"I think they are all homosexual communists in Satan's army...I espect as well they all live together and bathe together every morning and have the anal sex with one another, with the fisting and the guinea pigs." - Manuel Estimulo
"I can never quite tell if the defeatists are conservative satirists poking fun at the left or simply retards. Or both. Retarded satire, perhaps?" - Kyle
"You're an effete fucktard" - Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom
"This is the most pathetic blog ever..." - Ames Tiedeman
"You two [the Rev and el Comandante] make an erudite pair. I guess it beats thinking." - Matt Cunningham (aka Jubal) of OC Blog
"Can someone please explain to me what the point is behind that roving gang of douchebags? I’m being serious here. It’s not funny, and doesn’t really make anything that qualifies as logical argument. Paint huffers? Drunken high school chess geeks?" - rickinstl
MG Larry Lust representing the United States Army at a Ceremony in the Republic of Ireland.
The Great Larry J. Lust, Major General, US Army (Retired) was one of my commanding officers. He and I occasionally communicate and while he made me crazy at times when I worked for him, I appreciate his honor, integrity and kindness greatly. And, in addition to being a royal pain in the ass, I have to acknowledge that his requirements resulted in my doing some of my best work as a First Sergeant and eventually figured out that was actually the idea for all of the COSCOM.
The boss and I stay in loose contact. He sends out some weekly bits of advice, and frankly, some of them are kind of weird, but most of them are both relevant and worth thinking. The weirdness I attribute to him being from Kansas and a Republican. Anyway, he recently sent a couple, and I have incorporated them into my rules for living.
So, here are my rules for living. I invite comment. Citations provided where they exist and are not syntheses from my fevered mind.
1. Don't be a jerk.
2. Nobody has to be in charge, but if the situation requires and nobody else wants to be in charge or can do it well, take charge but do it as well as possible.
3. In the face of jerks, see rule 1.
4. In anger, take a deep breath, close your eyes and turn away for a minute. Gain composure and return to conversation. Scares the hell out of the bastards...and makes your point.
5. Somethings are worth dying for; most things are not. Choose wisely. No mere job is worth an aneurysm.
6. There are only two things in life -- things we can control, things we can't. Focus effort on what you can control but watch the other stuff carefully. (My loose translation from Epictetus.)
7. Things are always screwed up. So, any improvement, no matter how slight, is a meaningful accomplishment. (My loose translation from Marcus Aurelius)
8. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living; I say, the unexamined life is not led. (Kierkegaard, The Concluding Unscientific Postscript)
9. The true measure of an individual is how he or she treats others who can do him or her absolutely no good. (L.J. Lust, MG, USA)
10. Anger is an honest emotion. William James) You have the right to be angry; you don't have the right to be cruel. (L.J. Lust, MG, USA)
11. I beseech thee, by the bowels of our Lord Jesus Christ, to remember that thee may be wrong! (Noted Liberation Theologian and Democratic Activist, Oliver Cromwell)
12. Some days you do things that change the world; some days, you pardon a turkey. (Barrack Obama) So, do what you are doing as best you can without regard for the consequences. (Ignatius Loyola)
Not Lust, but Cromwell
After retirement, General Lust went off to war again, this time in Iraq as a senior Manager with KBR. We communicated occasionally, and I got the strong feeling that he wasn't happy with the situation, but thought that he could make a difference. I do know that stress, heat, and the fact that retired generals are by definition old farts caught up and he had some severe health problems. On home leave, he had a serious health issue, and his wife and high school sweetheart dragged his reluctant old ass off to the emergency room and he got to leave KBR. He's never shared with me, but I got the strong impression that he ultimately decided that was a better result than going back. He now is a faculty member at the Command and General Staff College and I shudder to think of his attention to detail, wit and directness applied to a paper of mine. Fortunately, I'm not one of his students or subordinates today; just a friend.
As the Army returns to full spectrum warfare which used to be called High Intensity warfare which was called Airland Battle which was called Warfighting...anyway, in 2006 General Lust pointed out to me that he was meeting lots of Armored Battalion Officers who had never qualified a company at Tank Gunnery who were now Battalion S3s or XOs as well as Brigade Commanders who had never qualified a battalion at Gunnery. I was finding tank mechanics who had never worked on a tank after AIT that we were hiring at the NTC to work on tracks. Kind of an interesting conundrum there, ehh?We both politely indicated that we thought this was just a helluva problem and worried about what was going to happen to our Army. Guess we still do. Well, neither one of us is in the Defense Contracting business anymore, and I doubt the Russians are going to invade Western Europe anytime soon. But...
I think the old man will be happy with the company. Well, maybe not Obama and Cromwell. Maybe Cromwell -- in addition to regicide and religious dictatorship, Cromwell started off as a pretty strong Cavalry Commander. So did Lust.
As for the Music, well, probably the Allison Krause. Maybe not Traffic. But, we're all about the same age and he's surprised me before.
