Once again, President Bush has vetoed Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, even though polling data shows that an overwhelming percentage of Americans support such research and its potential for life-saving cures.
The public shouldn’t be surprised by Bush’s action – he has never represented the values or aspirations of the American majority. No, Bush and his cronies serve the religious right and corporate clients, and they do it exceedingly well.
Upon vetoing the stem cell research bill, Bush was quoted as saying, “Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical.” This is an interesting statement from a man who frequently sent death row inmates to the lethal injection chamber when he was Governor of Texas, and is directly responsible for thousands of deaths in Iraq. Then again, hypocrisy and unethical behavior is the Bush Gang’s stock-in-trade.
In his new book, American Theocracy, author Kevin Phillips provides a sobering account of the negative effects of, among other things, “militant” Christianity on our country. When people who believe in Biblical inerrancy assume power and impose their beliefs and values on the rest of us, atrocious things happen, such as imperial military actions cloaked in crusading religious garb, disregard for scientific inquiry and rational argument, and wholesale attacks on an already tattered social safety net.
Who needs science when the secrets of life are contained in the Bible?
Who needs a social safety net when Jesus is standing by, ready to provide material sustenance?
These are sad times, here at the busy intersection where religious fundamentalism meets unfettered corporate power. We cross the intersection at great risk to ourselves and the people we love, particularly if we believe that the Bible is a work of mythology, that scientific inquiry is essential to our survival as a species, or that dissent is patriotic.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Hail Albania!
ABC News interrupted its coverage of Paris Hilton’s comings and goings long enough to report that President Bush received a “hero’s” welcome in Albania, and fresh from that happy experience, felt emboldened to visit Capitol Hill to stump for the federal Immigration bill.
I’m glad there’s a country in this world that Bush can visit and feel the love because he sure as hell doesn’t get that in America, but then, unlike Albanians, Americans have never taken to totalitarian leaders. Even though the “rule of law” is frequently perverted beyond recognition in this country, the “principle” that the Law means something in the land is as ingrained in our minds as the Pledge of Allegiance.
That Bush consistently “disses” the Constitution doesn’t trouble the average Albanian. Perhaps in Bush Albanians see a kindred, a link to the Roman, Ottoman, or Communists who once ruled the land.
But how pathetic is an American President who feels emboldened by a state visit to Albania? Not the UK or Germany or Japan or Australia, places where American heads of state usually receive a friendly welcome, but Albania.
The irony of this was lost on the talking mannequins at ABC. America has slipped so low in the eyes of the world, the Bush record is so dismal, full of error, hubris, and failure, that an inconsequential visit to a marginal nation is given the same gravity as a visit to a country with some juice on the world stage.
We will be rid of Bush in less than 600 hundred days, but his twisted legacy will live for decades. The sad but incontrovertible fact is that the damage Bush has wrought is largely irreversible.
Paris Hilton is in the slammer, crying for her mommy; the New York Yankees have won nine of their last ten game to climb above the .500 mark; and the major contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination are contorting themselves to prove their religious “faith,” a clear recognition that none of them can win unless they pull in a decent percentage of “religious” voters. Hillary Clinton: “When my husband was getting serviced in the Oval Office by that woman, Miss Lewinsky, my daughter and my faith were the only things I had. Without deep and abiding faith we would not have survived those dark, troubling days. What Bill and that woman, Miss Lewinsky, did was wrong, but my faith made it all turn out right.”
Sweet Jesus! Bush, Paris, Hillary – the inmates are definitely in control of the asylum. The rest of us own the ticket and have no choice but to take the ride.
I’m glad there’s a country in this world that Bush can visit and feel the love because he sure as hell doesn’t get that in America, but then, unlike Albanians, Americans have never taken to totalitarian leaders. Even though the “rule of law” is frequently perverted beyond recognition in this country, the “principle” that the Law means something in the land is as ingrained in our minds as the Pledge of Allegiance.
That Bush consistently “disses” the Constitution doesn’t trouble the average Albanian. Perhaps in Bush Albanians see a kindred, a link to the Roman, Ottoman, or Communists who once ruled the land.
But how pathetic is an American President who feels emboldened by a state visit to Albania? Not the UK or Germany or Japan or Australia, places where American heads of state usually receive a friendly welcome, but Albania.
The irony of this was lost on the talking mannequins at ABC. America has slipped so low in the eyes of the world, the Bush record is so dismal, full of error, hubris, and failure, that an inconsequential visit to a marginal nation is given the same gravity as a visit to a country with some juice on the world stage.
We will be rid of Bush in less than 600 hundred days, but his twisted legacy will live for decades. The sad but incontrovertible fact is that the damage Bush has wrought is largely irreversible.
Paris Hilton is in the slammer, crying for her mommy; the New York Yankees have won nine of their last ten game to climb above the .500 mark; and the major contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination are contorting themselves to prove their religious “faith,” a clear recognition that none of them can win unless they pull in a decent percentage of “religious” voters. Hillary Clinton: “When my husband was getting serviced in the Oval Office by that woman, Miss Lewinsky, my daughter and my faith were the only things I had. Without deep and abiding faith we would not have survived those dark, troubling days. What Bill and that woman, Miss Lewinsky, did was wrong, but my faith made it all turn out right.”
Sweet Jesus! Bush, Paris, Hillary – the inmates are definitely in control of the asylum. The rest of us own the ticket and have no choice but to take the ride.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Holier Than
Holier than you, Infidel;
Holier than you, Muslim;
Holier than you, Buddhist;
Holier than you, Roman Catholic;
Holier than you, homosexual;
Holier than you, secular humanist;
The Jesus of love-thy-neighbor has become the Jesus
of persecution;
The Jesus of turn-the-other-cheek is now the Jesus
of vengeance;
The Jesus of tolerance is now the Jesus
of intolerance;
The Jesus who chased the money changers from the Temple is now the Jesus
of greed;
Remember these names – Falwell, Robertson, Dobson – mortal men who high-jacked
the Bible;
Beware anyone who claims to speak for God;
Follow the power that flows from the money raised in God’s name;
And when someone claims to be holier-than-you,
Run
Holier than you, Muslim;
Holier than you, Buddhist;
Holier than you, Roman Catholic;
Holier than you, homosexual;
Holier than you, secular humanist;
The Jesus of love-thy-neighbor has become the Jesus
of persecution;
The Jesus of turn-the-other-cheek is now the Jesus
of vengeance;
The Jesus of tolerance is now the Jesus
of intolerance;
The Jesus who chased the money changers from the Temple is now the Jesus
of greed;
Remember these names – Falwell, Robertson, Dobson – mortal men who high-jacked
the Bible;
Beware anyone who claims to speak for God;
Follow the power that flows from the money raised in God’s name;
And when someone claims to be holier-than-you,
Run
A Mother's Courage
Mothers pay a high price in wartime. Mothers send their sons and husbands, and nowadays, daughters, to foreign lands and wait and worry and hope and pray that they come home alive and intact.
War is hell. A man said it, but mothers know what the hell of war feels like, down deep where it hurts all the time.
She was an ordinary woman from California, with a son in the military, subject to the orders of a president hell bent on imperial overreach under the guise of revenge for September 11th. The President said the invasion was necessary for the security of the United States, he said it was about “regime change,” and finding weapons of mass destruction, and bringing freedom to the long suffering people of Iraq. The President denied the most plausible explanation for the adventure: to secure reliable access to some of the largest proven oil reserves on the planet for American oil companies.
The President claimed the mission was accomplished, but the woman from California breathed no easier. Wars are sometimes waged in stages and on shifting battlefields. The “victory” of Shock & Awe – televised and trumpeted like a Super Bowl game – deteriorated into a stalemate, then defeat, but by then, the woman had already received the call and the news.
Her son was dead and her life would never be the same. She had to find meaning in her boy’s death, answer the searing questions, why and for what and for whom? In past wars, answers to those questions might have come easier, but in this new brand of war, a war of choice, pre-emptive and open-ended, based on shifting rationales, all of which unraveled as events on the ground unfolded, meaning came hard, if it came at all. The dead returned home in flag-draped coffins under cover of darkness and secrecy, as if the sponsors of the war were ashamed.
The only constant was Oil. How else to explain why the United States is building permanent military installations in areas with proven oil reserves, or why it is constructing a massive embassy complex on 104 acres in the Green Zone, or why the “Hydrocarbon Law,” drafted to force privatization of Iraq’s oil resources and give foreign oil companies long-term access to Iraq’s oil, was reviewed by the oil companies long before it was seen by Iraq’s parliament?
Imagine the dissonance in her brain, the uneasiness in her soul, forced every day to confront the emptiness and the questions, the constant reminders of her dead son. She was living in the hell of war.
Some women might have retreated inward, suffered in silence or self-imposed exile, but this mother felt the need to act, to communicate her grief and outrage, to challenge the rationale for continuing the military occupation that had claimed her boy. She tried the most direct route, to the Commander-in-Chief himself, and spent the better part of a month camped outside his ranch, hoping for an audience. Media arrived, curious then insatiable, she became renowned, the face of the anti-war movement. Soon she was marching, and speaking, telling her story on prime time media. It’s unlikely that she ever imagined herself in the role she was now playing, but life comes at us hard sometimes, wrenches us from comfortable patterns.
