Glacial Change

So I was asked for whom I am going to vote in this year's presidential election. The factors I am (or am not) considering are as follows:

The Economy. To be frank, the economy barely figures into my decision-making. For one thing, the President has little practical effect on the economy, regardless of what the spin doctors say. We have become a petroleum-based economy, and our major recessions are inextricably linked to the cost of petroleum, the deflated housing bubble notwithstanding. That is not going to change until we as consumers make it change, or until there is a significant collapse due to a worldwide shortage of petroleum. There are a few regulatory positions with which I generally side with the Democrats (such as requiring banks to be honest and careful with people's money), but in general, I believe that there's not much government can do to change the economy.

Abortion. There is not a politician at the national level who is going to seriously attempt to criminalize abortion. Enforcement would be impossible, given the number of providers, and it would be political suicide to try. While I personally think abortion is just one more way for folks in our culture (particularly men) to avoid responsibility for their actions, I am forced to consider it a political non-issue.

Religion. I don't think we have, as our Monkey-in-Chief posited, "a mandate from beyond the stars." If people find comfort in the belief that a sentient and benevolent overlord cares about them, and if that encourages them to treat their neighbors well, then I am all for it. If, however, they think their religious identity gives them the right to wage war, or to commit genocide, or to diddle kids, or to fly planes or drive trucks into buildings, well then they and their respective bearded sky fairies can go fuck themselves. Religious arguments effectively end debate. How can anyone advance a practical position against the infallible holy word of the gods? So I guess I could care less to what abstraction our President prays, as long as Christ or Jehovah or Allah isn't informing his or her policy decisions.

(In answer to a previous query, I suppose I am atheist, if I am any -ist at all. I would need to see the pillar of fire or put my fingers in the nail holes.)

The Environment. I am almost exclusively sympathetic with Democratic policy positions in regard to the environment, as those positions are absolutely more conservative than those of the right wing. It just makes sense to conserve, look down the road and have back-up plans should things go awry. Any energy policy that does not begin with the acknowledgement that fossil fuels are a finite resource is just plain silly. The whole idea that we can drill our way out of high gas prices or foreign oil dependency makes zero sense. Let's allow for the sake of argument that there is significant recoverable oil off our shores or in the Arctic. When Texaco extracts that oil, are they somehow going to sell it at discounted prices exclusively to U.S. consumers? Only if we nationalize our oil industry, which is something we've overthrown other governments for doing. Truth is, Texaco and Exxon would sell that oil on the world market at market prices, and there is simply not enough extractable oil to make an appreciable dent in those prices. Beyond the short-term pricing concerns, it is fact that we will ultimately run out of oil, whether it happens in 20, 50, 100 or 500 years. Rather than desperately freebasing the last of those supplies, why would we not devote our money and energy to conservation and innovation? I mean, Jesus Christ, have we lost our fabled American ingenuity?

Foreign Policy. I'm not like that college professor who called the folks who died on 9/11 "little Eichmanns," but I am also not an anti-fact Hannity drone who thinks 9/11 happened in a policy vacuum and was the work of folks who hate us for our freedom. If our foreign policy is fundamentally exploitative (as it has been for over a century), those who are exploited will eventually do whatever they can to strike back. Does this mean that the people in the WTC deserved to die? Absolutely not. It does mean that 9/11 was predictable. Drawing correlations or positing causation btween U.S. actions in middle-eastern countires and terrorist attacks by middle-eastern men on U.S. soil is NOT unpatriotic. Quite the opposite, it is responsible and necessary. It doesn't mean, as the right wing would have you believe, that we have kumbaya moments with militants, or that we stop fighting terrorists. It means that we should consider the repercussions of our actions in Muslim countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. I love my country, and I am pretty goddamn pissed at some of the things being done with my flag and in my name. Again, I lean towatds the Democrats here because I think a thoughtful considered approach is more conservative and effective than the current shoot from the hip and devil take the consequences mentality. Everybody is going to spend a shitload on defense and security. That infrastrucure is not budging (see Eisenhower's farewell address). I think Obama represents a micro-departure from previous administrations, and a broader and longer-term view of what really constitutes "U.S. interests."

Both of these candidates are owned by special anterests and lobbyists, whatever their arguments to the contrary may be. You don't reach that level of politics without being beholden to a bunch of people, both good and slimy, so don't kid yourself that these guys are free of slime. They're not. I am voting for Obama because of the differences in environmental and energy policy, and because I think he will be smarter and more deliberate in regard to foreign policy

Here's the real thing, though: Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain are going to visibly change the direction or dynamic of our culture. As a people, we are driven not towards freedom or harmony or love, but towards luxury. By luxury I do not mean an abundance of food, water and shelter. Every culture since the emergence of Homo Sapiens sapiens has striven for secure food sources and safety from the elements. Our pursuit of luxury does not end with plenty. It's not sufficient to have enough to eat and clean water to drink, or to have different clothes for every day of the week. It's not enough to have shelter from the elements and soft beds in which to sleep. This belief that more things will improve one's life is the fundamental crisis of our culture, and is addressed, generally, by neither left nor right. So if you want change, if you really want to create a healthier and more sustainable world for your kids (or for my kids, who are ridiculously smart and funny) than we're going to have to do it our own goddamn selves.

Much Peace,
ThomasJ

Your Kids Are Not Special

600,000 Iraquis are dead because you spoil your kids, or more accurately, because several hundred years worth of western Europeans, including you, have spoiled their kids. The fundamental dynamic of these European United States is not freedom or opportunity. It is still Manifest Destiny. Just like a spoiled little child, "waaaaah...Saddam kicked out BP and Texaco," we throw a tantrum until we get what we want. Rather than beating our heels against the floor and crying, though, the physical effects of our national tantrum are cluster bombs and widows and orphans. Like a pampered 3-year-old in high dudgeon, we simply cannot comprehend the fact that another nation may have the right to control their own natural resources. So we overthrow Allende and install Pinochet. At the behest of British Petroleum, we overthrow a democratically elected Iranian government and install the Shah. Through military and economic force, we make certain that a populist uprising in Cuba will fail. Our goal is not (and has never been) to spread freedom. Our goal has always been to make sure that all significant economic markets and natural resources are open to our exploitation. Was Pinochet's government democratic? Was the Shah's? Democracy is cosmetic in our corporate war on people that want to live differently than us. Sure, they can determine their own destiny and establish their own governments, as long as those governments put European-American economic interests first and their people a distant second. The threat of a Euro-American napalm tantrum is enough to keep most of them in line. Unfortunately, over a century of slash and burn foreign policy has resulted in our current day to day terror threat.

....and it all comes down to you spoiling your kids, teaching them that they're "special" and instilling a sense of bottomless entitlement. Kids are mammals and, contrary to the teachings of most Eastern and Occidental religions, part of the large and interdependent community of carbon-based life forms. Feed them, protect them, take care of them, but for chrissake don't teach them that they're little gods. I have a biological responsibilty to my boys, a genetic imperative simplistically labelled "love," but I hold no illusions that they deserve more than anyone else because of their race, nationality or baptism. If they grow up thinking they're better than the kids they meet at the playground, then I will have utterly failed as a father. I will also have passed on, in the most fundamental and binding way possible, the Western European ideal of imperialism, the concept that through some inate function of identity divorced from action or rationality, we have the entitlement to whatever we want, even if sating our want means taking its object by force from those who lack the might to stop us.

Much Peace