Friend of mine in Concord, California has an incredibly bizarre job – he's a coordinator for Disabled Student services at a district junior college. He's actually a pretty nice guy, like a lot of other cops, soldiers, firefighters, social workers, hospice workers and so on, but the clients drive him crazy. Fat people, blind people, crazy people, mildly retarded people, crippled people, deaf people and on and on and on and on. Lots of people in the college administration have great ideas about how to save money, how to take care of students, how to do just about everything but no one has the money to do any of it, including saving money. A student who had never approached his office for assistance is suing the college for lack of access to some classes; a Dean decides to sell a perfectly good van and replace it with some extended golf carts that do not have the ground clearance for the easy navigation of the myriad speed bumps; cuts in staff have everyone on edge. He is saved from madness by being a cancer survivor, which is a fairly consuming hobby of course and by being interested in a lot of strange stuff. He announced today that some new study shows that the proton is even SMALLER than previously thought, by about 4%. How exciting, as Doc Holliday might say apropos of Kate's non-utilization of the bustle, how lewd. Well, not really.
Instead of celebration, however, the result has caused consternation. Such a big discrepancy, say the physicists, led by Randolf Pohl of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, could mean that the most accurate theory in the history of physics, quantum electrodynamics, which describes how light and matter interact, is in trouble.
"What you have is a result that actually shocked us," said Paul Rabinowitz, a chemist from Princeton University, who was a member of Dr. Pohl's team.
The results were published in Nature. Protons, of course, have not shrunk. They have been whatever size they are ever since they congealed out of a primordial soup of energy and even smaller particles — quarks and gluons — in the early moments of the Big Bang. Determining how big they are, however, is both important to fundamental physics and extremely difficult.
At the risk of being cynical, duh! Most theories are resolved as proven or unproven or wrong when a new fact – the existence of gravity, the non-monadial construction of the universe, the estimation of the area under a curve, the utility of bread mold in treatment of disease, the size of protons – becomes known and screws the theories up. The Author points out that everything is still the same, but the calculations will probably come out significantly different. By, oh, some factor of 4%. But, the universe will still move.
Should have heard him about Higgs Boson. By the way, he was a theatre major. Go figure.
My thought when I read the note and article was that well, that just means there is maybe more nothing that everything is made of. In the general understanding of nuclear physics as a model for the universe, most of the atom is empty space through which electrons zing and zip and zig and zag. They now have four percent more space to do it in. There's even more nothing; and, you take all that nothing, and suddenly you have something. What that something is may be surprising, or not. But sometimes, there is just too much of nothing to make something of… Which, of course, leads to current events, non-events, imaginary happenings and so on.
Fiscal Cliff/Debt Ceiling/ Budgeting Kerfluffle
If there was any great doubt as to the wholly owned subsidiary nature of the Republicans in Congress to the Big Money, well, those results were made abundantly clear through out this. Not good news in terms of liberty, of course, but you'd think that the House could be quickly brought to heel. Nope, not likely. John Boehner has a coalition party up against Pelosi and her coalition party. However, Nancy Pelosi has built a pretty strong framework, a pretty strong bond of loyalty and we're all Democrats while allowing room for conscience. Since the idiocy and hyper-partisanship of the Hastert rule, the Republicans have pretty much emasculated the speaker. For those of you who don't know what the Hastert rule may be, don't be surprised. It's more Capital Hill gobbledegook, Gingrichian-Rovian madness that discourages compromise and working across the aisle. For the Speaker to allow a bill to come to the floor, he must have a Majority of the Majority. In other words, with 233 Republicans, Boehner feels compelled by that non-rule rule to not bring a vote until his whips assure him he has at 162 solid, sure, no shit votes. There are times when he just can't get there; he could pass the legislation, but he'd need to go to Pelosi and Hoyer to get them to agree to give him enough Democrats to pass the bill. He doesn't want to do that because it makes him look weak. So, while there have been things done lately with some necessary Democratic support, Boehner knows that there are a lot of things he can't get done unless Nancy P agrees, and he's afraid of the price for her agreement.
Now, when the Koch Bros tell you to put a schnizzle on that konizzel, so to speak, about deficits and spending cuts and debt limits, you're pretty far out there into tinfoil hat conspiracy country. Yet, despite the fact to which I will stipulate – most congressional Republicans are not teriary stage syphilitic madmen and women babbling this nonsense at home and in their sleep, most of them know it's all insane and they just went along with this, you know, out of poltics and foolin' around and now, Jesus Christ, what have we done! – they have to worry about the majority of their majority. How many of their base voters in their gerrymandered districts are this crazy? Do they have to worry about a primary challenge in their safe little home? Well, yeah – if Mitch Turtle McConnell is worried about a Tea Party challenge, then they need to worry in the house if Representative Katey "I'm conservative not crazy" Kracker might get opposed by someone who confuses World Net Daily with the Daily News and thinks they can channel Adam Smith and Joe McCarthy through their smart phone. A World Nut Daily type, who may win the nomination and then the seat unless they're able to do the whole Christine O'Donnell and the Democrat wins…and the former incumbent has to get a real job. How many lobbyists can K street accommodate?
