension within the National Consciousness.

We needed some way to deal with this. It is no secret that he is a bad guy. You could use him as an example to teach children that bad guys do exist. I told you I dressed up as him for halloween. Let me ask you- have you ever tried to make your face do what his does? It is not easy, yet it is a habitual and ordinary movement of his facial muscles. The infamous sneer of Vice President Cheney betrays an emotional visciousness that can only make polite, concerned patriots of mild temperment and middle age extremely uncomfortable. It is difficult to imagine the man being pleasant at all, for any reason. He is not avuncular, he appears incapable of kindness.

The cognitive dissonance of the mass of Americans, who hold at various levels of their awareness a distate and discomfort with this man, shaped the space around this shooting. Now we can laugh. Laughing is close to crying, after all. Now we can collectively process what has become a very public embarassing family secret.

The funny question that occurred to me was, what did he say after he shot Mr. Whittington? My thought was, "Next time, two hundred thousand." A freind of mine suggested simply, "Got 'im!"

A Difficult Truth in the Midst of a Nasty Situation

2006-01-21T18:29:00.000-06:00

I was talking today with my mom. I was trying to convince her to watch the Al Gore speech. She didn't want to because it would only depress her due to the fact that little if anything could come of it. During the course of the conversation she broadly derided blogs as being a bunch of people talking to each other and not producing any organization to speak of. It was worthy of thought.

The problem, as a few others have recently noted, is that the Democratic Party leadership does not read us. They do not, in an real sense, know we exist. It brings to mind the metaphor of sports radio. People call in to the sports radio channel and argue for or against the Vikings dumping Duante Culpepper (who just asled for a RAISE after a horrible 1/2 season and a serious knee injury ) and who, exactly are they talking to? And it occurred to me that that's it, we are just like that. Talking to the coaches and GMs of the party, who don't even ever listen to the show.

This is the nasty situation. Jonathan Weiler nails it over at the Gadflyer, saying of Elaine Kamarck (writing at Ruy Teixera's site):

So, whom does Kamarck propose to carry a strongly critical message to the American people, one capable of demonstrating real differences between the parties, not only regarding the administration's over-reaching on the war on terror but its failures on national security more generally: Hilary? Lieberman? Bayh? Biden? How are any of these folks going to make it clear to the American people that they stand for a meaningfully different, and better, understanding of how to protect America? As posted on Tom Paine today, Molly Ivins raises serious doubts about whether centrists like these are up to the task, on national security and other issues.

Molly Ivins, for her part, brings some her strongest writing ever to bear on the task. She asks, pointedly,

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

And this brings me back to my talk with my mom. She was livid with the Democrats. She was even angry with Hillary. My mom was in Beijing for the Women's Conference in 1995. She has steadily and proudly anticipated Hil's run for Pres for years.

I am asking now, Who are you, Democratic Party?! How do we speak to you? That is what we are doing here, and if the level of brains displayed by Harry Reid on Lehrer is the best you've got, if the facts of The American Prospect's recent scoop on Democratic Party polling are true (via Digby), what in God's name are you going to do? You do not have the brains to respond to this.

Go Home! Declare it over, quit and let somebody with guts take your place! This is a dire cultural situation and we are too damn busy trying to keep our financial ends met to try to change the system with pot and rock concerts any more.

(For my part, I have thought this somewhat the crux of the matter for some time now. As I was writing in my recent post about John Lennon, our expectations are overwhelmingly shaped by what happened in the early '70s. I get the sense, today, of a sort of subliminal cultural puzzlement (much of it from boomers like my mom) about why no one is in the streets protesting this slow march to totalitarianism. And the answer, of course is that no one has time. That, and like I said, no draft.)

Which brings us to the difficult truth. If we can't stop it, we are slowly marching towards a discontinuity in our governmental structure.

If we can't get the Democrats to listen to us, they will keep losing, and as Al Gore so straightforwardly points out, our Constitution will either change or become meaningless. And that's the nasty, nasty truth. Because nobody else is telling the Democrats this. And if they can't hear us then they will keep believing the poison mirror of the oligarchs' media.

Maybe we need to have a liberal blogospheric position and lobbying event. Develop a platform, take small donations on the Dean model and start targeting specific legislators and party officials. I wonder if the Governor himself wouldn't give us some suggestions where to start. Otherwise, what are we doing here?

Holy Fuck.

2006-01-18T22:26:00.000-06:00

Al Gore is reborn. The change is not only thorough but deep, and will be a lasting one. He is now a man who knows what conviction is. We should all write all of our congresspeople and ask if they have watched his speech and ask that they make public shows of support.

I have only one real thought that I want to share this moment with those who come to read my musings, and it has two parts. The basic thought (which I have not seen mentioned elsewhere) is that as a former Vice President, Mr. Gore enjoys certain priveledges. One is a lifelong dispatchment of dedicated Special Service teams, the most advanced security one human being can be provided. Another priveldge he enjoys is the right to a daily security briefing at a level of security clearance coequal with the Office of the President.

Ok, one more thought. There has been a great deal of thought expended be pretty much all of us on the activist and committed liberal end of the political spectrum since 2001. Our efforts have centered around how we will find a place in a nation that is clearly headed for an uncertain future. Al Gore has had a personal involvement on those moments which led to our introspections, and he gets it. Thank God, he really does understand the gravity of this moment in history, and he respects the part he has been given to play.

Go to C-SPAN, watch the speech.

Jottings from a busy man..

2006-01-17T23:18:00.000-06:00

Well, started school today. It's something being 30 and entering a major university as a transfer student.

One thing that impresses me is just how many people are there. Maybe because the age groupong is so narrow (and race/demographics, too), it becomes slightly overwhelming. The little (and very diverse) community college I had been attending was full of friendly people. Here, where there are overwhelming numbers of relatively similar people, there seems little impetus for small talk. There would be no real likelihood of connecting again, after all, so why bother?

I have one class in the social sciences building. It is a place marked by subtle indications of a population that feels need to dig in, facing an onslaught. I do not blame them. Academics are often killed first. It did make me really think, however, about how very much sound thought is guarded in academia. Even given the obvious shortcomings of the institution there is a great deal worth protecting.

Yesterday was MLK Day. I saw my son sing in his community choir at the local childrens' museum. They sang a variation of "We Shall Overcome." I was reminded just how radical an act belief can be, when the belief is something that flies in the face of history and precedence. We are in need of reminders regarding the odds faced by the civil rights movement. We should be honored to be able to inherit thier lessons.

Peace,
-swift

Irony strikes again: Bird Flu in Turkey

2006-01-12T23:42:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: This post has nothing directly to do with its title.

The end is nowhere near here, but somehow it is easy to believe it is.

Watching the History Channel's show on John Lennon tonight brought home the differences between 1972 and today. The difference is not that the FBI isn't spying on us. The difference is that in the Viet Nam era there were tens of thousands of protesters living in ways that made the FBI's monitoring attempts very difficult.

Today we politely blog from home, secure that our aliases present to the world only the face we want seen. We are fools.

The Republic our founders so quixoticly handed off to us some two hundred plus years ago is dying tonight in Washinton D.C. "Conservative" legal scholars are dancing in the streets and Democrats are standing by the hospital bed offering milquetoast and off-topic rebuttals.

The majority of our contry is asleep at the wheel. Out here in the hinterlands of the liberal blogosphere we are heartened by stories of yore, Nixon's landslide in '72 before his ignominous fall. Well, for years before his fall there had been civil unrest rocking the easychairs of the middle-American householders. Today there is only a feeble bleating. The absense of the Draft and its concomitant deaths makes all of today's challenges to democracy seem abstract.

Today there is a growing sense of unreality as ever worse offenses against common sense and the principles of Liberty and Justice are only pooh-poohed, and yet the day-to-day living of basically all of us remains unchanged. Our lives are unaffected by these viscious blows to our collective dignity because quite frankly, we've mostly given up that dignity years ago. We sacrificed it piecemeal, taking jobs we knew were complicit in the moral quagmire of modern business because we were bereft of better choices.

Even those of us who haven't compromised ourselves this way have grown somehow used to losing. We have seen the futility of every kind of straegem and organization. We have witnessed the rise and dominance of hard cash and plutocratic control and we have despaired even as we railed against it all. And we have watched television. We have sat benumbed as it all floated away. There is no fabric of public gathering left, and without fabric, a tapestry can tell no tales.

Somehow, though, we all believe in the fable of Nixon's fall. We believe that bad guys lose, even if good guys don't necessarily win. This irrational belief may someday be our best strength, if it ever motivates enough people to stand up. With impending news of a court that will endorse even the most foul and blatant eviscerations of Democracy, I hope that people are ready.

But before I go...

2006-01-04T23:47:00.000-06:00

One big, multi-part question.

Stroll around the lefty blogs, Mathew Gross, Bottle of Blog>, TPM, Hullabaloo, etc. and ask yourself, is this a different universe? Do the emplyees of newspapers and TV news just eat gray mush all the time? Is that why there is no sense of the magnitude or very close proximity of political uproar?

Or is it something else? Do the reporters know what's going on any more? Certainly Andrea Mitchell, wife of Alan Greenspan, has an inkling (follow the TPM link), but what about the writers at major daily newspapers? What about the folks producing news segments for the networks? Because it's either that they don't know or they just don't want to talk about it.

More than any of the other stuff (at least at the moment) this makes me worried. This silence portends denial of a serious sort, the kind that can progress to dangerous, stultifing depths. Once this kind of denial starts to become really ingrained (like, a year or two ago), it becomes hard to change it. Where is the great catalyst that shakes the media rubes from their torpor? And what if there isn't one big shock but maybe a series of small bumps? The kind of bumps one might feel as an oligarchic semi-democracy goes off-road, veering slowly toward the swamps of despotism? How would the docile, sleep-walking media cover it?

Just a question.

STATUS UPDATE: PENDING

2006-01-04T23:07:00.000-06:00

Already suffering mild blog-fatigue, and also somewhat dizzy from the exigencies of everyday life, I looked up and realized that I was shortly to be entering a vortex. That is to say my transfer admission orientation to the bureaucratic behemoth is tomorrow, and since I am as usual a 5n-dimensional piece going into a space desingned for rectilinear 3-d packages, I will be very busy for the next few weeks as I complete my obeisances to the ancient gods of inconvenience and bother.

The beginning of a useful idea

2006-01-02T18:15:00.000-06:00

Warning: Very speculative ramblings! (No, I wasn't high, it just reads like I was.)

Balance and bringing balance. The fine art of strectching ones capacities in a way that develops precedented areas of strength while building capacity in underdeveloped areas so as to provide stability. I see the opportunity for a new naming of a dynamic. This would be a part of homeostasis, the compelling movement towards homeostasis.

This is the challenge of all contained entities. (What the living fuck is a 'contained entity' you ask? Well, I'll tell you what I mean by that.) A contained entitiy is any living being or organization thereof whose limits are easily demonstrated. A nation, a corporation, a person. Less true of a family, but sometimes and in some ways, sure. Not any kind of ecosystem that is not threatened. Communities vary, some are very open-ended, diverse or philosophically sound enough that they could be considered as uncontained. The important thing is the demonstrability of the limits of the entity in question.

Anyway, that's my whole point. Different demands based on this ill-defined variable, which can be seen at a wide variety of scales.

For groups of less demonstrable limits, the compelling movement towards homeostasis can be applied to the organizing principles of the group rather than the specific members and their established functions. Communities within science, art and philosophy are examples of this aspect of the dynamic. Existentialists failed to develop those elements of the organizing principles of their community that could have provided better stability, and thus had a very short moment of initial prominence. Newtonian physicists have done a much better job by comparison, stretching into fluid dynamics and the physics of atomic interactions even when the Tao (flow) and "quantum" reality are categorically beyond the limits of their purview.

As a counterpoint to this idea, I suppose that we could also say if an entity is very specifically focused in purpose and also well established in its context, it can be said to have enough strength and balance that the demands of this dynamic are less pronounced. I am thinking here of species niches at any level of ecosystem (including the role of various cells in a body, paramecia, etc.) Also in this group would be particularly well adapted/established organizations, such as trade groups like the National Association of Manufacturers. However, even for entities in this situation, the situation is changed in intensity rather than kind.

Trade unions are an example of a whole category of entity that have largely failed to respond to this demanding dynamic.

Also implied by my proposal (demonstrated very clearly by the example of trade unions) is the existence of a complementary dynamic, the continuing change at any given specificity of environment.

. . .

Why yes, I have been practicing my T'ai Chi. Why do you ask?

Whew.

2006-01-01T01:03:00.000-06:00

Thank goodness that's over. Let's get on.. wait. That schmuck's still president? Arrrghh! @*$#! @*$#! @*$#! @*$#!!!

Welcome to 2006. Remember to be good to each other.

Decisive action + no casualties= Sure thing.

2005-12-30T23:58:00.000-06:00

Raw Story, who you should all check all the time, has been linking to the interesting developments in the German press regarding the U.S. striking at Iran. The latest in Der Speigel (english), is very specific. Airstrikes soon, because of recent anti-Isreali rhetoric.