After a time, when her criticisms became too pointed and her face and name over-exposed, the media machine that had thrust her into the spotlight turned on her. The Talk Titans from the Right questioned her patriotism and her motives, called her an “attention whore,” and soon it was all about her and not her dead son and the misbegotten war that took his life.
But mothers like this one don’t give up easily. She stayed in the fire, kept speaking out, marching for peace, and in November 2006 the country came around, voted Democrats into power with an explicit charge to do something about the mess in Iraq.
That they didn’t reflects our sad, dysfunctional political reality, cowardice, and calculation. Too many Democrats lacked Cindy Sheehan’s heart and courage. They should be ashamed. Cindy Sheehan, on the other hand, mother and patriot, has no reason to feel shame.
War is hell. A man said it, but mothers know what the hell of war feels like, down deep where it hurts all the time.
She was an ordinary woman from California, with a son in the military, subject to the orders of a president hell bent on imperial overreach under the guise of revenge for September 11th. The President said the invasion was necessary for the security of the United States, he said it was about “regime change,” and finding weapons of mass destruction, and bringing freedom to the long suffering people of Iraq. The President denied the most plausible explanation for the adventure: to secure reliable access to some of the largest proven oil reserves on the planet for American oil companies.
The President claimed the mission was accomplished, but the woman from California breathed no easier. Wars are sometimes waged in stages and on shifting battlefields. The “victory” of Shock & Awe – televised and trumpeted like a Super Bowl game – deteriorated into a stalemate, then defeat, but by then, the woman had already received the call and the news.
Her son was dead and her life would never be the same. She had to find meaning in her boy’s death, answer the searing questions, why and for what and for whom? In past wars, answers to those questions might have come easier, but in this new brand of war, a war of choice, pre-emptive and open-ended, based on shifting rationales, all of which unraveled as events on the ground unfolded, meaning came hard, if it came at all. The dead returned home in flag-draped coffins under cover of darkness and secrecy, as if the sponsors of the war were ashamed.
The only constant was Oil. How else to explain why the United States is building permanent military installations in areas with proven oil reserves, or why it is constructing a massive embassy complex on 104 acres in the Green Zone, or why the “Hydrocarbon Law,” drafted to force privatization of Iraq’s oil resources and give foreign oil companies long-term access to Iraq’s oil, was reviewed by the oil companies long before it was seen by Iraq’s parliament?
Imagine the dissonance in her brain, the uneasiness in her soul, forced every day to confront the emptiness and the questions, the constant reminders of her dead son. She was living in the hell of war.
Some women might have retreated inward, suffered in silence or self-imposed exile, but this mother felt the need to act, to communicate her grief and outrage, to challenge the rationale for continuing the military occupation that had claimed her boy. She tried the most direct route, to the Commander-in-Chief himself, and spent the better part of a month camped outside his ranch, hoping for an audience. Media arrived, curious then insatiable, she became renowned, the face of the anti-war movement. Soon she was marching, and speaking, telling her story on prime time media. It’s unlikely that she ever imagined herself in the role she was now playing, but life comes at us hard sometimes, wrenches us from comfortable patterns.
After a time, when her criticisms became too pointed and her face and name over-exposed, the media machine that had thrust her into the spotlight turned on her. The Talk Titans from the Right questioned her patriotism and her motives, called her an “attention whore,” and soon it was all about her and not her dead son and the misbegotten war that took his life.
But mothers like this one don’t give up easily. She stayed in the fire, kept speaking out, marching for peace, and in November 2006 the country came around, voted Democrats into power with an explicit charge to do something about the mess in Iraq.
That they didn’t reflects our sad, dysfunctional political reality, cowardice, and calculation. Too many Democrats lacked Cindy Sheehan’s heart and courage. They should be ashamed. Cindy Sheehan, on the other hand, mother and patriot, has no reason to feel shame.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Overcoming the Reign of Error
Those of us who knew a twisted lie was coming when George W. Bush first linked Iraq with 9/11, those of us who marched in the streets to protest the mindless run-up to the Invasion and then the Occupation, and those of us who felt a glimmer of hope last November when the Democrats regained control of Congress are bitterly disappointed today.
The Democrats became spineless wimps again, and instead of standing on principle they adopted convoluted justifications for why many of them voted to authorize more of our tax dollars for Bush’s Iraq misadventure. So much for Democracy. The people spoke loud and clear and our elected representatives blew us off. Again. Business as usual in Washington.
As the days and months of the Bush Reign of Error roll on, the words of old Bob Dylan ring clearer and truer: “People are crazy and times are strange.” How else can a thinking person explain this cursed era?
While Bush and his cronies lay waste to Iraq, sentence more Americans and countless Iraqis to death or injury, add to the considerable hatred that many Muslims feel toward the United States, plunge our Treasury into massive debt, transfer even more wealth to the wealthiest citizens, deny scientific knowledge and ridicule rational inquiry, prize ideological purity and personal loyalty above ethics and competence (Alberto Gonzalez), and ignore the plight of the poor and the struggles of the shrinking middle class, while all this goes on -- and on -- those of us who are awake and grasp the scale of the catastrophe that Bush and his posse have visited on this nation, can only wonder why more people aren’t as pissed off and disgusted as we are.
Is the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans rebuilt and thriving, has all the dirt and debris been removed, are businesses open for business, are flowers blooming in windowsill planters, and have all the displaced people returned to continue their lives as they were before Katrina hit and our country failed them? Must be, because the mainstream media has stopped reporting on the great Gulf Coast rebuilding project. Given the choice between reporting on Katrina’s displaced and Anna Nicole Smith’s tragic life and death, any media exec worth his stock options will choose Anna Nicole every time. Or Paris Hilton. Or Lindsay Lohan. Or Dancing with the Stars. Or American Idol.
Our capacity for political and social policy discourse is so degraded that we can’t even have a rational, fact-based discussion about any serious topic. If it isn’t entertaining we can’t be bothered.
For example, while most Americans struggle to make short ends meet split ends on stagnant wages earned at mindless jobs, the media reports that interest rates are low and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is robust – as if those measures mean a damn thing to the average wage slave American. Interest rates and the migrations of the stock market mean something only to those who own property or stocks. For the beleaguered working class struggling to stay even, it’s just more American myth being shoved down our throats.
Perhaps George W. Bush, reformed party boy and habitual screw-up, really believes that he is a holy warrior for Christ, and that all the misery he has created in this country and the world is part of God’s master plan to bring about a Christian paradise on Earth.
This is a desperate, but not necessarily hopeless, time in the history of this nation. As Dr. Martin Luther King said many years ago, “The past is strewn with the ruins of the empires of tyranny, and each is a monument not merely to man’s blunders but to his capacity to overcome them.”
When shall we begin to overcome?
The Democrats became spineless wimps again, and instead of standing on principle they adopted convoluted justifications for why many of them voted to authorize more of our tax dollars for Bush’s Iraq misadventure. So much for Democracy. The people spoke loud and clear and our elected representatives blew us off. Again. Business as usual in Washington.
As the days and months of the Bush Reign of Error roll on, the words of old Bob Dylan ring clearer and truer: “People are crazy and times are strange.” How else can a thinking person explain this cursed era?
While Bush and his cronies lay waste to Iraq, sentence more Americans and countless Iraqis to death or injury, add to the considerable hatred that many Muslims feel toward the United States, plunge our Treasury into massive debt, transfer even more wealth to the wealthiest citizens, deny scientific knowledge and ridicule rational inquiry, prize ideological purity and personal loyalty above ethics and competence (Alberto Gonzalez), and ignore the plight of the poor and the struggles of the shrinking middle class, while all this goes on -- and on -- those of us who are awake and grasp the scale of the catastrophe that Bush and his posse have visited on this nation, can only wonder why more people aren’t as pissed off and disgusted as we are.
Is the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans rebuilt and thriving, has all the dirt and debris been removed, are businesses open for business, are flowers blooming in windowsill planters, and have all the displaced people returned to continue their lives as they were before Katrina hit and our country failed them? Must be, because the mainstream media has stopped reporting on the great Gulf Coast rebuilding project. Given the choice between reporting on Katrina’s displaced and Anna Nicole Smith’s tragic life and death, any media exec worth his stock options will choose Anna Nicole every time. Or Paris Hilton. Or Lindsay Lohan. Or Dancing with the Stars. Or American Idol.
Our capacity for political and social policy discourse is so degraded that we can’t even have a rational, fact-based discussion about any serious topic. If it isn’t entertaining we can’t be bothered.
For example, while most Americans struggle to make short ends meet split ends on stagnant wages earned at mindless jobs, the media reports that interest rates are low and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is robust – as if those measures mean a damn thing to the average wage slave American. Interest rates and the migrations of the stock market mean something only to those who own property or stocks. For the beleaguered working class struggling to stay even, it’s just more American myth being shoved down our throats.