So, the R's will continue to do stupid shit – retire the deficit without massive new revenue in ten years? Violate the constitution? Hold their breath and turn blue? Recite the Constitution but this time on helium? – that will be meaningless, and if they are in danger of actually hurting the economy as opposed to just not helping it, the big money dogs will pull them to heel. Nothing much to see here – intellectual and moral bankruptcy is more of a void than a spectacle.
Women in Combat – Ever Hear Boudicca? Joan of Arc?
Possibly apocryphal, but the story goes that for years, the Ranger Training Regiment has never outright refused a woman candidate. Come on in and join the fun; so far, no one has wanted to hang around too long. I can understand that – it takes a certain degree of testosterone charged madness to want to go through twelve weeks of deprivation, exhaustion, bullying and macho mind games. For the record, I'm in favor of all of that, by the way.
The issue in the Army and Marines has been locations on the battlefield; the issue for the Navy has been largely types of ships to which women could be assigned. I don't expect to see a woman command Special Operations Command or the Combined Arms School at Fort Benning any time soon. I do, however, expect that any supposedly closed opportunities in logistics, maintenance, intelligence, aviation or missiles will be seriously evaluated and there will be some openings. As for the issue of women receiving recognition for the combat they have seen and supposedly have been denied, well, again I can only speak with some comfort for the Army but I suspect it's largely BS. Granted, the Army is the only service with the combat patch and the combat infantry badge. However, the initiation of the Close Combat Badge a few years ago was intended to address the problem of folks without infantry MOS who deserved some sort of recognition. I know a number of women soldiers who won that thing in Iraq and they tend to make light of it which generally means in Army culture that they're very, very proud of the award and earned it not to get the award but to get the job done. One of them, Captain Nastashia Faye (USAR) joked about being under fire under her desk…in Takrit. (Stash, by the way, is very heavily into Extreme Cross Fit to the point where she doesn't make my teeth hurt, she scares me…she gets mad at me, I'm rolling over on my back and whimpering. Incredibly fit, very smart, very focused and nastily subtle sense of evil humor. ) Combat patches for women started showing up very quickly after Desert Shield. There is no way to ignore the assignment of women to units in combat without willful blindness. Not, of course, that I deny the existence of willful blindness in the military, government or the world at large. That would require willful blindness…
I suspect we'll see a change in assignment trees and such. But, the nature of the modern battlefield makes all lines pretty arbitrary. Where, when a major offensive weapon for the other side is a vest full of explosives detonated in a crowded marketplace or movie theatre is the combat zone? You can't delineate it anymore with maps and signs. It's there…Even more obvious to me is the change in the nature of war. A friend of mine, someone I love and admire greatly is a retired Navy Nurse, Mary Kelly. A mustang, Mary was a First Class Petty Officer and realized that she was never going to get the sort of assignments that would let her make Chief; so, she went into a nursing education program at 12 years or so service. Mary was the first female Officer in Charge of the Independent Corpsman program for the Naval Training Center at San Diego. Navy Corpsman provide the medics for the Marines – independent corpsman provide service both to the Marines combat units as their medics and for smaller ships where no doctor is assigned. She had a bought with cancer and another one with bureaucracy and retired at 28 years as a Lieutenant Commander. Anyway, my main reason for mentioning this is in this shot…a Marine Sergeant, a Marine Lance Corporal, and a Navy Corpsman working Psyops and Community Relations in Afghanistan. You cross the border into Afghanistan and you're in combat. (It's been that way since Elphinstone led his Army into Pathan country back in Flashman days, by the way. Somethings never freaking change…) The photo above shows Women Marines coming back from a patrol with AFGHAN FORCES, unloading weapons. These warriors are extraordinary, not because they are women but because of the nature of what they are doing. Making a big deal of an administrative and clerical change is just silly.
A friend of mine, a radical Catholic Feminist theologian named Mary Hunt recently published an article comparing the opening of combat assignments to women to what she regards as the inevitable opening of ordination to women to the Catholic priesthood. To an interesting extent, she's not so sure that either is really a good idea but that's just the way life is. She points out that the original opening of the majority of military occupations to women was driven by demographic realities inherent in the volunteer force. With a huge amount of the American Catholic priesthood being over 70, she doesn't see anyway the Catholic Church can avoid this. She's just not sure that on the whole, that would work to the individual woman's or women in general's advantage. There's some really cogent thinking and argument here; Mary reminds me of George Will at times, but in a good way.