This "reason why" has the ring of truth to it. From der Speigel:

The DDP report attributes the possible escalation to the recent anti-Semitic rants by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose belligerent verbal attacks on Israel (he described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map") have strengthened the view of the American government that, in the case of the nuclear dispute, there's little likelihood Tehran will back down and that the mullahs are just attempting to buy time by continuing talks with the Europeans.

George seems like the kind of guy who would think that talking tough is serious business. This kind of thing might be enough to get his dander up. If he feels like going on the offensive is a good way to reclaim the initiative in the domestic political debate, this would be one way to do it.

Another factor weighing in favor of W. taking this step is the looming State of the Union Address. The man has to talk about something, you know? What good news does he have?

So, lets just say it looks like 5:4 in favor, since it's still a very drastic step. If they take it, what would this mean?

Well, for starters it would hugely affect the domestic political equation in Isreal, where the last I read, Sharon is not really doing well after his stroke. Regardless of how coherent Sharon is, however, the military is certainly quite ready to go after Iran. The polis in Isreal has, of course, been finally easing a bit to the left. Bad news for W. and the neocons. If they can start something with Iran, it's a lot more likely that the yahoo Netanyahu will end up back in power.

The wider gulf states would probably stand to benefit in the short run, depending on how the strike goes. Shi'a populations in the Gulf have of course been very attentive to the goings on in southern Iraq. If the media in the Middle East can play it right, the Gulf State Shi'a will be both somewhat chastened and more loyal to their own governments. This would likely involve some combination of loudly declaiming the U.S. action (what I think of as 'diplomatic outrage') while also finding some way to criticize Iran for destabilizing the region. So far so good. The appearance of these opportunities might be enough to earn tacit approval (read: encouragement) from some of the Gulf States named in the der Speigel article.

The problem, of course, is that Iran would not be incapacitated and would probably strike back. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard are a higly independent, initiative oriented elite force. I would look for something really nasty to go down in Iraq, probably in the Green Zone. The U.S. troops have likely gotten used to being able to somewhat trust Shi'a Iraqis. Typical of any Bantustan, the locals are needed to staff basic amenities. My guess is that there are several Iranian intelligence assets working in the Green Zone. If our guys weren't constrained by ideological blinders, they would take this into account. Of course, if that were true, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

Furthermore, I would not expect the general populace of Shi'a Iraq to be very happy with a U.S. airstrike in Iran. Many Iraqi Shi'a have family living in Iran, after all.

Also, there is a huge potential for bizarre nastiness with the Iran/Turkey/Kurdistan situation, should this strike take place.

At the very least, it would really complicate things. At worst we would be looking at the wider regional conflict that we have all been dreading (except the Christian "End Times" fanatics, of course, they would be thrilled). No matter what, it would make a smooth withdrawal of U.S. troops all but impossible.

Basically, this would be an idiotic move certain to lead to terrible developments; in other words, par for the course.

Okayness-ing

2005-12-29T21:47:00.000-06:00

-Or, What I saw at the movies-

Once upon a time there was a little cartoon character with the perfectly goofy name of Spongebob. Spongebob was a humble little guy in shirt and tie, and though he worked at a fast food joint, he also championed the temporary victories of staying young in the face of impending adulthood. While this sounds at first blush to be just another push towards the elongation of childhood, it is in fact very much more.

Spongebob, you see, has the distinction of being very successful. He also has a best friend, and their relationship earned their movie a heaping ton of outcry from the carping culture-crappers of the religious right.

The fun thing is that the movie earns it. Especially if you are a guy, I strongly suggest seeing this movie. What a wonderful warping and playful twisting of the half-knowledge of incipient sexuality. What a really, really gay-and-straight-friendly film. What a bunch of very bizarrely adult visual gags. What a feel good film, and in all the borderline ways implied!

-------

There are three big thematic movements that I see shaping the development of our culture (may be more, but these three at least). Number one is the very dangerous and dramatic gyrations of political form that accompany the late stages of empire. It's the one I usually write about. Number three is the curious and oft-underestimated persistence of spiritual emergence throughout the populace. That's for another time. Second, though, is the ever increasing tolerance and understanding prevalent within our culture.

Not sure about that last one? Consider, my lady love and I recently watched Notorious, the 1946 Hitchcock film starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. A wonderful movie. There was so much wrestling with and suppressing of emotion that you could have mapped the waves of psychic energy had you sand to dance across the space between those actors. They were that tense. Of course, Hitchcock, 1946, etc.. but still, have you heard of the Eisenhower years that followed? Notoriously repressed, haha.

Today, consider, I work (in produce at a goofy, high-end, natural foods grocery) with a fellow, a family man, a few years older than me, quite the character. He tells this story one day, about the neighbor girl who comes over because her family ignores her, watches TV a lot with his family. Says to my friend that she thinks she might have an STD (she's 14). He kicks his kids (11 and younger) out of the room and goes through this very dense, emtionally laden territory in a sensitive, caring way, takes her to the clinic. A gut wrenching story, but in a big way it's really about the neglect the girl is suffering at home. I bring it up here because later on, while there's nobody else in the cooler, I take the moment to tell him I think he did exactly the right thing, and he just opens up, starts talking, sharing his worries and cares. We talk it over a bit, and later he thanks me. This would've been all but impossible in 1985, much less 1945. In 1905 our middle class jobs barely existed. Our liberal bourgoise clientele certainly had no equivalent as sizable or prominent.

Today, I still hear people use the the word 'gay' as a derogatory adjective for things or actions, and of course the hate fest of the 2004 elections is another topic entirely. However, my gay family members are not only tolerated, they are openly integrated into many folds of society. Friends and relatives who are inter-racial couples are met with nothing worse than infrequent glares, at least in my fair northern clime (another co-worker just went to visit in-laws down south and said they were not served at a restaurant on the road). What I'm getting at is that I know that prejudice and bigotry are not dead, but they are losing, and have been, steadily, for quite some time.

Once upon a time (the 1990's) I liked to reflect on how powerful I thought it would be that a whole generation was being raised without any cultural endorsement of bigotry. From "The Real World" to "Will and Grace," "American History X" to "The Bird Cage," amazing work was going on, culturally. And everywhere bigotry was a shameful thing. There were no notable examples of a proud bigot other than the extremely marginalized, for example David Duke. Then came Karl with a K, and well, the rest is recent history. All the same, though, this recent blip of backlash cannot come close in real power to the trends that have shaped popular entertainment since the birth of mass media.

There are a lot of reasons for a lot of different parts of this that I would love to get into here (and bore my one or two readers,) and I should loudly note that the popular acceptance of misogyny is profoundly, disturbingly and puzzlingly harder to combat, but I try to limit my rambles to two major topics at a time at most. Enjoy the good mood, friends, and go rent the Spogebob Squarepants Movie.

Peace,
-swift

Silently

2005-12-27T21:54:00.000-06:00

All the faces of the Goddess are real
aware of the answers we move about our dreams
awake or in denial we conduct our dealings
Love or dross, we spin our fables of meaning
and All our histories are real

The potential for language generation on blogs

2005-12-27T14:01:00.000-06:00

Over the holiday madness (an empire built on the backs of retail employees), I had an opportunity to reply to this very good guest post by poputonian over at Digby's Hullabaloo. Poputonian compares the liberal blogosphere to the social environment and pamphleteering in revolutionary era Boston.

Poputonian's rumination on the variety of groups working in loosely associated fashion during Paul Revere's time was apropos. The feeling of revolution is very much in the air out here on the blogs. The people of late 18th-c. New England, however, were involved citizens in a way that is vastly different from our contemporary info-polis. Today, there is little indication that Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry or any of their friends really know what a blog is.

Congressional leadership amongst the Democrats must very much feel the point of our semi-revolutionary fervor is directed at them as well as at the corrupt heart of Washington's halls of power. And they are right to feel this. I doubt that any of the prominent, socially climbing bloggers like Markos or Josh Marshall were happy when Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This is the sort of anti-democratic legislation that will haunt the United States for generations to come, and a lot of it came during the Clinton years.

I think I have written before about how happy I am that there is a thing called the Thirty-Something Dems Working Group in Congress. That is a good place to start. However, sooner or later we will need to address issues within the leadership of the party. The first ten minutes of Bulworth, where the senior Senator from California is hogtied by lobbyists and his own chief of staff, remain one of the most trenchant critiques of modern politics ever to see mainstream exposure. There has been no real change to this dynamic.

The locally prominent, reform minded Democrats that I talked to at a Howard Dean rally were all very cognizant of this problem. The closest any of them would get to a clear discussion of the problem, however, was to call out "special interests" and demand vague reforms. This abysmal abandoning of effective use of language was on prominent display throughout the Kerry campaign as well. Kerry was very good at talking in code words to try to indicate that he was far more liberal than he had ever really shown publicly. For my part I believe him. So what? Who knows it? Nobody. Even within the party, people are unable to speak plainly about the problems that this country faces.

Out here in flyover country, people outside of the political system are more able to talk to each other about politics than the Democrats are because the Dems realize at a subconscious level that in order to talk plainly about the systemic biases in this country they will have to explose their own indenture to the financial/insuance/medical, military/industrial/communications and marketing interests that have always had an overwhelming interest in the operation of this "democracy." The plain language that people want to hear from their politicians is difficult to manage when you are at risk of stepping on the toes of giants. Consequenty, voters are turned off by Democrats because it is clear that there are too many circuitous thought patterns and coded meanings going on when they talk.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are starting to wake up to the fact that they are fighting for their lives. They are also not from among the Beltway in-crowd who have far too much a penchant for the hierarchies of their own society. Nancy Pelosi in particular, with her recent proclamation that there will not be one party-wide position on Iraq is opening the door to the plain use of language by Democrats.

What needs to develop now is a sense that this variety of opinion and subsequent plain language is a basic principle of the party. The Repuglicans have, after all, been crazy good at promulgating very specific memes. The Democrats can differentiate themselves from this by using widely varied, but direct language. There is an army of think-tank language engineers working for them in this capacity right now. It's us, out here in the blogoshpere. The question is whether any will notice.

This is a very exciting time for our country.

2005-12-20T15:47:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time a very rigorous thinker, alarmed at trends within his culture, set out to make a differnce by writing books. Fortunately for him books were still a good way to make an impact in wider society. His major works, 1984 and Animal Farm did make a difference. Millions of people have read them and perhaps as many as tens of thousands have taken their warnings to heart.

Unfortunately, books are not what they once were in the great cultural debates. It seems likely that Our Hero, George Orwell's writings, were in the end too dated and too British to prevent the emergence of dangerously totalitarian trends in the

United States

.

Up until the Bush II years, I thought that Brave New World was far more relevant to our contemporary doldrums of democracy. Certainly it remains as relevant as it ever was. There has never before been a society as saturated by the anaesthetizing vicarious pathos of popular drama as ours is today. And as changes in culture have become more drastic, uncertainty in the wider existential environment has increased. People seem to always relate to their society and culture for existential cues and anchors. Who am I to question whether this is right or wrong. It is the way it is.

As these turbulent changes increase in their frequency and magnitude, however, there are born several complementary urges within the polis of culture. Huxley wrote in Brave New World about the urge to escape and immerse oneself in diversions. I know that, for example, I have become much more a sports fan in the past several years than I was as a younger man. I have watched democracy crumble and my fellow citizens endorse the new order in various ways, and it has been comforting for me to have some drama in which the resolution was not of such great consequence. Plus, sometimes in sports my team would win.

There is another cultural movement, however. The one that Orwell wrote about. For a long time I thought it far less applicable in modern times. Not because of any great progress in the tapestry of our culture, but just because the "soft fascism" of celebrity worship and popular branding were so successful that the more draconian methods were being rendered unnecessary.

Then, of course, following the great corporate putsch of vertical integration and neo-liberal economics, there came the demogogic onslaught of the late Clinton years. The consolidation of power had begun in earnest. The inclination towards dominance was in full flower, but there was still no need for these other methods. After 9/11 it was not about need, but rather about opportunity and inclination.

What can be said of this authoritarian type of political dominance? First and foremost is a reaction against an "other," who is "causing" these disruptions. If there is no convenient other outside of the body politic (the Hun, the Jap, Osama/Saddam Hussein), then otherness will be projected internally on some subculture or opposition political party or even a personality type or psychological trope.

Hyper-masculinity is usually promoted as a virtue, espcially in western (Apollonian?) cultures. We recently had the cultural experience wherein the intellectual allowance of nuance was openly ridiculed. Disgust and a queasy form of amusment mingled in the awareness of my fellow "liberal elitists" as we whispered in horrified tones of atavism and its perils. Loudly, many pondered leaving the

United States

for

Canada

or Western Europe, where the virtues of civilization are not so casually discarded.

Another common tendency in this authoritarian expression of the play for dominance is one that Orwell expressed so well that we now call it after him. The idea of internally contradictiry language and constellations of ideas was also expressed by an American author, Joseph Heller, who wrote interestingly not of a hypothetical country in an abstract timescape, but rather of his experiences in the U.S. Army Air Corps. His insights are also enshrined in our language, of course, as we call Catch-22's after the book he wrote. In either case we can clearly see the dominance oriented ego work to overcome rationally expressed objections by denying the validity of the rational framework itself.

