Shooting Off My Fat Trap

Still Dead

2007-09-17T12:51:00.000-04:00

This blog is still dead. Kaput. Phhhht. Not alive. It has gone to meet its maker and joined the choir invisible. It's still bleedin' dead.

And it will not be revived.

I only haven't deleted the whole thing because I don't want some low-life jumping on it and putting up a temporary porn site.

My main blog is Next in the Series: The Blog. All are welcome there.

Change of Venue

2007-05-22T09:36:00.001-04:00

From now on, all posts of mine concerning politics will appear on my main blog, Next in the Series: The Blog. The Commisariat feels that centralization will help the collective attain the goals as set forth in the Five-Year Plan. Also, maintaining a huge number of blogs is a drag.

Do svidaniya!

The Fort Dix Six

2007-05-09T09:38:00.000-04:00

Or, as they should be known, Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, Joe, and Curly Joe.

I just wanted to try to put this most recent arrest into what I think is the proper perspective.

First, this was not a significant terror threat. This was a bunch of overgrown adolescents playing army. Although they had bought some weapons and spent some time going up to the Poconos to shoot them, they were not close to seriously attacking Fort Dix (where they would have gotten slaughtered in short order had they tried it). They had no date set. Their "substantial firepower" included "handguns, an assault rifle and a semiautomatic assault weapon," which means that they would have gotten wiped out immediately since everybody in the Army has an assault rifle, as well as all the most sophisticated weaponry imaginable.

Despite their claims to be participating in jihad, it seems that none of the six were especially religious or observant, and the jihad business was clearly just part of a greater rationalization and fantasy on their part. They claimed to be waiting for a fatwa to be declared, but isn't that exactly what someone would come up with if they wanted to put off their rendezvous with destiny indefinitely? It seems to me that, if you wanted to attack an Army base for real, you would just set a date, not wait for a fatwa to be declared by somebody you had never asked to declare one.

These were boys who could not figure out how to be men, so they developed a fantasy in which they could pretend to be action heroes. You don't get somebody who is not part of your group to transfer video tape to DVD for you if you're serious about an attack. You do that if you want to watch the DVD because it helps you to believe that you're a grown-up.

Now, I'm glad they were arrested, glad they will be tried. I hope they do long, hard time. However, we cannot let the government and the press try to convince us that these idiots were terrorists. They were fools, nothing more or less.

Stuff & Nonsense

2007-05-06T10:41:00.000-04:00

Just some thoughts that have been accumulating:

First, it has occurred to me that part of the appeal of The Sopranos is that the organizational ethos in use is roughly similar to the one in use by the Bush Administration. And in that spirit, I'd like to pitch a new series that can replace The Sopranos on HBO or, at least, compete with reruns of it on Showtime or USA.

I call my new show The Bushis (pronounced "Bushies"), and it would follow the melodramatic travails of the Washington, DC, crime family headed by Giorgio "Dubya" Bushi. Like Don Corleone in The Godfather movies, Bushi is basically incomprehensible when he speaks, however, he seems more of a figurehead than the man who is really in charge.

The real mastermind behind the family's crimes is second-in-command Ricardo "The Dick" Cheni. Cheni is Bushi's mentor, and when Bushi asked him who he should choose to be second-in-command, Cheni chose himself. Bushi, having risen through the ranks through family connections rather than intelligence or competence, easily falls under the older man's sway. They gather about them a group of like minded incompetents, including Condi, Wolfi, and their consigliari, Alberto. Carlo Rovo is their faithful hitman.

I think that gets across the flavor of it. Storylines would involve election-fixing, large-scale gang warfare, corruption in government contracting, all culminating in a series of episodes dealing with the slow destruction of the family and the internecine fighting that ensues.

In other news, how naive can the New York Times editorial board be? According to an editorial published today, May 5, 2007, they are amazed that the Presidential diaries of Ronald Reagan showed him to be, in their words, "a prosaic and amiably unrevealing drone." This is news? Do you mean to tell me that they have thought all along that Mr. Reagan was something besides a figurehead, an actor called upon to play the role of the avuncular and often condescending Grandpa-in-Chief? Say it isn't so!

Ever since he was wheeled out of office in January 1989, I've said that a good title for a book about him and his administration would be Asleep at the Wheel. It was obvious from the very beginnings of his first term that this was a guy who was mainly a PR device to be used by others as they implemented an agenda that he neither formulated nor understood. He was a mouthpiece, a beard, a front bought and paid for originally by a bunch of Southern California rich guys who noticed what a good job he did pushing cleanser in the breaks on Death Valley Days.

As for Mr. Reagan, he was one of those people who could fall face first into a pile of manure and come up smelling like a rose. He pretty much lucked into every job he ever had, from radio sportscaster to President of the United States. His only known skills were those of amiability and a willingness to mouth whatever palaver he was asked to by whoever was paying the bills.

Most incredibly, The Times board seems amazed that there were no phrases as pointed as "Evil Empire" or "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," which were touches provided by speech writers anyway. Mr. Reagan, like Mr. Bush, was always trouble when he ad libbed, and was more likely to talk about trees causing more pollution than cars than coming up with pithy political slogans.

The right wing of the Republican party likes their Presidential candidates in this mold: not very bright mouthpieces and figureheads. Mr. Reagan fit that mold and so does Mr. Bush. They are the Trojan Horse candidates, the ones who present an attractive front that conceals the forces of your doom.

No Opinion

2007-05-03T15:57:00.000-04:00

A lot of things, including my own displays of idiocy, are pushing me to what the Wizard called "a cataclysmic decision." I'm tired of opinion pieces. As my previous entry demonstrates, it's not writing opinion pieces that get you anywhere. It's making fun of things that gets you noticed. I mean, somebody had to notice my comments in order to delete them. Publishing them is actually a far more passive activity.

Argument does not work. People refuse to be persuaded. You have to sneak up on them by being entertaining.

Therefore, I am devoting myself to satire. No more logical arguments, just jokes and ridicule. Get 'em while they last! Unless, of course, the Moriarity who deletes my stuff at The Times finds out about this blog. Then I might be in danger of being [CENSORED].

Irving Washington

Help! Help! I'm Being Repressed

2007-05-03T11:17:00.000-04:00

I finally broke down a couple of months ago and got a subscription to the New York Times Select service. This entitles me to access to the copious archives of The Times, as well as the privilege of reading any current articles and online content that has been labeled "mitts off" to the general public.

Among these online features is a weekly blog written by Stanley Fish, a well-known college professor. This week, Professor Fish considered the case of the College Republicans at the University of Rhode Island who offered a $100 WHAM Scholarship (WHAM stands for White Heterosexual American Male) and were later threatened with revocation of their charter by the Student Senate if they didn't apologize.

Professor Fish made his points about the balance between free speech and, I guess, unfree speech and left it for the commenters to sort out. After almost 70 comments had been posted, mostly in the self-righteous, why-can't-you-idiots-understand-the-truth mode popularized by blogging, I decided to post a slightly satirical comment in which I purported to replace sections of text with [CENSORED]. I signed it "Irving Washington," in the body of the text, which is a reference to Catch-22. (My first name would appear as a signature to the whole thing. I really wasn't trying to mislead anybody.)

The Times squelched it. That's right. My joke about censorship was censored. The comments are, of course, moderated, and whoever is in charge of moderating that discussion felt that my jibe was too much to be born and some sort of threat to society, so they deleted it.

What's even funnier is this: Later on, when I realized that my contribution had gone missing, I wrote another comment that explained what I had written before and reported how that had been censored. That comment has also been censored. I'm beginning to think that somebody at The Times doesn't like me. And here I thought that I was one of the Select.

I Recant

2007-04-20T16:15:00.000-04:00

According to this article from the January 2000 Harper's Magazine, I was completely wrong concerning my interpretation of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That doesn't change any of my conclusions, but it is still important that I come clean and say that I screwed up. I've learned something, which, in itself, is unusual for a 47-year-old man.

We regret the error and return you now to our regularly scheduled programming.

Part 3: A Miscellany

2007-04-20T10:58:00.000-04:00

A couple of more quick thoughts about gun control:

First, just because I knock down the idiotic arguments presented by the gun lobby doesn't mean that I'm in favor of banning all gun ownership. This is a very thorny and complicated issue that defies easy answers. And while I think there are certain reasonable limits that can be placed on ownership--background checks, cooling off periods, and the like--and while I cannot be convinced that there is any legitimate use for an assault weapon other than in killing lots and lots of people, and while I think that people who own handguns are more likely to kill someone they love than an intruder, I also think that it's too late to impose some sort of comprehensive gun law. The genie is out of the bottle and he's not going back in. And, just as in the case of abortion, outlawing it would just drive it underground, and it's hard to deal with anything that's happening underground.

Legislation is not the cure. The problem goes deeper than that.

I'd also like to address the most preposterous suggestion being made by the gun lobby now, and that is that the massacre in Virginia could have been contained had there been more people carrying weapons at the time. Their theory is that, had the campus not been a gun-free zone, some lone ranger could've killed Mr. Cho before he could have killed all those people. Of course, I think it is more likely that even more people would have died as there would have been entire rooms of morons blasting everything that moved, including friends and well-wishers. In situations like this, panicking is bad; panicking with a firearm would be worse.

Behind all the sour grapes aimed at the University Administration for not locking down the whole school after the shooting in the dormitory, I'm beginning to see the outlines of the problem that makes these events inevitable, and that is the culture of fear.

My thoughts on this are nascent, so don't expect a full-blown thesis here. However, in the course of my lifetime, I have seen our nation turn into a society of scaredy-cats. People spend too much time fretting over the unlikely and avoiding problems they would never encounter anyway. And while it is sometimes necessary to make adjustments in order to ward off threats, it should be a bit more of a balancing act, and less of an ill-considered rush. To use one of Mr Bush's favorite words, fear emboldens those who would frighten us.

Speaking of Mr. Bush, he advised everyone yesterday to be willing to report anyone "exhibiting abnormal behavior" to any authorities willing to listen. As someone who can be described as quiet, eccentric, and something of a loner, I'd like to see some further definition of what constitutes "abnormal behavior." I'm not quite ready for the nuthatch yet. At least that's what the voice in my head tells me.

Oddly enough, I think that the inability of the State of Virginia to commit this boy may be the fault of the Reagan Administration. In their rush to stuff as much of the Federal budget as possible in the trousers of defense contractors, they came to the conclusion that the mentally ill would be better served on an out-patient basis. (You can read a scholarly article about this here.) As a result, they engineered the release of hundreds of thousands of crazy people into the general population, many of whom eventually became homeless. Cho Seung-Hui should have been locked up in a mental institution long ago. He was deranged. Maybe the time has come to reverse the Reagan-Era policies and to decide, as a community, that we can do better for the insane and for ourselves.

A Quick Interjection

2007-04-19T15:06:00.000-04:00

It has occurred to me that the Bush Administration's argument for continuing our presence in Iraq is really just another restatement of that greatest of all catches, Catch-22. What they say, in a nutshell (which is where most of them live), is: We can't withdraw from Iraq until there is peace and there can be no peace if we withdraw. Somewhere, Yossarian is wincing.