Like women in combat, non-ordained people do what needs to be done pastorally and argue the details later. This is how social change happens. Laws are made and changed in response to already existing situations, not to fantasies. (My emphasis)
There are plenty of differences between these two cases. Those who promote women in combat probably do not want to change the fundamental nature of the military. Women priests already exist through ordination processes that parallel the official one, and plenty of Catholic women minister in their own ways. But what feels so dismayingly familiar is that we who struggle for justice only live to see such a fraction of what we envision.
I am not persuaded by incrementalist arguments. I do not think that women entering combat will change the bellicose ways of the US military. If anything, I think it will reinforce the importance of the warrior, re-inscribe the role of the hero who risks death and kills the enemy. That seems to me an awfully high price for equality. For priests, the entrance of women into the Roman Catholic clerical caste will reinforce the status and role of clergy and re-inscribe the power of difference (they are not lay people anymore). What a steep tab for proving the simple point of gender equality.
I find that viewpoint interesting, on target but probably not particularly relevant. Tell a group of human beings that they can't do something, however awful the something might be, and there will be some who won't be able to resist demanding to try. The presence of women in combat will not alter the nature of combat; the presence of women in the priesthood will not alter the priesthood. Fundamental change requires fundamental change. A woman warrior is a warrior; a woman priest is a priest. A cup of coffee is a cup of coffee. Lots of space inside the atom for variations that don't really alter the atom; lots of places in the organism for variation without fundamentally changing the organism. Lots of emptiness out there, more than we can fill… (To be continued, with the Filibuster, al Jazeera and related madness)
While looking for some pictures to
tie this piece together, I discovered this – The Greek Christmas Goblins not to
be confused with Krampus. Krampus is there to screw with the bad children, but
the Kalikantzaroi
are there to screw with Christmas.
Who says Santa
Claus is the only one trying to come down your chimney during the
festive season? According to Greek mythology, a gaggle of goblin-like spirits
are trying to slide into homes -- and instead of presents they are intent on
leaving a trail of destruction. As the
Greeks tell it, it wouldn't be hard to confuse theTwelve
Days of Christmas with the Twelve Days of Hell. That is if you believe
in the Kallikantzaroi.
Well, there’s definitely reason when we think about it to
see this as a definite possibility. The
recent madness in Sandy Hook is a marvelous metaphor for the impact of reality
striking the sensibilities this time of the year. I spend a couple of weeks
before and after braced for the next bad deal – invade someplace?
Pestilence? Riots? Tsunami? Tiffany,
Goddess of the Defeatists and Malcontents, is definitely driven to
distraction by the all the sugar consumed and her consequent inability to fit
into her skinny jeans, so she wrecks havoc on the world around us…part petulant
teenage fit, part evil deity exercise program.
There’s a young artist up in Denver, Katey Laurel, who for some odd reason decided to
follow me on Twitter. Since we don’t actually know each other, I always
react to “Follows” like Henri the Cat would if he actually typed his tweets to
his peeps….I check out who they are. If they are interesting, I follow them.
Katey has a gorgeous voice, excellent guitar taste, plays very well and is very
much an upbeat and positive type of the sort that gets Henri and me feeling
nervous. But, talent, music and beauty cover a multitude of sins. In our
occasional correspondence, I referred to her as
“hippy Dale Evans” which she seemed to like. Snarky as that sounds, I
can’t see a downside.
However, AXE’s world does have some standards. One of them
is a vomit-reaction to anything approaching a sentimental attitude at Christmas
that could be mistaken for commercialism. When I was a practicing Catholic or actively
non-practicing Catholic, I felt that Christmas was a silly feast. If you buy
the whole Christian mythos – and a number of other mythos with similar stories
that pre-date Christianity – the true center is neither word becoming flesh nor
dwelling amongst us but the 36 or so hours between the death of Jesus on the
Cross and the stone rolling away on Sunday morning at dawn. The whole torture,
suffering and death thing serves as a horrible prologue for something outside
of human experience.
But, human beings love cuddly, warm and bright at least for the most part. I’ve
never had a Goth girlfriend, but I suspect that even they feel the need for
warmth, security and brightness in the night. So, Christmas evolved and despite
the best efforts of the Puritans and Roundheads and the Jansenists and bunches
of other people, Christmas is the center
of everyone’s world for six months of so. Good Friday and Easter get a token
nod, maybe some Lenten fasting and abstinence but there’s no real hysteria and
commercial upside to Easter. Eggs, chocolate and hats do very well. Not like
Christmas…
So, Katey decided to do a Christmas song every day.
Bleech…and post them on her blog. What is nice and authentic about them is that
she just turns on her web cam, sits down with the guitar and plays the song,
and then does whatever a Colorado-Hippy-Cowgirl type does for the rest of her
time. It would be a lot of fun to just sit around with her and play by the
way…she’s got a marvelous voice and an attractiveness in the purest sense that
would make her easy to accompany. What
wasn’t cool was her suggestion that she’d like to do a Christmas album for next
year. My immediate response, on Twitter, was”Are you changing your name to
Bambi?” She obviously got the joke, because she not only favorited it, she
re-tweeted it. However, after hitting send, I thought why not do an
existentialist Christmas album.