The dominance oriented ego is then unfettered by common sense in its exercise of Force. This is because common sense is dependent upon language and language (again in the Apollonian west especially) is most often overdependent upon development of rationality. Poets, preachers and other charismatic leaders, of course, are imprisoned or simply shot.

The Bush II administration, in all its Orwellian glory, has proffered us a new form of this internal contradictoriness. Today, this use of intentionally irreconcilable pardigms has been extended to the philosophical arena. For example, the GOP rose to power claiming a mandate for "states' rights" but quickly acted to impose federal authority over medical marijuana and assisted suicide laws. Some of this is mere hypocrisy, or in the case of states' rights, synecdoche for racism. It is a widespread and pesistent trait, however. The idea that there is a "strict constructivist" core of legal philosophy driving the current administration sounds good when explained: as the Constitution is written!! However, there is no doubt that even the more authoritarian and aristocratic of the framers of the Constitution would argue vociferously against the ability of the Executive to usurp the power of the Legislature and Judiciary regarding torture and spying, and they would likewise be horrified at the all but endoresement of a State Religion.

This form of argument, utilising a philosophical context for one basis of action and then acting clearly against that philosophy, short circuits the ability of any opposition politics that does not come from a well founded philosophy. In a day such as ours, when the dangers of hypocrisy have been irrelevant to the well being and comfort of most citizens for multiple generations, there is almost no cultural traction available to those who would argue against such brazen plays for dominance. What can be done is to call out these bastards for lying, call them out for having despotic aspirations, call them out for corruption and sleaze. In short, what must be done is to speak plainly.

I wrote previously about the tensions involved in challenging the underlying premises of a culture (to wit, why Hillarycare was more politically difficult than engaging in torture). There is a reason that the Democrats have had a much easier time challenging Repuglican corruption than they have challenging their despotic aspirations. To challenge the existence of corruption reinforces the idea that corruption in business and politics is the exception rather than the rule. To challenge the despotic tendencies of the juggernaut that is Bush II/Rove/Cheney calls into question the will to power that is the underlying premise of modern business practice.

This is a time when the existence of philosophical distinctions of great import is much closer to the surface than usual. Hypocrisy is categorically dangerous because it is always oriented towards freeing the will to power. In order to challenge hypocrisy, a politician would have to implicitly challenge the lying about social and economic reality that frames debates like international movements of labor. They would be challenging the pervasive disparity in CEO pay to the well being of median wage citizens. It is, in short, very difficult to do.

But because of the in-your-face egregiousness of the Bush II administration, this is a time when the dangers of hypocrisy have been exposed. The surrounding cultural context is well developed enough that an aspiring politician could sieze this opportunity and draw critical connections within the popular awareness. Not between hypocrisy and the surrounding culture of corporate dominace, that would still be political suicide. Rather, the foul smell of incipient despotism that emanates so powerfully from Dick Cheney and Karl Rove can be named and repudiated. Likewise the disengenuous obliviousness of modern Repuglican politicians who act as if social reality had no practical reality or consequences can be called for what it is. These simple, forceful acts of language could form the basis for a new examination of what we, as a culture, are all about.

It is very unlikely, however, that this will happen. Democrats are rarely bold, and never brave in the face of criticism from within the ranks of their own party establishment. If they disregard this opportunity, however, we will face a time when the premises of our culture are redefined to categorically include the right of power to act unilaterally.

Since this cannot happen in a vacuum there would be significant social and political turbulence. Do not relish in this thought. Whatever the outcome of this upheaval, it would not play out quickly, nor would any outcome recognizable as victory be very likely for anyone.

Update: According to Defensetech, agents of the type asked to do this spying are upset (via Josh Marshall). One of the problems we would face as a country if things do continue to go bad, is that there will be considerable fallout within the intel and defense communities. More than there already has been. Also in that post, apparently Sen. Rockefeller has been taking the extreme nature of the White House's policies very seriously. If he sent and kept hand-written copies of his letter protesting the program it's because he did not want to use his computer. Also, Digby has been working hard to demonstrate why the White House must've wanted to go beyond the reach of the courts in the first place.

Ariel Sharon Hospitalized for Stroke

2005-12-18T22:20:00.000-06:00

Well, if he wasn't 77, I'd say it sucks to throw the Isreali Right-Wing party into dissarray. You make a lot of enemies, definately some of whom could arrange for you to have a stroke.

Given his age, it's no sure thing, but it is an interesting coincidence.

In the Guardian aritcle on the topic this paragraph near the end cought my eye. (via True Blue Liberal)

Mr Sharon has never spoken openly about how he moved from being a major supporter of Jewish settlement in Palestinian areas to being the first premier to withdraw from settlements. He has also not spelled out the political direction he wants his new party to take so he would leave no clear legacy for the party he created. "Sharon is driven by the late recognition of the necessity of fixing Israel's borders as a matter of vital national importance. He has not disclosed the reason for his change of heart because he felt that it would incur too much political resistance to his plans," said Mr Ezrahi.

Well, I hope he's got it down in his journals. Sharon is clearly no peacenik, but by his recent change of heart on this issue, he has become a very interesting political figure. Remember that he could almost certainly be tried for war crimes for his role in Lebabnon in the early 80's, if anybody had the guts and resources to do it, and he swept into office by provoking the second intefadah. Vacating Gaza (and subsequently splitting Likud) was a bold, clumsy move, and it will etch Sharon's name deeply into the history books. I hope he is well.

To Protect and Serve

2005-12-18T21:02:00.000-06:00

There is a relationship between a free press and democracy that famously goes back to the American Revolution. Today there is a court-endorsed precept that advertising consititutes free speech. In fact it is not free speech, it is paid for. Neither is it freely available to those able to pay. Advertising may be rejected for any reason, of course, but the only real reason to do so is content, and that means politics whether it is party politics or simply that other advertisers (or a parent company) may be offended.

There has been a growing sense in the meta-media environment that the Democrats do not act in a focused, savvy way when presenting ideas to the public. The Republicans on the other hand, especially since the Reagan administration, have made media management a calling and a craft. No story is accidental or uncoordinated. Ratings hooks abound and good meals are served. A sense of camraderie is fostered.

The Democrats, agrue sympathetic media foot soldiers, aren't doing their part. There needs to be, offer Lakoffian tacticians, a bigger picture and coherent language. (That much is true, of course, but can we please talk also about content? Where are the cries for a coherent philosophy from Dems? Oh, yeah, right-wingers ask that question. Think about it.)

The issue today, though, is the idea that the Dems need to appproach news like the R's do. By this logic, the wiretap story would be argued on cable news (on stations where management is anywhere from sympathetic to partisan in favor) by armies of heretofore unknown talking heads trained by billions of dollars in contributions from degenerate, rabid plutocrats. The same catchy phrases would be used by many of these message transmitters, and letters and editorials would appear in scattered news outlets across the country arguing the very same points. Soon, drama would ensue. People would tune into cable news a little more often, to catch juicy developments and heated rhetoric. Advertising revenue would be plentiful. Then, answering "the will of the people," Democratic pols would offer concern alternating with indignation, win elections and cheat on redistricting plans to make sure they can never lose again. At least, I'm pretty sure that's how it goes. Did I miss anything?

What it all amounts to is that the media reps want to be spoon fed. As the newsrooms around the country have gone more and more to budget management ala the Harvard Business School model, there have been precious few resources for investigative shoe leather and patient building of backstory. We all know this. This is why the sympathetic foot soldiers of the media horde wish the Dems would act more like Republicans, because they know that otherwise there is little excuse to tell another side of a story.

Again, there is some substance to this criticism. At it's higest levels, the Democratic Party is hamstring by crossed lines of powerful influence and political sympathy. This is why ted Kennedy can eloquently bash Bush policy, but can not address the global reality of a viscious class inequity. He and his ilk are too indebted to high-dollar power brokers of the American (global hegemonic) aristocratic establishment.

Where we are today, however, there is no need for reporters to work long hours building a careful background on the wiretap story. A quick phone call to any major political science dean of any respectable university will quickly result in some very juicy quotes. Dinosaur moderate Republicans from the old hard-copy phone number lists can be dredged up to righteously cast scorn upon the usurpers who defile the institutions that a majority of Republicans used to believe in. These are easy stories to write.

Furthermore, if it is left to the Democrats to build a case against this gruesome disfiguring of the face of Democracy then it will be only partisan politics. If this is rendered as a partisan story, then the dramatic changes being made to the legal fabric of the United States will necessarily be obscured by the partisan origin of the story. This story is profoundly different from most politcal stories. If the writers covering the story do not convey that difference then they are failing their duty to the American people and the institutions of this Nation.

Oh goodness, where to start?

2005-12-17T23:54:00.000-06:00

Digby has some great stuff, as usual. This is about a college senior who was visited by Homeland Security Officers after requesting Mao's Li'l Red Book through a college inter-library loan.

Josh Marshall has been blowing away every possible rationale for the NSA wiretap problem, and really getting to some investigative journalism into what might be underlying why the administration would have tried to get so extremely extra-legal regarding this issue. I reccomend checking his site regualrly over the next few days.

But what has really got my dander up is this must-read from AlterNet. Basically, beecause of what's going on in Ohio right now, we're really screwed. And I mean long term, just straight fucked.

This is the problem, as I see it: There is no motivation for any powerful information establishment organization to attempt to remedy the situation as presented by the three stories referenced above. The idea that there is an unchecked authority in the office of the President, being wielded in extremly undemocratic ways, should be newsworthy. That internal security is focusing on thoughtcrimes and wiretapping willy-nilly should be preposterous and deeply alarming.

But in fact, we have every reason to avoid looking. Keep your head down, mind your own business, don't challenge the boss when he's in a bad mood.

Furthermore, an ineffective opposition tends to promote cynicism and apathy. Unfortunately, right now the Democrats are relying on the press to be hard-nosed investigative journalists and the journalists are relying on the Dems to make a newsworthy fuss. And of course, as everyone should know, newsroom budgets have been being structured along a for-profit model since the 1970's.

So who can show us the way? What type of dramatic action will frustrated citizens gravitate towards? When, in 2006, after the Dems make disappointing gains and the Repulicans have once again started to dominate the political rhetoric of the day, what will be the impulse of the Democratic Party Leadership?

Will people start ot suddenly challenge this ever more powerful one party state? Hell no! People will hew more closely to the party line and work harder to curry favor with the Despots of Dementia, the Cabal of Morons. With no back up, no exemplar of principle, no community of noteworthy dissent, why should any one stick their neck out? There is no reason to.

Yes, I'm a wee bit cynical tonight, but there is no indication that the Democrats recognize the depths of enmity that the ideologues they are facing bear towards Democracy. And though it is an ugly truth, when we step back and consider the indications of such stories as are making the rounds tonight, it must be our conclusion that that is the dynamic at the heart of our current difficulties. And why not?

Are we to be surprised when a culture of secrecy and power turns against Democratic practice? The mistake was in imagining that with the curtailing and exposure of programs like COINTELPRO that we had somehow turned a tide. In fact we had only made temporary gains. There is no doubt that the focus of power in a militaristic society is what I said: secrecy and power. We have had ample warning that the development of information technologies could only prove too tempting to the domineering tendencies of the "domestic security" establishment. Where do we go now? We shout from the rooftops. The prevalence of this activity is what protects us. We have little else. Certainly we are unlikely to hear the Democrats defending the college student in Digby's story. Even if Paul Krugman or Frank Rich writes about this in the New York Times, it will be a story noticed by few and talked about only in passing. But here, I am telling you, is the seed of a terrible thing.

The question, of course, is how far will the authoritarian right take this struggle. Truly, there can be little thought that they would win fair elections next year. But elections are less fair today.

And let me just restate once more that the old families of wealth and prestige are complicit in these dynamics by their passive acceptance of them. There can be a reshaping of the media landscape in this country with a few high pressure meetings, and it is not happening.

Update: Mathew Gross has some very specific thoughts on the matter as well, as does Steve Gilliard, quoted on Mathew's site. I'm going to sleep now, so you can go find out what those very worth-while thoughts are for yourself.

I've been thinking about 2008.

2005-12-16T14:02:00.000-06:00

I want to make bumperstickers like the "Wellstone!" ones that at least everyone in MN recognizes. I want to make ones that say "Hillary?" over a solid blue background. I think that most clearly sums up my feelings.

Though of course if it were to be Hillary against either McCain or Giuliani, well, I'd work my ass off for Hillary. What's that, you don't mind McCain? Give that man control of the military for one term and I guarantee you you'll take it all back. He may stand for ethics and morality within the service, but what he would do with his ethical army would be like to make Paul Wolfowitz blush. This is a man who believes in the use of military force.

Hillary, of course, would likely be just as bad, given that she would have to overcome the double toughness stigma of being a Democratic Woman. Hell, she might just nuke somebody. But I don't think so.

I don't care who it is, the Dems need to learn to be tough, and I mean in terms of facing the onslaught of the Very Conservative Media. Maybe Hil's the one to learn the lesson.