Perhaps George W. Bush, reformed party boy and habitual screw-up, really believes that he is a holy warrior for Christ, and that all the misery he has created in this country and the world is part of God’s master plan to bring about a Christian paradise on Earth.
This is a desperate, but not necessarily hopeless, time in the history of this nation. As Dr. Martin Luther King said many years ago, “The past is strewn with the ruins of the empires of tyranny, and each is a monument not merely to man’s blunders but to his capacity to overcome them.”
When shall we begin to overcome?
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Cheapskate Society
My son’s Thursday folder from school contained the usual announcements as well as the usual request for money; my daughter’s Thursday folder, from a different school, implored parents to buy $25 per person tickets for an upcoming silent auction, the purpose of which is to raise money for the school.
It’s a rare week that passes without a plea for money, pencils, paper, tissue, paper towels or art supplies from our public schools. Along with mastering the state-directed curriculum, standardized testing, Federal, state and local funding requirements and restrictions, the latest pedagogical techniques, school principals must also master Fundraising 101. Average fundraisers get the basics; extraordinary fundraisers get new science wings, computers, digital projectors and other high-tech gadgetry, out-of-town field trips, guest speakers and so on.
The State of California spends in the neighborhood of forty percent of its budget on K-12 education, or roughly $60 billion, and it’s nowhere near enough. You’d think that public schools in posh areas like Santa Barbara would be awash in cash from property taxes, but it’s not the case. Instead, the public schools hold bake sales and rummage sales, jog-a-thons, silent auctions, Bingo nights, on and on endlessly throughout the year.
What’s going on here? Is this the logical legacy of Proposition 13, the 1978 voter referendum that slapped a one percent cap on property taxes and effectively cut revenues for local governments and schools? Or is this part and parcel of the Reagan Revolution, which, coming hard on the heels of Prop 13 and Jimmy Carter’s impotent reign, declared government the problem and the marketplace the solution? Reagan believed that no government entity (including public education) could function as efficiently as a private, for-profit one. In Reagan parlance: government robbed and the market liberated.
It was an effective narrative and Reagan was an unparalleled messenger. With a prepared script and a patriotic, American Pie backdrop, Ronald Reagan recited his lines better than any American president before or since. The public bought Reagan’s message and government at every level began to wither. The Conservative assault on the middle-class, and the upward transfer of wealth, had begun. The American Left and the Left leaning wing of the Democratic Party was bereft of ideas and could come up with no narrative to defend its values against the onslaught. Economic justice, civil rights, equal opportunity for all – down the toilet. It was Morning in America. The Dems offered Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis and watched them get crushed. It was an age of corporate efficiency, massive downsizing, tax cuts for Big Business, Small Business, and the Wealthy; personal greed was canonized and shared sacrifice was ridiculed. The individual, mythic American, left to his own drive and initiative, unfettered by government interference and regulation, beholden to no one but himself, became King. Government, with its power to equalize and balance, was shoved out of the way, knocked to the turf, trampled. Reagan and his acolytes made it clear that they meant to eradicate every last vestige of the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society; they knew it would take time, a few decades at least, but they organized for the long haul.
And make no mistake, the Conservatives organized the game brilliantly, culminating in the reign of Bush II, where for a time the GOP controlled all three branches of government. Meanwhile, thanks in large part to the “marketplace” genie that Reagan let out of the bottle, and with a big assist from the corporate-controlled Congress, the GOP’s supporters and allies had taken ownership of the mainstream mass media, which enabled the Conservative side of the GOP to shape and promote its message, stifle inquiry, and ignore inconvenient subjects such as the growing divide between wealthy and poor, the demise of the middle-class, environmental degradation, and the millions of citizens without access to affordable health care.
Connect the dots. Reagan declared government bad and the market good. The surest way to make government institutions inefficient, ineffective and irrelevant is to take away their funding by slashing taxes. And once you get started, why stop? Why not “starve the beast,” as conservative icon Grover Norquist famously remarked, until it croaks? Pour billions into national and homeland (wasn’t the term “homeland” frequently used in Nazi Germany?) security and let the rest ride. And even as tax rates are being cut, continue the media drumbeat for more tax “reform.”
Since Reagan, politicians of every stripe know that the surest way to commit political hari-kari is to call for new or increased taxes. Give the Conservative movement credit for taking that option off the table, making it completely taboo.
But we still have government and citizens (even wealthy ones) who need government services, like fire and police protection, courts, roads, bridges, highways, schools, and so on. How do we pay for our common needs when for nearly thirty years we’ve been conditioned to believe that we have no common needs and that taxation is theft? Sleight of hand accounting gimmicks, state-sanctioned gambling, pension fund raids, user fees – anything without resorting to the most direct and efficient solution -- raising taxes to invest in the programs and services society needs to remain decent and humane.
Perhaps the tide is turning. Perhaps it’s beginning to dawn on citizens that we’ve been bamboozled, played for fools by Conservatives and their policies. The wealthy can only isolate themselves from the great unwashed to a degree, but the wealthy must still move through society, drive the roads and highways, drink the water, breathe the air.
Until we come to our senses and rewrite the rules of the dead-end game we’re playing, my children will continue to come home from school with pleas for money, crayons, paper, and almost everything else students need to receive a basic American education.
It’s a rare week that passes without a plea for money, pencils, paper, tissue, paper towels or art supplies from our public schools. Along with mastering the state-directed curriculum, standardized testing, Federal, state and local funding requirements and restrictions, the latest pedagogical techniques, school principals must also master Fundraising 101. Average fundraisers get the basics; extraordinary fundraisers get new science wings, computers, digital projectors and other high-tech gadgetry, out-of-town field trips, guest speakers and so on.
The State of California spends in the neighborhood of forty percent of its budget on K-12 education, or roughly $60 billion, and it’s nowhere near enough. You’d think that public schools in posh areas like Santa Barbara would be awash in cash from property taxes, but it’s not the case. Instead, the public schools hold bake sales and rummage sales, jog-a-thons, silent auctions, Bingo nights, on and on endlessly throughout the year.
What’s going on here? Is this the logical legacy of Proposition 13, the 1978 voter referendum that slapped a one percent cap on property taxes and effectively cut revenues for local governments and schools? Or is this part and parcel of the Reagan Revolution, which, coming hard on the heels of Prop 13 and Jimmy Carter’s impotent reign, declared government the problem and the marketplace the solution? Reagan believed that no government entity (including public education) could function as efficiently as a private, for-profit one. In Reagan parlance: government robbed and the market liberated.
It was an effective narrative and Reagan was an unparalleled messenger. With a prepared script and a patriotic, American Pie backdrop, Ronald Reagan recited his lines better than any American president before or since. The public bought Reagan’s message and government at every level began to wither. The Conservative assault on the middle-class, and the upward transfer of wealth, had begun. The American Left and the Left leaning wing of the Democratic Party was bereft of ideas and could come up with no narrative to defend its values against the onslaught. Economic justice, civil rights, equal opportunity for all – down the toilet. It was Morning in America. The Dems offered Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis and watched them get crushed. It was an age of corporate efficiency, massive downsizing, tax cuts for Big Business, Small Business, and the Wealthy; personal greed was canonized and shared sacrifice was ridiculed. The individual, mythic American, left to his own drive and initiative, unfettered by government interference and regulation, beholden to no one but himself, became King. Government, with its power to equalize and balance, was shoved out of the way, knocked to the turf, trampled. Reagan and his acolytes made it clear that they meant to eradicate every last vestige of the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society; they knew it would take time, a few decades at least, but they organized for the long haul.
And make no mistake, the Conservatives organized the game brilliantly, culminating in the reign of Bush II, where for a time the GOP controlled all three branches of government. Meanwhile, thanks in large part to the “marketplace” genie that Reagan let out of the bottle, and with a big assist from the corporate-controlled Congress, the GOP’s supporters and allies had taken ownership of the mainstream mass media, which enabled the Conservative side of the GOP to shape and promote its message, stifle inquiry, and ignore inconvenient subjects such as the growing divide between wealthy and poor, the demise of the middle-class, environmental degradation, and the millions of citizens without access to affordable health care.
Connect the dots. Reagan declared government bad and the market good. The surest way to make government institutions inefficient, ineffective and irrelevant is to take away their funding by slashing taxes. And once you get started, why stop? Why not “starve the beast,” as conservative icon Grover Norquist famously remarked, until it croaks? Pour billions into national and homeland (wasn’t the term “homeland” frequently used in Nazi Germany?) security and let the rest ride. And even as tax rates are being cut, continue the media drumbeat for more tax “reform.”
Since Reagan, politicians of every stripe know that the surest way to commit political hari-kari is to call for new or increased taxes. Give the Conservative movement credit for taking that option off the table, making it completely taboo.