Objectively, Christmas is a really schizoid kind of holiday.
For six weeks or so, everything operates at a level of hysteria such that the
entire world is torn between glee, despair, love, hate, anger, angst, joy and
fear. The emotional roller coaster is shadowed by the looming debt, the stress
of “loved ones,” the joys of travel in the US today and so on. It’s
unavoidable…inescapable…insatiable. And then, of course, on the 26th
the post Christmas commercial blitzkrieg takes center stage, the toys don’t
work, the tree comes down, the crumbs are vacuumed, the cats come out of hiding
and every one gets ready for the cycle to begin again. Poorer, older, fatter
and more depressed…sugar high, crashing blood sugar low.
People die around Christmas. It’s not just the uptick in
suicides which may or may not be mythical. A lot of old and sick folks stop
fighting around Christmas and just go. It’s a time of ends and beginnings. The
coldest and darkest time of the year, 3 days into winter which is already
turning from darkness to light.
I fleshed out my
suggestion to Katey for a more Either/Or Christmas album. I could see this as a single
artist project, an ensemble or a larger collaboration. Do a traditional
Christmas song and then counterpoint it with a Christmas song of angst, anger,
despair or whatever that would model the dark side. Perhaps a Harlequin
Christmas although I like the Either/Or concept. I stole the title from
Kierkegaard, one of my favorite thinkers…and, for K at the end, there was an
effort to synthesize the aesthetic and the ethical realms into the religious
realm, the Both/And.
I sent her a tentative song list, and she said she was going to check out the
videos I linked. Now, it is probably not a terribly commercial idea – do you
think? – and I can understand it if she doesn’t jump all over it. Still, I
think Katey and a couple of other guitars, maybe a blues harp, maybe a violin,
some simple drums and a string bass, and Christmas would be honestly and
respectfully portrayed.
Although I never made it to the Stilge Nacht, Helige Nacht
church in Austria, I have attended Midnight Mass in small village churches in
Germany and Austria where the light was from candles and a fireplace and the
instruments were guitars, flutes and zithers. The starker, simpler arrangements
are special. At the same time, some of the greatest commercial songwriters in
the glory days of Broadway, Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley touched the Christmas
theme. So, why not…
So, here’s my partial play list, proposed from the Dark Side
of the Force for Christmas... The
Guardian has a marvelous piece on how Fairytale came to be. This is one of the most popular contemporary
Christmas songs, and one of the few Christmas songs I have ever bothered to
learn how to play. Part of it is the Irish part of it of course – an early
version has some lyrics beginning “it was a cold dark night in County
Claire/and I looked to the west and wondered what’s over there…” Part of it is of course, it’s America…”it’s
got cars big as bars, it’s got rivers of gold? but the wind blows right through
you it’s no place for the old/when you first took my hand on that cold
Christmas eve/You promised that Broadway was waiting for me”…Failure, loss,
despair and love gone bad: “I could have
been someone/Well so could anyone, You took my dreams from me when I first
found you…”and, maybe hope triumphant…”The Boys of the NYPD Choir still singing
Galway Bay and the bells were ringing out on Christmas Day!”
Robert Earle Keen is one of the non-Gonzo
Texas Alternative Country musicians, closer to Townes Van Zandt in substance
and Guy Clark in style with some Lyle Lovett tones. Which makes a lot of sense,
given that Clark and Lovett were roommates and band mates and fellow English
Majors at Texas A&M. Like Clark he confronts reality in a sort of
off-kilter way that is truer to the whole thing than fantasy or straight
reporting could be. The Robert Earle Classic, Merry Christmas from the Family
is so true to Christmas gatherings and families and family issues. This is the
other Christmas song I’ve bothered to learn. Now, if you love Texas, the song
is pretty whimsically real, but it doesn’t have to be Texas…I was the Irish
boyfriend at a Sicilian Christmas decades ago, and yes they were connected.
“Sister brought her new boyfriend/He was a Mexican/We didn’t know what to think
of him/ Until he sang Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad…”
A
Christmas
Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis is Neko Case singing Tom Watts...Despite
being an acquaintance of mine, Neko Case one of the most talented
singer-songwriters working these days or any days. Powerful voice, expressive
and alternatively yearning, defiant and reflective. Hell, simultaneously
yearning, defiant and reflective. Her twitter remarks are worth the price of
admission alone. She’s a unique talent, responding to a piece of my snark with
“Crusader AXE, if I wanted a father, I’d buy one.” However, she complains about
Christmas and indicates that this is just not her happiest time of the year,
she’s the kind of great soul, kind heart and love-filled spirit sheathed in a
protective coating of red-headed angst and cynicism that makes her perfect to
deliver this song. ”Everyone I used
to know is either dead or in prison/Came back to Minneapolis and this time I
think I’llstay…” Waits
version is perhaps more authentic, but less affecting and less humane. Valid
still, but Neko owns this song.