Part 2: The Gun Debate

2007-04-18T09:32:00.000-04:00

Originally, I was going to save this part for later on, but the news is full of it, and I have as much right as any to put my two cents in.

Before I get to my real point, let me say this: Everything the gun lobby says is either a lie or an exaggeration. Their arguments are poor and usual rest in misused statistics and wrong assumptions. Since we a nation that does not know its own history, we tend to fall for it every time.

Yesterday, I came across this defense of gun ownership by Larry Elder. In the article he attacks the viewpoint that easy access to guns promotes violence by saying that According to criminologist Gary Kleck, "The homicide rate in Japan is 2.3 times greater than it is among Japanese-Americans (emphasis added) where firearms are plentiful and considerably easier to obtain." The murder rate in Japan is 0.6 per 100,000. He glides right over the fact that the homicide rate in the US is 9.4 per 100,000 or about 20 times as great as that of Japan. His argument is framed in making racist assumptions about people of Japanese descent, but that's really neither here nor there. The thing is that in Japan there have only been 53 shootings this year, which, out of a total population of 128,000,000, I make to be a rate per 100,000 of 0.04. Now, this is shootings, not murders with firearms. The murder rate with firearms would be even smaller. Can it be said that the murder by firearm rate by Japanese Americans would be even smaller? I doubt it. It's all statistical slight-of-hand.

I address another instance of gun lobby statistical slight-of-hand here.

The second part of the gun lobby fantasy that I would like to address is the notion that the Founders wanted us all to have guns so that we could overthrow the Federal government should it ever lapse into tyranny. This shows no knowledge of American history.

Let's look at the Second Amendment, shall we? "There being a need for a well regulated militia, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Clearly, the right to bear arms is predicated on the need for a well-regulated militia. Why did they put that in there?

It is not, as some would have it, so that the citizens would have the weaponry available to depose our oppressors. Not at all. It was put in because, traditionally, the United States has kept its standing army small during times of peace and the militias (the equivalent of today's National Guard) were needed so that we could defend ourselves if invaded. In fact, there was no standing army at all until 1791, when an army was raised to fight the Indians. The Founders didn't distrust politicians--all being politicians themselves--they distrusted the army--few of them having been soldiers.

The most laughable part of this point-of-view, though, is the idea that having a .22 in the nightstand or a shotgun in a cabinet in the game room will allow us to overthrow a tyranny. I mean, regardless of what guns the Michigan Militia might have, the US Army has better. And their soldiers are extremely well trained and professional. An armed revolt against the federal government would last about 20 minutes and be terribly one-sided. Regardless of Thomas Jefferson's views--and let's face it, Jefferson was a crackpot--this argument is little more than a rationalization for maintaining our love affair with firearms.

Now, all that being said, let me get to my main point. The gun debate is irrelevant to what happened in the Blue Ridge the other day. There is something else going on in this country, and it is spiritual and psychological in nature. These rampages are symptoms of a far greater disease and should be looked at in that manner. We are ailing and apathetic and isolated from one another. We constantly objectify others as "that car over there" or "that screen name" or "that image on a screen." We are phantoms to one another mostly, and some few lose all connection to others as true beings entirely. And that tends to end badly.

One more thought: I realized why these rampages usually end in suicide. I mean, that's how the video game ends, isn't it? You die.

Rampage, Part One

2007-04-17T09:17:00.000-04:00

The mass killing at Virginia Tech yesterday has put many thoughts and questions in my head. Over the next several days, I'm going to try to go through them, as they occur to me, in a most likely vain attempt to make sense of yesterdays events and similar happenings that have occurred in recent years.

Quite often, at times like these, I think of Audie Murphy. Audie Murphy was the most decorated American soldier in World War II, and he didn't get those decorations from peeling potatoes. He got them by killing people. Lots of people. In every day life, it seems that Murphy was a nice guy, despite dealing with symptoms of what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In battle, however, he tended to go berzerk.

Now, "going berzerk" is a technical term that describes the state of mind certain warriors go into. They become highly efficient killing machines whose attention becomes entirely focused on the matter at hand. In World War I, Sgt. Alvin York went berzerk and killed 25 German soldiers and captured 132 more. Audie Murphy's body count came to 250 collected over a period of about a year-and-a-half.

It seems to me that the young men (and it is, generally, a young man's game) who commit these atrocities have somehow gotten themselves in this mindset. The killing becomes methodical and focused. From what I've read, Klebold and Harris in the Columbine massacre got almost bored with the killing. It wasn't as much fun as they had hoped.

It's hard to know what goes on inside the mind of someone who would do something like this, partially because they have a habit of killing themselves after they've murdered or wounded any number of others. Do they reach some point in which they realize the magnitude of what they've done? Is it merely fear of arrest? If the act was committed as an act of self-aggrandizement, why commit suicide? How does continuing to live cheapen what has gone before in the twisted corners of their minds?

Although we tend to think of this as being a relatively recent occurrence, it isn't. I've just been reading about a fellow named Andrew Kehoe who killed his tubercular wife, set fire to his farm, and blew up one wing of a schoolhouse. He then drove his truck to the school and blew that up, too, having first rigged it to scatter shrapnel. This all happened in 1927. 45 people, mostly children aged 8-to-10, were killed. Klebold and Harris's original plan involved bombing the school and shooting the survivors. What happened in the school that day was ad-libbed after their bombs didn't go off.

I don't know whether more of these posts will follow daily or on a more irregular schedule or whether I'll just drop the whole thing after this. My current intention is to try to post some more, to try to make some sense out of all of this, and to try place these acts in the context of the culture that spawns them. I will try to avoid easy answers, since I'm not sure that there are any answers at all.

Imus

2007-04-10T09:23:00.000-04:00

Let me start off by saying that the comments that Don Imus made about the Rutgers women's basketball team were stupid and inappropriate. They are not defensible as failed humor or anything else. He shouldn't have said it, and if that's the level of discourse he has to stoop to in order to retain listeners, then he should just retire.

Now, that being said, let's discuss the culture in which he said it. On the one hand, we have the current radio culture, a culture that celebrates intolerance and juvenility. I stopped listening to morning radio some years ago because everything besides Morning Edition was moronic and smutty and Morning Edition was boring, depressing, and pretentious. Satellite radio is no better, with Howard Stern on Sirius and Opie and Anthony on XM. Adolescent antics and naughty words. In other words, worthless blather.

The other culture we need to think about is the culture generated in the name of Black America. Don Imus coined neither the term "nappy-headed" nor the term "hos." The former has been used by blacks for many years and probably goes back to slavery. It is not a derogative term as much as it is one of diminution. However, let's face it, whatever offense might have been generated had Imus called the Rutgers team "nappy-headed ladies," it would not be as great as the uproar that has come from the actual phrase he used. Like most adjectives, "nappy-headed" is not the word that commands most of the power in the phrase.

Writers are taught to write with nouns and verbs. Those words are the left hooks and right crosses of language. And so, we must examine the use of the word "ho."

This word, this corruption of the word "whore," has arisen not from Don Imus or from morning radio. It has come to us from street slang and was promoted first by rappers and then by black comedians. It is amazing to me how blatant misogyny has so quickly become an accepted part of the culture. And I don't care how "bitch" or "whore" gets pronounced, the effect is misogynistic and derogatory. Just as with Mr. Imus's statement, passing it off as humor does not lessen the damage caused.

And this is my question for Al Sharpton, since he has taken on the Imus case as his latest cause celeb: Would you be as incensed if Chris Rock had called these young ladies "nappy-headed hos"? What are you doing about the bottomless attack on women that passes for rap music and the racist and sexist routines that have become the easy way out for so many black comedians? Perhaps when blacks stop promoting terms such as "nappy-headed hos," whites will be less inclined to mimic them. I guess my question is, should Don Imus be punished for stooping to levels that black routinely set for themselves?

Let us not have double standards. What is wrong for the goose is also wrong for the gander.

Would You Buy a Used World View from This Guy?

2007-04-02T16:10:00.000-04:00

Why does he always look like he needs a Bromo?

Beware That Climb Up the Ladder

2007-03-14T09:18:00.000-04:00

...There might be a noose waiting for you at the top.

Case in point, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Now, here's a guy who's been a loyal Bush foot soldier for many years, and his career is hanging by a thread simply because he--as always--followed orders rather than doing the right thing. Now, at the moment, he has no intention of resigning. They never do. In fact, he's even been quoted as saying, "I didn't become attorney general by quitting." Which is true. He became attorney general by sucking up and being a general toady. I mean, Renfield showed more independence than he has.

The fact is that he has become a political liability and odds are that Bush will ask for his resignation pretty soon. He'll receive the same loyalty for his services that fellow lapdogs Harriet Miers, Scooter Libby, and Michael "Brownie" Brown received: a good swift kick in the direction of the curb. Even his eventual receipt of a Presidential Medal of Freedom won't wipe clean all the grime he's ladeled on himself. Like all other lackeys, he will find out all too late how expendable he and his services really are.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

2007-01-16T09:27:00.000-05:00

Somehow, this morning, as I was trolling the Internet to kill time while waiting for my son to brush his teeth, I came across a couple of pro-gun writers who were extolling the town of Kennesaw, Georgia, for an ordinance it passed back in 1982 that made owning a gun a requirement for every home. Even though, by their own admission, this ordinance has never been enforced (frankly, I think the Constitution would forbid its enforcement), they go on to attribute Kennesaw's low crime rate (it was never high to begin with) to the ordinance.

This seemed to me to be more wishful thinking than anything provable, so I thought I'd put their assertion, backed by reputable statistics, to the test. The flaw in their presentation, of course, was that they presented their statistics in a vacuum. Crime statistics for Kennesaw were never compared to those of a comparable community that did not seek to coerce their citizens into gun ownership. I seek now to remedy that omission.

When I was born, my family lived in a town called East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Like Kennesaw, East Greenwich was a small town that began to develop into a "bedroom community" back in the 1950s. Again, like Kennesaw, it has grown substantially since the '80s, and now a town that had a population of a couple thousand back in my mother's youth is now home to more than 13,000. Kennesaw has grown to include 28,000 citizens. Not an exact match, but comparable.

So, here are the statistics: East Greenwich not only had fewer burglaries (which is the crime most dwelt upon by the gun lobby) as a raw number, 31 to 91, but fewer per 100,000, 229 to 322.8. Now, if all those 91 homes that were burglarized in Kennesaw were inhabited by law-abiding citizens, that probably means that there are at least 91 more weapons out on the black market or already in the hands of people with less noble motives than Kennesaw's town fathers.

In fact, with the exception of rape (one in East Greenwich, none in Kennesaw) and murder (tied at zero), East Greenwich was safer in every single category.

Now, I'm not as willing as some to draw a lot of conclusions from these statistics. The fact is that crime is far less likely in small, affluent towns. The difference is probably explainable as being a function of size and prosperity rather than because of any ordinance. However, I can say this: mandating gun ownership does not make a town safer or friendlier.

To Get to the Other Side

2007-01-12T10:32:00.000-05:00

Recently, there has been a big brouhaha here in Atlanta over an incident in which a history professor, who was in town for a conference, was spotted jaywaking by an Atlanta patrolman. An altercation ensued and the historian was subdued, cuffed, and sent to the Fulton County detention center for an eight-hour visit.