I've always thought it out like this: In the NBA, when opposing teams play against the L.A. Lakers in Los Angeles, they know ahead of time that they're just going to put up with certain calls made by the refs on behalf of the home team. It is unlike any other relationship in the league, and it has everything to do with TV ad revenue when the Lakers win. The Democrats are always playing against the home team. It's all about the power of the country club power lunch and pleasing your boss. I cannot imagine a circumstance where the Dems would be t liely to be treated fairly by the mass media group-think. There's just too much culture clash and steroetyping.

The sooner the Dems realize this, and start playing for the win and not for the refs, the sooner they will have a chance to win real popular approval. Because from outside the bubble, many Americans have an intuitive sense of this dynamic, and of how the Dems should respond.

The question is, who will take on Citibank? And by Citibank I mean the whole financial/insurance/pharma/agricultural/international trade sector of the economy that gives contributions and poer to the Joe Bidens and John Kerrys of the world. Because if that's the coaching staff (to extend the metaphor), then what does it mean to play for a win?

Here's a thought you may not have had.

2005-12-14T18:28:00.000-06:00

The big two reasons the U.S. won the Cold War were that citizens of the eastern bloc nations wanted reliable access to foodstuffs and that the young people wanted to partake of the mythically sexy culture of the West. These reasons are exactly why we are not likely to "win" what clash of civilizations does exist between the West and the Muslim East. Citizens of these nations are not starving and they do not want rock'n'roll or blue jeans.

Just what this "other citizenry" does want seems unlikely to be a common variable given the very different historic experiences of countries such as Egypt, Iran, Algeria, Qatar, Lebanon, Pakistan, etc. Regardless, whatever is wanted in each locale is almost certainly tied to historic validation, and we cannot provide that except by losing.

However, there is another kind of historic trend brewing very slowly in the greater Islamic culture. A friend of mine maintains that Islam needs to experience its enlightenment, akin to Europe throwing off the reigns of the Catholic Church in the 16th century. I think he is wrong, for a variety of reasons, but importantly, I think something else is happening.

As Muslim citizens acclimate in particular to Western Europe, a new sense of identity and a new set of desires are forming that will in time mutate into a form that is relevant to the experience of Islamic peoples in the desert countries of their origin. Viewed in this light, the recent civic unrest in France is the most encouraging that could possibly have happened. I say this because that rioting signified a desire for cultural acclimation, validation and fulfilment in a way that is very dissimilar to, say, unrest in the streets of Egypt promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood during recent local and parliamentary elections.

In any case, these are the movements that matter. Military operations and metaphors serve mostly to obscure what is really at play, and of course to consolidate power for demagogues around the world.

2005-12-13T15:48:00.000-06:00

giants climb the stairs of heaven
carry us
as offerings
to the fell gods of history

the dying moans of thousands are but shadows
in the greater works of genius

and our remarkable efforts to change this vast world
matter when we are walking, carrying a load

Happy Holidays!!

2005-12-09T20:12:00.000-06:00

So this has been getting under my skin a bit, but the lovably anonymous posting ricky.zee over at Bottle of Blog hits the nail on the head with this one:

I could rant. But this "War On Christmas" defies any rant. It's so goddammed stupid, if you started mocking it, today, you wouldn't even be halfway done by the time God, Almighty blew the sun out of the sky for once and for all.

It really should be the final--and this time we're serious!--knife in the heart of modern conservatism. I mean, if the record setting deficits of the last three fiscally conservative presidents weren't enough, if the expansive ginormous government of the last three "small government" conservative presidents weren't enough, if the total lack of accountability and personal responsibility from the last three conservative presidents weren't enough...

...and we won't even mention the entire philandering, profiteering, and prison bound conservative leadership in Congress...

...then this really ought to do it. I mean, it really should.

The War On Christmas???

There's no War On Christmas, you fucking morons. Not by Soros. Not by the ACLU. Not by your major department stores.

None. Not now. Not ever. None.

And, contrary to his honorable protestations, he does go on to rant. And he should, he's very good at it.

What he doesn't mention, and what no one seems to have mentioned, is that the supposed "defense of Christmas" crowd are really, in fact, spouting anti-Semitism.

Now, it seems very obvious to me that this whole drama is just a red herring to keep the fanatic base from noticing that there is actual news happening all over the place these days. After all, one Congressman has resigned and another seems poised to fall soon, and Tom DeLay is in deep doo-doo, and Karl Rove is not much better off... Better whip up something nice and juicy, right?

Well, ok, but, what exactly are we saying here? Only Christmas is a legitamate holiday this time of year? Leaving aside the glaringly obvious fact that New Years' Eve is something everybody outside of Mormons and cultists celebrate, what's left? Oh yeah, Hannukah. Not acceptable, apparently.

As much as the ugliness regarding gay marriage around the election in '04, this shows the brutal ugliness that lies not far under the surface of the modern evangelical movement.

Shalom.

You probably already knew this, but

2005-12-06T21:28:00.000-06:00

...the end of the world is beginning in a remote corner of Pakistan.

Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone:

The best-case scenario for the aid effort is to get everyone a tent and some food and hope the majority of them make it. But few believe it is going to go well. Back in Tariqabad, a young aid worker named Raja Faisal Majeed is wiping his forehead in exhaustion. Just behind him, a bunch of tent-city residents have killed a bull, and people are walking up to the fly-covered carcass which is half-buried in mud, hacking off bloody bits, carrying them away. This place is filthy, unlivable, no one here will have a bath until spring . . .

Majeed, who has been living here on behalf of a group called Muslim Hands, shoots me a look as if to say, "You have no idea . . ." When asked about the winter, he shakes his head and looks ready to cry.

"Without shelter, they will suffer greatly," he says. "Suffer greatly. It will be very hard on the children and the old people."

He pauses. "Just look at this place."

Pakistan is an uncomfortable place for a Westerner. The poverty is so extreme that it hovers as an accusatory fact under every human interaction. In the capital, Islamabad, a Westerner is treated with extreme deference and obsequiousness on the surface, but there is something underneath as well, a defensiveness and readiness to take offense that borders on menacing. It is a country that feels sneered at and surrounded by enemies and would-be colonizers -- which it is -- and there is plenty of fuel here for crippling national complexes.

Before the rubble had even settled, it was firmly expecting to be left behind by the West at the aid-donation party. Even at the level of the individual earthquake victims, there was a perception that the West was uninterested in helping Muslims. Time and again I was asked by quake victims why America hates Muslims, is always making war with Muslims, etc. Two refugees insisted that Osama bin Laden did not exist; one college-educated Muslim aid worker asked me if it was true that Americans called Muslims "dogs."

Taibbi is a veteran of the Moscow Times whose carreer has been marked by a certain cynicism. I have followed his writings ever since he dissd the Clark Campaign with unusual vigor. That he has gone to Pakistan to report increses my respect for him.

Go. Read. Worry.

We are swimming in culture.

2005-12-06T14:11:00.000-06:00

The political juggernaut of the right seeks always to move the currents of our culture, and thus to influence the body politic. This is very much a matter of creating subconscious associations. When we see speeches made in front of military uniforms, it is as much to maintain the popular association of the Republican Party with the military as it is to play to a political strength in a time of challenge.

The reason that the emergence of torture as a politically acceptable practice is likely to be a long term rather than a short term development is that no one is demonstrating the ethical failing that torture represents. Sure, there's a few academics here and there, maybe some bloggers. But what voices in the mass media are clearly arguing the very well known arguments against these practices? None, really. There is no uproar, no hue and cry that an average citizen can refer to in their media landscape.

This means many things, but first and foremost is that for lack of wider cultural precedent, there can be little in the way of a political argument made along those lines. A Democrat, for example, would thus sound "out of the mainstream" for opposing torture. Combine this with the fact that it sounds "weak" and we can rest assured that no Democrat who is going to succeed will ever even raise the point.

What is lost here is that this cultural reality does not have to be ethically or practically sound. It does not have to jive with any external fact, it is a reality at the level of cultural perception, and that is enough for it to persistently affect human decisions and assumptions.

The contemporary model for this is based apparently on an envelope of stability. The dominant political discourse is allowed to persist so long as it stays within a range of deviation from known reality. This range is established by whether or not a political act does not destabilize the cultural status quo to the extent that underlying assumptions are put too closely to the test.

By my lights, it is for this reason more than any other that HillaryCare was derailed so forcefully. There were far too many underlying assumptions of the social status quo that were being challenged. Obviously first among them is the great "Libertarian" premise of absolute individual accountability, but also there is the idea of Government competency or incompetency and not far behind is the idea of a wife's intellectual, executive and administrative role. Each of these ideas are incredibly challenging to the general model of society as promoted by business, banking and marketing interests.

In fact, if we compare torture and changes made to legal practice by the "PATRIOT ACT," to HillaryCare, we can see very easily that the values of uncertainty, the rights of authority, fear of the other and ruthlessness are far more in keeping with the value sets of business, marketing and banking than, say, collective accountability, care for the well being of others and interconnectedness in general.

This is why there is no argument made against torture. And considering that the major player Dems rely heavily upon marketing and banking for election cash, this sort of seals the deal, so to speak, on them not speaking out.

This is also why one of the most powerful political acts we can make right now to is to state, as clearly and loudly as possible, the precise arguments against torture and in favor of the rights of the accused.

And when the foot comes down...

2005-12-05T17:15:00.000-06:00

...you better know where you're at.

The really ugly follow up (or kicker, sorry) is this: With a dominant Air Force and a dominant Navy, but a vastly weakened Army, it is ever more likely that we would have to resort to a draft in a crisis.

It's easy to say that it could never happen, but a Democrat could do it. A Democrat would be pressured to do it if there was, say, an eruption of the much ballyhooed Wider Regional Conflict in the Middle East.

And how could that happen? Well, you have a new group of combat fanatics and torturers with tons of private money backing them (who, as Digby wisely points out, aren't going anywhere, no matter how many troops leave Iraq), and a small but vociferous community who think we should've won, and a group of completely unscrupulous political operatives who hate not being in power and could very easily see an opportunity to work something.

It's a scenario. I'm not a tin-foil hat paranoiac, nor do I belive the tides of history can be that easily scryed. I am very concerned, and I want to underscore just how unstable a set of political factors we're going to be faced with.

Evil is a Foot...

2005-12-03T00:47:00.000-06:00

...and the foot comes down.

So I am watching the television. It's PBS, they're doing me a favor by showing me this foot-faced bastard who is apparently arguing in favor of torture, and I'm thinking, fuckin' A, this guy dresses like a Nazi. I mean, he's ugly in a way that few of the Nazis were, his nose and head shape are not Germanic, really, so he doesn't look like a Nazi, but he's definately dresing like one. He's wearing a very severly cut black pinstipe suit with a silver tie and matching pocket kerchief, and just somehow the whole thing just shouts of the very obvious and well known Nazi aesthetic. Quite frankly, I've seen it a few other times recently, but this was just off the charts.

So I watch him for a minute, his face and voice are imapassive, affectless. He's rather ugly. But who is he? Ah, there, they put it on the screen for me: Neil Livingstone, Terrrorism Expert. Hm, computer's on, Google will tell more.

(sigh) I've seen websites for curious little above-board covert-ops outfits before, basically by doing this exact same thing. Yes, they are usally just exactly this up-front about what they do. Only in this case they don't come right out and say that they torture people, but come on, they're gonna get your information for you, right? I'm sure the only "customers" finding this website will know what they're looking for. Note also, however, a new wrinkle, at least as far as I've seen before: presidential speech writers. Okie-dokie. (sigh)

That last bit just came up, something mostly unrelated that I've been thinking about lately is just how damaging this little adventure is going to turn out to be for our military. But lots of people have been talking about that on and off for a while. What I've been thinking about is the way that our military is set up, and what Iraq may come to mean for the future of the over-all thesis of the military.

To wit, my basic thought is this: since the Cold War, the prevailing doctrine has been that we are set up to be able to fight a two-front war. Well, that's obviously hooey. During Korea we could've opened up another front if we had to, WWII was still so fresh in the cultural memory. During Vietnam, maybe up until, what, late '68? By mid '69 there was so much craziness going on internally that I'm not sure even a European land war against the Soviets would've held enough sway to allow us to muster a sufficient fighting force. Certainly I don't think we had several battalions of standing troops stationed in Europe at the time. I don't think the public would've been as sanguine as they generally were up to that point, regarding the draft. It doesn't make sense.

After Viet Nam, the services were a mess, so far as I've been told by those who served at that time. Reagan of course oversaw the great rebuilding, and Rambo finally won us our pride back, etc. etc. We might've been able to fight a two-front war then. But now? No. I will long carry this very clear memory of sitting in a dingy St. Paul apartment with this poor fellow, a passionate, somewhat cynical but still very patriotic Gulf War I vet who had later been medically discharged after a training accident (more common than you think), and we were "watching the war on TV," that is, our drive up the Tigris and Euphrates valleys on CNN, and I had been reading the very detailed Russian intel reports/anti-American propaganda dispatches from Venik's Aviation website, and so we were having a fairly lively conversation of it. In the course of this, at one point he pauses and says something to the effect of, "Y'know what I just can't help thinking? I hate it, but, damn, what if this is all we got?"