But we still have government and citizens (even wealthy ones) who need government services, like fire and police protection, courts, roads, bridges, highways, schools, and so on. How do we pay for our common needs when for nearly thirty years we’ve been conditioned to believe that we have no common needs and that taxation is theft? Sleight of hand accounting gimmicks, state-sanctioned gambling, pension fund raids, user fees – anything without resorting to the most direct and efficient solution -- raising taxes to invest in the programs and services society needs to remain decent and humane.
Perhaps the tide is turning. Perhaps it’s beginning to dawn on citizens that we’ve been bamboozled, played for fools by Conservatives and their policies. The wealthy can only isolate themselves from the great unwashed to a degree, but the wealthy must still move through society, drive the roads and highways, drink the water, breathe the air.
Until we come to our senses and rewrite the rules of the dead-end game we’re playing, my children will continue to come home from school with pleas for money, crayons, paper, and almost everything else students need to receive a basic American education.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
POEM - Sub-Prime
Give me a payday loan and a sub-prime mortgage,
another Visa card to run to the max;
Cancel my health insurance, dissolve my pension, slash my hourly
wage; ship my job to Bangalore;
The more we owe the more the banks are willing to give,
it’s good business – for them;
We chase middle-class illusions and leave
the tab for our children;
Anyone with eyes can see the big hurt coming,
the bills coming due,
the millions who bought the fantasy of spend without end
will feel the pain first;
but no one is immune –
how can we sustain a consumer economy if consumers
can’t afford to consume?
We share the blame -- you, me, Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones, even old John Doe --
complicit in our own indentured servitude,
MIA and ignorant of history, battles and blood spilled;
what became of our willingness to take to the streets and stand for
justice?
have we forgotten how to say NO or that to receive
a fair share of the harvest we must demand it?;
Shame on us for allowing them to silence our collective voice,
revoke our citizenship, marginalize our American concerns;
We’ve been weaned on snake oil, played for fools, sold out for
campaign contributions, luxury hotel suites, first-class passage to St. Andrews,
by lawyers and legislators beholden to nothing more than the corporate
bottom line;
We mixed the toxic Koolaid that is poisoning the American Dream;
Give me a payday loan and a sub-prime mortgage,
another Visa card with a low introductory rate,
I can’t lose;
Can’t win either
another Visa card to run to the max;
Cancel my health insurance, dissolve my pension, slash my hourly
wage; ship my job to Bangalore;
The more we owe the more the banks are willing to give,
it’s good business – for them;
We chase middle-class illusions and leave
the tab for our children;
Anyone with eyes can see the big hurt coming,
the bills coming due,
the millions who bought the fantasy of spend without end
will feel the pain first;
but no one is immune –
how can we sustain a consumer economy if consumers
can’t afford to consume?
We share the blame -- you, me, Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones, even old John Doe --
complicit in our own indentured servitude,
MIA and ignorant of history, battles and blood spilled;
what became of our willingness to take to the streets and stand for
justice?
have we forgotten how to say NO or that to receive
a fair share of the harvest we must demand it?;
Shame on us for allowing them to silence our collective voice,
revoke our citizenship, marginalize our American concerns;
We’ve been weaned on snake oil, played for fools, sold out for
campaign contributions, luxury hotel suites, first-class passage to St. Andrews,
by lawyers and legislators beholden to nothing more than the corporate
bottom line;
We mixed the toxic Koolaid that is poisoning the American Dream;
Give me a payday loan and a sub-prime mortgage,
another Visa card with a low introductory rate,
I can’t lose;
Can’t win either
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Dirty Balcony
The Balcony is dusty, cluttered, unkept, a mess. It’s a few weeks since I climbed these stairs and the place has an unfamiliar look. There’s an empty Coors can that I can’t remember drinking, newspapers, a half-finished crossword puzzle, a solicitation from the Republican National Committee, an appeal for money from the ACLU, a tattered copy of the Nation; the War on Terror is endless and unwinnable, we’re killing the planet but it’s not politically or economically feasible to do anything to mitigate the damage, houses cost too much, schools teach too little, too many Mexicans stream across the border, professional athletes are overpaid, TV reinforces our collective stupidity, I don’t get why Paris Hilton is a celebrity or why anyone gives a fuck about Britney Spears, all the good poets are dead and not even rock & roll can save us; somewhere in America a child is born in poverty, somewhere else an elderly person is dying alone, the ghost of John Steinbeck is playing poker with the ghost of Tom Joad, while in central Baghdad another car bomb explodes and more innocent humans die, the wind rips at the trees, the side of the 101 freeway near King City is littered with discarded shoes, baby bottles, queen-sized orthopedic mattresses, beer bottles, pipe fittings, oil filters, pots, pans, and a bird feeder; what does it all mean? We are what we dispose of? Where is our Martin, our Malcom, our Gandhi? We are spoon-fed the Myth of Ronald Reagan, treated like children, denied the cold hard truth that might set us free, told that our only duty as citizens is to SPEND, SPEND, SPEND! Has the world always been this nuts? When was the Golden Age? Or is that another myth, like the one about the Immaculate Conception and the Easter resurrection? Don’t know, these questions are beyond me, I’m a simple man in a complicated age, an age where lies become truth and petty people hold positions of power, an age where five men can rule over how women use their own bodies; let the fuckers get pregnant, carry full term – then they can talk about reproductive freedom and the sanctity of the unborn. It’s Sunday. A church bell tolls in the distance. My children are drinking chocolate milk.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Speeding Downhill on a Dark Night
Hold on, folks, because this one will veer all over the place, like an 18-year-old kid high on Wild Turkey behind the wheel of a Hummer H2 on an icy downhill road in the black of night.
Yeah, this week felt that perilous. The shootings at Virginia Tech were horrifying enough when the story first broke, and as more details emerge the picture gets worse. Despite laws, good intentions, security procedures and evacuation plans, one armed and determined crazy willing to lose his own life can’t be stopped. That’s no solace for the families of the dead or the kids and faculty who survived, but it’s essentially true. I heard some radio talk about the shooter’s Korean ethnicity, and how discrimination – real or perceived – might have played a role in pushing the young man over the edge, but I’m not sure ethnicity had much to do with it; mental illness crosses freely between and among ethnicities, and this young Korean-American man was certainly ill.
Another eerie aspect of the VT shootings is the way digital technology – cell phones and laptops -- allowed the rest of the country, and the world, to witness the events almost as they happened, and to record those events from a variety of angles and perspectives. The number of sources and the sheer volume of information make the whole effect more chilling, though even with the benefit of all this information, we will never know with total certainty what made the young man go off. Was it a particular event, a look from a classmate, a rejection from a girl, or just the steady accumulation of perceived slights and injustices that snapped the camel’s back?
Rush Limbaugh blamed American Liberals for the massacre, though I’m hard-pressed to understand how that is possible in a society where Conservative ideology has been ascendant for nearly thirty years. Limbaugh is a pill-popping hypocrite who should join Don Imus in retirement.
The New York Times reported that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said, “I can’t recall,” fifty times during five hours of sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It always amazes me how men and women trained in the law, graduates of our finest universities, torture the truth once they are sworn in and placed on the hot seat. Gonzalez is clearly a lying little weasel trying to save his ass. In the same breath he accepts full responsibility and denies ever doing anything improper, and asserts that he’s in charge and completely unaware of what his subordinates are up to. "Senator, I don't have a recollection of not having a recollection about that specific meeting or any other meeting about which I have no recollection." I wonder if he can remember what he ate for breakfast yesterday morning or the last time he had sex with his wife. Does Gonzalez suffer from amnesia all the time or is his affliction merely situational?
Moving to more local issues…this will not be a restful weekend for members of the Santa Barbara School Board, faced as they are with slashing millions from the District budget next Tuesday night. The Board bought the ticket when it struck a multi-year salary agreement with the Santa Barbara Teachers Association, and now it must take the ride; the only problem is that most of the reductions on the big board suck and are sure to piss off one interest group or another. The Board’s standard fall back position – defer and delay, hire consultants and study – isn’t an option this time around, unless the Board wants to repudiate the agreement with the teachers that they approved on April 10. If you’re interested in watching a five-ring circus, check out the Board meeting at 7:00 P.M. on the 24th.
Yeah, this week felt that perilous. The shootings at Virginia Tech were horrifying enough when the story first broke, and as more details emerge the picture gets worse. Despite laws, good intentions, security procedures and evacuation plans, one armed and determined crazy willing to lose his own life can’t be stopped. That’s no solace for the families of the dead or the kids and faculty who survived, but it’s essentially true. I heard some radio talk about the shooter’s Korean ethnicity, and how discrimination – real or perceived – might have played a role in pushing the young man over the edge, but I’m not sure ethnicity had much to do with it; mental illness crosses freely between and among ethnicities, and this young Korean-American man was certainly ill.
Another eerie aspect of the VT shootings is the way digital technology – cell phones and laptops -- allowed the rest of the country, and the world, to witness the events almost as they happened, and to record those events from a variety of angles and perspectives. The number of sources and the sheer volume of information make the whole effect more chilling, though even with the benefit of all this information, we will never know with total certainty what made the young man go off. Was it a particular event, a look from a classmate, a rejection from a girl, or just the steady accumulation of perceived slights and injustices that snapped the camel’s back?