Now, both city and police officials are standing behind the actions of the officer and the historian has published a piece in The Atlanta Constitution-Journal that is part rationalization, part melodrama, part political diatribe, and at once snobby and egalitarian. There followed, in the online version, a litany of comments from readers that seemed to fall exclusively into two categories: 1) The APD is endlessly evil and the professor blameless, and 2) The professor is endlessly evil and the APD is blameless.

It seems to me that, as usual, the truth falls somewhere in the great, gaping middle. The professor was most likely arrogant, and he seems to be prevaricating at least to some degree. I mean, I've seen Atlanta police officers downtown and have never had a jot of trouble in distinguishing them from, say, bus drivers or mill workers. And, even if he did confuse a bona fide police officer for a security guard, there was no reason for him to be uncivil and uncooperative.

However, doesn't it seem to any of the APD's defenders that excessive force was used? I mean, it sound like the set up to a bad joke: How many Atlanta police officers does it take to arrest a spindly, middle-aged historian? In the photo published in the AJC, I counted eight officers on the scene. Eight. It took eight healthy police officers to subdue him? Really?

Further, was it really necessary to knock the guy to the ground? Didn't the officer exacerbate the situation by going immediately into the I'm-so-tough-Billy-Badass-you-do-what-I-tell-you mode? Again, wouldn't a small dose of civility have gone a long way to avoiding a flare-up?

It seems to me that both the professor and the officer displayed a lack of manners and civility. Both were wrong, and it would be nice if either of them (I hold out no hope for both) could admit that they were rude and uncivil and that that rudeness and incivility made the situation worse than it needed to be.

Sometimes there is no better cure for the ills of society than for everyone to try to have better manners.

In Sickness and In Health

2007-01-03T12:44:00.000-05:00

I've just finished reading an article in The New York Times concerning a gentleman who leapt onto the tracks of the subway in order to save another guy who had a seizure and fell off the platform. The hero, Wesley Autry, is a 50-year-old construction worker who was taking his two little girls home before he went off to his second-shift job.

He was quoted as saying, "I don’t feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right."

This is a form of health called "reaching out in compassion," and it does not depend on knowing anything about the other person. The young man who had the seizure--a film student as it turns out--didn't qualify for saving for any other reason than that he was a human.

The most prominent story in recent days has exemplified the opposite themes of the subway story, and that story is, of course, The Lynching of Saddam.

Now, no one can argue that Saddam was a good person or that he was endowed with an ounce of compassion. However, it does show, to my mind, the futility of using violence as a means of righting wrongs and obtaining social justice.

Thanks to the thirst for blood and the belief that the use of violence is the best way to end violence, an evil man has been made a martyr, and someone who should have died in loneliness and disgrace went to his grave with far more dignity than was displayed by those who put him there. Sectarian violence, rather than being calmed, has been inflamed and another step toward the abyss of civil war taken. Many more will die, regardless of how many troops we send, and many more horrors will follow, all nurtured by the desire for revenge and the belief in the healing powers of murder.

Had the Iraqi government commuted Saddam's sentence to life in solitary confinement, the violence engulfing that country may have ebbed, just from the shock if nothing else. The Sunnis would have been denied their martyr and the Shiites denied their prize. And Saddam would have died, eventually, alone and forgotten, a symbol of the wages of sin. Compassion would have shamed him and showed him as the shriveled little parody of a man he really was.

The Bigot They Are, The Harder They Fall

2006-12-12T16:31:00.000-05:00

The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has sponsored a meeting in Tehran of people who question the fact of the Holocaust in World War II. My thoughts are:

1) Out of a world full of bigots and haters, they were only able to round up 60-something people who were far enough out of touch with reality so as to question the historical reality of the Holocaust. In some ways, this should be counted as a victory for sane people everywhere.

2) Even a collection of extremist loonies have a right to gather and exchange insane ideas. However, that such an assemblage should be sponsored by the government of a sovereign nation is beyond the pale.

3) The whole reason why the Holocaust cannot be forgotten is so that there might be a small chance that we will stop doing such things to one another some day. Those who choose to forget or downplay history may one day find themselves on the wrong side of the bayonet. To forget is not only to threaten oppression, it is to risk victimization. We must always remember that it was Hitler who said, "Who remembers the Armenians?"

4) My father had nightmares for the rest of his life after having seen what had happened at Dachau. Can a single one of these idiots look me in the face and tell me that he was lying? No.

5) Rather than give this kind of nonsense too much attention, the civilized world needs to do its best to dismiss it. It is only as important as those who are not there make it.

6) Everyone at this "conference" can go to hell.

From My Chest to You

2006-12-07T12:06:00.000-05:00

A couple of things that have been on my mind as of late:

First, when will anybody in Washington wake up to the fact that there can be no military solution to the troubles in Iraq, regardless of whether the military involved is American or Iraqi? The best way to defeat the insurgents is not to kill a bunch of people. It is to make daily life bearable, perhaps even pleasant. the solutions are social and societal. The more people who are well-fed and comfortable, the fewer "insurgents" you will have. The enemy is not some group, but discontent.

Second, I'd like to say that I'm tired of hearing the words "winning" and "losing" in regards to Iraq. There's nothing to win or lose anymore. It is a matter of succeeding or failing, and the current problems stem from the fact that the Bush Administration was so focused on winning that they forgot to try to succeed.

There was a third thing, but I forget what. Maybe another day. Maybe it's gone forever.

Uncivil War or al Qaeda Plot? You Decide!

2006-11-28T09:11:00.000-05:00

This morning's headlines brought the news that our President--the guy who is supposed to act as the Chief Executive of the United States--believes that the spiraling violence in Iraq is an al Qaeda plot. The reporters have focused on how he is using this rationale as a way of sidestepping use of the phrase "civil war" when it comes to the situation in Iraq, however, I see it as a symptom of his inability to understand or in any way comprehend reality.

Al Qaeda has become, to him, a kind of all-purpose boogyman, a specter to be blamed whenever reality doesn't work out in the way that he wishes. I'm sure he blames al Qaeda for the burnt toast and for the inability of the Rangers to win the A.L. pennant. "George!" Laura will call out. "The dog has peed on the carpet!"

"It's an al Qaeda plot!" George will reply through a spokesman.

The midterm elections showed that George is perceived as being the Boy Who Cried Wolf and that his statements on these matters have been completely discredited. He could actually rehabilitate this image if he would, just once, engage reality and face the facts. Unfortunately, old habits--dissembling included--are hard to break.

Oh, yea, and just for the record, I would like to state that I do not believe that Iraq is engulfed in a civil war. A civil war would be a step up from where they are now. Those poor people are trapped in chaos.

The Democrats

2006-11-16T13:17:00.000-05:00

I've always quoted Will Rogers when asked about my party affiliation. He said, "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."

Nowadays, I tend to think of myself as an Independent who wishes he could still be a Democrat, because that is my heritage, if you will. However, that's really where my heart lies.

And on days like today, in which the Speaker-of-the-House-to-Be has had her faced slapped by the members of her own delegation simply because she preferred to champion the ethically challenged John Murtha for majority leader over the obvious choice, I can't help but think of the original Mr. Rogers, Will.

On top of that, I read an article in The Times (New York, not Pawtucket) about how James Carville and a couple of others are carping at Howard Dean and a couple of others about how the Democratic National Committee spent its campaign funds. And this is one of the main differences between the Democrats and the Republicans: The Republicans work with a party discipline that would have been the envy of the SS while the Democrats display the party discipline of F Troop. And given my choice between the two, I'd still choose the Democrats. Their way is annoying and frustrating, but the Republicans are frightening and creepy. They should hold their next convention in Stepford.

I guess the thing that I do like about the Democrats is that they are kind of like a family. They squabble and fight and hold grudges and that one over there drinks too much and that one will do anything for money and those two think too much of themselves and too many of them need better supervision. They are human and fallible and therefore lovable. While the Republicans demand respect and loyalty, the Democrats beg for love.

However, regardless of that, they need to get themselves together, at least for a little while, because, if they don't, the voters will throw them out in two years. There's no such thing as a mandate. It's all a test drive.

Another Fine Mess

2006-11-15T12:34:00.000-05:00

First, my credentials: I was openly against the Iraq War since before the beginning. I thought the invasion was stupid, unnecessary, and motivated by the wrong concerns. My intelligence sources--The New Yorker and Harper's--revealed that the situation on the ground in Iraq was far different from what was being advertised in the Oval Office and that the American people were being misled. As long ago as before the first Gulf War started, in a letter I sent to a friend in early 1991, I conjectured that removing Saddam from power could have unintended consequences and that the problems caused might not have an easy solution.

Now, today, I read that Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, soon to be the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is pushing for a phased withdrawal of American troops to begin in four-to-six months. You think I'd be happy, but I'm not. (That's from a song lyric, isn't it? Anybody who knows which song, please drop me a line. It's going to eat at me until I figure it out.)

The problem is that, although I didn't think we should have invaded in the first place, we went ahead and did it, and the consequences of that and of the 13 years of bombing raids and missile attacks that preceded it are our property, like it or not.

We have a responsibility to the people of Iraq--Sunni, Shia, Kurd, and whatever else they've got--to clean up our mess before we go.

That we need to leave as soon as possible is beyond argument. However, it is incumbent upon us to leave it in at least as good a condition as that in which we found it. My mother taught me this rule, and it is a good one and a fair one. Before you leave, clean up your mess.

And this is why I say, again, that we must not simply remove our troops. We must redeploy them to safeguard public works projects and design not a timetable for withdrawal, but a plan that correlates troop withdrawals with specific goals in the rebuilding of a country we have destroyed.

Thoughts in the Aftermath of the Election

2006-11-11T08:17:00.000-05:00

The results of Tuesday's election are heartening, but I am, at best cautiously optimistic.

It is good that the House and the Senate--also known as Congress--is going to be in the hands of the opposition. It is one of the functions of Congress to act as a check on both the Executive and Judicial branches, both of which are currently controlled by the Republicans. The sad thing, of course, is that acting as a check on the two other branches is supposed to be a function of the institution, and not merely one of party.

George Washington, in his Farewell Address, warned against the dangers of faction, and the Constitution, in my opinion was not designed to function properly under the constraints of a two-party system.

Our two-party system, of course, is not really a system, but merely a tradition. The Constitution was designed with the idea behind it that the people serving in Congress and in the judiciary would be individuals and not flocks of sheep. Unfortunately, James Madison and the rest of his crowd overestimated the capacities of most people, particularly politicians. If we were to keep true to the spirit of the Constitution, everyone would be an independent and would think for him- or herself rather than sticking to the talking points.

The true test of whether anything has really been accomplished by this new arrangement of power will not be in how vigorously Congress opposes the President, though. It will be in whether the Democrats make a real effort to include the Republicans in the legislative process or whether they will continue the childish "I'm taking my ball and going home" attitude that the Republicans brought with them in 1994. The idea behind democracy is not that it be a contest between my idea and yours, winner-take-all. It is that it provides a way to compare ideas so that, with any luck, a third, better idea can be thought up.