What if, indeed? The real problem we have faced now ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, is that we have an armed forces terribly poorly configured to act against any real world opponent we are likely to face off against. In ironic, illustritive fact, we are most well equipped at the moment to go to war against the rest of NATO. Before this Iraq fiasco, we would've been in really good shape against Iran, another demon of our own failings, of course, but still, actually a quite unpleasant place politically, and much more apt to make trouble for us and others in the region than Saddam was after a decade of sanctions and bombing. Right now, though, we could not very easily go against Iran for two big reasons. One, we would have Iraq at our backs, and what little stability we've had would utterly evaporate once the Shi'a turned against us in force (which they most certainly would if we invaded Iran). Two, we would have far too many troops in one spot, geographically. Assuming we couldn't use the troops we have there (something about trying to advance while being attacked with IEDs and RPGs from behind), we would have to bring in the very few we have left in Germany, the small chunk sitting in the US, the medium chunk in Korea and frankly, that's all, folks. Hm, North Korea getting any ideas yet?

We do not now, nor are we likely to again soon have a highly funtioning military. This is almost a completely done deal. When the troops do come home, most of them are going to be a little fucked up. Those who stay in will be either absurdly really warped or they will be decent folk truying to make sure the Army they love doesn't make the same mistakes again. Unfortunately, for factors I simply don't have time to get into now, I think it will be more of the former who stay in.

So where exactly does this leave us? Well, clearly the slavering hordes of the right wing are in fits trying to figure our how to make this all the Democrats' fault. But, beyond that, it leaves us a by necessity very isolationist country for the forseeable future. There will also very likely be an increasing tension within military ranks, as those demagogues that are within the military establishment stir up yet more passions reminiscent of Viet Nam, saying, just as some other yutz on The News Hour was pushing, "We could've won! If we'd've only stayed in there we could've won!!" Well, that was horseshit with Viet Nam and it's triple or quadruple horseshit now. And most military families know it's horseshit, otherwise Congressman Freedom Fries from Camp LeJeune would not be being critical of the war effort. (He is, look it up.)

Where else it leaves us is with unelected people such the torturer Livingstone with a much more established place at the table within our cultural landscape. There will certainly be small tectonic shiftings within the Power Elite after the next few elections show us more clearly the National mood, but not many shiftings, and not big ones. It is quite painfully clear that what rejection this claque of vacuous thugs has recieved has come due to their failures, not their aims.
There is no viable cultural foundation for a response to this crisis of our values at this time. There is only what we make. It is important to realize that the Cabal of Morons was not wrong about being the actors of history, they were wrong about being immune from it. We are the actors of history also, if on much smaller stages, but perhaps we can learn more intelligently from our history, and thus act in accord with its various and nuanced floes.

Shalom.

A Truth about Magic

2005-11-29T14:48:00.000-06:00

Magic, of course, is real and happening all around us. Magic is much more pervasive than we often think. We take it for granted a lot.

One consequence of taking magic for granted is that we do not realize how much difficulty, hard work and sacrifice is involved. Most of the time this heaviness is borne by a cosmic property of our very environment. Where is the balancing hard work that supports the graceful spider's web, for example? It is distributed through the natural universe and carried by the fierceness of the world's that eats and decomposes all around us all the time. We humans mostly do not see this, though it seems certain we are able to.

We can become much more involved in magic than we usually are. Prophets and artists and leaders carry great magic in their movements. A casual survey of biographies will attest to the profound and ubiquitous burdens that accompany their granduer.

Not everyone is interested in this route, of course, but many become parents over the course of their lives and even the hardest-harted among us cannot but be touched by the immediacy of magic present in child-rearing. Oh but what a weight it is sometimes, and for those unprepared, or who have wandered outside of the structures built by successive generations to help us bear the burden of this magic, well, this can be a challenge undreamt of.

Everyone has some magic in thier lives. The challenges of exposing people to their own magic is especially acute in this day when so many of the devoted magical thinkers are often acting in anger and fear, trying to destroy the Truth that we are all interconnected. People are hard at work attacking science today, and the struggle between science and magic has been well documented. Our challenge, if we are intitiates (for lack of a better word), is to bring the magic of our lives in a way that transcends this conflict.

Science is not immoral but amoral, and the conflict with the magical aspect of reality comes with the misapprehension of the role that science plays in the larger framework of our knowing. We can know and ackowledge science while revivifying the magic of our roots in reality.

We can find a deeper truth if we are bold in our dreaming, but we will have to bear a burden of unusual measure, for ours are interesting times, and the fabric of society is being rent and rewoven daily, and often by our own hands. Thus we had better be serious about building our capacity for energetic movement. Oh what a thing that is.

The coming bad news.

2005-11-28T17:39:00.000-06:00

Sooner or later the US will be getting out of Iraq. Everybody today wants to debate whether we should stay as long as possible or leave as quickly as we can. This is all a lot of naive foolishness.

Our option, singular, is to treat our withdrawal as a military operation. Mobilization needs to be prepared for as soon as possible, since right now everybody's unpacked and sitting on their butts in camp barracks. The sooner everybody starts getting ready to leave, the more practice and preparation (always needed before any major US military operation) they can get. Also, it is going to be necessary to develop a plan for maintaining a force presence throughout the withdrawal, because make no mistake about it, this is far more a retreat than a withdrawal.

If, as politics in Washington would have it today, we treat this as a political maneuver, then we are going to see a drastic spike in casualties during the withdrawal maneuvers. As far as that goes, the better option for the lives of the troops is that we don't leave until after 2008 since we all know that Cheney and Rummy are completely indifferent if not hostile to military officers running the military. As far as the U.S. and the Dems are concerned, though, it would be better if it happens before 2008, since even if a new (hopefully Dem) administration does a relatively good job, we all know the VCM (Very Conservative Media) will slag the shit out of them.

Or, of course, if we got a new Repuglican administration in 08, maybe we would hear a great chorus of cheering for whatever they did, good or not.

Domestic politics aside, however, just remember that this is not about what Iraq looks like after we leave. In fact I suspect the situation in Iraq post-occupation will turn out to have very little with how we conducted the end of our operations there, and far more to do with what is done by al Sistani, the Kurds and others, who doubtless know that nothing they do will be for keeeps until after we leave.

But don't take my word for it, read what Juan Cole has to say and draw your own conclusions. Even though his thoughts aren't precisely along the same lines, he certainly gives a flavor for context that can't be denied.

Oh! Oh! Oh, it makes me so MAD!!

2005-11-27T21:18:00.000-06:00

Here is a story, which though you are familiar with, you should read.

From the NY Observer:

“We just did this huge film about torture,” Mr. Kirk continued. “We called all the people who worked at Abu Ghraib—the military police, military-intelligence people, officers. Many, many of them said no reporter had ever contacted them. This was a public list; this was not a secret list. It’s basic journalism—I call one guy and say, ‘Who else can I talk to?’ He gives me two more names. And that person gives me four more names. They also said they had not been contacted by anyone in journalism.”

So the war, in its bloodless version, fails to disturb the national media mind.

“I don’t think the networks have been able to create a narrative or mythology for the war,” said Ron Simon, the television curator for the Museum of Television and Radio. “For a narrative, you have to have an answer to Norman Mailer’s famous question, ‘Why are we here?’ Two years later, they’re still struggling to ask that question.”

The Cabal of Morons

2005-11-23T22:38:00.000-06:00

"We cannot go any further, the limit has been breached!"
"No! We must go further, there can be no limits when we are the
(cue theme musik)

Actors of History!"

"Oh, yeah. Uh... Which way we goin again?"

....chapter 2, in which we join our hero...

Jason and his Petronaughts aimed their SUV at the desert horizon.
"To victory!" They cried, mad drunk on benzene and coke.
They hurtled forwards, spewing foul exhaust behind them, soon to be lifeless bodies of poor children bouncing off their titanium logo-encrusted hood.
More and more forwards they hurtled. Ever onwards, hurltling and hurlting and hurtling.
"The horizon, muttered one of them, "It does not get closer."
Bounce! went the traitor, bounce, bounce, and into the dust he receded.
"To victory!!" They cried, and one bruised his head as the Grand Old SUV hit a pothole, had IEDs and RPGs thrust rudely at it.
"Man the gates! The liberals attack!" they cried, and the SUV hurtled on.
"To victory!" they cried, and surely there were cheers. Ringing and the benzene-coke haze made them hard to make out, and of course the windows must be tinted for security, but surely, surely there was cheering!
"To victory!" they cried.
"Aye! Cap'n! There's a fierce storm a'brewin!" came the report, and sure enough, the horizon could no longer be seen. "But, we're lost!" cried a traitor, and he disappeared into the howling winds.
"To victory!" they cried. "Who here needs a compass?" snarled the dreaded first mate. "We have a moral compass, and we can smell victory!"
"To victory!!!" they roared with their power- WHAM! "Man overboard!" went the cry, and "Fitzmas! Dear God, oh dear God!" went the praying.
The praying and wailing went on for some time. It was a time, a time, no small time, without a cheer. The horizon could not be seen! "The first mate!, Oh God!" went one, and it was true, he had his thumscrew kit out and some other things-
"To victory!" they cried, and "Oh, God! To victory!!"

...to be continued...

The distance and the difference.

2005-11-22T14:11:00.000-06:00

"Reagan Democrats" were probably mostly two groups: one young, one old. the younger group consisted of follower youth, associated with the hedonistic heyday of the 60's and 70's.

A sense of philosophic conviction opposed to discrimination and in favor of individual liberties ruled the day. This was vague, prone to inconsistancies (such as the sexual objectfication frequently woven into concepts of "sexual liberation") but expected, and so many followed suit. When youthful indiscretions began to pile up, and the reality of personal responsibility for the future pushed people to search for a way to live the rest of their lives, the easiest models involved moves to a much more conservative world view. They moved to the suburbs, moved back to the suburbs, or what have you.

The older group were probably mostly New Deal/JFK Dems who were never interested in cultural revolution, and remembered the iconic days of Camelot and saw Morning in America as an idealistic echo of those themes. That these folks were all too willing to ignore the hypocrisies and failings of the Reagan White House speaks a powerful lesson about what I will call "social consciousness fatigue." This can be expressed as a relatively simple eqution:

Social change is possible proportionately relative to the ratio of present discomfort to social consciousness fatigue, less the percieved immediacy of downward mobility due to social upheaval, but where that factor can be violently flipped towards change if downward mobility becomes percieved as inevitable.

(We are in a very interesting place right now where systemic crisis is becoming perceptble -a dynamic that would be even too much a digression- slowly enough that we may be able to benefit from it, where it has more often historically proved calamitous.)

In any case, it is these older "Reagan Dems" who are now reaping the ill seeds of their willingness to be decieved, for it is they who cannot imagine that we would torure.

The demographic swing much noted lately on the blogs, whereby torture is becoming permissable, is due to the transition of social prominence (think in terms of who gets marketed to) from the elder group of Reagan Democrats to the younger. The elder group ( and their contemporaries would never condone torture because there is a much greater sense of the importance of philosophical underpinnings of a society within this group. This is of course largely due to the awakening to our own capacity for cruelty, post WWII. Call it the "but they're like us" cognitive dissonance of western upper and middle class citizens when Ike brought the cameras into the death camps. This awareness was seen as very important and passed on to the children of this generation- the boomers- but mostly through anti-Soviet propaganda-education.

Of course we went on to win the cold war, but we also underwent a huge shift in the nature of societal thought with the advent of television (and now the net.) It is very difficult to gauge the magnitude of this shift, but its impact can be described.

We think in more segemented packets, jump cuts and loose associative themes that stretch across many topics without permeating into the waking awareness except in terms of glib references and in-jokes. (Knowledge of this dynamic is how Repugs win elections.) Deliberative intelligence, while perhaps never widespread within the populace, has now become even less common. The basic dynamic of an idea or fact having broad reaching implications is now wholly and entirely lost on huge swaths of our culture. Philosophy or its imports is at this point, if not exactly impossible, categorically very limited in scope. And torture is something that has nothing to do with the suburbs and sounds as if it should help us win. What once set us apart has to do with another era, like watching M.A.S.H. in a Desperate Housewives age.

Let loose not the hounds, but the pigs.

Torture and the Gorgon

2005-11-21T16:33:00.000-06:00

Our crunchy brains open and reveal digusting movements.

We have never been more civilized then our worst impulse, and historically, cultures of great refinement condone behaviors of great cruelty.
You are not guilty, we are all merely alive, fighting gravity to remain on two legs.
Never expect tolerance that a person has not had taught from a young age or else earned through pivotal experiences of their own.
Most people fear and avoid pivotal experiences without ever knowing why they do so.

Movement, movement stimulates your prolonged presence on the indifferent couch.
Exercising judgements of taste is not participating in Democracy.
Cultivating refinement is not participating in Democracy.
Nothing you do is participating in Democracy, Democracy is a myth, a gentle fable we exercise at our peril.

