High Comedy at West Point

President Obama gave the commencement address at West Point the other day, as presidents are fond of doing, particularly Democrats, who always make a great effort to show how much they adore our warriors. I have a transcript of Obama’s remarks before me and it makes for amusing reading, and also proves the contempt the American political class has for the people. When I read this line, “And through it all, we’ve refocused our investments in what has always been a key source of American strength: a growing economy that can provide opportunity for everybody who’s willing to work hard and take responsibility…” Is he kidding? The hardest working people in America are among the poorest, the most stressed-out, and the most despairing – precisely because the harder they work the deeper they sink. The American economy is growing, albeit sluggishly, but even so, all the income gains accrue to the people who least need them because the system has been engineered that way. The rich become richer and the poor become poorer.

Someone should tell Obama that wage growth for working people is, and for years has been, flat.

Another amusing line: “Our military has no peer.” Really? Might this be because the United States spends more money on its military than any other nation on this beleaguered planet? Obama went on to say that our alliances, “from Europe to Asia,” are unrivaled in the history of nations. Of course they are. When you point overwhelming military and economic strength at lesser countries, they will typically do what you ask, even if what you ask is not in their interests. Most people call this extortion – the U.S. calls it diplomacy. I’m sure by “alliances” Obama also meant the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that gargantuan, secret trade agreement that is sure – if ratified -- to impoverish millions of people while making a relative few very rich.

By now I’m chuckling heartily, barely able to contain myself. The cadets are lapping it up; after all, Obama is the Commander in Chief and the man who nailed Osama bin Laden after more than a decade of futile searching. Obama is warming to his subject now, preparing the audience for an extra thick layer of BS: “I also believe we must be more transparent about both the basis of our counterterrorism actions and the manner in which they are carried out.” This from the man who leads one of the most secretive and opaque administrations in American history, the man who asserted the right to kill American citizens if he suspected they were involved in terrorist activities, the man who promised to close the travesty that is Guantanamo and failed to deliver, the man whose administration has cast a chill over the practice of investigative journalism.

I’m laughing so hard now I’m choking. Obama chooses to pile it on, reminding the cadets of America’s benevolence after World War II when it supported creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Ah, how I enjoy a well-spun fairy tale. The World Bank and the IMF were created with only one aim: to make the US dollar the supreme currency and to open markets for US banks. If benevolence was a thought at all, it was an afterthought.

But Obama isn’t done, oh no, there’s more, he must talk about the amazing results the US has produced in Afghanistan after thirteen years of occupation. This is the good stuff, people, the pure gold. Did you know that Afghanistan is our partner in the War on Terror? And that from our stronghold in Afghanistan we – along with our beloved partners, of course – have delivered killer blows to Al Qaeda? Hold back thy tears because it gets better. On the US taxpayers’ dime, we have trained thousands of Afghan soldiers, quite a few of whom enjoy turning their weapons against us. But no matter – when the US perceives a threat to its interests (meaning economic or strategic interests like oil, minerals, natural gas) it reserves the right to bomb the shit out of someone.

Running an Empire is heady stuff!

I’m about to pee my pants when Obama goes over the top: “So the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.” Yes! There it is, American exceptionalism in all its glory. We’re #1 people! We lead the world in handgun murders, drug addiction, incarceration, income inequality, we’re way up there when it comes to child poverty and infant mortality and obesity and depression and anxiety. If the United States is the one indispensable nation does that mean every other nation is dispensable?

Like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama is a snake-oil salesman without peer. His gift is his ability to sound like he’s on the side of the common people when in fact he is a dedicated servant of the ruling classes.

Hail to the Chief!

Grief Ripples Outward

The name Elliot Rodger will not be forgotten on the Platinum Coast for a long time. Rodger joins David Attias on the short list of disturbed people who have rampaged in the student oasis – or ghetto, depending on one’s point of view and financial wherewithal – of Isla Vista. Rodger did far more damage, killing seven and injuring another thirteen in ten minutes of mayhem. He fatally stabbed three young men in his apartment; was Rodger adept with a knife, able to target vital organs with a single thrust, or did he wield the blade indiscriminately, slashing and cutting in a frenzy of violence? Although it’s morbid in the extreme, I try to imagine that crime scene, the enormous amount of blood. But that wasn’t enough to satiate Rodger, who next turned to his car and his guns, the latter all purchased legally and registered.