Hang Ups

2006-11-06T09:42:00.000-05:00

The Iraqi Kangaroo Court (and, even though it reached the right decision concerning guilt, there can be little doubt that it was a kangaroo court) has passed sentence on Saddam Hussein, and he is to be hanged from the neck until dead at the Kangaroo Appellate Court's earliest possible convenience. Now, setting aside the question of whether murder is a proper, useful, and ethical legal tool, I'd like to say that the worst they could do is hang Saddam.

Is this because I think he is not guilty? No. He was a brutal, dictatorial despot, and killing people by the hundred is the way such people work.

Is it because the method of trying him was flawed? No, even though it was.

Is it because justice would have been better served had he been handed over to International authorities for trial by the World Court? No, even though that's undoubtedly true.

The reason it is a bad idea is that killing Saddam will only further inflame the sectarian divide that is the true cause of the violence and chaos that currently embraces that benighted land. He will hang and the violence will escalate.

Now, President Bush loves nothing more than a good killing, so he's behind the hanging 100 percent. Prime Minister Maliki also couldn't be more pleased, as the sight a Saddam swinging in the breeze plays well to what Karl Rove calls "the base." However, the Sunni minority in Iraq will see it as symbolic of the general sectarian cleansing they see going on in the streets every day. It's not that they haven't been doing more than their share of cleansing as well, but this sort of thing tends to devolve into a kill-or-be-killed philosophy rather quickly.

The smart thing for Mr. Maliki to do would be to commute Saddam's sentence and let him rot in prison for the rest of his days. Showing mercy would flummox his enemies and keeping him in solitary confinement--like Rudolph Hess at Spandau Prison--would give some comfort to his supporters.

Of course, that will not happen. Saddam will hang and some portion of Bagdhad will burn. Mr. Bush will get his kill and will be astounded when nothing changes. The madness will go on and all that will be gained is one more corpse in one more grave.

Winning in Iraq

2006-10-21T09:59:00.000-04:00

Ever since our benighted escapade in Iraq started, I have been wrestling with the question of how disentangle ourselves honorably while leaving behind something other than the chaos that our presence has engendered. A couple of weeks ago, it finally occurred to me.

We need to start by using our troops in a different manner than the ways they have been used thus far. The mission for our troops should not be to look for, attack, or captured insurgents. That is an activity on a par with trying to catch the wind in a paper sack. It can’t be done and persisting in this strategy will lead to inevitable defeat and dishonor.

No, our soldiers and marines need to be redeployed to secure and defend projects that involve reconstructing the infrastructure of Iraq. It is a mission that our troops can do splendidly with a reduced risk of needless casualties. And it is my contention that we can do more to undercut the insurgency with the construction of power plants, wastewater treatment plants, and hospitals than we can by killing a bunch of people. And should insurgents try to attack a project defended by Americans, not only will they be repulsed, but any casualties they sustained would buoy support for American forces that are insuring the supply of electricity, clean water, and so forth.

As more and more projects come online, our troops can be withdrawn. A timeline could be created that tied troop withdrawals to specific achievements in the rebuilding of a modern Iraqi state.

I’m not saying that everything will be hunky-dory in the streets of Baghdad right from the get-go; no one could or should promise that. However, there will be less violence fairly quickly when opposition to the American presence is no longer a rallying point for the insurgency.

Food, water, power, medicine, and safe roadways. These are the things that can win this war.

Constructive Engagement

2006-10-17T20:33:00.000-04:00

As the mushroom clouds start to sprout over North Korea, the time has come for us to reconsider our policy toward that strange nation and our foreign policy in general.

Throughout our history, but most particularly in the years since the end of World War II, we have shown the depressing tendency to view other nations as either client states or enemies and have consistently lacked the subtlety in our approach necessary to finesse delicate situations. Our government—regardless of the party in power—has looked at foreign policy as act of coercion rather than cooperation and persuasion, and, as a result, a lot of things have tumbled in ways that are good neither for us nor for the rest of the world. The current crisis concerning North Korea is an example of this.

Throughout his time in office, Mr. Bush’s administration has sought to isolate and marginalize North Korea in the hope that Kim Jong Il will eventually send candy and flowers and Hallmark cards bearing the legend “Please Be My Friend.” Of course, this flies in the face of what we know about human nature.

People, like cats, tend to lash out and panic when backed into a corner. The result is rarely good for anybody. And we have to remember that other nations are run by people and that those people will react to events according to human nature.

Now, let’s look at the evidence concerning the use of sanctions and isolation as foreign policy tools. Some of the nations that this tactic has been tried on before are Cuba, Iran, and Iraq. In Cuba, 47 years of embargo have helped make Fidel a hero to his people rather than exposed him as an authoritarian tyrant. Fidel has outlasted 9 U.S. Presidents, and just might outlast the 10th. Meanwhile, the people of Cuba have suffered politically and economically, and we have had no opportunity to influence the course of events in that tiny island nation.

In Iran, we have seen, during Mr. Bush’s tenure, a strengthening of the hardliners in the government and the evaporation of the voices of Iranian moderates. They are flirting with acquiring nuclear weapons and see it as their duty—in defense of their autonomy—to support terrorists and troublemakers wherever they can find them.

In Iraq, 13 years of sanctions did nothing to remove Saddam from power and merely enfeebled a well-educated and prosperous middle class. While Saddam and his sons and cronies grew richer, the great mass of the Iraqi population grew poorer and more desperate until now, after taking the final logical step in this strategy and invading the country, a once proud people now find themselves without electricity or clean water.

There are those who might cite South Africa as a sanctions-based success story, but let’s turn that over for a moment. Could it not be that the internal stress caused by a tiny portion of a given population trying to subjugate the large and growing majority doomed apartheid? Was it not a triumph of the South Africans themselves? Did not the white government do the things typical of such regimes when they are subject to sanctions, i.e., seek underground trading partners, support terrorism, and work toward the possession of a nuclear weapon? Sound familiar?

I have long felt that the proper basis for a sane American foreign policy is something I call a policy of constructive engagement. The first step would be to stop looking at ourselves as being masters of the world and to start perceiving ourselves as being citizens in a global neighborhood. We should normalize relations with North Korea, Iran, and Cuba.

This is exactly what we did with Vietnam, and you’ll notice that they are not part of any Axis of Evil. In fact, a great deal of progress has been made since normalization and while not exactly our best friend, Vietnam can no longer be considered an enemy, either.

There are those who like to throw around the term “appeasement” whenever someone else mentions a peaceful alternative to diplomatic relations, but I do not think that term is apt. Cooperation does not necessarily mean giving in to aggression, and not everyone we don’t approve of has Hitlerian ambitions to rule the world.

Finally, Senator John McCain recently stated that President Clinton’s cooperation with North Korea (which was brokered by Jimmy Carter) was a failure that led to the current crisis. This, of course, is the kind irresponsible bushwa that Sen. McCain is becoming noted for. North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear arsenal disappeared after the Clinton agreement. It only resumed when the Bush Administration repudiated that pact. QED.

Mourning in America

2006-10-17T08:12:00.000-04:00

Well, today, Mr Bush will sign his torture authorization bill into law. Let us take a moment of silence to honor the passing of any semblance of democracy, justice, ethics, and morality as part of our civic heritage.

As John Lennon said, "The Dream is over."

Learning from 9/11

2006-10-10T20:40:00.000-04:00

Let us think, for a moment, about the 9/11 attacks, their purpose, meaning, and methods, and see what conclusions we can derive about al Qaeda, terrorism, and the best ways to oppose both.

First, what possible purpose could have lay behind the planning of these senseless attacks?  What benefit would the planners derive from executing those hijackings?  Now, there are those, according to an article I read that was in a recent issue of the New Yorker, who believe that Osama intended to provoke the United States into invading Afghanistan in the hope that such an invasion would incite the entire Muslim world to jihad.  If that were the case, they succeeded in the immediate goal, but failed in that the invasion of Afghanistan was seen throughout the world—including throughout Islam—as being justified by the pointless violence of the 9/11 attacks.  (It took the invasion of Iraq to rev up the idea of jihad anywhere in the Muslim world.)

President Bush has his own theory, namely that they attacked because they “hate our freedoms.”  I don’t know what this is supposed to mean.  How would slamming jetliners into buildings damage our freedoms?  It’s not like we kept our freedoms inside boxes secreted in those buildings.  This is pap, meaningless pap, meant sway emotions rather than to illuminate the terrorists’ motives.  In fact, I think that this is merely a case of projection.  Mr. Bush and his cronies clearly hate the idea of the great mass of the American populace having liberty, and they have acted steadily and unrelentingly to rescind the most fundamental of our freedoms:  the rights to privacy, assembly, speech, and habeus corpus.  Next thing you know, they be forcing us to quarter soldiers in our homes.

There are those who believe that the purpose of the attacks was to influence us to betray our democracy by rescinding the sorts of freedoms that the Bush Administration has unceasingly attacked.  Now, as tempting as it might be for me to go along with this theory, I don’t think it holds water.  For one thing, all the major attacks attributed to al Qaeda before 9/11, such as the attack on the USS Cole, occurred outside of the United States, typically against either a military or diplomatic target.  That pattern, in fact, suggests that al Qaeda had been trying to goad the United States into some kind of military action for years before 9/11.  Therefore, I must conclude that the first theory is the most likely.

Next, we come to the meaning of the attacks.  Did they have an intended meaning and, if so, what was it?  Did they attack those targets because of the architecture?  I doubt it.  Did they just choose places at random?  Again, unlikely.  Were they chosen because the planners believed that attacking those targets would incite the greatest amount of terror?  I don’t think so because it would have been just as easy to plow those planes into neighborhoods or schools or hospitals.  No, they must have represented specific things to the planners.

Just as the Murrah Federal Building was chosen by Timothy McVeigh as a symbol of his disaffection with the Federal government, the 9/11 targets were chosen, in large part, because of what they meant.  Part of the appeal was logistic:  Each of the planned targets—the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Capitol—was completely exposed.  They were easy targets, unlike the White House or the State Department, both of which would have been difficult to hit with a weapon as large and as clumsy as a jetliner.  (The White House would have made an excellent target except for one thing:  the Washington Monument.  There’d be no way to get a passenger plane past the monument without missing the White House either short or long.  Certainly not with pilots trained on Cessnas.)

However, it wasn’t just the ease of acquiring the targets that suited their needs.  If that were the case, the choices would have been nearly limitless.  Planes could have struck exposed office buildings in a dozen major cities simultaneously.  No, those targets were chosen as symbols of what the planners reviled and feared the most:  globalization, American foreign policy, and the United States government.

They don’t like American foreign policy because they see it as bullying and intrusive and because a great deal of our foreign policy is built around assuring access to the Saudi peninsula and its oil.  In their eyes, any non-Muslim presence in Saudi Arabia is heresy, and heresy must be cleansed.

They fear globalization because they see it as a threat to their cultural and traditions.  And they are right.  In fact, it’s a threat to our cultural and traditions.  However, that’s how life is:  ceaseless change.  There’s nothing you can do about it and killing a bunch of blameless strangers won’t stop it.  Unfortunately, the kind of mind that is capable of sending thousands to their deaths over an idea is not the kind of mind that is capable of understanding subtleties.  (See George W. Bush.)

Next, let’s look at the methods used by hijackers and see what conclusions can be drawn from them.

