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

Civil War

“ …in every one of us..there’s a civil war going on….every time you set out to be good, there’s something pulling on you…every time you set out to love, something keeps pulling on you trying to get you to hate. Every time you set out to be kind and say nice things…something is pulling on you to be jealous and envious and spread evil gossip…..we end up crying out with St. Augustine “Lord make me pure but not yet.” (MLK - Unfulfilled Dreams)

I'm a white guy from a white family in a white neighborhood. I guess I was fortunate in that my parents and some of my older siblings were literate about race. I got smacked twice for bad language when I was a kid: once for calling my brother a cocksucker, and once for telling Mom that Anthony and I had gone nigger-knocking (In my defense, I did not, at age seven, know what either of those words meant). While I have used the first term a time or two since then, my education was such that I have not used the second since. I'm not pretending to empathize with the African-American experience; but I do try to be conscious of my thoughts and knee-jerk reactions, and I make an honest effort to root out the prejudices I find in myself.

So why the bullshit introspection/disclaimer? I reckon if a white guy is going to start a blog post with a quote from MLK, he'd best be honest about the ground on which he stands. This post isn't about race, though. I don't have the perspective or the chops to start that discussion. I was listening to NPR today, and they were playing excerpts from some of Dr. King's last sermons and speeches. The quote above is taken from a larger context in which Dr. King stated that, "life is a continual story of shattered dreams." He referenced Gandhi's ultimate heartbreak over a divided India, and he of course masterfully framed the concept in the arena of the Civil Rights movement. What struck me, though, was the blatant and almost illicit personal narrative occurring in Dr. King's voice and delivery. The NPR narrator speculated that King could have been drawing from his own purported personal struggles with adultery, but I don't know that the specific sin matters. I think he was saying that ain't nobody all one way, and that nobody is free of the capacity for destruction and debasement, self or otherwise. It's not a clear cut struggle, either. Some days it feels like all the things you do right are made false by the miserable and compulsive joy of entertaining wrong. Lust, rage, meanness...If somewhere in my brain it's considered, then it's as surely me as any good I may ultimately do. I'm not religious. I am, in fact, allergic to religion. As a non-religious white guy from a white family in a white neighborhood, though, I would, almost, follow whatever abstraction this black preacher told me to if it illuminated a way through this struggle. Too bad the fuckers had to kill him.

Much Peace.

Saturday Interlude

Max and Will (my twin two-year-olds) are lingering over their english muffins, eggs and juice while I make plans for the day. It is not so unbearably moist today, so we will likely pack a lunch and go survey what damage last night's storms did to one of the nearby state parks. The boys will be fascinated by the rarity of a full and fast-flowing Platte, and I will be glad to head outside and absorb light not produced by a computer monitor. Obviously, I am getting off the damn compter now.

Much Peace

Who's Going to Shoe His Holy Little Feet?

I suppose I should begin with a correction from yesterday's post, wherein I questioned his Grand High Holiness' credibility, in small part due to reports that he flaunted red Prada loafers as part of a Papal ensemble. A Vatican newspaper set the record straight, assuring us that the Lord High Brownshirt "does not wear Prada, but Christ."

Jesus forgive me, and all of us, who would for one minute believe that this model of simple living would ever succumb to the lure of worldly goods. Excepting, of course, his red fur-lined hat, his gold-embroidered robes and gold plated cups, and the long red velvet cape trimmed with ermine he wore to a recent event. As I recall, the poor carpenter from Galilee (who generations of Popes and other less exalted Christians have failed miserably to emulate) didn't go in much for ermine. I think Nero did, though, and probably Caligula. Given (then) Cardinal Benedict's attempts to cover up his corporation's widespread kiddy-diddling (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/24/children.childprotection), Caligula is the more accurate comparison.

Pit Bulls and SUVs

Pit Bull Terriers and Hummers send the same message to me: “My owner has a small penis and a tiny brain.” The two beasts may seem unrelated, but their genesis and proliferation are children of the same junkie whore mother.

Another pit bull attack in Omaha and another kid loses a portion of her anatomy. This time it was a 15-month-old baby with her scalp ripped off. The owner, a stereotypically unwashed, undereducated woman with obvious life issues, told television reporters she was sorry for what happened to the kids. 20/20 remorse. It would be nice if these short-sighted troglodytes considered the possible ramifications of keeping their killer “pets” in an urban area with children. Are there not enough documented cases of kids getting their faces or genitals bitten off by noble Staffordshires to pierce the fog of terminal adolescence that surrounds the owners of these dogs? Seriously, how self-absorbed does a person have to be to put his own misanthropic desire for a big mean dog ahead of the safety and well-being of his community?

… about as self-absorbed as the cases of arrested development who drive Hummers and other big SUVs during an energy crisis. Just pop some Extenze, for chrissake, or better yet, get over yourself and realize you’re still a selfish, juvenile, strutting little peacock no matter what you drive. Sure, sure: we have the Divinely granted freedom to engage in whatever self-and-socially destructive behavior the Gods of Oligarchy deem profitable (provided it’s nothing so benign as marrying whom you want or smoking weed), and I am not suggesting we ban SUVs. I would, however, like to bitch-slap some perspective and self worth into the bitches hogging the highway and the resources in their rolling self-esteem chambers.

These are just two lurid examples of what is really the fundamental and basic compulsion of our entire culture and economy: the Holy Pursuit of Unnecessary Goods. The more extravagant and nonsensical the purchase, the more negative the fallout elsewhere, the more valuable it will be seen by you and the Joneses.

For example, women want diamonds because, like ravens and crows, they like to line their nests with shiny things. Pathetic men purchase these overpriced shards of coal in the hope of a consistent date less efficient than their own right hands. Both parties in this blatant bit of prostitution ignore the well-publicized fact that folks half a world away are being raped and murdered to supply hooker and john with their trinket of respectability. Again: It’s not a secret that many of us were married with conflict diamonds. It just doesn’t matter to us. Those little things are just so damn pretty; a few dead kids in Africa are a small price to pay to stroke our fancy and our egos.

It’s all of a piece. We define ourselves by what we own, setting a baseline of narcissism and materialism. I don’t believe the Superstitious Right when they preach about Christian values in their $1,000.00 sweetwater suits and 3000-square-foot homes. I don’t believe God’s Pit Bull, the current Catholic Pope, who rails against vague materialism while strutting in his red Pradas and blessing fleets of Ferraris.

I don’t believe the purportedly socially and environmentally conscious left, whether D.C. or Hollywood, who talk a pretty good game, but who zip back and forth in private jets and fuel the most banal brand-minded consumerism. When push comes to shove, neither Barack nor Hillary will actually alter their lifestyles or consumer habits for the greater good, any more than would Bush or a Saudi prince. There really isn't much difference between the illiterate troll who keeps a pit bull, the preening suburbanite getting 10 mpg in his Hummer, and the middle class consumer who pays no attention to where his diamonds, shirts or coffee come from. The underlying attitude is, "we gots to get ours, and screw the consequences."

Much Peace