The
Hives are 90s garage-punk rock from LA and everybody knows Cyndi Lauper.
However, there is more happening here than it seems, and frankly, I’ve heard
arguments like this from lots of people. This is a lot realer than we’d like it
to be. I’m kind of amazed at Lauper – she’s gone a long way musically from
wince-producing to very interesting at times. This was part of the journey, and
I could see Katey laughing her ski boots off but never considering it as a
possible song for the album. Think that would be a mistake though…
When
I heard Dylan say he was going to do a Christmas album with new songs one
morning while listening to Theme Time radio while driving to work, I spit
coffee all over the dash board. And then he produced this…the guy remains
unpredictable and true to his own vision. He’s not unwilling to share it, but
we’ll never understand it in advance. That’s how a scrawny Jewish Kid from
Northern Minnesota was able to change the world – we never saw it coming. Steven
Van Zandt repeatedly tells the Al Cooper legend of how Koop ended up, a guitar
player overshadowed and intimidated by
Mike Bloomfield’s presence in the recording studio so fakinghis way on to the
Hammond B3 for the session that produced Like a Rolling Stone. While that may
define Chutzpah, Dylan gave an insight into the vision that day when he told
the producer to turn up the organ, he wanted to hear the organ louder. The
Engineer apologized and said basically that Cooper wasn’t an organ player and
wasn’t supposed to be there anyway. Bob
said, “I’ll tell you who’s an organ player and who isn’t. Turn up the organ.”
And the rest is rock history. While I
don’t envision rock and roll polka coming anytime soon, this is a helluva lot
better and definitely a subversive take on the whole Santa thing. And, how could it be a music recommendation from Crusader
AXE that didn't include Dylan?
There are dozens of other songs that fit this mold, but from
my point of view, these are probably the best fitting for me. There is an
underlying ethical and existential tension in the whole Christmas story – for
if Jesus was the son of God and fully God and fully man, he would know his
future, even while an infant. So, there is a bit of the dark side in all the
religious carols. Now for me, anti-theist but cultural Irish Catholic, I find
that so incredibly awesome and awful that I can’t approach it. Mr. Deity has fun with it
in the whole “Jesse is a quitter!” thing but it’s a philosophical and theological
problem that I don’t think has been addressed except in Kierkegaard’s Attack on
Christianity.
There are two iconic mainstream Christmas related songs that
I think could fit in this compilation on the dark side. The first is Bing Crosby’s “I’ll be home for
Christmas.” A 1943 release, the
whole I’ll be home for Christmas malarkey is actually a pretty good wartime
meme…wars are always expected to be done by Christmas, and they never seem to
end quite that way. I sense, and this is
probably just me reading into it, a connection thematically between this and
the country song, “The Green, Green
Grass of Home.” Still, I’ll be home for Christmas is all positive buildup
until the end, with “I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams…”
The next one is another in Crosby canon, “White
Christmas.” Katey commented on Twitter
to how she can’t see how people in warm areas can get in the Christmas spirit
without snow. Well, Christmas is largely about Walmart’s bottom line these days,
so in SOCAL and similar locations, it
just removes a distraction from what it really important.
It would be possible on a concept album to use these two
numbers with a pretty simple arrangement to bridge the dark side to the cheery
sides. Thus, the Either/Or. Worth considering, I think.
George Will made a comment concerning gay marriage this morning on his weekly attempt to pretend his baseball writing isn't the only thing anyone will remember him for to the effect that the opposition to gay marriage is literally dying. Mitt Romney went to a boxing match and jinxed the guy who lost by encouraging him. Common Cause and the Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives filed suit against the Senate for using the filabuster. As absentee ballots and provisional ballots continue to be counted, Romney appears to have lost by more...
Well, life sucks if you're willing yourself extinct. If you've been reading my stuff, you know that I have an unrequitted, secret love for Maureen Dowd. We're about the same age, same ethnciity, same cultural bias, same religious roots -- although I suspect she's still a practicing Catholic as opposed to an anti-theist -- and we both like words, wit and traditional Catholic social values. She went to Catholic University, I went to Holy Cross. She graduated and went off to become a practicing political reporter, then occasional columnist and then anchor columnist on Sunday and Wednesday for the Times. Me, I joined the Army so I could extend my adolescence for another 23 years, playing with guns, working out, blowing things up...I think in a lot of ways, I got the better deal.
But damn, she writes well. When she's really off her game, she's pretty good. When she's good, she's very good indeed. When she's really good, DAMN. This is one of those columns.