The interesting thing to me about the weapons used in the 9/11 attacks is that they were anything but high tech.  The fundamental weapons used were box cutters.  Using those, they took control of jetliners and jammed them into building as very crude, but effective, missiles.

Despite the constant fearmongering concerning biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons being used in terrorist attacks, the truth is that they tend to keep it simple.  The simpler the weapon and delivery system, the fewer things that could go wrong and the smaller the trail to pick up on beforehand.  The most high tech terror attack carried out by an organization that I can think of was the attempt to poison the Tokyo subway with ricin gas, and that did not work well—at least not from the terrorists’ point of view.

In fact, al Qaeda tends to work in low-tech ways, such as bombs.  I mean, let’s face it, any idiot can stuff some explosives in something and set it off someplace.  Their typical modus operandi is the method used to attack the USS Cole:  They stuffed and dinghy with explosives and let it drift into the American ship.  Actually, they had already attempted to attack an American ship previously, but the attempt failed when they overloaded the dinghy, and it sank.  And, in my opinion, we are unlikely to see biological, chemical, or nuclear attacks from a bunch of dingbats who can’t properly operate a raft.

My point is that while we must keep aware of al Qaeda, we should not get lost in the fear that gets generated about a collection of nutbags.  They are not going to bomb the Fleener Building in Topeka.  They are not going to be setting off nuclear devices in downtown anywhere—with or without Kim Jong Il.  In fact, I think the best way to destroy al Qaeda is to develop a more enlightened approach to dealing with the rest of the world.  As people fear and loath us less, recruitment for such a loony cause will get harder and harder.  Al Qaeda, much like the Bush Tyranny, thrives on fear and hatred.  Why give them ammunition?

What Comes After Fear

2006-10-08T13:17:00.000-04:00

There is an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer, after having accidentally consumed some poisoned blowfish at a sushi restaurant, is told that he has only 24 hours to live.  (“Actually, 22 hours,” Dr. Hibberd says.  “Sorry about the wait.”)  Dr. Hibberd give Homer a pamphlet entitled “So, You’re Going to Die,” and explains to him that he can expect to go through five stages.

Dr. Hibberd:  First, there’s denial.
Homer:  No way, ‘cause I’m not dying.
Dr. Hibberd:  The second is anger.
Homer:  Why you little!
Dr. Hibberd:  After that comes fear.
Homer:  (panicking) What’s after fear?  What’s after fear?
Dr. Hibberd:  Bargaining.
Homer:  Doc, you gotta get me out of this.  I’ll make it worth your while.
Dr. Hibberd:  Finally, acceptance.
Homer:  Well, we all gotta go some time.

In the so-called War on Terrorism, I find that we are stuck in stage three:  fear.

This is mostly because our leaders—cowards, for the most part—cannot get past fear, both because of their natural inclinations and because instilling fear is one of the best and easiest ways of getting and keeping power.

However, once one considers the word “terrorist” and it’s implications, one understands that fear is precisely the wrong approach to take in dealing with terrorism and terrorists.  The whole idea behind terrorist tactics is to instill fear in the population you are attacking.  If they’re not afraid, you’re not doing it right.  When our leaders panic at the slightest threat, they are acting in a way that is unlikely to instill confidence in the populace.  The result:  The terrorists win.

Now, to be fair, no one thinks of him- or herself as being a terrorist.  The people on the other side of the question are the terrorists.  The individual thinks of him- or herself as being a patriot or a freedom fighter or a revolutionary or a martyr.  When one considers this, the term “terrorist,” one comes to realize, is meaningless.  So are “patriot,” “freedom fighter,” “revolutionary,” and “martyr” when used in this sort of context.  There’s not much that can be done about it.  As long as killing is sanctioned as an acceptable way to resolve political disagreements, these labels will continue not only to exist, but to thrive.

However, it seems to me that as long as we accept the term “terrorist” as having meaning, then the best way to fight terrorists is to have courage.  Having courage means accepting a certain amount of risk in every day life and retaining our rights even when doing so might incur a slightly greater amount of risk in life.

I am struck by the response of the Amish community in Pennsylvania to the recent massacre of young girls by a local non-Amish man.  Not only did they show quiet dignity and courage in the face of the onslaught, they comforted the attacker’s wife and children and attended the man’s funeral.  They have showed courage and dignity when most other communities would have cried for blood and called for tougher measures.  They plan to build a new schoolhouse on a different property, but I doubt that the new place will have metal detectors or armed guards.  They are wiser than that.

And so, I think that we, as Americans, should learn from their example.  We should live our lives with courage and dignity and not turn these traits over to those who would harm us in order to make some vague political point.  Let us hold on to our rights and not turn them over to a government that would have us live in fear.

The Detainee Bill

2006-10-03T20:01:00.000-04:00

Toward the end of last week, our Lilliputian Senate passed a bill regarding the treatment of so-called detainees after cutting a deal with the Bush Tyranny to make sure that the CIA had plenty of room to do whatever it deemed best.  This third-rate piece of legislative buffoonery is called the Military Commissions Act of 2006, but would have been better styled the Bush Tyranny Authorization and Legislative Cowardice Act.

This bill allows the President to designate anyone—say, me, for example—as an enemy of the State so that he or she may be removed to a secret place for all kinds of secret fun-and-games.  I’m sure there are those who would disagree with my label of tyranny, but let’s face it, friends, this ain’t democracy either.

According to Wikipedia, a tyrant is one who “possesses absolute power through the people.”  Given Mr. Bush’s spotty record in elections, one might dispute his administration being so defined, but let’s go further.  Wikipedia defines “tyrants” in  modern terms as “cruel despots who place their own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the ‘best’ interests of the general population which they govern or control.”

Let’s examine the Bush regime in light of that definition.  Is Mr. Bush cruel?  Well, looked at from the perspective of the detainees in Guantanamo or in abu Ghraib or in the multitude of secret places around the world where people are subjected to unknown terrors in the service of his agenda, the answer would have to be “yes.”  Cruelty and incompetence are two of the defining hallmarks of this administration.  Mr. Bush and his minions are cruel in the manner of a two-year-old who will find entertainment in casually dismembering an insect.  Were the offending legislation reasonable, all entertainment techniques meant to be used on detainees should be tested first on Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and the rest of the crowd.  I doubt the two-year-old would care to be dismembered, and I doubt that the Bush regime would want to be treated as they would treat others.

Is Mr. Bush a despot?  Well, that term is defined thus:  “[A despot is] either an individual or a tightly knit group which rules with absolute power.”  The Republicans—typically in the guise of bootlickers or mendicants, although there are exceptions—control all three branches of the Federal government and Mr. Bush has gotten his way pretty much up-and-down the line from the lapdog Congress.  When he doesn’t like a law, he simply declares himself above it and ignores it.  If I did that, the police would be round for a chat and a field trip down to the station.  Not so with our Fearless Leader.

Does he place his interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the interests of the population at large?  Look at his tax agenda.  If he were being deposed on this, his attorney could rightfully object by saying, “Asked and answered.”

Is Mr. Bush a tyrant and his administration a tyranny?  You bet.

They got there because of the dreadful events of 9/11/01 and their willingness to cynically use the shock and fear (was there awe as well?) that came from that senseless attack to grab power in a way that I don’t think we’ve ever experienced before.  The tyrant’s traditional motto has always been “You are in danger.  Let me protect you.”  They do not ask for our courage.  They do not protect our freedom.  Their weapons are always jail and death.

The interrogation practices that are used in these secret and sometimes not-so-secret prisons are not meant to elicit information.  They are meant to inspire conformity and obedience.  John McCain knows this, even if he hides that knowledge because his thirst for power is greater than his love of truth.

But don’t take my word for it.  Just read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

This Is What I Think of Both "Sides"

2006-09-29T10:21:00.000-04:00

The recent controversy over whether Mr Bush or Mr Clinton had done a better job of fighting terrorism led me to remember a story about Samuel Johnson.

When asked by Maurice Morgann whom he considered to be the better poet — Smart or Derrick, Johnson replied, "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea."

This is what I think of the leaders of both parties: lice and fleas.

Coming Attractions

2006-09-29T08:04:00.000-04:00

Yesterday on the Next in the Series blog, I made a cryptic comment concerning a flurry of activity on this one. I had originally intended to get something up here then, but did not have a chance. And then, this morning, I thought I would take this opportunity to post an overview of what I plan to write about in the forthcoming days.

A lot of things have been on my mind in recent weeks, and I hope to get this weight off my brain. The topics I'm currently planning on writing about are the detainee bill that just passed in the Senate, tyranny, terrorism, the Iraq War and how to disentangle ourselves from it, and waking up.

I have turned off the comment function because I intend a monologue and because I wish to deter the drive-by commenters who post pointless, inflammatory drivel on random blogs before disappearing into the night, much like kids ringing doorbells and running.

The point of view will be neither "liberal" nor "conservative," pointless labels used mostly to obscure and mislead. The jerks who run this country have pushed me into cynicism, and that is the point of view I feel I represent.

I don't know when I'll have time to start this, but it will be soon.

Thanks.

Len

Compare and Contrast

2006-09-11T09:53:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I read a report in The New Yorker about jihad theorists and their plans for the future of terrorism. This morning, I read an article in The New York Times about Dick Cheney's appearance on Meet the Press. Between the two, I couldn't help but think of how much in common Osama bin Laden has with Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush. The similarity is really quite striking, and it gives some insight into why so much of the world is being blown up and why so many people are being needlessly killed these days.

The first similarity is that all three are utopians. That is, they each have a vision of what they consider to be the perfect world, and each one suffers from the delusion that his utopia is a practical, achievable goal. In Osama's case, his utopia is located somewhere around the year 900 CE, back when the Caliphate really stood for something. Something like world domination. Everyone would have the freedom to be either Muslim or dead and people who look and think like him would have the grave responsibility of deciding whose hand got cut off and whose wife raped. It's a dirty job, but someone who believes he's better than everyone else has got to do it. If we're to have a utopia.

Messrs. Bush and Cheney, of course, would like to go back to the heyday of the Roman Empire, just as long as the Emperor dwelt on the banks of the Potomac instead of the Tiber or the Bosphorus. Everyone would be free to agree with the Emperor or die, and the Emperor would have the grave responsibility of doing whatever the hell he wanted without interference. There would be many secret prisons modeled on the dungeons of the Inquisition where dissenters could learn how to confess and reform with the help of extreme duress. It would be just like the good old days in the Soviet Union and the world would be a bright and rosy place. For the Emperor.

The second way that they are alike is in their callous disregard for human suffering. What counts most to each man is his particular ideology, and the death or mutilation of strangers is just what it takes to get things done. Don't take it personally. It's just business.

Of course, that kind of mindset, when found in lesser men, men who can only kill one or a few at a time, is called being a sociopath. The other difference between Osama, George, and Dick and the common run of sociopath is that they do their work through surrogates while the typical sociopath has to be the owner/operator of his particular viciousness. This also separates them from idiots like the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who took the extra step of being an out-an-out psychopath.

Mr. Bush and Mr. bin Laden are also similar in their messianic visions of themselves. Each sees himself as being the avatar of the one true God, a being whom both would describe as being benevolent and desiring nothing more than the total destruction of most of the world's population.