Rush Limbaugh blamed American Liberals for the massacre, though I’m hard-pressed to understand how that is possible in a society where Conservative ideology has been ascendant for nearly thirty years. Limbaugh is a pill-popping hypocrite who should join Don Imus in retirement.
The New York Times reported that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said, “I can’t recall,” fifty times during five hours of sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It always amazes me how men and women trained in the law, graduates of our finest universities, torture the truth once they are sworn in and placed on the hot seat. Gonzalez is clearly a lying little weasel trying to save his ass. In the same breath he accepts full responsibility and denies ever doing anything improper, and asserts that he’s in charge and completely unaware of what his subordinates are up to. "Senator, I don't have a recollection of not having a recollection about that specific meeting or any other meeting about which I have no recollection." I wonder if he can remember what he ate for breakfast yesterday morning or the last time he had sex with his wife. Does Gonzalez suffer from amnesia all the time or is his affliction merely situational?
Moving to more local issues…this will not be a restful weekend for members of the Santa Barbara School Board, faced as they are with slashing millions from the District budget next Tuesday night. The Board bought the ticket when it struck a multi-year salary agreement with the Santa Barbara Teachers Association, and now it must take the ride; the only problem is that most of the reductions on the big board suck and are sure to piss off one interest group or another. The Board’s standard fall back position – defer and delay, hire consultants and study – isn’t an option this time around, unless the Board wants to repudiate the agreement with the teachers that they approved on April 10. If you’re interested in watching a five-ring circus, check out the Board meeting at 7:00 P.M. on the 24th.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Bob's Big Night
The folks backing school board member Bob Noel’s brainchild, the American Charter High School (ACHS), came out in force Tuesday night, among them former board member Ray Franco, dapper Das Williams from the City Council, Frank Schipper of the eponymous construction firm, a UCSB professor whose name I didn’t catch who also happens to be a Nobel laureate in Physics, and a horde of lesser luminaries. All in all, it was a very impressive and organized bunch, all united in their desire to break the iron grip of educational bureaucracy and create a school that will keep kids interested in learning. Noel’s band arrived on the heels of Op-Ed pieces in the News-Press that claimed that the Board and Superintendent Brian Sarvis stood in opposition, even outright hostility, to the ACHS proposal – a position that none of the other Board members or Dr. Sarvis was willing to own. Twice Sarvis denied ever calling charter schools “economic parasites.”
As one of, if not the prime mover behind the ACHS idea, Bob Noel was expected to be in rare form, and old Bob didn’t disappoint. As a member of Noel’s posse noted, what else is a 77-year-old PhD going to do with his ample free time if not dream up solutions to the many dilemmas facing public education in Santa Barbara? Noel was geared up for combat from the start, jousting with Assistant Superintendent Jan Zettel over various aspects of vocational education, debating fine points of charter law with the District’s legal counsel, and ardently stressing that he, Bob Noel, had no financial interest or official capacity in the ACHS hierarchy, and therefore no conflict of interest as a sitting board member poised to cast a vote. That position appeared to be a helluva stretch, but when it comes to questions of basic ethics, Bob’s a triple-jointed kind of guy.
Like most Board meetings in the wacky world of the Santa Barbara School Districts, this one offered moments of delicious weirdness. I sat up and paid attention when my all-time favorite wing-nut, Kenneth Locke, inter-disciplinary guru of the emerging avant-garde, took the microphone for another installment in his long-running series of three-minute lectures. Somewhere in this great land of ours, the padded cell where Locke once resided stands empty; the walls of that cell are no doubt covered with squiggles, arrows, triangles, rectangles, mathematical formulas, grocery lists, koans and runes. Following Locke as he darts and skips from Aristotle to Jackson Pollock to Arthur Ashe is always a mental trick: “The abstract of the 20th century is that yoga is related to painting and painting is related to tennis, and between painting and tennis is pumpkin pie. Without a paradigm shift, young people will never understand what this means! The only way they can find themselves is through this paradigm shift! What I’m referring to is recycling, like when you take a milk carton and turn it into art, glorious art! In other words, the non-object object, the process by which something becomes nothing and nothing becomes everything!”
Watching the audience watching Locke is half the fun. Mouths fall open, eyes bug out, heads are scratched, earlobes are yanked, some folks cough nervously, some laugh, many whisper “What is that guy saying?” to the person next to them.
Yes, strange weirdness abounds in the Santa Barbara School District. Issues that pass unnoticed in other school districts are subjects of intense scrutiny and debate in SB, along with much hand-wringing and tears. Take Laura Baker for example. Ms. Baker teaches at La Cumbre Junior High and is waging a one-woman crusade to save La Cumbre from an invasion of elementary students from the Santa Barbara Community Academy, who may soon be housed on the La Cumbre campus. Ms. Baker has made dire predictions, sounded warnings, voiced numerous complaints, and advanced visions of mayhem during public comment at something like eighteen consecutive Board meetings. Tuesday night she asserted that the “Eastside” Academy kids would stir up resentment among “Westside” gang-affiliated kids, and who knows what terrible consequences might result from such an ill-conceived co-mingling of students. Ms. Baker would have the Eastside kids move to Cleveland – where they will be among their own kith and kin, safe from the predations of the Westsiders. Rumor has it that Ms. Baker’s true intention is far more personal and pragmatic: she stands to lose her private bathroom if the Academy kids move to La Cumbre.
The ACHS gang trooped to the microphone, one after the other, to express their unqualified support for the new charter school, asserting that it would provide a place for kids who fall through cracks in the pedagogical floorboards, for potential gang-bangers, for misfits with hidden potential, for English learners, for 8th graders reading at 3rd grade level, and for nascent mechanical geniuses under-served by the traditional curriculum. Not only that, the ACHS would flood the local labor pool with highly-skilled, employment-ready kids prepared to earn big wages framing buildings, policing the streets, and extinguishing fires.
After the Nobel Laureate whose name I didn’t catch spoke and was enthusiastically applauded, it was clear that the ACHS was the greatest thing since sliced bread, the plastic ice tray, and Botox and Viagara combined. Former Board member Ray Franco clinched the deal in a ten-minute rant that began in Spanish and concluded in English, describing his own immigrant success story and quoting Thomas Jefferson for good measure. Seven times Franco said, “Finally,” and then took off on another tangent. I looked at Bob Noel as Mr. Franco was speaking and finally understood what people mean when they say, “grinning like a Cheshire cat.” I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Bob had a hard-on, perhaps the biggest stiffie he's had since he became eligible for Social Security; he was basking in the light of his own brilliance, his soaring intellect, his organizational ability, and his “juice” in the community. To his fellow Board members and Superintendent Sarvis, Bob’s countenance seemed to say, “You can’t stop me, you can’t touch me, I am King of the World! My brainchild will be born and it will thrive!”
As one of, if not the prime mover behind the ACHS idea, Bob Noel was expected to be in rare form, and old Bob didn’t disappoint. As a member of Noel’s posse noted, what else is a 77-year-old PhD going to do with his ample free time if not dream up solutions to the many dilemmas facing public education in Santa Barbara? Noel was geared up for combat from the start, jousting with Assistant Superintendent Jan Zettel over various aspects of vocational education, debating fine points of charter law with the District’s legal counsel, and ardently stressing that he, Bob Noel, had no financial interest or official capacity in the ACHS hierarchy, and therefore no conflict of interest as a sitting board member poised to cast a vote. That position appeared to be a helluva stretch, but when it comes to questions of basic ethics, Bob’s a triple-jointed kind of guy.
Like most Board meetings in the wacky world of the Santa Barbara School Districts, this one offered moments of delicious weirdness. I sat up and paid attention when my all-time favorite wing-nut, Kenneth Locke, inter-disciplinary guru of the emerging avant-garde, took the microphone for another installment in his long-running series of three-minute lectures. Somewhere in this great land of ours, the padded cell where Locke once resided stands empty; the walls of that cell are no doubt covered with squiggles, arrows, triangles, rectangles, mathematical formulas, grocery lists, koans and runes. Following Locke as he darts and skips from Aristotle to Jackson Pollock to Arthur Ashe is always a mental trick: “The abstract of the 20th century is that yoga is related to painting and painting is related to tennis, and between painting and tennis is pumpkin pie. Without a paradigm shift, young people will never understand what this means! The only way they can find themselves is through this paradigm shift! What I’m referring to is recycling, like when you take a milk carton and turn it into art, glorious art! In other words, the non-object object, the process by which something becomes nothing and nothing becomes everything!”
Watching the audience watching Locke is half the fun. Mouths fall open, eyes bug out, heads are scratched, earlobes are yanked, some folks cough nervously, some laugh, many whisper “What is that guy saying?” to the person next to them.
