50 may be the new 40
But 40’s not a half century;
I was born in an analog age
When writers wrote on typewriters
Vinyl records spun on turntables
And family photos, like TV, were in black & white;
Eisenhower was President
The world was different
Not necessarily better, just different
We worried about the Soviet Union
And Communist China;
I don’t have a clear memory of the day JFK was killed
Though I do remember when Martin Luther King was shot
And RFK went down in LA
I remember the Watts riots
TV images of Newark and Detroit in flames
No adult I knew could explain why these events
Happened;
I watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon
And the Vietnam War unfold on our TV
I remember the Oil Embargo of ‘73
Nixon & Watergate
The Vice President with the funny name – Spiro Agnew;
I’ve now lived long enough to know
That the sum of what I know
Is less than the sum of what I don’t
And that I’ll never know all I’d like to;
So what else have I learned in 50 years?
Life is fleeting
Knowledge is easy, wisdom is hard
Ask for what you want
Don’t wait for the planets to align to begin something
People and places are seldom what they appear at first blush
We’re all searching for answers
Life is frequently cruel, brutal, violent, heart-breaking,
Incomprehensible, sad, ridiculous, hilarious and
Beautiful;
We come into this world naked and alone
Leave the same way
Our end is known at the beginning
And the only uncertainty is the hour and circumstance
Of our departure
The time in between is brief, best measured in minutes
Not years
What matters are those we love and what we do;
OK, the calendar says I’m 50
But as far as I’m concerned
I’m just getting started
Friday, April 24, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sadism, American-Style
Just following orders from the top, that’s all. The word came down from on high to waterboard Al Qaida detainees or strip them naked and lock them in cages for days on end, and the CIA operatives obeyed, using the same amoral logic that hundreds of SS guards employed when they shot or gassed Jews in Poland; same logic used by the underlings of Joe Stalin and Idi Amin and Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.
In this case, just following orders means absolution from culpability.
The Obama Administration should be commended for releasing internal Bush-Era Justice Department memos that bring to light the heinous “legal” methods used by the CIA to torture suspected terrorists -- and condemned for not pursuing prosecution of the people who carried out these un-American practices.
Because someone must be held accountable for torturing human beings in the name of the United States government and lowering the United States to the level of a sadist.
Under George W. Bush, we kidnapped real or suspected terrorists, jailed them, and then tortured some of them when we believed it suited our ends.
If we’re willing to do all that, we have to ask what else we’re willing to do in the name of “national security.” Where does it end, and with whom?
President Obama declares that these perversions will never happen again – and that might be so, on his watch – but what is to prevent a future administration from reviving the Bush Administration’s entire “pre-emptive” framework, including torture?
I want to know: Does the United States of America torture human beings we find threatening or don’t we? Does our conduct depend on circumstances? Do we reserve torture only for Muslims or would we also torture Mexicans or Swedes?
Although the United States is a militaristic empire with a long rap sheet, our respect (OK, maybe it was only lip service) for the rule of law, domestic and international, stood us above rogue regimes. Identifying the bad guys on the world stage used to be a relatively black & white affair. Regimes that held people in jail for years without due process, or tortured political prisoners, were bad and the United States condemned them.
Until George W. Bush came along and used the aftermath of 9/11 to stand international conventions against torture on their head.
By every indication Barack Obama is a decent, intelligent man, but he’s also a politician infatuated with having it both ways; he wants to appear as if his administration is cleaning house – but only if the cleaning excludes the basement; he also wants to protect his political capital from charges from the Right that the administration is on a witch hunt.
A politician talks about looking forward; a leader talks about making sure the evils of the past do not repeat in the future.
A leader knows when to stand on principle and not budge an inch.
Since Obama assumed office the style and tone in Washington D.C. has definitely changed, but at the end of the day real change has not yet arrived. In fact, real change isn’t even in sight.
In this case, just following orders means absolution from culpability.
The Obama Administration should be commended for releasing internal Bush-Era Justice Department memos that bring to light the heinous “legal” methods used by the CIA to torture suspected terrorists -- and condemned for not pursuing prosecution of the people who carried out these un-American practices.
Because someone must be held accountable for torturing human beings in the name of the United States government and lowering the United States to the level of a sadist.
Under George W. Bush, we kidnapped real or suspected terrorists, jailed them, and then tortured some of them when we believed it suited our ends.
If we’re willing to do all that, we have to ask what else we’re willing to do in the name of “national security.” Where does it end, and with whom?
President Obama declares that these perversions will never happen again – and that might be so, on his watch – but what is to prevent a future administration from reviving the Bush Administration’s entire “pre-emptive” framework, including torture?
I want to know: Does the United States of America torture human beings we find threatening or don’t we? Does our conduct depend on circumstances? Do we reserve torture only for Muslims or would we also torture Mexicans or Swedes?
Although the United States is a militaristic empire with a long rap sheet, our respect (OK, maybe it was only lip service) for the rule of law, domestic and international, stood us above rogue regimes. Identifying the bad guys on the world stage used to be a relatively black & white affair. Regimes that held people in jail for years without due process, or tortured political prisoners, were bad and the United States condemned them.