Both also have this in common: Neither possesses a sense of irony.

Although he is technically a Methodist, Mr. Cheney's religious beliefs, judging from his views about the power of the Presidency, can be summed up as "The state is God; God is the state." This makes him a bit more flexible politically because his God only requires the total subjugation of the rest of the world. Total destruction is merely the means to the end, not the whole point of the process itself.

In fact, all three are really, at heart, proponents of totalitarianism. The funny thing is that none of them is aware of this.

So, apparently, none of them possesses a verifiable sense of humor.

They're all wealthy and therefore have the requisite leisure time to make sure the world is painted in blood. Mr. Bush and Mr. bin Laden were born wealthy. Mr. Cheney had wealth thrust upon him by huge government-contracting corporations like Halliburton. It's a regular Horatio Alger story that should inspire future generations of ethically challenged politicians everywhere.

It's really too bad that at any meeting at least one of them would have to be considered a heretic. Otherwise, they could probably have a marvelous time together at a cocktail party. Of course, Donald Rumsfeld once supported Saddam Hussein and Osama himself was on the CIA's payroll back in the '80s. So, you never know. Times change.

As Usual

2006-07-08T22:05:00.000-04:00

Bill Waterston sums it all up.

(To see the original, click here.)

Thanks, Bill.

The Argument Clinic

2006-06-24T09:46:00.000-04:00

Speaking of not learning lessons, I got myself into another pointless debate on another blog last week, and the whole experience has put me in mind of the Monty Python "Argument Clinic" sketch.

This sketch brilliantly sums up the state of discussion in modern America, and one has to assume since the Pythons were and are British, elsewhere. For example, how many of us, like the hapless protaganist of the sketch, have instead of participating in an argument, found ourselves the unwitting recipient of abuse. Let me quote:

Chapman: WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Palin: Well, I was told outside that...
Chapman: Don't give me that, you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings!
Palin: What?
Chapman: Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, toffee-nosed, maloderous, pervert!!!
Palin: Look, I CAME HERE FOR AN ARGUMENT, I'm not going to just stand...!!
Chapman: OH, oh I'm sorry, but this is abuse.
Palin: Oh, I see, well, that explains it.
Chapman: Ah yes, you want room 12A, Just along the corridor.
Palin: Oh, Thank you very much. Sorry.
Chapman: Not at all.
Palin: Thank You.
Chapman: (Under his breath) Stupid git!!

For some people, political discussion never rises above--and never can--"Shut your festering gob, you tit!" To listen to an idea that contradicts theirs would be a tacit admission that they might not be right, and these folks are so insecure that such a possibility terrifies them. This terror then gets manifested in the forms of screaming and insults. This phenomenon is not limited to political party or ideology. Adherents are spread across the political spectrum, but are most concentrated at the edges, at the places where politics becomes religion and life is always jihad or crusade. People with different viewpoints are understood to be infidels and heretics fit only for death and burning at the stake. These are folks who confuse belief for knowledge and faith for reason. These people cause a great deal of the world's misery.

There are two statements made by the hapless protagonist that occur to me regularly when I find myself embroiled in these brouhahas. First, after a patch in which he gets contradicted on the statement that he had been contradicted, he says:

Palin: An argument isn't just contradiction.
Cleese: It can be.
Palin: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.

How many people arguing politics on blogs make "a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition"? Some. Many, however, tend to present conclusions without support and conflate accusations with rationality. If the other party makes a point they can't dispute, they simply ignore it and try to change the subject. Or they simply contradict it without demonstrating any reason why their statement is true. Again, it comes down to a kind of belief and faith. If they believe it, it must be true, because if it isn't then they might be wrong and that possibility cannot be admitted.

At last, before finally running out of patience, the hapless protagonist says, "Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes." And this sums things up for me. This is where we are. Argument is no longer an intellectual process, but has been reduced to "the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes." In a republic that was founded on a belief in rationality, this is a sad state of affairs indeed.

Of course, you can always complain. Or can you:

Palin: I want to complain.
Idle: You want to complain! Look at these shoes. I've only had them three weeks and the heels are worn right through.
Palin: No, I want to complain about...
Idle: If you complain nothing happens, you might as well not bother.
Palin: Oh!
Idle: Oh my back hurts, it's not a very fine day and I'm sick and tired of this office.

Some days it just doesn't pay to power up and log on.

Headline of the Day

2006-06-23T08:58:00.000-04:00

Iraqi govt declares state of emergency

Just in the nick of time, I'd say.

Also, in the accompanying story, we learn that insurgents have "set up roadblocks in central Baghdad and opened fire on U.S. and Iraqi troops just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone." And a couple of days ago, they abducted scores of factory workers. (Seventeen have since been freed.) Perhaps killing al-Zarqawi wasn't the antidote to all that ails that troubled nation and didn't signal the death knell of the insurgency.

Once again, the President has jaunted off someplace--this time Baghdad--to celebrate Mission Accomplished, but his victory dance has proved premature. The funny thing is that they initially kept low-key about the al-Zarqawi killing, and I had hopes that they had finally learned a lesson through all this. I think it took all of about 48 hours before they fell back on old habits though.

Some people never learn, and, unfortunately, some of them get to run the country.

Would You Buy a Used Car from This Guy?

2006-06-22T15:15:00.000-04:00

Or a used world view? I know I wouldn't.

My question is this: Why does Mr Cheney always look as though a gas bubble the size of a softball is passing through his digestive tract? You're rich. You're powerful. You have your own undisclosed location. What are you so ticked about, Dick?

Today's Surprise Announcement

2006-06-12T11:48:00.000-04:00

Today's "I Never Would Have Guessed That" headline courtesy AP:

Militant chosen to succeed al-Zarqawi

As I understand it, the race would have been closer, but the moderate was beheaded.

Nonsense

2006-06-05T13:16:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend, I received an email forward that I feel compelled to respond to. This email comes with the subject line “A Message from the Ghost of General Patton,” and it attempts to justify the abuses of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison by having a very fictional General Patton compare it to a murder conducted by (I’m guessing) Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi. Grisly pictures of a beheading are nestled in the midst of various photos of Patton and all are surrounded by a rather forceful yet mulletheaded prose.

Here is my response:

First, although the email implies otherwise, those of us who abhor the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib are not less patriotic than those who seek to condone it. We are more so. I say this because the basic impulse behind our revulsion at this and other outrages such as Haditha and Guantanamo Bay can be summed up as follows: GODDAMN IT, WE’RE AMERICANS AND WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS!

The author of this email uses the kind of reasoning that one usually associates with an adolescent boy: So-and-so did this thing that’s worse that what I did! This is falderal, balderdash, and a slew of words far less polite. What our troops at Abu Ghraib did was wrong. Period. It cannot be defended morally or ethically. What should we ask of ourselves and our nation? Should we not ask ourselves to be the most moral and ethical we can be?

For this is the problem with the people running this war and their defenders: Although they prattle on and on about morality when ever it will win them a few votes, the truth is that they are amoral jerks who prize the certainties of a police state over the challenges of liberty. In their constant flogging of the word “patriotism,” I am reminded of what Jesus said about praying: “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray, in the synagogues and street corners so that others may see them.” As Dr. Johnson said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and the scoundrels who run and support this war hide behind that word constantly. And yet, they cannot be patriots, since they so openly and obviously hate liberty and freedom and the entire democratic experiment we embarked on in 1789.

But back to the email.

The use of the images of the beheading of an innocent is not only cynical to the point of disgust, it is manipulative, and finally horribly sick. The person who put this thing together clearly has a disordered mind and should be locked away in a mental institution.

Finally, I would like to say that the whole concept dishonors Gen. George Patton, an outstanding tactical commander under whom my father served. First, the writer made him speak as though he were a cartoon of a drill sergeant rather than as a general in the United States Army. He has Patton use the word “maggots” as a term of address to those who oppose this vicious, stupid, worthless, vile war. Patton would not have used that word. In looking at his speeches, I found him referring to the Germans—the enemy, not his fellow citizens!—as Huns and the Bosche, and as bastards and sons of bitches. However, nowhere does he use such a term as maggots. Whoever the small-minded creep is who composed this drivel, he owes General Patton’s family and descendents an apology.

Pot Meet Kettle

2006-05-04T10:19:00.000-04:00

I had to post when I saw this headline on the Yahoo Reuters feed this morning:

Cheney Rebukes Russia on Democracy

I mean, what's upsetting him? Do they have too much for his taste?

At least he didn't shoot them from his undisclosed location.

St. Swithin's Day Already?

2006-04-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

There's an episode of The Simpson's in which Bart breaks his leg shortly after the family acquires a pool. As the family's backyard quickly becomes the epicenter of everything hip and delightful in Springfield, Bart stays in his room, his leg encased in a cumbersome plaster cast. (Only one person has bothered to sign his cast--his friend Milhouse, who has signed it "Milpool.") We find out that he has begun writing a play ("St. Swithin's Day already?" "Tis, Aunt Helga."), and his sister, Lisa, gives him a telescope she won at an optics festival. ("There was an optics festival, and I wasn't informed? You go now.") Leading up to this scene, Marge sends Lisa to spend some time with her brother because, in her words, "He's becoming isolated and weird."

I bring all this up for two reasons: First, I like quoting lines from The Simpsons. Second, it seems to me that I, too, am becoming "isolated and weird," and that the cause of this is too much blogging about politics and current events.

When I first posted something political on Next in the Series: The Blog, my main intention was to fill up blog space with stuff that I had already written and submitted to The New York Times as either an op-ed piece or a letter to the editor. As I went along with that blog, I interspersed various kinds of writing--memoir, travel writing, and straight humor--with occasional opinion pieces. At first, I was curious whether I could do a decent job of writing op-ed stuff, and, frankly, I've been generally pleased with my ventures in that field.

When the time had come when it made sense to focus the show blog more on the show and less on politics, I decided to channel that energy into the writing of this overtly political blog. As the title implies, my intention was to point out the way our rulers lie to us and deceive us. I've also found myself an occasional participant on another blog or two that concern themselves with politics.

And while this sounds rather innocuous, it can also take up a great deal of time. For one thing, I try to write carefully--although I don't always succeed--and writing well is hard work. At least it is for me. I want there to be a certain music to my prose, and I try to be clear. And, when necessary, I do research. I spent half-a-day last week analyzing the federal budget and the fluctuations in income taxes paid in recent years. That's half-a-day I'll never get back. And for what? So that I could convince some stranger of the errors of his logic? If that was the case, then it was a total waste of time.

Because he didn't change his thinking. He just found new ways of presenting the same views. And that is only natural because most people don't think. They believe.

And that's their right. In this confusing and pressurized time, sometimes belief is all we have to hang on to. There's a scene in Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf when the main character, Harry, is in a place called The Magic Theatre. And at one point, he sees his reflection in a mirror and smashes the mirror. And all the shards of glass become little Harrys, running around and carrying on. Harry had thought himself to be composed of two selves: the respectable middle-class author and his dark side, which he calls the Steppenwolf. And in this sequence he sees that he's made up of not two selves, but thousands.