Yes, strange weirdness abounds in the Santa Barbara School District. Issues that pass unnoticed in other school districts are subjects of intense scrutiny and debate in SB, along with much hand-wringing and tears. Take Laura Baker for example. Ms. Baker teaches at La Cumbre Junior High and is waging a one-woman crusade to save La Cumbre from an invasion of elementary students from the Santa Barbara Community Academy, who may soon be housed on the La Cumbre campus. Ms. Baker has made dire predictions, sounded warnings, voiced numerous complaints, and advanced visions of mayhem during public comment at something like eighteen consecutive Board meetings. Tuesday night she asserted that the “Eastside” Academy kids would stir up resentment among “Westside” gang-affiliated kids, and who knows what terrible consequences might result from such an ill-conceived co-mingling of students. Ms. Baker would have the Eastside kids move to Cleveland – where they will be among their own kith and kin, safe from the predations of the Westsiders. Rumor has it that Ms. Baker’s true intention is far more personal and pragmatic: she stands to lose her private bathroom if the Academy kids move to La Cumbre.
The ACHS gang trooped to the microphone, one after the other, to express their unqualified support for the new charter school, asserting that it would provide a place for kids who fall through cracks in the pedagogical floorboards, for potential gang-bangers, for misfits with hidden potential, for English learners, for 8th graders reading at 3rd grade level, and for nascent mechanical geniuses under-served by the traditional curriculum. Not only that, the ACHS would flood the local labor pool with highly-skilled, employment-ready kids prepared to earn big wages framing buildings, policing the streets, and extinguishing fires.
After the Nobel Laureate whose name I didn’t catch spoke and was enthusiastically applauded, it was clear that the ACHS was the greatest thing since sliced bread, the plastic ice tray, and Botox and Viagara combined. Former Board member Ray Franco clinched the deal in a ten-minute rant that began in Spanish and concluded in English, describing his own immigrant success story and quoting Thomas Jefferson for good measure. Seven times Franco said, “Finally,” and then took off on another tangent. I looked at Bob Noel as Mr. Franco was speaking and finally understood what people mean when they say, “grinning like a Cheshire cat.” I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Bob had a hard-on, perhaps the biggest stiffie he's had since he became eligible for Social Security; he was basking in the light of his own brilliance, his soaring intellect, his organizational ability, and his “juice” in the community. To his fellow Board members and Superintendent Sarvis, Bob’s countenance seemed to say, “You can’t stop me, you can’t touch me, I am King of the World! My brainchild will be born and it will thrive!”
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
An Echo Forty Years Old
On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King made a speech at the Riverside Church in New York City that was heralded as historic by some and something of a crime by others, but either way, much of what Dr. King said that day sounds eerily familiar in light of the economic, military and political morass the United States finds itself in today.
One parallel between the observations Dr. King made forty years ago and today is how little we understood or even considered what the Vietnam War meant for the millions of Vietnamese in the North and South who were just trying to live their lives. America’s focus was on our troops, our strategic interests and on propping up the US-installed government in Saigon.
Fast forward forty years to the American Occupation of Iraq. The plight of ordinary Iraqis is almost completely ignored by the American news media, as is any comprehensive coverage or explanation of Iraqi society, culture and history; most Americans couldn’t explain the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite if their home and hearth depended on it. It’s next to impossible for Americans to understand what it must feel like to live in an occupied country, to see foreign soldiers on street corners, to hear fighter jets and helicopters thundering overhead day and night, and to be reminded, every day, that your destiny rests in foreign hands rather than your own.
Forty years ago Dr. King quoted a Buddhist leader who wrote: “Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instincts. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies.”
Same in Iraq today. The folly of our invasion and occupation has created enmity in the hearts of Iraqis that will last at least a generation if not longer. We could “surge” forty or sixty thousand troops into Iraq and not come close to eradicating the hatred Iraqis feel for America and Americans. Dr. King feared for American troops in Vietnam, feared that we had placed them in a situation that was not only brutal but cynical: “…for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.”
I wonder how Dr. King would feel if he could see how many steps backwards America has taken in the forty years since he spoke at the Riverside Church. The militarism he feared is still alive and well; the economic and social injustice he spoke and marched against is as strong as ever; the racial intolerance he dedicated his life to fighting is alive and well. The words Dr. King spoke echo down the years, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and down to the Gulf of Mexico, through the ruined streets of the 9th Ward in New Orleans, through small-town churches and big-city synagogues, through the halls of government and the plush offices of corporate titans; the words echo and fall on ears gone deaf.
One parallel between the observations Dr. King made forty years ago and today is how little we understood or even considered what the Vietnam War meant for the millions of Vietnamese in the North and South who were just trying to live their lives. America’s focus was on our troops, our strategic interests and on propping up the US-installed government in Saigon.
Fast forward forty years to the American Occupation of Iraq. The plight of ordinary Iraqis is almost completely ignored by the American news media, as is any comprehensive coverage or explanation of Iraqi society, culture and history; most Americans couldn’t explain the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite if their home and hearth depended on it. It’s next to impossible for Americans to understand what it must feel like to live in an occupied country, to see foreign soldiers on street corners, to hear fighter jets and helicopters thundering overhead day and night, and to be reminded, every day, that your destiny rests in foreign hands rather than your own.
Forty years ago Dr. King quoted a Buddhist leader who wrote: “Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instincts. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies.”
Same in Iraq today. The folly of our invasion and occupation has created enmity in the hearts of Iraqis that will last at least a generation if not longer. We could “surge” forty or sixty thousand troops into Iraq and not come close to eradicating the hatred Iraqis feel for America and Americans. Dr. King feared for American troops in Vietnam, feared that we had placed them in a situation that was not only brutal but cynical: “…for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.”
I wonder how Dr. King would feel if he could see how many steps backwards America has taken in the forty years since he spoke at the Riverside Church. The militarism he feared is still alive and well; the economic and social injustice he spoke and marched against is as strong as ever; the racial intolerance he dedicated his life to fighting is alive and well. The words Dr. King spoke echo down the years, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and down to the Gulf of Mexico, through the ruined streets of the 9th Ward in New Orleans, through small-town churches and big-city synagogues, through the halls of government and the plush offices of corporate titans; the words echo and fall on ears gone deaf.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Notes on the March
I marched on State Street on March 17th, marched against war with an enthusiastic crowd, many young, many more my age or older, Vietnam-era folks, who have deep and lasting memories of another failed war, another lying Administration that widened war on false pretenses. Many of the same people, myself included, marched back in 2003, when President Bush, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, and a compliant, lazy national press were beating the drums for the invasion of Iraq. We marched as Shock & Awe unfolded on Fox and CNN, and retired generals gushed about the supreme firepower of the United States military. Predictably, the US rolled over Saddam’s pathetic forces, our tanks rumbling largely unimpeded all the way to Baghdad. We found no weapons of mass destruction, of course, no chemical stores, no missiles pointed at Washington or Tel Aviv. Saddam never posed a threat to the United States – and millions of protestors around the world knew it. We knew that Iraq was a third-rate military power at best, even as Bush and Cheney were comparing Saddam to Hitler. Pure fear tactics, a shell game.
Now that we’re mired in a civil war, the talking heads and Administration mouthpieces tell us that we cannot up and leave; disaster will result, enormous bloodshed, the US will lose all credibility (as if we have any left to lose), our vital national interests will be irreparably damaged. The same false choices were offered during the Vietnam conflict, but lo and behold, none of those horrible predictions came true. Yes, the Communists overran the south and forced the US to evacuate, and unleashed a flood of refugees, but today the US has nearly normal relations with Vietnam; we sell the Vietnamese Coca-Cola and iPods and GAP jeans and financial services and god knows what else. Vietnam is not a threat to its neighbors.
What the anti-war protestors knew in 2003 the majority of Americans know now – that on the basis of trumped-up intelligence and fear-mongering, the US invaded and occupied a sovereign nation that posed no military threat to our country. We knew the Invasion would not be a cake walk, and that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were wrong; we knew that Iraqi children would not throw flowers at the feet of American soldiers; we knew that age-old sectarian hatreds, bottled for decades by oppression and suppression, would erupt.
Millions of us knew that history was about to repeat; our political leaders refused to listen, and now, we are doomed to suffer the consequences of their vanity and ignorance.
Now that we’re mired in a civil war, the talking heads and Administration mouthpieces tell us that we cannot up and leave; disaster will result, enormous bloodshed, the US will lose all credibility (as if we have any left to lose), our vital national interests will be irreparably damaged. The same false choices were offered during the Vietnam conflict, but lo and behold, none of those horrible predictions came true. Yes, the Communists overran the south and forced the US to evacuate, and unleashed a flood of refugees, but today the US has nearly normal relations with Vietnam; we sell the Vietnamese Coca-Cola and iPods and GAP jeans and financial services and god knows what else. Vietnam is not a threat to its neighbors.
What the anti-war protestors knew in 2003 the majority of Americans know now – that on the basis of trumped-up intelligence and fear-mongering, the US invaded and occupied a sovereign nation that posed no military threat to our country. We knew the Invasion would not be a cake walk, and that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were wrong; we knew that Iraqi children would not throw flowers at the feet of American soldiers; we knew that age-old sectarian hatreds, bottled for decades by oppression and suppression, would erupt.