Lift your mind up and move with a purposeful heart.
Only engaging a dream worthy of dreaming is daring enough.
You are only risking your trembling, weaker than you think foundations.
Breathing with your whole face is participating in Reality.
Buildings come and go, but our simple breathing moves us far beyond this time.
Society's various shapes today and tomorrow are built on the smallest currents of Reality breathing.

Where do you place your weight?

real steps and waiting

2005-11-15T19:35:00.000-06:00

Since Fitzmas we have seen the blogosphere enter a new phase of realating to the cultural drama. We know now that the occurrance of real events has its own momentum and its own reality.

The commentators aren't out of the game of course, but they are newly aware of their own secondariness.

There will be new days of excitement and pupose, and there will be more events that our rogue's gallery of pseudonymous heroes will be important to. For now, however, there is a sense of quietude on the steppes: We have skirmished and come out well, but was it us who did the damage? The post-modern partisan can rarely answer the question, and if anyhting this case typifies the general uncertainty.

da Vinci's Revenge

2005-11-13T22:40:00.000-06:00

So ah, basically, the Catholics are defending evolution from the the fundamentalists...

Get real here, people. The Catholics wish it was 1300 A.D. really bad. If they're telling you to get with it, you've got problems.

2005-11-13T16:22:00.000-06:00

Mathew Gross has a post up about Jimmy Carter's values book & speech. I was moved to comment and in doing so figured I had more to say about the subject than would rightly fit in a comments section.

What I wrote there was that the values of this country have shifted over a long time. To wit, over the 20th century:

-Industrialists established monopolies.

-WWII boosted fortunes mostly of least scrupulous within social institutions.

-Advertising strategies and mass media plus 1990's "conservative" putsch= PR/media groupthink that formally enshrines dominance as virtue.

Beyond this I would like to add that this seems like a typical shift of values within an empire. Of course as force becomes more and more the mode of shaping external relations of a culture the more it will be found as a value within that culture as well.

What we have today is a culture where winning is seen to be a value unto itself. By my lights this really does stretch back to the early 20th c. industrialists. There were social upheavals relating to what was a relatively explicit shift in values at the time, culminating with the turbulent 1930's. WWII did not so much cure the ills of the depression, however, as it reestablished the social order based on force and dominance that had been emerging prior to the depression.

Now, after Monica and Florida 2000, there is little other than winning available to appeal to. And frankly, other than a few isolated incidences of outcry (e.g. "greatest gen" highbrow types on TV after Abu Ghraib) there has been no clear enunciation of these values. And that doesn't count for much.

In fact, there has been very little in the way of any clear enunciation of classical liberal values within popular culture for a very long time. And check it, it has to be within popular culture, because as long as we still vote for our leaders, that's where the values approved by our elections are going to be first established.

I think that these values were strongly reinforced within our educational system after the horrors of WWII drove many to question some long held assumptions about human nature, but since then there've been some problems: Free Love, 1970's revolutionaries and the earnest, disasterous attempt in the late 80's to codify cultural respect known as Political Correctness. And for each of these movements, the power elite became more alarmed and antagonistic towards classical libreral values.

This antagonism has been expressed in many ways, but mostly it has been within the sphere of politics and public rhetoric. As anyone who has read this report knows, there has been a great deal of energy put into dominating rhetoric, and in order to reinforce , but also to rationalize that dominance, dominance itself has had to be glorified.

Of course this is only part of a larger trend. Americans love football and basketball today, not baseball. But it is the ground we are standing on. If today's politicians want to approach this issue... well, I think it will be difficult, but first they will have to win some battles (Alito), no matter how they do it because if they don't, they will have no social standing with which to present the worth of their ideas.

Note: This post has been edited and lengthened for clarity.

The divide that cuts both ways...

2005-04-22T13:49:00.000-05:00

There are many problems with our contemporary tendencies in this country, but one that lives on both sides of the cultural divide is the tendency to try and squelch the view of those we disagree with.

The conservative half, from libertarians on out to the christian nationalists, all love to complain about the political correctness movement. "Who is going to say I can't piss people off with my ornery conservative views?" they ask. And they are right to ask this and represent a valuable part of American culture.

On the left we are terrified that the neo-christian statists are going to someday work their way around to a Kristallnacht moment and come after the gays and liberals that apparently present such an offense to their way of living.

Clearly there are good guys and bad guys on both sides of the line here. Some conservatives strongly support the right of you and I to disagree with them (and these people are rightly very upset with the direction their party is taking).

Some liberals hate to see people punished for making offensive statements; we belive that we can sort it out with conversation and that these important conversations are spurred by offensive remarks (however unfortunate they may be).

Personally, I also disagree with the part of what conservatives call the "nanny state" that makes risky behavior no longer possible. I miss having merry-go-rounds at playgrounds, and dammit if it's not lawsuits that got 'em taken out. (Of course I do like welfare and a social servicee type stuff that is also included in the right-wing thought-bomb, but that's another story.)

Which brings me to the thing that got me started on this little rant. This high school student cannot wear a button proclaiming that she loves her vagina (she went to see The Vagina Monologues.) It's really a tempest in a teapot: Winona, MN; high school in general; hot button words like vagina in a small town... But the thing that got me was this: (and for some reason this was in the print version of the article but not the internet version!) the original complaint issued against the young women wearing these buttons came from a school secretary! What the Fuck?! People are going to be expelled from high school because they use a word that refers to anatomy in medical textbooks? These are adolescents that deserve to be comfortable and proud of their maturing selves.

So where are the libertarian conservatives? Sitting on their hands, probably, letting the extremists run the show.

I guess that there has been a concerted show of support for these young women. I don't know how to get in touch with them, but if anyone has time to find out, they should post it in the comments section.

Tip

2005-04-21T20:20:00.000-05:00

Dave Neiwert has a must read piece up regarding the coming assault upon the judiciary, its roots and place in the wider culture war.

Also, be sure to check out the Asia Times Online's usual phenomenal international analysis of geopolitics. While U.S. media is full of all-pope all the time hoopla, others are writing real analyses. Go figure.

Dear goodness, me.

2005-04-21T15:21:00.000-05:00

You know, I was for a while all ready to write about Bendict XVI and his Nazi past. I thought, how funny it was to come from one hegemonic power with global ambitions (as a draftee) and go to another hegemonic power with global ambitions and become its supreme ruler. I thought, how interesting that the Nazi Salute was exactly that of the Roman Centurions who had helped to build the early church.

I thought, nah, let it go.

Then I read something from the Gadflyer that made all that Nazi shit seem like what it is: ancient history.

(This was published orig. by Agence Presse France, Gadflyer picked it up from truthout.org. The whole post at the Gadflyer is worth reading but this is the meat of it.)

German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican theologian who was elected Pope Benedict XVI, intervened in the 2004 US election campaign ordering bishops to deny communion to abortion rights supporters including presidential candidate John Kerry.

In a June 2004 letter to US bishops enunciating principles of worthiness for communion recipients, Ratzinger specified that strong and open supporters of abortion should be denied the Catholic sacrament, for being guilty of a "grave sin."

He specifically mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws," a reference widely understood to mean Democratic candidate Kerry, a Catholic who has defended abortion rights.

The letter said a priest confronted with such a person seeking communion "must refuse to distribute it."

A footnote to the letter also condemned any Catholic who votes specifically for a candidate because the candidate holds a pro-abortion position. Such a voter "would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for holy communion," the letter read.

Tip

2005-04-20T21:37:00.000-05:00

I have bugged you all before to read billmon's blog, The Whiskey Bar. There is now a perfect example of why posted there.

A Contemplation

2005-04-20T20:14:00.000-05:00

In the busy and messy world of the United States at the opening of the 21st Century, we often leave aside our feelings.

Sure, it is a problem we are getting better at dealing with. There is exponetially greater facility and respect with regard to feeling than there was but a few short decades ago.

The true majesty and power of feeling, though, this is still not quite reflected in our common attitudes.

If you doubt me, consider: What is the worth of a true feeling of rest and satisfaction?

an Interlude

2005-04-20T00:21:00.000-05:00

What is death?

A haunting question, the kind of thing most people tuck out of sight and do not examine.

While my lady love and I were in the Olympic National Forest, we saw trees standing 100 ft tall, with live branches only at the top. We saw trees piled deep with moss, ferns growing out of the moss, and a few fallen leaves resting still upon the ferns. We saw trees growing out of trees that had fallen, trees growing out of trees still standing. It all blurrs together and happens so slowly- over hundreds of years time scale.

Our movements of society and culture are like this. More like this than than they are like any environment I have ever come across. They grow out of each other, slowly dying and transforming, hard to tell when one becomes another.

If our sense of human meaning is rooted in our societal context (and indeed, for many it is often rooted in little else), then who are we to say what is more alive? Is it us or our trees?

...

One new poem...

2005-04-19T18:46:00.001-05:00

Do the cutthroat, bring the inside death

What we are so sure of (our neatly packaged needs)
disappoints beyond the counter,
So we stop counting.

Images, accustomed and brutal, roil us.
We quiver,
out at an arms-length, conscientious regard
of our deplorable cousins;

We trim our opulent wicks
and declare ourselves healed.

We fulminate against atrocities we are sure we would never commit
(disregard is our passkey to safety).

Our rampant demons spit on our contradictions.
Everyone knows our comforts are products of their filthy wealth.

Kill our demons! We shout, or would, but rather
we pine earnestly for negotiations, and other niceties of language.
Our demons spit on our contradictions.

We cultivate derision and grope for compassion:
There is no contradiction in this, really.

We clamber for the high road, but what is there to do
When the high road crumbles out from under us?

Aha!

2005-04-19T18:46:00.000-05:00

In celebration of having the internet reconnected at my house, I offer you two things I had hoped to post earlier that are more-or-less appropos to the theme of recent posts.

I was debating wether to post on the new Pope. However, I will request comment from my many readers. Use the comments section: Does Benedict XVI bode well or ill for the church? Is there hope for such a hidebound institution? Is it all about numerology?

More soon!

-swift

...and one old one

2005-04-19T18:43:00.000-05:00

Madison Avenue

Microsoft microsof, on the wall
Eat my brain or shoot us all
When do we wake up what’s for lunch

Can I cani, please have my brain back?

What strange devilry is this, practiced in our halls of power??
Why go along alittle when we can go along a lot,
Huh, , Madison Avenue?

Eat well, and live well,
Eat others, and live others lives for them.
Watch your programming now, child.

Love is a froot we all eat, some eat it messy, ,some eat it neat
Some love a game and some can’t eat.

Save my file, please.

a little deeper in...

2005-04-19T10:13:00.000-05:00

One thing I've been wanting to get back blogging for is to get a little deeper into some of my concerns for our current situation vis-a-vis the christian right, This particualr bit is not entirely about it, and I promise to return to this topic in a less hastily written piece, but I think you will see where it fits in.

Many people have noted that there are few people today whose minds are swayed by new arguments or facts. This is a relatively recent phenomenon not in its occurence but in its intensity. Many supporters of Nixon, for example, I imagine must have been swayed by Watergate. In fact I read that this was a crushing blow to many who had held near saintly views of the Presidency. (I strongly suspect exaggeration, given what I have been able to glean of the rough edges of the "Greatest" generation, however...) The point is that had the people I knew in the eighties been exposed to something as clear cut as Abu Ghraib, many would have abandoned St. Ronnie and left him in the dust. (Iran Contra, on the other hand was not at all clear in its implications.)

My question, that I am working towards in my haphazard, unedited way, is this: Is politics dead?

The foundation of democracy is that people make decisions after weighing issues. Without that, there is only the play for dominance by one group over another. That only one group has the taste for dominance explains much of our current cultural and political morass.

A recent problem for me....

2005-04-17T13:52:00.000-05:00

A recent problem for me has been a tendency I've been developing to disparage christians. It's almost as if the delusions of oppression harbored by the screwball rightwing christian nationalists become self fulfilling. If I could possibly oppress them, I would seriously consider it. Sort of like the Germans with Scientology.

It's a bit against the way I usually do things, but check this out. See if you don't feel the same.

Cultural Feedback

2005-04-15T08:47:00.000-05:00

My roommate often asks, “When did the Democrats become the Fun Police?” Given that he worked with me and some mutual friends on Clinton ’96 but now regards politics as a whole with a visceral and well-reasoned cynicism, it is no idle question.

I do not know when the Democrats became the “Fun Police,” but I strongly suspect that one would have to at least discuss at length the difficulties brought about by the Yippies to address the issue in contemporary language.

In modern times the question of bridging discontinuities ‘twixt Lakoff’s nurturing frame and the wilder inclinations of the headstrong “youth” motivated by activist concerns is one that is far from being answered. When the volatile ferment that is our contemporary cultural story-play is added to the mix (and the activist-minded respond with pointed critiques of the same), there can be little hope for a beleaguered and compromised political party that can muster a spirited stand only once (for Social Security) in ten or more years.

The fact is, of course, that our activist hotbed of passion is anything but uniform, in age or anything else. There is also the noteworthy fact that there is a strong contingent of activists whose attitude towards cultural hegemony is easily twisted to sexist stereotypes of feminism (when in fact the fringe who would “emasculate” pop-culture given a chance is quite small).