This is true of all of us, and an absolute, unwavering faith that what we believe is true and worthwhile is a magnetic force that helps us pull all those disparate parts into some sort of functioning whole. To take away that belief suddenly and capriciously is to do a great injury and a great injustice.

Most of all, however, I am tired of arguing. It's a fruitless, enervating activity that hardens the soul and closes the mind. The self becomes a fortress and enemies abound. A heart that is not open in compassion is a heart that is not fully alive. For an artist, it is a kind of suicide.

And I consider myself foremost an artist.

I'm not going to make any great, grand statements concerning the future of this blog. It may continue; it may not. I'll let the future figure that one out. And I have to admit that, on a day in which the President has been quoted as saying, "I'm the decider, and I decide what's best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense," it is tempting to go on. I mean, that offends me both as a citizen and as a lover of the English language. But mine is a small voice, nearly unheard, and no public policy will be made or changed because of what I write here.

In the meantime, I have a script to write and a novel to finish.

Peace.

Pride Goeth, and It Can't Go Fast Enough

2006-04-04T08:11:00.000-04:00

Tom DeLay has announced that he will not seek reelection and will retire from Congress shortly. I, for one, couldn't be happier.

I am not happy because my political philosophy differs from Mr DeLay's. He plans to spend his time between now and the beginning of his eventual jail term supporting conservative and Republican causes, and that's great. More power to him (figuratively). Freedom of belief is the predicate to freedom of speech, and I am an unequivocal supporter of both those notions.

No, I am happy because a serial abuser of our Constitution has been taken down a peg.

Mr DeLay, in his unwavering fealty to party and power, put love of faction above love of country and sought, through gerrymandering, money laundering, coercion, and political trickery, to evade the will of the People and to effect a bloodless coup that would place the power of the Federal government in the hands of an even smaller collection weasels and drips than has been our standard for the last 217 years. Mr DeLay’s ideal is a one-party state, much like Stalinist Russia, and this approach to our political life—regardless of the ideology of the proponent—must be resisted.

Besides which, look at his eyes. He got the crazy eyes.

So Many Stories, So Little Time

2006-03-28T08:57:00.000-05:00

If it weren't for the email I get from The New York Times every day, I wouldn't be able to do this. I don't know whether that's a blessing or a curse.

Okay. On to the stories.

First, we've got the Senate Judiciary Committee having the temerity to pass reasonable immigration legislation out of the committee for consideration by the full Senate. The conservatives are up in arms and Bill Frist is already in a tizzy. They all favor a "get tough" policy that really just comes down to doing more of the same. And we all know how effective the same has been, don't we?

The thing that gets me about the approaches of conservatives to both immigration and drugs is that they otherwise put themselves forward as being believers in free markets and the wisdom of the Unseen Hand. That is, of course, unless the Unseen Hand is threatening their xenophobia or their naive belief that drug use is a moral matter rather than a matter of public health policy.

The truth is that we have so many illegal immigrants because there is a market--apparently a very large one--for their labor. More draconian laws concerning immigration will only go to enrich the people who make their money by moving illegal aliens across the border. It would probably be simpler and cheaper and result in less needless loss of life if we just paid the criminals directly. Or we could adopt sensible legislation such as that which the Judiciary Committee just passed. It recognizes the existence of this particular market, legitimizes it, and regulates it sensibly.

All the conservatives have to peddle is fear.

The same things could be said about the so-called War on Drugs. The legislation that created that--promoted with fear--could have been called The Drug Dealers Welfare Act. Prohibition is never a good policy.

The next story that piqued my interest is one about how some idiot congressman from Michigan has forced the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, to post an enormous number of documents, videos, and recordings (probably over a million items) concerning Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection to al Quaeda on the web so that right-wing bloggers and other nut jobs can pour over them to find a smoking gun or two.

I think this experiment might just prove the correctness of one of my pet theories. It's my belief that the best way to keep our secrets truly secret would be to declassify everything. No one would ever be able to tell what was useful from what wasn't and spying would become a thing of the past. Stamping "Top Secret" on something is just a way of separating it from the crowd and pointing out its usefulness.

What the idiots behind this hadn't counted on, though, is this: Just as many left-wing nut jobs will be pouring through the same material and reinterpreting every smoking gun document in a different light.

My questions for Congressman Peter Hoekstra, the dummy who devised this scheme, go as follows: How do you plan to vet this research? What standards will be applied to any finds and by whom? And finally, do you have to make sure that you face only into the wind so that when it whistles through your ears, it doesn't make that vacant knob on your neck sing like a conch shell?

The one piece of good news is that the Afgan who converted to Christianity has been released on a technicality. There you go. Another hardened criminal out on the street because of "the rules." It's enough to make Justice Scalia sick to his stomach.

Am I the only one who finds Zacarias Moussaoui's sudden confession that he was to fly "the 5th plane" into the White House not quite believeable? I mean, according to Moussaoui, he and the only other TV celebrazzi terrorist, Richard Reid, were supposed to hijack a plane together? And he didn't know any of the others? Just the guy whose name was in the headlines, the guy who tried to blow up his sneakers on a nonsmoking flight? Yeah. And he and Osama used to thumb wrestle for matchsticks.

This guy wants to be executed. Why? That would make him a martyr. Without death, he's just another jerk in an orange jumpsuit. Don't fall for it. Give him life.

Miscellaneous Friday

2006-03-24T07:41:00.000-05:00

If you've got 90 minutes, take a listen to the podcast of a forum sponsored by Harper's Magazine discussing the many reasons why we should impeach George W. Bush. My favorite moment came when Lewis Lapham challenged the notion that impeachment of a President should only happen as rarely as possible. "We've had 43 presidents and only three impeachments," he said. Considering the run of incompetent boobs we've had filling that office, he may be on to something.

Did you hear about the guy who is on trial in Afghanistan for having converted from Islam to Christianity about 15 years ago? He could face execution unless they decide that he's insane instead. The whole thing inspired me to come up with a new slogan for Islam's most conservative wing: "Islam: It's a Sentence for Life."

A radio talk show host was fired after he inadvertently used the word "coon" while suggesting that Condoleeza Rice should become the next Commissioner of the NFL. What the guy said was this:

She's been chancellor of Stanford. She's got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football. She's African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. A big coon. Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that.

This was obviouslya slip of the tongue, but the guy got canned for it anyway. It was one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations, so I can't blame the station for firing him. I just find it ironic that black stand-up comedians make a living off burying their mostly black audiences in the worst racial epithets imaginable while this guy gets kicked to the curb for inadvertently using a term that went out of style with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's a good thing that he wasn't suggesting she take a diplomatic trip to Niger.

Rose-Colored Tri-Focals

2006-03-20T08:03:00.000-05:00

Does Dick Cheney do peyote buttons at breakfast? One has to wonder after his performance on Face the Nation yesterday. When asked about his previous statements that American troops would be greeted a liberators (2003) and that the insurgency was in its "last throes" (2005), the oldest Dick in the White House replied:

"I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad."

This is someone who, when he read George Orwell's 1984 (and I'm sure he did), thought, "That Newspeak is pretty keen," and "I want to be just like Big Brother when I grow up."

Forget impeachment. I think we should put the guy in stocks and cart him around the country so that ordinary citizens can have the opportunity to lob eggs at his face.

And in the meantime, Dick, lay off the hallucinogens.

Tyranny

2006-03-17T07:48:00.000-05:00

In an article concerning a backlash in the Republican Party against Mr Bush's retroactively asserted policy of preemptive democratization, I was treated to the opening sentence of the new national security strategy paper. The sentence ran as follows: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

This embodies a noble sentiment, however, when it comes from the mouth of an administration that got into office by fixing the 2000 election and arguing that expedience outweighed the will of the People, that has a love affair with secrecy that is unrivaled by any of its forebears, that likes to spy on the citizenry, that tortures prisoners, that holds prisoners without charge or hearing, that proves repeatedly through its actions to have no taste for liberty, but rather a fear of it, one can be forgiven for raising a querulous eyebrow.

The quote that comes to mind is an old one and Greek: "Physician, heal thyself."

The Liberal Media

2006-03-13T07:59:00.001-05:00

If the media is so damn liberal, why do you have to go to an English paper to read a story such as this one in The Guardian?

My first question for those who believe in this liberal media nonsense is this: How did you become aware of this "conspiracy"? From Rush? From Bernard Goldberg? From Fox News? In other words, from the media? Of course you did, you dim bulb. Wake up. Stop looking for conspiracies. Dig deeper. Look for the facts. Stop being a sheep. Think for yourself.

On several occasions, I have been accused of being a "dupe" of the liberals. (Notice the red-baiting language? Old habits die hard.) These critiques always come from people who've never had an original thought in their lives, twerps who listen to Rush or his compatriots and nod in wonder at their sagacity, never stopping to think that these worthies might be coloring their version of events and are nothing more than propagandists paid to toe a particular political line.

Here's my advice to those who need it: Read widely. Listen carefully. Look for the flaws in your favorite ideas. Beware demogogues whatever point of view they espouse. Question your leaders and demand that they make sensible arguements. Be a citizen and not a partisan. Be your own person. Don't follow leaders.

Just remember: The pump don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles.

South Dakota

2006-03-07T08:37:00.000-05:00

One of the big news items on this day is the one concerning the legislation banning abortion that was signed into law by the governor of South Dakota yesterday. The intent of the dingbats who sponsored this nonsense is to push the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1972 decision that brought America's abortion industry out of the back alleys and into the clinics. Personally, I doubt that this challenge will ever get as far as the Supreme Court.

When it is eventually litigated (perhaps from this legislation or perhaps a similar law from another state), the federal district court that has the misfortune of hearing it will have to overturn the law by the simple application of stare decisis, the Latin term for the basic method of legal reasoning through the application of precedent. That decision will be appealed to the federal appellate court with jurisdiction in the matter. That court will uphold the district court's decision, on the same basis. Then the proponents of this bill will get the opportunity to do what they really want: Appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

Not only do I think that the Supreme Court will not overturn the rulings of the lower courts, I doubt that they will even decide to hear the matter. By the public testimony of none other than Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, Roe v. Wade is settled law. To overturn it would also invalidate volumes of case law decided since 1972 that relied on holdings in Roe, particularly its holdings concerning the right to privacy. Overturning Roe at this point would create legal pandimonium, and every member of the Supreme Court knows this. We cannot have anarchy just to suit the biases of one particular interest group in one narrow area of American life.

Also, were I Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Alito, I would be offended by the notion that my jurisprudence was bought and paid for. No matter what anyone thinks about the views of either man (and for the record, I favored the Roberts confirmation and was doubtful about Alito), each is a a man of the law and a lover of the practice and application of it. I believe that they are both men of honor and not some subspecies of bunco artist that the framers of this piece of legislation would assume them to be.

The fools think that they are preparing to challenge Roe, when, in fact, they are only going to push a court that would overall like to refine and restrict it to affirm it instead. Beware of what you wish for--.

Finally, I will say this: If these dolts really want to reduce the number of abortions performed in this nation then they would be well advised to throw their considerable energy into preventing unwanted pregnancies. As the number of unwanted pregnancies dwindled, so would the number of abortions, and the problem would take care of itself.