Millions of us knew that history was about to repeat; our political leaders refused to listen, and now, we are doomed to suffer the consequences of their vanity and ignorance.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
FEAR WITHOUT LOATHING
Bet on Fear, it’s a sure thing
Renewable and inexhaustible
The moving shadow at the edge of our campfire
The unknown sound in the middle of the night
If it’s not hate-filled Muslims
Child predators
Catholic priests
Male-pattern baldness
Impotence
Germ-laden hotel carpets
Identity theft
Credit card fraud
Computer viruses
E. coli
SARS
Avian flu
Arthritis
Discolored teeth & foul breath
It will be some old Fear made new
Trumpeted on the Tube
Echoing on the radio dial
Be afraid
Very afraid
Renewable and inexhaustible
The moving shadow at the edge of our campfire
The unknown sound in the middle of the night
If it’s not hate-filled Muslims
Child predators
Catholic priests
Male-pattern baldness
Impotence
Germ-laden hotel carpets
Identity theft
Credit card fraud
Computer viruses
E. coli
SARS
Avian flu
Arthritis
Discolored teeth & foul breath
It will be some old Fear made new
Trumpeted on the Tube
Echoing on the radio dial
Be afraid
Very afraid
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Second-Rate Power
I was listening to Noam Chomsky on KPFK today, good leftist radio, and Chomsky was talking about Iraq and the results of a US-sponsored poll that revealed that 87% of the Iraqi population wants the US to end its occupation on a set timetable.
Of course, the US regime could give a shit about this poll, even though Bush and his posse are committed to fostering democracy in Iraq. Democracy? Isn’t democracy concerned with the will of the majority? Not in Bush’s twisted Universe. Let’s not forget that Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000, but got bailed out by the Supreme Court and installed in the White House.
Chomsky went on and on, detailing US misdeeds, crimes, schemes, machinations, lies, mostly in connection with the Middle East and control of oil, the liquid that makes the global economy go round. If the US loses control of or access to oil, it could easily become a second-rate power, little better than Italy or France or Portugal; and how would Americans, encouraged by decades of official myth-making, deal psychologically with second-rate status?
That will be a hard pill to swallow, but it certainly seems that we are headed that direction. Sooner or later we will lose our ability to call the shots and rig the world for our own benefit. Then we’ll be like the San Francisco 49’s or the Oakland Raiders, once iconic teams that have fallen on lean times and can’t rise out of the cellar. Other nations will heap ridicule upon us the same way we have for decades heaped ridicule upon them. Hugo Chavez will drop his pants and piss on the White House steps.
Comeuppance is a terrible thing.
When did JFK’s New Frontier become this shit-train run and ruled by Bush and Cheney? What happened to our idealism? Or was all that stuff a hoax, a smokescreen, a big fucking lie? Camelot will not rise this time, not from the nuclear dust. Bush has set us on a collision course with disaster, and if you think there’s a savior in the wings, forget it. John Edwards is a fag, remember? Hillary has bigger balls than Barrack Obama. John McCain is a wingnut. Rudy G is impotent.
Meanwhile, Noam Chomsky drones on. I wish more people were listening.
Of course, the US regime could give a shit about this poll, even though Bush and his posse are committed to fostering democracy in Iraq. Democracy? Isn’t democracy concerned with the will of the majority? Not in Bush’s twisted Universe. Let’s not forget that Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000, but got bailed out by the Supreme Court and installed in the White House.
Chomsky went on and on, detailing US misdeeds, crimes, schemes, machinations, lies, mostly in connection with the Middle East and control of oil, the liquid that makes the global economy go round. If the US loses control of or access to oil, it could easily become a second-rate power, little better than Italy or France or Portugal; and how would Americans, encouraged by decades of official myth-making, deal psychologically with second-rate status?
That will be a hard pill to swallow, but it certainly seems that we are headed that direction. Sooner or later we will lose our ability to call the shots and rig the world for our own benefit. Then we’ll be like the San Francisco 49’s or the Oakland Raiders, once iconic teams that have fallen on lean times and can’t rise out of the cellar. Other nations will heap ridicule upon us the same way we have for decades heaped ridicule upon them. Hugo Chavez will drop his pants and piss on the White House steps.
Comeuppance is a terrible thing.
When did JFK’s New Frontier become this shit-train run and ruled by Bush and Cheney? What happened to our idealism? Or was all that stuff a hoax, a smokescreen, a big fucking lie? Camelot will not rise this time, not from the nuclear dust. Bush has set us on a collision course with disaster, and if you think there’s a savior in the wings, forget it. John Edwards is a fag, remember? Hillary has bigger balls than Barrack Obama. John McCain is a wingnut. Rudy G is impotent.
Meanwhile, Noam Chomsky drones on. I wish more people were listening.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Everywhere
The bastards are everywhere
Like lice or locusts
They come and go
In swarms
Chop off their heads and three more grow back
They are indestructible
Immune to poison gas and cyanide
To reason and moderation
Is there peace?
Or solitude?
Or silence?
A moment to commune with God or the Big Dipper?
Does anything we do matter?
To what do all the tears and agony amount
When we’re dust in a box in the ground?
The bastards are everywhere,
Turn around,
You’ll see
Like lice or locusts
They come and go
In swarms
Chop off their heads and three more grow back
They are indestructible
Immune to poison gas and cyanide
To reason and moderation
Is there peace?
Or solitude?
Or silence?
A moment to commune with God or the Big Dipper?
Does anything we do matter?
To what do all the tears and agony amount
When we’re dust in a box in the ground?
The bastards are everywhere,
Turn around,
You’ll see
Sunday, March 11, 2007
The Best the OC has to Offer?
We don’t watch a lot of Tube on the Balcony. Incessant Tube chatter drives the Proprietor mad, makes him irascible, and somewhat dangerous; he’s been known to throw empty beer cans at the screen, particularly when he sees the ghostly image of George W. Bush or Deadeye Dick Cheney. “War criminals!” he screams. “Asshole-motherfucking-shithead-bastards.”
It can get pretty ugly. American Tube fare mirrors the emptiness and vacuity of the nation. The average, unthinking, moronic American is captivated by crap. Just last evening the Proprietor, after reading the latest edition of the Nation (depressing news about inequality and official indifference to the rule of law, genocide in Africa, etc.,) was channel-surfing in search of Mexican League baseball or highlights from Spring Training, when he happened upon the Real Housewives of Orange County on BRAVO. Within twenty seconds he was muttering, “Sweet mother of Jesus, what the Hell is this?” His instinct for self-preservation told him to switch the Tube off and flee, but his feet disobeyed his brain and his eyes remained fixed on the absurd, pointless spectacle.
Orange County? Since when does anyone give a fuck about Orange County? And if these shit-for-brains women are the best the OC has to offer, if they are the poster ladies for the good life, then we are doomed to stand outside the Gates of Hell with our brains on fire. Talk about taking the trivial to a new level! Word up, OC housewives: excessive use of Silicon and Botox and hair care products can stunt your intellectual growth and turn you into a pathetic excuse for a human being. Your daily comings and goings are simply not that interesting, and filming them doesn’t make them more dramatic or arresting. Should I brush my teeth or take a crap? Wow! Should I shop at Nieman Marcus or the GAP? Corn flakes or granola? Should I get a Brazilian or have my asshole bleached – or both?
Up in Heaven, in a dark corner of the All Saints Bar & Grill, Charles Bukowski is laughing, Henry Miller is saying “I told you so,” and Hunter S. Thompson is filling a bong and placing a bet on the Knicks-Pacers game.
It can get pretty ugly. American Tube fare mirrors the emptiness and vacuity of the nation. The average, unthinking, moronic American is captivated by crap. Just last evening the Proprietor, after reading the latest edition of the Nation (depressing news about inequality and official indifference to the rule of law, genocide in Africa, etc.,) was channel-surfing in search of Mexican League baseball or highlights from Spring Training, when he happened upon the Real Housewives of Orange County on BRAVO. Within twenty seconds he was muttering, “Sweet mother of Jesus, what the Hell is this?” His instinct for self-preservation told him to switch the Tube off and flee, but his feet disobeyed his brain and his eyes remained fixed on the absurd, pointless spectacle.
Orange County? Since when does anyone give a fuck about Orange County? And if these shit-for-brains women are the best the OC has to offer, if they are the poster ladies for the good life, then we are doomed to stand outside the Gates of Hell with our brains on fire. Talk about taking the trivial to a new level! Word up, OC housewives: excessive use of Silicon and Botox and hair care products can stunt your intellectual growth and turn you into a pathetic excuse for a human being. Your daily comings and goings are simply not that interesting, and filming them doesn’t make them more dramatic or arresting. Should I brush my teeth or take a crap? Wow! Should I shop at Nieman Marcus or the GAP? Corn flakes or granola? Should I get a Brazilian or have my asshole bleached – or both?