Until George W. Bush came along and used the aftermath of 9/11 to stand international conventions against torture on their head.
By every indication Barack Obama is a decent, intelligent man, but he’s also a politician infatuated with having it both ways; he wants to appear as if his administration is cleaning house – but only if the cleaning excludes the basement; he also wants to protect his political capital from charges from the Right that the administration is on a witch hunt.
A politician talks about looking forward; a leader talks about making sure the evils of the past do not repeat in the future.
A leader knows when to stand on principle and not budge an inch.
Since Obama assumed office the style and tone in Washington D.C. has definitely changed, but at the end of the day real change has not yet arrived. In fact, real change isn’t even in sight.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Get Your Tea Bag On
If any more proof was needed that the Republican Party has drifted so far to the right that it has completely lost its moorings, the recent Tea Bag protests put the case to rest.
It’s clear now that Republican heavyweights and party icons alike have lost the ability to think rationally, let alone critically. The Republicans can’t remember what happened on election night last November let alone what happened in 1932 or 1964. When John Boehner crows that, “the people have spoken and they don’t like what’s happened the past three months,” he simply erases any doubt that the hours he’s spent in a tanning bed have fried his brain.
The central Republican idea that Americans are over-taxed isn’t supported by fact, particularly when one studies tax rates for the wealthiest Americans or compares tax rates in the United States with those of other industrialized countries. Republicans talk a lot about “socialism” and the evils of transferring wealth from the productive rich to the slovenly poor, but they’re oblivious to the fact that for nearly 30 years, the transfer has been in the opposite direction – from the working class and the middle class to the wealthy.
I give the Republicans and their corporate clients credit for seizing absolute control of the terms and norms that govern economic discourse in the United States. The Republicans and the corporate class took over the mass media (scrapping the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 helped) and use its enormous power to promote their viewpoint, focusing zealously on investors and Wall Street, and paying lip service, if that, to working Americans, wages, and middle class buying power.
Here’s a case in point: every weekday morning on the local news, the news reader dutifully reports the opening numbers on Wall Street, as if those numbers have any significance for the people rushing out the door to work for wages that have remained stagnant for decades; for people up to their asses in credit card debt or struggling to hold onto their homes; for people who long ago realized that the American Dream is a fantasy beyond their reach. Even with Wall Street disgraced and in ruins, the mainstream media follows the stock numbers, day in and day out.
The other thing I gave Republicans credit for is convincing working Americans that small government, privatization, outsourcing, and the “free” market actually make them more economically secure. It took many years to sell this notion, and there’s little doubt that an inept, weak and defensive Democratic party aided the Republican cause. By the second Clinton administration, it was difficult to tell Democrats from Republicans, so chummy had Democrats become with corporate America.
The conservative wing of the Republican Party had a genius for propaganda – because it takes no less than genius to convince millions of voters to support ideology and policy that actually work against their self-interest; to convince voters that all taxation is bad; to convince voters that effective government is impossible; to convince voters that the free market is always right, just and self-correcting; to convince the average working person that unions are bad for workers; and to convince the public that the wealthy have no obligation to anyone but themselves. Karl Rove dreamed of a permanent Republican majority, and this might have come to pass if George W. Bush hadn’t been such a bumbler. Bush’s abject failure exposed conservative ideology as empty, immoral and corrupt.
The American public knows something is fundamentally out of whack in the way the nation is organized. The public finally grasps, I think, that plutocracy masquerading as democracy cannot address pressing problems or satisfy human needs. The political class – particularly on the Republican side – doesn’t get this at all, but the majority of citizens do because they are living through the effects.
It’s clear now that Republican heavyweights and party icons alike have lost the ability to think rationally, let alone critically. The Republicans can’t remember what happened on election night last November let alone what happened in 1932 or 1964. When John Boehner crows that, “the people have spoken and they don’t like what’s happened the past three months,” he simply erases any doubt that the hours he’s spent in a tanning bed have fried his brain.
The central Republican idea that Americans are over-taxed isn’t supported by fact, particularly when one studies tax rates for the wealthiest Americans or compares tax rates in the United States with those of other industrialized countries. Republicans talk a lot about “socialism” and the evils of transferring wealth from the productive rich to the slovenly poor, but they’re oblivious to the fact that for nearly 30 years, the transfer has been in the opposite direction – from the working class and the middle class to the wealthy.
I give the Republicans and their corporate clients credit for seizing absolute control of the terms and norms that govern economic discourse in the United States. The Republicans and the corporate class took over the mass media (scrapping the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 helped) and use its enormous power to promote their viewpoint, focusing zealously on investors and Wall Street, and paying lip service, if that, to working Americans, wages, and middle class buying power.