Her thesis, not all that different from Will's insight, is that the Republicans are going willfully extinct as a national party. She begins with an interesting anecdote:
My college roommates and I used to grocery shop and cook together. The only food we seemed to agree on was corn, so we ate a lot of corn. My mom would periodically call to warn me in a dire tone, “Do you know why the Incas are extinct?” Her maize hazing left me with a deeply ingrained fear of being part of a civilization that was obliviously engaging in behavior that would lead to its extinction. Too bad the Republican Party didn’t have my mom to keep it on its toes. Then it might not have gone all Apocalypto on us — becoming the first civilization in modern history to spiral the way of the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans. The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys.
While there were a lot of contributing factors in 2012, there are moments when you just had to stand there and wonder WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY THINKING? The only really viable candidates nationally were probably Pawlenty and Huntsman and only Huntsman had a vision that didn't seem to involve hiring a witch hunter profundis and taking us all back to the dark ages. So, Pawlenty and Huntsman were gone very early. A pizza magnate, a menopausal madwoman who confused John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy when announcing her candidacy, a ego-drunk sack of hypocritical yesteryears claiming with some justification to being the intellectual center of the Republican world, W.2 -- a tall Aggie who was meaner, dumber and in this case zonked on pain medicationa troll from Texas who thinks it makes sense to base the modern world on the standards of the Roman empire, and Mitt Romney were the possibilities; in fact, most of the possibilities arose as temporarily viable because they had the virtue of not being Mitt Romney. After Romney survives a war of attrition, he then selects an Eddie Munster look alike who actually refused to explain the math behind his tax reform and budgetary plans. Romney is revealed as a lumbering clown -- of course, he did that quite well last time, and the reality showed through to the deniers with the 47% crack -- beginning at the Iowa State Fair when he argues that "Corporations are people too, my friend."
I'm not the Virginian, and you aren't Travis. Don't smile when you say that, you grinning zombie. Don't say it. Don't call me friend when you're not my friend.
Republican Convention 2012
Then we have a comedy of errors going on all 2012. Transvaginal probes. Eighty two members of the Democratic Party are card carrying members of the Communist Party. The Female body has defense mechanisms that kick in when there's legitimate rape. The sky is falling and massive inflation is right around the corner. Obama is a Kenyan Socialist Manchurian Candidate. A child conceived in rape is a blessing from God. (By that logic, Rosemary's Baby would be a blessing from God.) Cut taxes on the rich; cut spending on the poor, on education, on infrastructure. Government can't create jobs! (Particularly liked this when it was some Republican house member or Senator with 20 years seniority saying it.) We love our warfighters -- but if we take care of the Veterans, we're going to bust the budget and raise the deficit. "Hell no you won't!" Success in Libya, Iraq and a end-date to the Afgnasy (Yeah, I'm channeling the Russians here) ordeal are signs of weakness; not bombing Iran and widening that conflict at the bidding of the craziest of the Zionists in Israel; advocating war in Syria; and on and on and on...
What were they thinking?I watched the Karl Rove meltdown on Fox a couple of times and actually found it painful...but you know, facts have a way of biting you in the ass if you ignore them. I kinda, sorta actually felt bad for the guy -- he looked like a fat kid denied someone else's hotdog. The guy who coined the phrase "reality-based" as a pejorative was getting bitchslapped by that reality. As lots of commentators have noted, the facts seem to have a liberal bias these days.
Who would ever have thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would ever have thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would ever have thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would ever have thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?
I think it's possible, and patriotic, to vote against your own interests for the common good. But, the Republicans by hitching their wagons to Ayn Rand, a God not familiar to most readers of the New Testament, denigration of women, denigation of workers, greed, guns, racism and intrusion while trying to wrap it up as "Freedom!" really couldn't claim anything for the common good. Romney's dancing horse really sums them up in a way so apt; he actually believes that saying things like the trees are the right height was a way to connect. Bragging that he had always paid at least 13% was tone-deaf. Demanding greater disclosure from Ryan than he was willing to disclose to the American people on his taxes is kind of amazing. Mormons are not generally considered exemplars of chutzpah, but damn...
Expect more convulsions. We are a deeply divided country in a lot of ways, but if the Democrats stay charged up and the President takes it to the Republicans actually using the bully pulpit as opposed to occasionally polishing it with a deep coat of linseed oil, then we'll see. But right now, I see no way the Republican party as it is now survives as a relevant force.
Persona aside, I tend not to pick fights over politics with
strangers. If they’re saying things that are totally batshit, well, I probably
will not be able to convince them otherwise and the sake of argument is to
convince the other person. If I want to just babble insanely, I can do that in
the bathroom; or, on a blog. Why risk the aggravation?