News Item

2006-03-01T09:09:00.000-05:00

The following has been copied and pasted from an email I get from The Atlanta Contitution Journal this morning:

President visits Kabul amid rising violence, resident Bush, says he remains confident Osama bin Laden "will be brought to justice." (Emphasis added.)

Well, I've been calling him Resident Bush for a couple of years now. It's heartwarming to see it starting to gain a wider currency.

A New Service

2006-02-21T07:29:00.000-05:00

Since I only write these when I feel like it, anyone who would like to be notified should just notify me by email. I'll put you on a mailing list and send out a notification whenever I post something.

Two Game Wardens, Seven Hunters, and a Cow

2006-02-14T08:47:00.000-05:00

Back when I was about 14 or 15, I took a hunter's safety course at the behest of my then best friend. It was really important to him, and I still wasn't that far removed from the days of playing soldier, so I agreed to take a portion of my Saturday mornings for a month or two and devote them to a class taught by a police officer in a dingy room over the Fraternal Order of Police "clubhouse" in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

We were enthusiastic, starting out, and rhapsodized about how we would take this class, get ourselves a couple of rifles, and go out into the world to (in the words of the Pythons) slaughter of few of God's creatures. Why not? I mean, after all, there were plenty of people with less intelligence, compassion, and sobriety than us who did it all the time.

In the last of these classes, the instructor gave us a couple of tests. As I recall, I did fairly well on the written one, however, not so well on the other, the one that equated to the road test for your license. In this test, a series of slides were shown and you were given something like three seconds in which to decide whether or not to shoot. At the end of it, it turned out that I had decided to shoot almost exclusively people. I don't think I decided to pull the trigger when a deer was onscreen even once. Well, that decided my career as a hunter. That and the the fact that when he showed a photo of a deer staring into the camera as we checked our scores, I realized that I was far more likely to feed it than to kill it, and so maybe I should look into some other way of spending my time.

Which brings me to the story of how the Vice President pumped a load of birdshot into the face and neck of one of his companions during a hunting expedition.

There are so many aspects to this story that I'd like to touch on that it is difficult to know where to begin.

Let's start with the notion that it was really the victim's fault. While it may have been good manners for Mr. Whittington to have made sure that the Veep knew he was approaching, it is ultimately the responsibility of the shooter to not plug any poor defenseless creature that isn't on the approved list. That was the point of the test I took when I was 15, and it seems to be the standard held to by most hunters today.

However, taking responsibility for his actions isn't really the Vice President's style, so those involved, after hushing the whole matter up for as long as they could, have banded together to assert that it was all Mr. Whittington's fault for having the temerity to stick his face between Mr. Cheney and a quail. Just remember, kids: Guns don't kill. People who walk into the line of fire do.

A side note about this story continues to perplex me, though. Why in the world would people in Texas want to kill a quail? It's neither black nor retarded.

Another side note is this: It's a good thing for all that they were hunting quail and not deer because a load of buckshot at thirty yards might have taken Mr. Whittington's head clean off, and Mr. Cheney would now be known as Vice President Manslaughter.

Mr. Cheney's hostess, Mrs. Armstrong, has said that the birdshot caused more bruising than anything else, but that doesn't explain why the guy spent a day or so in intensive care. Unless, of course, the hospital they took him to was the Clinique Clinic and the unit he was in was Intensive Skin Care. That might explain everything.

All this prevaricating about why they didn't notify the press is especially unseemly and depressingly typical of this Vice President and this administration in general. They are afraid of the public (for whom they work), afraid of the truth, paranoiac, and absurdly childish. There is no reason why they couldn't have notified both the White House and the media immediately other than that Cheney wanted to make sure he hadn't killed the guy first and so that they could make sure everybody had their stories straight. Rather than being open and honest and responsible, Mr. Cheney decided to issue talking points, which was a cynical and idiotic response.

Given the choice of ammunition, it is unlikely that Mr. Cheney was indulging in a restaging of "The Most Dangerous Game" and purposely hunting Mr. Whittington. It was an accident, an accident for which Mr. Cheney needs to take responsibility.

The VP's so old and close to death that he has to travel with a medical detail in tow. Isn't it time he grew up?

Update: Of course, the VP has, since I wrote the original article, confessed on Fox News. It only took him five days to accept responsibility in an interview with some stooge who was guaranteed to ask him questions no harder than "Are you okay, Mr. Vice President?" And, of course, he still defended the stonewalling and evasion.

Personally, had I plugged some friend with a load of birdshot, I'd like to think that I would have gone to the hospital rather than sitting down to a dinner of freshly killed quail. But, obviously, the Vice President and his posse needed some time to get their stories straight and to work up some talking points. "The Vice President was very worried." Well, if he was so goddamned worried, why wasn't he at the hospital while the "friend" he had blasted was on the operating table? I suspect that he was more worried about the political fallout than he was about the fate of Harry Whittington, and I can't imagine a worse thing to think about someone.

That he did not get this story out immediately shows how little respect he has for the people of the United States. Had some flunky of his gotten into a similar scrape, you could rest assured that he would have wanted to be informed immediately about it. And this is the problem with the man: He does not understand that he is our employee. He thinks he is our prince.

Here's My Thought

2006-02-13T08:47:00.000-05:00

As we drift toward the midterm elections, it has become apparent that the Democrats have no positive message to put forth, no over-arching vision of what should be done. Of course, they're pretty good on what shouldn't be done, but they've been helped in that by the Bush Administration, which has etched everything that should not be done in a kind of psychic bas relief across this land.

But the Dems don't seem to have any kind of positive position on anything. At least that's how it seems according to the emails I get from John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and MoveOn.org. They either want me to give money to support an attack ad on TV or to sign a petition to stop something or somebody. They ask for money to support certain candidates, but the reasons that they give to persuade me to send that dough all boils down to the fact that the candidate they endorse is not the other guy.

And it's really time they changed tacks.

My thought is this: The Republicans got where they are by painting themselves as being against Big Government. On the negative side, the Democrats need to point out that the Republicans have, time and again, have shown themselves to be against big government for Corporate America and in favor of big government in the case of individuals. On the positive side, they need to push themselves as taking the reverse approach. They need to take a stand against big government for the People (prominently mentioned in the Constitution) and for big government for Corporate America (unmentioned in the Constitution--you can look it up).

They need to show a prejudice in favor of civil rights, in favor of ordinary citizens, not by opposing everything under the sun, but by putting forward positive proposals to do things like repeal or significantly reform the Alternative Minimum Tax or protect ordinary Americans from unwarranted spying. Perhaps they could propose a method of reforming campaign financing that would take the power away from the corporations, the greedy rich, and the parasitic lobbyists, but I stray into fantasy.

Of course, nothing will happen. It often seems like we have only one political party in this country, a party with two wings: the conservatives and the far right. They're all in the pocket of the same few people and organizations and have very little interest in doing the business of The People.

And, in the meantime, we'll just continue to drift.

Why the Silence

2006-02-08T09:24:00.000-05:00

Back in the 1970s, Tom Lehrer was asked why he stopped performing and writing songs, and he said that satire became impossible once they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger.

That is kind of how I'm feeling these days.

We are in a phase in which satire is redundant and in which my cynicism has become a bottomless pool, and I have no enthusiasm for writing about it all. It's like we're all getting sucked into a black hole of foolishness and vanity, and I don't feel particularly amusing about any of it.

That could change and probably will, but right now, there's not that much that's funny.

They're probably going to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Cheney next.

Backward the Thought Process Ran

2006-01-20T09:46:00.000-05:00

Back in the 1930s, Wolcott Gibbs of The New Yorker wrote an article about Time Magazine in which he presented the following sentence as a parody of the style in which Time writers were required to work: "Backward flowed the sentences until reeled the mind."

It has occurred to me that this is a reasonable representation of the thought processes of the Bush Administration. They make a decision to do something they know is inherently shifty, and then they go through a long, tortuous process of justifying it. This is how they worked out the ever-shifting rationale for invading Iraq, for detaining alleged "enemy combatants," for torturing people, and now for invading the privacy of American citizens.

This administration is an affront to the Constitution of the United States. The crazy thing is that I can't even decide whether I'd want Mr. Bush impeached and removed from office because that would just mean that Cheney would be President. At least until his impeachment and removal. That would leave us with President Dennis Hastert to round out one of the lamest lame-duck presidencies in the history of the Republic.

I'd really just like to see the entire White House cabal wearing orange jumpsuits and picking litter off the sides of highways. Let's see. I-20 goes from coast-to-coast. Maybe they should start with that.

The Results Are In

2006-01-19T10:48:00.001-05:00

The results of the investigation into vote fraud in the recent Iraqi election are in, and it's enough to make a body nostalgic for Florida in 2000. According to the AP:

Election officials received around 2,000 complaints that alleged ballot box stuffing and theft, tally sheet tampering, intimidation, violence, incorrect voter lists, ballot shortages, multiple voting, improper police and military conduct, campaigning within polling centers and violations of a pre-election ban on campaigning.

I had no idea that Karl Rove had time to go all the way over there to lend his expertise. And who has the responsibility for making sure the elections are fair in Iraq? Katherine Harris? These results are just a hanging chad and widespread disenfranchisement away from being complete.

But let's be fair. The Iraqi's are new this.

The Definition of Cant

2006-01-11T09:57:00.000-05:00

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate, 11th Edition:

cant n (1640) 1 : affected singsong or whining speech 2 a : the private language of the underworld b obs : the phraseology peculiar to a religious class or sect c : JARGON 2 3 : a set or stock phrase 4 : the expression or repetition of conventional or trite opinions or sentiments; esp : the insincere use of pious words 5 : any public utterance by George W. Bush

Okay, I'll own up. The fifth definition above is mine, but it's just as true as the rest.

Mr. Bush got up in front of a group from the VFW yesterday and, according to The New York Times, drew a distinction between "'honest critics' and those 'who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people.'" Since it is demonstrably true that we got into the war in Iraq because having the second richest oil fields on the planet under the control of a client government was deemed prudent long-term energy policy and that we were persuaded to do so by a policy of selective intelligence gathering that can only be understood as propaganda, there is no other way of being an honest critic of the war.

I'll gladly concede his point about Israel simply because a) I don't think he really gives a rat's ass about Israel, and b) I've never encountered this particular criticism in the large amount of anti-war criticism I've read. It really sounds like the kind of criticism made by the people who believe that the Jews are selling drugs through the Catholic Church at the direction of the Queen of England. I'm sure that swipe at the LaRouchies was inserted only because it is absurd on its face and thereby goes to taint the serious charges that are brought on either side of it.

Mr. Bush has, in this statement, returned again to the level of Newspeak. "Honest" critics don't refute his lies. What does that make those who do? Dis-honest, by his reckoning.

The third definition of "cant" as a verb goes thus: "to talk hypocritically." Doesn't this describe Mr. Bush's speeches? I mean, let's be honest.

The Fool's guide to Cant: An Introduction

2006-01-10T09:01:00.000-05:00

As I go along with this blog--which I've created to function as a safety valve from which I may purge the rancor that builds up in me whenever I come in contact with the news--I will be posting things I've written and published on another of my blogs over the course of the last year-and-a-half. New ravings will probably get added in between the archiving of the old stuff, but I'll try to maintain the date order of each.

Peace.