Premeditated murder, perversely documented in a hundred-plus page manifesto, and reinforced in heart chilling YouTube posts that are difficult to watch. Young Elliot told the world what he was planning to do, and then he went and did it, before putting a round into his own cranium. Grief ripples outward from Isla Vista. Dozens of lives are altered forever: mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, and relatives. The clock froze on Friday night, stuck on the hour and minute that Rodger set out to fulfill his twisted promise, to avenge those he held responsible for his alienation and loneliness. Six innocent UCSB students in the wrong place at the wrong time are dead.

Yes, grief ripples outwards from Isla Vista, through the lecture halls of UCSB, and the common places where students gather to relax and hang out.

2013-2014 has been a terrible academic year for UCSB, with brutal sexual assaults, the Deltopia riot, and now the deadly madness of Elliot Rodger. A curse has fallen on Isla Vista, the dense student community with orphan political status, unwanted by the City of Goleta or the County of Santa Barbara. As reporter Nick Welsh pointed out in a piece for the Santa Barbara Independent, our local weekly paper, Isla Vista no longer plays host exclusively to UCSB students. Our award winning community college – Santa Barbara City College – a school that feeds students into the UC system, with many going on to UCSB, is not only successful at drawing students from California, but also from foreign countries, allowing the college to capture the high tuition and fees foreign students pay for the privilege, that SBCC has contributed to a dearth of affordable student housing, which has pushed many SBCC students into the human cauldron that is Isla Vista.

Politicians and pundits will make the usual pious speeches, offer prayers for the dead and the wounded and their families, but the prospects for sensible handgun control legislation will remain as remote as Mars; the NRA will ramp up its PR machine and silence any politician who has the temerity to voice support for action on handgun control; even if a bill is introduced, by the time it winds through the process of legislative bribery it will be so toothless as to be worthless. Isla Vista will join Columbine and Aurora, Colorado and Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech and Fort Hood in our national hall of shame and cowardice.

Little Turds

Whenever my daughter calls me at work I assume she’s calling to complain about her brother. Has he devoured the last piece of Mexican bread or wolfed her bag of potato chips as well as his own? Has he called her an unsavory name? Entered her room without her express permission? No. It was a matter of plumbing. In between her sobs I gathered that she and one of her school friends had clogged the toilet and my daughter was afraid that the entire apartment would soon be under water; turds were rising to the rim and threatening to spill over.

I told my daughter to take a deep breath and calm down. I explained where to find the plunger and how to use it. “Call me back,” I said. My phone rang within thirty seconds. “I can’t do it,” my daughter wailed. “It’s gross and germy. Can you come home?” “Look,” I said, “this kind of thing happens and you have to deal with it. There’s a pair of rubber gloves under the sink in the kitchen. Put them on. Get some paper towels. Try the plunger again. You can do this, kid.”

“Noooo, I caaaan’t,” my daughter said, sobbing. “You don’t understaaaaaand! It’s disgustinnnnng. You have to come home now! Why is this happening?”

Is this how it is with all 12-year-old girls? When life slings a minor curve ball at them is their default option to freak out, burst into tears and hysterics? Are all of them bundles of raw, exposed nerves? I told my daughter to give the plunger another try. I might as well have suggested that she pull her own fingernails out with a pair of pliers. “I have to pee,” she finally admitted. “How can I pee with the toilet like this?”

“Go in the backyard,” I said.

“I can’t.”

“Why not? Pretend you’re camping in the woods or that there’s been a major earthquake.”

“Dad, you’re not helping. I can’t pee in the backyard; it’s disgusting and unsanitary. You have to come home right away! This is the worst day of my life!”