The bottom line, regardless, is very simple. There will be no movement other than mach schnell, more faster.

The rules of cybernetic systems apply here. There is no response without feedback. In this case there is a positive feedback loop created by sales, advertising money, manufacturing money, manufactured consent and political power. There are no checks on this system. There is no existing way any checks may be imposed. The only vector by which checks on this dynamic could have been introduced, namely the mainstream media, have abdicated en masse or been purged and are now mortally complicit.

The naysayers of culture, James Dobson, Joe Lieberman, unbathed EarthFirst!ers or middle-of-the-road concerned parents are all impotent to change the sex and violence soaked ways of late-stage American Culture.

Culturally this places us at an endgame. Feedback loops of this sort are profoundly incompatible with the long-term sustainability of a system. Our culture, then, will increase steadily in its themes and tendencies until there is some kind of discontinuity.

At this juncture, it seems overwhelmingly likely that figures feeding on the eschatological energies of the Christian “flock” are consciously profiting enormously from a continued exacerbation of these trends and tensions. When death anxiety is publicly stoked (a la Terri Schiavo), the sheep willingly respond.

(The big danger of the current situation, the atavistic passions of mob mentality stirred up by such agitations, is yet mitigated by such governors as I outlined here.)

For us today, the point is that we need to strategically plan on the undeniable fact of these dynamics rather than futz about distractedly. Why try to figure out what to do “about” this when the only answer is to adapt and move on.

To put it more ironically: Why is it that the creationists are, for the moment, better at evolving to meet the situation?

Vacation ended....

2005-04-13T18:59:00.000-05:00

...but I guess I was unable to post at all. Do not think I do not love you, gentle reader, think only that I had, erm, ah, other things to do.

Big trees, cool ducks and jays to spot, siblings. Must've been a good time. Fastest week in the West.

You've all forgetten me, anyhow, all three of you, I am sure. But I will write more soon, anyway! In all honesty, though, probably not tonight.

Leaving for Vacation

2005-04-06T11:36:00.000-05:00

Ah the sweet Pacific Northwest, here I come.

The rainforest, the family joys... in any case, bloggin will be light for the next week or so.

Cheers all.

-swift

Updated links

2005-04-05T13:16:00.000-05:00

For all you net junkies!

Check it, only the best live here.

Go Dayton, Ohio! Yeah!

2005-04-05T08:18:00.000-05:00

Huzzah!!

The City Of Dayton Goes Wireless

You can now surf the Internet for free in Downtown Dayton.

Your wireless computer, P.D.A., or cell phone can now surf the Internet for free if it's Wi-Fi equipped.

The free service is available within one square mile around downtown.

The city will pay about $5,000 a year for it, but most of the cost is paid for by the advertisers.

If you have any questions about Wi-Fi, you can call the City of Dayton at 333-3333.

...via Pandagon. Follow the link and read the comments to see my two bits.

Actually, two other things instead.

2005-04-05T01:25:00.000-05:00

Again tangenting off of Digby. Digby writes here about an article in the American Prospect that basically disses political activism vis-a-vis taking to the streets, etc.

Both pieces are longish. The one in the American Prospect is worth skimming so you can see what Digby's up about, and his, then, is worth reading.

Between the two of them I had a couple worthwhile thoughts: 1) We are seeing the development of a new sort of protest movement from the contemporary right; 2) There is a huge difference (from left to right) in the very nature of organizing in the United States.

First the new protest culture of the right.

Consider, the culture of the right is on the side of authority, but urging for the exercise of greater authority. The culture of the right is based in a context that assumes a certain degree of freedom from material wants, has a higher level of assumed commodification, if you will.

These points are specific to certain sub-groups on the right, of course. For instance I am leaving out the Patriot movement and the poorer groups within the extremist Christian circles that I know nothing about but assume exist.

I am talking about the suburban, "middle class" (probably closer to wealthy by most reckonings) agitators that one finds at abortion clinics and modern political theater events like the Schiavo brouhaha.

This is a different group. They are here to get in the way and be seen, but not to cause trouble. They go home and go to the mall. If they do drugs, it's Zoloft and Welbutrin. In the sense of the status and situation of thier own lives, it is not clear what they are protesting.

Protest they do, however, and consider this: They are likely to become more and more the public face of a political crusade in this country.

A few things occur to me regarding this group. First, that the idea of protest, and the personal catharsis that the naysayer from the American Prospect talks about, these are very powerful creatures in people's lives. Once they've been engaged they tend to grow towards a recapitulation of form at a greater level of magnitude. In short, it is possible that at some juncture these protesters may start showing up to cause trouble as well.

If they have the support of the Federal Government against local authorities (or, say a circuit court decision), how does that play out?

Just asking, of course. I don't see that as too near on the horizon. The passions for this crew are artificially levelled, remember, and their hair should not be mussed. But all the same.

---

Second, some of the basic differences between organizing on the left and the right.

(This will be but an introductory glimpse; at some point I would like to write a much longer-form piece that explores this. Tonight, however, it's on my mind and related to the piece in the Prospect, so I'll tumble out a few main points.)

On the left, in general, (today in the U.S. etc.) the basic underlying thrust of our argument is that we would like to be able to devote our lives to meaningful things that there are few remunerative opportunities for. Or that the offense occuring out in the wider world is great but should still be balanced by a rich and fulfilling personal life. (Again, these are broad generalizations, but I think you can see what I'm getting at.)

The right wing activist, however, tends to be, on one side, an activist as an extension of white-collar career opportunities and per se and etc. On the other hand the activist on the right is a married woman with a church community and social hierarchies and per se and etc. Or else the right wing activist is a very well paid professional enforcer.

In any of these cases there is a positive feedback loop twixt accomplishment and activism. Continuation of the activists work is reinforced by an increase in status and, often enough, material well being.

For the left wing activist, success in activism usually means that other goals have been put aside. IF there is a sufficient degree of success, the left wing activist is fairly likely to feel relieved that she or he can go back to their normal life, or move on to something better.

Like I said, there is a lot more to get into here. The motivations for the two groups are almost certainly significantly different as well, for instance. I will, however, have to devote more thought to those differences before I can present them here in a meaningful way.

Any thoughts?? Please comment.

Blgging from work- will be brief!

2005-04-04T18:10:00.000-05:00

But I wanted to get this in.

The conversation going on over at Digby's (see links on sidebar) about the enforceability of the culture of life, via the theocrats, etc. misses a critical point.

This point is often forgotten, and is one of the few Q.E.D's in contemporary political moralism. Very simply I can take my own life. Given this, why is it not granted that I can extend this power to others?

Personally I believe in a fairly radical personal sovereignty. Drug use, self mutilation, whatever, by the right of adulthood, go for it.

The question I like to look at (and will, here, before I sleep tonight) is why this is so hard to address today in a reasonable manner...

Fuck the New York Times

2005-04-03T15:31:00.000-05:00

Whenever I get into an argument with a well-meaning liberal about the New York Times (about once every two or three months, lately) the one thing they always hold up as a sort of trump card is the coverage of foreign events.

"Sure they're not all that great on domestic issues," goes the argument, "but they're the best we've got, and the coverage of foriegn events is great. Nobody else comes close."

Well, maybe not in this country, but hey, what could possibly be left out that's all that important, right?

Coming Soon: Something a little less nasty, I promise!

Grossly Impolitic

2005-04-01T20:48:00.000-06:00

It is, I know, grossly impolitic to point out on the eve of the Pope's death, but the Catholic Church has really gone a long way in the wrong direction.

For some time now people have been tiptoeing around the issues surrounding a bitter old man's misogyny (ok, except for the "Virgin," but isn't that the same thing?). Put this together with the widespread acceptance of a culture of abuse, the absurd reticence to allow women priests, or priests to marry, or prophylactics anywhere and a sad, sad story emerges.

There are a few good things JPII did, it's true, and not all the idiocy is his fault, but the Catholic Church is a very intensely personal organizations in its absolute hierarchy. One cannot go from Vatican II to today without a strong leader.

Ater all, the absurd claim of the Vatican that the Portland, Oregon Archdiocese is an independent finanial unit that can declare bankruptcy while the Church in Rome sits on billions of dollars in liquid assets provided a distateful backdrop for the canonization of the founder of Opus Dei.

I have roots in the Church, as many of you know, and there is a certain bitterness on my part that is also very personal. Over the years, however, it seems more and more to me that my teenage observation sitting in the St. Paul (MN) Cathedral holds very true today: This is an organization that misses Imperial Rome and the dark ages. Given our wider, contemporary swing back towards politics apropos of such uncouth times and the prominence of such extremist Catholics as Antonin Scalia, it is hard for me to not see at least some wider correlation.

---

I do of course have other ideas about the wider context of these shifts in politics, etc.

I could not, for instance, write my post on earthquakes and turn around and point a finger straight at the Catholic Church, of all places.

This remains a blog, however; and if I am put off by collective wailing and moaning over legitimate tragedies, I can be outright hostile when a rosy picture is painted of a complex man some of whose acts contributed significantly to the misery of the world.

Earthquakes:

2005-03-31T12:25:00.000-06:00

So here's the thing. The Earth is alive. Every biologist I've met agrees; most balanced, informed opinions, it seems, would have to at least accept certain key arguments.

When there are changes in the wider fields of existence, for example the weather, there would naturally also be changes in other of the major subsystems of Earth. Like humanity.

If you step back and consider the implications of storms occurring in weather because humanity heats it up (and it does seem that the Earth was already heating up FWIW,) and the serious implications of so many of our current most peculiar storms in the minds of collective humanity, , I feel obliged to re-examine many assumptions I have held regarding identitiy. We are all in this together, one way or another, it's one of our strongest liberal arguments.

It seems to me that the nature and origin of identity bear heavily in our experience of reality. It also seems very natural to me that as humanity has become so explicitly intertwined on a coherent, global set of levels, that we also see noticeable continental dynamics at play.

This is a rearrangement of ideas as we "moderns" are concerned.

There are many ancient traditions which share a much more presently integral way of being. (That is to say, we approach the Now more elegantly as we appraise ourselves more honestly. There is more about this but not tonight ;> )

The thing for us (at least for you some who do me the favor of reading) tonight is that it is very likely, if not an established reality that we will see considerably more and more powerful earthquakes.

Iran, Turkey. The northern aspect of the valley of the San Andreas, methinks. Watch, watch polar quakes. I strogly suspect aspects of that involved with magnetic dynamics. But strict theory will also have to wait for another night.

Everybody is really used to big quakes on the West Coast of the Sun, too. And check this out- so often people would be amazed. But we treat it like a big deal when it hits areas of geo-political significance. Perhaps I can see how the press might actually be somewhat obliged to softplay some of its presentation, but those of us who make a point of paying attention to things, such as, say, Jared Diamond's work should also note these basic things. It also stands to reason to me that many of our ruling "elite" would appreciate knowing such trends are occurring.

I really do hope someone takes me up on these ideas of mine, too. It seems to me there is nearly ready to be an information leap of some sort soon, and likely across many key areas of significance.

It is to the quick if we get with the fact that this is a very simply a form of heavy magic. It has been of interest to me for some time that the fist to get this would be the atomists, but that as well is for another night.

Goodnight.
-swift

oh-oh!

2005-03-31T01:19:00.000-06:00

The Pope is being fed with a tube!!!!

If this goes through we'll have the No-Pope! And then the oldest medieval state in the world will have a familiar pickle of a situation. And much longer to play it out (in).

Tee Hee!

2005-03-29T12:30:00.000-06:00

The D'oh! Vinci Code. "A must read!"

Postponed: Earthquakes and objectivity.

Central Asia

2005-03-28T13:53:00.000-06:00

I've been paying a little bit of attention to this area for years, ever since I learned that there's a very good chance of real oil deposits (as opposed to the chimera in ANWAR) in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The best little bits of info I've been able to glean seem to indicate that private interests have had force presence on the ground for at least 5 or 6 years there.

So that's western oil conglomerates with real soldier of fortune types just kind of hanging out, staking a claim, as it were; maybe just getting involved a bit in local politics.

Before 9/11 I thought it very likely the US would find a pretext to go into this region within 10 years just because of the oil. Now, of course, there's a lot more going on there.

Remember also that China is right there to the East. The Central Asain Plateau is of great GREAT geo-strategic significance. Had we not gone into Iraq, had we meant half of what we said going into Afghanistan, this could have been a great opportunnity for a forward thinking military to plan for the next century (which you may be interested to know I don't think would've been a bad idea). As it is, of course, we have almost no money (and China holding the economic chair we're standing on!), little remaining "soft power" around the region or the world, and flat out zero troop reserves, plus we're hot for Syria and Iran.

A century and a half of colonial history teaches that, in this part of the world, sooner or later factions unite and slaughter the invaders. It is of no small significancee that this is taught in grade schools and family folklore. Being as over extended as we are, there is no real chancee that this will work out well for us.