Here’s a case in point: every weekday morning on the local news, the news reader dutifully reports the opening numbers on Wall Street, as if those numbers have any significance for the people rushing out the door to work for wages that have remained stagnant for decades; for people up to their asses in credit card debt or struggling to hold onto their homes; for people who long ago realized that the American Dream is a fantasy beyond their reach. Even with Wall Street disgraced and in ruins, the mainstream media follows the stock numbers, day in and day out.
The other thing I gave Republicans credit for is convincing working Americans that small government, privatization, outsourcing, and the “free” market actually make them more economically secure. It took many years to sell this notion, and there’s little doubt that an inept, weak and defensive Democratic party aided the Republican cause. By the second Clinton administration, it was difficult to tell Democrats from Republicans, so chummy had Democrats become with corporate America.
The conservative wing of the Republican Party had a genius for propaganda – because it takes no less than genius to convince millions of voters to support ideology and policy that actually work against their self-interest; to convince voters that all taxation is bad; to convince voters that effective government is impossible; to convince voters that the free market is always right, just and self-correcting; to convince the average working person that unions are bad for workers; and to convince the public that the wealthy have no obligation to anyone but themselves. Karl Rove dreamed of a permanent Republican majority, and this might have come to pass if George W. Bush hadn’t been such a bumbler. Bush’s abject failure exposed conservative ideology as empty, immoral and corrupt.
The American public knows something is fundamentally out of whack in the way the nation is organized. The public finally grasps, I think, that plutocracy masquerading as democracy cannot address pressing problems or satisfy human needs. The political class – particularly on the Republican side – doesn’t get this at all, but the majority of citizens do because they are living through the effects.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The Gallows are Empty
“O, sir, to willful men/the injuries that they themselves procure/must be their schoolmasters.” William Shakespeare, King Lear
The Masters of the Universe peddled dreams to dreamers. They told the gullible that reward would come without work, that dross could become gold with no more than a brief incantation and the flick of a magic wand. The gullible wanted to believe it was so. The game was rigged all along, but only the masters and their minions knew the extent of the ruse. “Don’t worry, the masters said. “The old verities of work and reward are no more. This is the new economy. Trust us.”
And now the dream has been unmasked for a fraud, the benevolent Market God exposed as a charlatan; instead of gold, the streets outside the money palaces are paved with cracked bones, and the stench of broken lives sullies the air. Despite the wreckage and the carnage, the pain and the suffering that lay at their feet, the Masters are untouchable; the stocks that should hold them fast are empty, and none of them will ever mount the gallows.
Regulators were present but rendered powerless by a belief that the Market would reward the virtuous and punish the incompetent. Another falsehood. The virtuous were ignored and the incompetent followed with slavish devotion by people intelligent enough to know better. Virtue and ethics were an old school notion, the last refuge of overly cautious souls out of touch with the new order. This too proved false. Wisdom born of experience and bedrock values never goes out of style because while the world has changed, humankind has not.
Old lessons must be re-learned every generation or so. One cannot stand before an empty fireplace and expect it to give heat; one must first go to the woodpile and swing an axe, break a sweat splitting logs, and then haul those logs to the fireplace. Reward follows work, not the other way around. It takes effort to build an edifice that will survive good times and bad times, war and famine, disease and drought and deluge, not to mention the caprice of politics.
There is no free lunch, in other words, and precious few shortcuts. When a man or woman promises something valuable for what seems like nothing, one is wise to withhold one’s trust long enough to defy the old adage that a sucker is born every minute.
The Masters of the Universe peddled dreams to dreamers. They told the gullible that reward would come without work, that dross could become gold with no more than a brief incantation and the flick of a magic wand. The gullible wanted to believe it was so. The game was rigged all along, but only the masters and their minions knew the extent of the ruse. “Don’t worry, the masters said. “The old verities of work and reward are no more. This is the new economy. Trust us.”
And now the dream has been unmasked for a fraud, the benevolent Market God exposed as a charlatan; instead of gold, the streets outside the money palaces are paved with cracked bones, and the stench of broken lives sullies the air. Despite the wreckage and the carnage, the pain and the suffering that lay at their feet, the Masters are untouchable; the stocks that should hold them fast are empty, and none of them will ever mount the gallows.
Regulators were present but rendered powerless by a belief that the Market would reward the virtuous and punish the incompetent. Another falsehood. The virtuous were ignored and the incompetent followed with slavish devotion by people intelligent enough to know better. Virtue and ethics were an old school notion, the last refuge of overly cautious souls out of touch with the new order. This too proved false. Wisdom born of experience and bedrock values never goes out of style because while the world has changed, humankind has not.
Old lessons must be re-learned every generation or so. One cannot stand before an empty fireplace and expect it to give heat; one must first go to the woodpile and swing an axe, break a sweat splitting logs, and then haul those logs to the fireplace. Reward follows work, not the other way around. It takes effort to build an edifice that will survive good times and bad times, war and famine, disease and drought and deluge, not to mention the caprice of politics.
There is no free lunch, in other words, and precious few shortcuts. When a man or woman promises something valuable for what seems like nothing, one is wise to withhold one’s trust long enough to defy the old adage that a sucker is born every minute.
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