At this point I should have shut my computer down, locked the office and gone home, but I made the cardinal mistake of asking my daughter if this really was the worst day of her very young life -- and if it was -- didn’t she consider herself fortunate only to be confronted with a clogged toilet and a full bladder? In many parts of the world girls her age were dodging bullets, toiling in factories, and running from sex slavers and kidnappers…

“I don’t need one of your stupid lectures, dad, I need to PEE!”

I could see my wife’s face, the way she shakes her head in disbelief when I make what she considers a parenting blunder, say or do the wrong thing at the wrong time, fail to perceive what’s really happening with our children, the emotional need lurking behind their words. Why couldn’t I see that the clogged toilet wasn’t the real problem but only a symptom of a larger malaise? It’s the subtext, stupid man.

I checked out of the office and drove home. My daughter and her friend were sitting at the kitchen table watching You Tube videos on my daughter’s laptop. The table was strewn with textbooks, papers, pencils, cups, gum wrappers, banana peels, orange peels and apple cores; the sink was full of unwashed dishes. The apartment wasn’t flooded; my daughter looked no worse for wear. I had the sense not to ask if she had found the nerve to pee in the back yard. The toilet was still clogged with paper and coffee-colored water. I rolled up my sleeves and started in with the plunger, clearing the clog on the third try.  

Blood, Tears, and Lost Treasure

I’m reading a sad and poignant book – Thank you for Your Service – by Pulitzer Prize winner David Finkel. The book follows soldiers and their families as they attempt to reestablish their lives after serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s about PTSD and panic attacks and suicide and trips to VA hospitals for treatment or counseling, and wives who live in fear of the damage their husbands might do. Some soldiers returned home to fanfare, with flags and streamers and bunting and posters, others stepped back onto American soil alone.  

Unlike other American wars, the territorial objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan were not defined, and identifying the enemy wasn’t easy. As David Finkel notes, “the thing that got to everyone, was not having a defined front line. It was a war in 360 degrees, no front to advance toward, no enemy in uniform, no predictable patterns, no relief, and it helped drive some of them crazy.”

I lost count of the number of references to “warriors,” a term I despise as much as the overused “heroes,” though this is no fault of Finkel’s -- it’s the common parlance of the post 9/11 era. Yes, some of the men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan performed heroic acts, but to call all service people “heroes” is to demean the word. The truth is that referring to returning soldiers as heroes and warriors makes for more palatable PR on the home front. It’s not like the Pentagon can admit to the families of the fallen that their son or husband died for a mistake. Soldiers are told repeatedly that the nation is grateful for their service, that because of their sacrifice the rest of us are free to pursue the American Dream. Even as vets sit in dilapidated and overcrowded VA hospitals waiting for treatment, or sleep in doorways on the streets of Los Angeles or Topeka, or struggle to convince an employer that they are sane and stable, even when it’s clear that the nation lost interest in Iraq and Afghanistan years ago, the refrain of gratitude plays on, an endless loop. The official feel-good narrative omits the fact that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was completely unnecessary, a war of choice based on lies told by politicians and bureaucrats with heads full of imperial ambition, abetted by a news media guilty of astonishing gullibility.

USA! USA! USA!

The approved narrative doesn’t confront our futility in Afghanistan either; thirteen years later and we still cannot bend that battered country to our will. Thirteen years! Longer than the Civil War and World II combined.

Have our leaders learned that wars are relatively easy to start but difficult to end, and that their costs continue long after government bean counters have closed the books? Unlikely. Our political leaders would rather cower behind platitudes than confront the consequences of their hubris.  George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice will be held harmless by history -- once it has been whitewashed and sanitized -- a process well under way. In all the rhetoric about the War on Terror, we rarely consider the costs inflicted on the other side, the Afghan and Iraqi civilians killed or maimed by American bombs and bullets. Instead we fabricate tales about the righteousness and purity of our motives, how our only objective was to protect Americans from fanatical terrorists while delivering American-style democracy and freedom to the oppressed people of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Such fantasies carry a hefty price tag.