Whether the Caspian Basin is it where it starts to go bad or not is immiterial (my money's closer to Afghanistan, FWIW). The signs all say the same thing, and the ideologues in Washington refuse to read them.

Later Tonight: The new Indonesian Earthquake, earthquakes in general, and some thoughts on coming changes in a much broader terrestrial context.

NOWWWW!

2005-03-28T00:47:00.000-06:00

You will read this now.

Haha.

Huzzah! Osiris lives again!

2005-03-27T16:46:00.000-06:00

Well, another year and the Sun comes again to the North where Saxons roam!
Invincible! We storm the gates of heaven an again we crash in upon ourselves.

The dead run in the street like thieves on the day the soldiers come.

We know the explosion for who we are.

Many myths we entertain oh so seriously these days.

Let fire bring anew what it will, the death preachers (and we)are ones who truly come to know our own works.

Our tears and our prayers and our love, forsooth!

It slakes my soul.

Peace and Rejoice, all,
chimneyswift

What is it?

2005-03-26T00:35:00.000-06:00

When we have a situation as ethically messy as Terri Schiavo (or Red Lake, or Guantanamo-torture A.G., or Enron or fill-in-the-blank), how do we deal with it?

There is a divide in this country, and one side truly is interested in fixing things, looking at causes, evaluating actions etc. and one side truly is not.

The reason the New Right resists looking at what causes ethical miasmas is that they belive in a mythologically dualistic reality. God and Satan war for our souls, we either pass or fail.

Red Lake is too complex, let us just say they all failed. Abu Ghraib is forgettable because we have passed and they have failed (whether "they" are the poor hick reservists or the Iraqis they tortured). Terri Schiavo, now she is a template, a blank screen we can project all our rationales of goodness upon. She will live because life is good and we must always cling to life because otherwise we are disrespectful of it.

When there is a astract principle established absolutely, run and hide.

But the idea of LIFE cannot meet the demands of these zealots. Their ideas of God and the Rapture demand they champion life militantly only because they cannot accept that God also gave us death.

The rules of the 10 Commandments and all the literal King James Scriptures can be mastered: remembered and spit out in the faces of nonbelievers. This is a power-mastery coplex that demands rather than convinces, and those who would convince rather than demand will eventually be seen as the enemy.

Though it sounds extreme it is true, for this is an extremist, militant philosophy and its premises of dogma and dominance are irreconcilable with the premise of reason.

The sad thing is that reason is not all that. It's philosophical limitations are in fact quite extreme. The frontiers of reason, however, are frightening to some, and this is but a part of a much longer-scale drama.

The simple fact is that the frontier of reason can take us to the fact of death and give us not much more. The simple existential hard-assed squint is not fulfilling to most people. Beyond the fact of death, though, there is a mystery (or several). But reason cannot grasp mystery.

So people instead champion the comforting absolute of rules easily mastered. The obvious fact that these zealots are led in their charge by cynics is no small comfort to the "few" who stand, insistent and apalled, still reaching for a language that addresses process and reality.

---

We are developing this language, of course, but we will have more setbacks before we have triumphs to celebrate again.

The Siren Fetus

2005-03-26T00:25:00.000-06:00

OOOh! James Wolcott has it!

If Terri Schiavo is a large scale fetus, and cannot speak for herself, then what is anyone to do but save her?

The big problem with this situation is that of course no one wants to be Terri Schiavo, or connected to her I.V. It's horrifying!

But as I was saying earlier, pity moves us. Those who cannot put together what it is to be pitied and what it is that creates such situations then go on to create pitiable messes. The sickest part is that today we have a dominant rubric that violently champions this approach to social analysis.

Nowhere here is empathy, nowhere the consideration of human equality.

On Billmon, blogging and all that.

2005-03-26T00:02:00.000-06:00

Not that I expect any one of my one anda-half regular readers are actually fans of the blogoshpere, but here is why I still like Billmon.

Backstory: Billmon is perhaps one ofthe greatest writers of the blogosphere. He, however, works in the belly of the beast - as many who write online do - but feels it a bit much.

He went through some public agonizing a while back, quit, came back, quit again, left his site up (but just sitting there) for five, six weeks without posting and then just started up again, but without actually writing anything, just cut-and-pasting cross references(!).

I don't care. He gets it in a way very few do. Dig through his archives and find the economic analyses- he rivals Krugman, but is not limited by column length or ties to the Gray Lady. Beyond that, when he writes, he has a way with words that kicks all our asses.

Who are we then to hold his anguish against him. Why else do any of us do this? It's an outlet, just as the Cunning Realist alleges in this also very well written piece that all lefty bloggers should read for lots of different reasons.

So that's part of the spectrum and part of the culture. And damn if I could take it either being that close to the Horror.

Cheers, y'all.

-swift.

An Imposed Dearth of Responsibility

2005-03-24T16:33:00.000-06:00

The Right wing, with their many canards and joyous offensiveness, love to pick on liberals for what they call our "Blame me first" approach to social issues.

What the right wingers really want is the freedom to act without any accountability. Any consequences their actions have for others are the problem of those who have the problems. Likewise the unfortunate get the blame: for being less fortunate, for being in the way, for being a rebuke to the pure society of dominance, power and obedience craved by our craven leadership.

The suffering of the downtrodden gets in the way of these fever dreams. It is an inconvenient fact, and one that is dangerous to their ideology of power.

Suffering, whether by someone living in the toxic industrial swamps of Lousiana or Bangalore, or the war zones of East St. Louis or Mosul, is something that elicits empathy in the human heart.

---

It is no coincidence that the initiation ritual of the Skull and Bones (TM) revovles around forcing a sexual identification with shame and death. The void for these men becomes a source of political power because they, by identifying with it (a malignant and viscious interpretation of it, anyway) they see when and how others try to avoid existential conflicts and then maneuver to dominate choices or create conflicts of identity vis-a-vis their opponents' relation to their existential denial.

This, then, is why leaders such as MLK, Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy meet violent deaths. They are resistant to these forms of coercion.

---

What we can do is to look directly at the suffering of others. This in itself is a subversive act in a society ruled by dominance and power.

When we can speak clearly and directly about suffering, then, this can create circumstancees conducive to social change.

Finding people who can do so, however, can be hard when many leaders of the political opposition are seriously intertwined with the very causes of the suffering that need to be called out into the light.

Coming soon: The modern mind and death terror, Terry Schiavo and Baghdad.

Late note: It seems Digby was having at least somewhat similar thoughts this morning. In any case, please visit this superior blogger if you do not already.

First Steps

2005-03-24T00:42:00.000-06:00

Who wants to focus on the void?

Why would we do such a thing?

It is honest.

Our lives are idexes of our honesty. Certainly it is uncomfortable to contemplate the ways in which our lives are meaningless, (and I of course strongly discourage Nihilism as a philosophical choice) but there are repercussions to such avoidance.

---

Let me first cut to the chase and suggest that one accomplishable goal would be that by balancing the horrific, the beautiful, the ambiguous and the contradictory aspects of life we become more aware of the profound and mysterious aspects of our lives that are in fact all around us.

This kind of aesthetic and philosophical sensiblility is not easily compatable with societal compromises and abitions, of course, but niether are they mutually exclusive. One must simply accept that to live in such an idealistic way is hard work.

---

If we run from this challenge, however, and accept the ready "truths" of dogmatic religion or live instead for glib materialism and historic significance, then we are hiding from ourselves those questions we have no good answer for. In this way, fear grows in our subconscious minds and we at critical times act in ways we do not understand our own motivations for.

Yes, it is like being hit in the face with a big red rubber ball (for all you Huckabee's fans), but by god, it's better than living the only life we've got hiding from shadows.

Red Lake

2005-03-22T15:09:00.000-06:00

I have never much cared for the collective wringing of hands that follows horrible tragedies. For that matter I have never much cared for how our society mourns in general.

This kind of thing in particular, this horrible, senseless tragedy, shines a light on our societal shortcomings when it comes to dealing with grief.

I'm not sure if it's Buddhist past life heritage or a particular twist on my internalization of Catholic Catechism, but for whatever reason, I have alwaysfound it easy to have empathy for a person who has committed terrible acts.

A few years ago, shortly after the rash of school shootings had subsided, I got to see a PBS Frontline about Kip Kinkel (sp?) the Suburban Oregon teen who shot up his school.

I had thought then (and still think now) that the driving force for these shootings, rural, suburban, on the res (not so many in the big bad cities...), what have you, is just the void. Adolescents are so open to the bleakness possible in life, and so many of the rest of us build our lives around not seeing that bleakness.

Mostly Terrifying

2005-03-21T19:09:00.000-06:00

Where do we go from here?

If we assume that James Wolcott has called it aright (and in truth I think there are many of us who have had similar feelings), what can we expect? What choices will we face?

This has always been a hypothetical question. “What if the fall of empire were to happen today?” A science fiction question. So let’s look to the sci-fi authors for some input.

David Brin wrote a wonderful little book called The Postman, (which should not be judged for having been dragged through the muck by Kevin Costner at his worst) in which the biggest concern are neo-feudalist survivalists. This book is both quaintly dated and eerily prescient in many ways. For our circumstances, though, I don’t expect a Fall would be so complete or explicit today, for reasons I will discuss shortly.

Margaret Atwood’s latest, Oryx and Crake, is much more important for today’s concerned reader. While making liberal use of novelistic conventions to foreshorten time’s passage, she still manages to convey an all-too-plausible misc en scene for the decline and fall of Western Civilization. Not that she has advice for us, mind you. It’s doomsday out there, and damn the torpedoes.

Another recommendation, a bit more off the beaten track, is Outlaw School, by Rebecca Ore, who manages to give a searing warning of the potentials of modern social extremism without actually ever mentioning religion. This is a truly relevant book for 2005 (it was written a few years ago). Keep working, whatever happens, she shows us, and things will come of it, even if only indirectly.

But what if we take some time to imagine a future for ourselves? Preliminary observations about our current and future circumstances are mostly terrifying, but let’s get to details.

We can, for instance, safely conclude that the credit and banking industries will squeeze the middle class ruthlessly, given the new bankruptcy laws. Yet there will yet be those who manage to hold on. Importantly, there is no small incentive for the insurance and mortgage sectors of the financial industries to maintain at least some vestigial middle class.

As many have noted, the crisis of the middle class is now one of emergency cash expenditures, mostly health are related. In this way the radical right’s emphasis on religion becomes self-fulfilling: those who have a social support network to turn to will avoid poverty. Those who do not, or whose extended family groupings have to face multiple crises, will become service-industry statistics.

(There is some question in my mind about private banks appearing on the scene who give preferential treatment to Christians, especially in the mortgage sector, but I have not seen this yet. What I have seen are indications that a separate micro-economic community based on evangelical membership is emerging. This would be something to pay some attention to with regards to other potential forms of social exclusion.)

In any case, those who maintain their place in the bourgois classes will be much more fully beset by difficulties (indeed, peril), and thoroughly saturated by messages tying financial solvency to relative moral worth and codes of political conduct.

It is a given that the only segment of the middle class that matters in today’s political calculations are those who consent to the ruling agenda. As well, we can easily see and foresee how the dying demographic of the middle class liberal will be made less and less a factor in over-all political calculations. In the intermediate term, though, there are many middle class liberals waiting to be bled dry.

Damn it sucks to be a boomer.

(I maintain several iotas of optimism regarding the Dean insurgency, of course, but that gets us to the media wars, which I will write on soon.)

Better minds than mine have noted that the value/stability of mortgages and property values constitute economic indices that are both very important and very threatened.

What I expect is the development of a new class of financial instruments that allow people to continue living in houses that are somehow more fully not theirs.

Furthermore, I have faith that in the self-preservation instinct of the elite and their managerial class, it will be widely acknowledged that change which is penetrating and internal is far more stable than change which is dramatic and external. The question now is how much pressure will be brought from outside actors.

Given the suicide commando combination of our current foreign policy theory and fiscal policy, it is easy to wonder if our financial institutions will get the chance to play out their hand.

The alternative would have to be quite dire, and yet a full scale collapse does not yet seem plausible all the same.

Go read Margaret Atwood and Rebecca Ore. You tell me how plausible their scenarios sound.

The setting:

2005-03-19T20:08:00.000-06:00

Ready to invade someone, anyone, the blitzkrieg blunderers stake their spot like thirteen year old rowdies with no bigger kids anywhere to be seen.

Old battlescarred players shift around purposefully. Eyes meet, agreements are proposed (some quietly made.)

Rumblings can be heard from deep in the very ground. Storms blow fitfully, dissipate, blow again. Rumours in the wind seem to imply that some animals are considering new migratory paths. Many stop to mourn those who cannot change theirs, and may well be doomed.

We, the persistently knowing faithful reach out to one another. We are scattered but unbowed. Though tired and poor, yet we are resourceful and determined.

Our persistent clarity elicits great huffing and puffing diversions from the Wurlitzer's mighty lackeys.

Open mic, cast...

2005-03-19T19:46:00.000-06:00

Check one. Check check.

When in Rome be ready to fiddle, burn or dance. Run if necessary and remember not to fight City Hall, if at all avoidable.

Sibilance, sibilance. Check.