Up in Heaven, in a dark corner of the All Saints Bar & Grill, Charles Bukowski is laughing, Henry Miller is saying “I told you so,” and Hunter S. Thompson is filling a bong and placing a bet on the Knicks-Pacers game.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Liberal Forms of Torture
Wouldn’t it be funny, not to mention appropriate, if old Teddy Kennedy bent Ann Coulter over a chair and fucked her from behind? Would Coulter consider being fucked from behind by an old Liberal a form of torture?
Interesting to contemplate, though I don’t give people of Ann Coulter’s ilk much thought, except to wonder why anyone with a moderate IQ gives what she says or writes any credence. Do they give her the benefit of the doubt because she’s thin and blonde? How do they know she doesn’t spend her evenings sucking on a crack pipe?
Coulter is the poster-girl for this dumbed-down, sound-bite age. If you read newspapers or listen to radio broadcasts from other countries, the world looks completely different than it does from the commercial perspective of the American corporate media. The American media treats citizens (consumers) like morons, too stupid to consider the many sides of an issue.
Instead of background and context, we get the carnival life & times of Anna Nicole Smith. While the world around us burns, we get American Idol. While George W. Bush and his criminal posse rape the middle class and invade other nations, we get frantic over Dancing with the Stars – all of whom happen to be has-beens. We get Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts fawning over one another breathlessly, like a couple of teenagers who recently discovered that they are attracted to members of their own sex.
Now, suppose Dick Cheney got to feeling frisky and decided to bend Ann Coulter over a chair and fuck her up the ass. Would that be OK with Ann, even considered an honor? I don’t know and don’t particularly care. As Bob Dylan so aptly put it, “People are crazy and times are strange.”
Amen, brother.
Interesting to contemplate, though I don’t give people of Ann Coulter’s ilk much thought, except to wonder why anyone with a moderate IQ gives what she says or writes any credence. Do they give her the benefit of the doubt because she’s thin and blonde? How do they know she doesn’t spend her evenings sucking on a crack pipe?
Coulter is the poster-girl for this dumbed-down, sound-bite age. If you read newspapers or listen to radio broadcasts from other countries, the world looks completely different than it does from the commercial perspective of the American corporate media. The American media treats citizens (consumers) like morons, too stupid to consider the many sides of an issue.
Instead of background and context, we get the carnival life & times of Anna Nicole Smith. While the world around us burns, we get American Idol. While George W. Bush and his criminal posse rape the middle class and invade other nations, we get frantic over Dancing with the Stars – all of whom happen to be has-beens. We get Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts fawning over one another breathlessly, like a couple of teenagers who recently discovered that they are attracted to members of their own sex.
Now, suppose Dick Cheney got to feeling frisky and decided to bend Ann Coulter over a chair and fuck her up the ass. Would that be OK with Ann, even considered an honor? I don’t know and don’t particularly care. As Bob Dylan so aptly put it, “People are crazy and times are strange.”
Amen, brother.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Poem - She's Dead
They know the contents of her stomach
Speculate on her state of mind
The father of her child
As if her death is the last piece of news
On the last day of life on Earth
They interview old friends, ex-friends, bartenders and cab drivers,
Attorneys, photographers, manicurists, and hypnotists;
Her image clogs the Tube night after night
Platinum hair and ruby lips
Blowing kisses for the cameras
Sad and tragic and dead
Her body cold, cold, cold
Why can’t they leave her alone?
Speculate on her state of mind
The father of her child
As if her death is the last piece of news
On the last day of life on Earth
They interview old friends, ex-friends, bartenders and cab drivers,
Attorneys, photographers, manicurists, and hypnotists;
Her image clogs the Tube night after night
Platinum hair and ruby lips
Blowing kisses for the cameras
Sad and tragic and dead
Her body cold, cold, cold
Why can’t they leave her alone?
Monday, February 19, 2007
Poem - What He Left
A pair of reading glasses
Gold-plated cigarette lighter
St. Christopher medal
Shot glass from Niagara Falls
Nail clippers
A key to an unknown door
Twelve one dollar bills
Two yellow golf tees
One miniature screwdriver
Expired drivers license
and a W-2 from the Golden Peacock Bar
What he left fit in a shoebox
The stuff rattled around;
His life was an open book,
In death he became a mystery
I split the money with my brother;
We ordered a round and raised our glasses
And did something we’d never done before –
Toasted our old man
Gold-plated cigarette lighter
St. Christopher medal
Shot glass from Niagara Falls
Nail clippers
A key to an unknown door
Twelve one dollar bills
Two yellow golf tees
One miniature screwdriver
Expired drivers license
and a W-2 from the Golden Peacock Bar
What he left fit in a shoebox
The stuff rattled around;
His life was an open book,
In death he became a mystery
I split the money with my brother;
We ordered a round and raised our glasses
And did something we’d never done before –
Toasted our old man
Saturday, February 17, 2007
A Classic 70/30 Split
The phone rang at 3:30 A.M., an hour of the morning ripe for bad news. As I stumbled for the phone in the dark my first thought was that someone in the family had died.
“Hello?”
“I saw your speech. You have a future as a Baptist preacher.”
“Dr. Duke?”
“Of course it’s me. Who else calls you at this hour?”
Duke had been out of touch for four months, off, I assumed, on one of his periodic excursions to Thailand or Outer Mongolia or gallivanting through Prague with an underage heiress.
In fact, as he was now telling me, he’d been in Kona, Hawaii, attending to business interests. Cannabis cultivation, I assumed, though, given the proclivity of the Bush Administration to eavesdrop on ordinary Americans, I had no intention of asking on an open telephone line. The trip had obviously gone well because he was sober and in high spirits, eager to incite revolution and mayhem.
“Not running for school board was a big mistake,” Duke said. “Those people desperately need someone with my peculiar talents. The foundation is crumbling and they stand around like shell-shocked sheep waiting for a miracle to save them. And whoever’s doing their PR needs a public flogging. Sweet Jesus, what kind of morons extend the big boss’s contract before taking care of their labor force? The first principle of leadership is to take care of your people. How the hell can a PhD not know that? Is the Superintendent that arrogant or that dense?”
“Beats me,” I said. “Maybe a little of both.”
“Looks like a classic 70/30 split to me,” Duke said. “If the man had a shred of moral decency he would have told the Board to delay extending his contract until after this mess with the teachers was settled. And then, for good measure, he would have refused any salary increase until his people got what they deserved. What kind of car does he drive?”
“A Lexus SUV, I think.”
“Yeah, that figures. Lexus, the official vehicle of elitist greedheads. Be that as it may, the Board put its collective foot in a steaming pile of walrus shit and the teachers will never forgive them or forget. Whether they meant to or not they made it abundantly clear that they value the Superintendent more than the people who do the heavy lifting. You don’t extend the contract of a man leading you to state receivership.”
“That’s the general consensus,” I said.
“Well, the Superintendent may have a contract through 2010, but he’s effectively washed up. His reputation is shot and his legacy will be one of failure and ineptitude. Amen.”
“Hello?”
“I saw your speech. You have a future as a Baptist preacher.”
“Dr. Duke?”
“Of course it’s me. Who else calls you at this hour?”
Duke had been out of touch for four months, off, I assumed, on one of his periodic excursions to Thailand or Outer Mongolia or gallivanting through Prague with an underage heiress.
In fact, as he was now telling me, he’d been in Kona, Hawaii, attending to business interests. Cannabis cultivation, I assumed, though, given the proclivity of the Bush Administration to eavesdrop on ordinary Americans, I had no intention of asking on an open telephone line. The trip had obviously gone well because he was sober and in high spirits, eager to incite revolution and mayhem.
“Not running for school board was a big mistake,” Duke said. “Those people desperately need someone with my peculiar talents. The foundation is crumbling and they stand around like shell-shocked sheep waiting for a miracle to save them. And whoever’s doing their PR needs a public flogging. Sweet Jesus, what kind of morons extend the big boss’s contract before taking care of their labor force? The first principle of leadership is to take care of your people. How the hell can a PhD not know that? Is the Superintendent that arrogant or that dense?”
“Beats me,” I said. “Maybe a little of both.”
“Looks like a classic 70/30 split to me,” Duke said. “If the man had a shred of moral decency he would have told the Board to delay extending his contract until after this mess with the teachers was settled. And then, for good measure, he would have refused any salary increase until his people got what they deserved. What kind of car does he drive?”
“A Lexus SUV, I think.”
“Yeah, that figures. Lexus, the official vehicle of elitist greedheads. Be that as it may, the Board put its collective foot in a steaming pile of walrus shit and the teachers will never forgive them or forget. Whether they meant to or not they made it abundantly clear that they value the Superintendent more than the people who do the heavy lifting. You don’t extend the contract of a man leading you to state receivership.”
“That’s the general consensus,” I said.
“Well, the Superintendent may have a contract through 2010, but he’s effectively washed up. His reputation is shot and his legacy will be one of failure and ineptitude. Amen.”
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