However, a few weeks ago I was sitting with my wife who has
added macular degeneration to colon cancer as reasons to be happy for modern
medicine or to curse getting old. Or both – it’s a fine line. However, we were
waiting to see the ophthalmologist and the inner waiting room was filled with
seriously old people and on a big screen TV they were showing FOX NEWS. I
almost didn’t go in but decided that was stupid. She needs my support and so on
and so on. Well, the gentleman sitting next to me was in his 70s and both he
and his wife were there for some cataract work and possibly some Lasik. All
covered by Medicare, which is a great program and should have been extended for
all. Of course, the insurance companies and other interests including big
Pharma would have gone bat shit. However, given what happened in 2010, how much
worse could the whole Tea Party thing have been? Anyway, the guy started
talking about how Obama was looting Medicare to pay for Obamacare and…and
I couldn’t take anymore when he started in on the deficit. “Sir, like me you’re
old enough to do the arithmetic yourself; do it.” I then enumerated the factual
errors behind nonsense. The only medical benefit not paid for through taxes or
deductions in any program – Medicare, Medicaid or Obama care is the cost of the
prescription drug benefit. That simple. Want to know why we have a deficit? Two
wars, unpaid for prior to 2010; a galloping bureaucracy called Homeland
Security also largely not paid for; tax cuts with no offsets based on the absurd
idea that a budget surplus projected over 10 years should result in massive
reduction in tax cuts in year ZERO. The conversation was civil, and the guy
listened. I’m sure I’ve figured in some local Bircher conspiracy theory, but
what the hell…
I do not find that metaphorically shooting fish in a barrel
puts me in the same league as Hemingway’s Fisherman; arguing with this guy didn’t
make me the equivalent of Patrick Henry or Clarence Darrow. I decided to drop
the proselytizing. However, on the next visit, I refused to go back in that room
if that was on TV. My wife was grateful because it was making her angry to. One
thing the two of us are not about to complain about is health care that we have
– the health care available to others, on the contrary, deserves nothing but
condemnation. Not the medicine but the absolute BS that surrounds it.
So, last night we went to dinner at a place I haven’t been
since she was in the hospital. Owner had our table, and she made some sly digs
about not having seen me lately; after the second one as she bent over to
refill my tea, I said, “I got the digs…it’s ok.” Which elicited a laugh. Nice
place. Anyway, it was a little louder than usual and people were raising their
voices a bit so I felt like I was in the conversation at the next table, where
this braindead idiot started accusing Candy Crowley of having set up Mitt
Romney, that she and the President were in on it and how else could she have
known what the President had said about the Benghazi attack being an act of
terrorism? This time, the argument would have been unfriendly and impolite and
would have probably included language my young lady friend the owner would not
have wanted in her semi-upscale Bistro. Then the fool started in on Voter
Fraud. Then, they left…so, no political homicide last night by Crusader AXE of
the Lost Causes.
THIS IS NOT GOOD FOR MY KARMA. IT IS NOT GOOD FOR MY BLOOD
PRESSURE. IT NEEDS TO STOP. I AM SOOOOOO COMPLETELY READY FOR WHAT SEEMS LIKE A
FOUR DECADE ORDEAL TO BE OVER!
Dr. Dennis Leary, author, Bon Vivant and Worcester native
who did not go to Holy Cross wrote a classic piece of American poetry entitled
“Life’s Gonna Suck”. That’s kind of the
way I feel about this election – regardless of what happens, life will continue
to suck for most of the world and actually, compared to what the potential
situation was compared to what is, for most Americans. I feel grateful, of
course, that this isn’t Darfur, or Bosnia, or Syria or Ukraine or Mogadishu or
Mumbai or any number other locations, hell holes to havens, Nigeria to Norway
and beyond. But, while I try to stay based in the reality world as opposed to
imaginary world loved by Karl Rove and the Republicans, every now and then I’m
overwhelmed by the desire to have things actually be good for once. Truth,
justice, freedom, fairness, great schools, great infrastructure, the babies
well fed, the young educated and optimistic and the old warm and secure. And,
despite my laughter at my Defeatist and Malcontent brothers and sisters over
their disappointment with the Obama Administration to actually, you know, what
for what it believes in, I envy them this – they aren’t willing to be satisfied
with a quarter cup of satisfaction and a promise of tomorrow. So, I am pretty
sure that whether Romney pulls it out, Obama bitch slaps him, or fuck it, Gary
Johnson somehow, in some universe is going to win, life will continue to suck.
More with Romney, less with Obama but still gonna suck.
I’m not the only one who believes this. Muy Amor Maureen Dowd, for example,
finds the idea of contrast between Obama and Romney less stark on the human
level. Romney, like Obama, is probably a great father. He’s probably good to
his wife. He probably doesn’t go down and poison pigeons in the park. He’s got
no reason to be president except that the Republican party is bankrupt of
leadership and it’s his turn using what seems to be their system of nominating
in the next general the guy defeated in previous primaries, based on the idea I
guess that candidates need to age, like fine wine or really foul cheese. But,
they’re not that different in some regards –
Much
was made of the alpha tone of the second presidential debate. But it was more
like a parody of alpha, a couple of pampered, manicured Harvard princes kicking
up “gorilla dust,” as Ross Perot calls it. In a truly commanding performance,
you don’t jab fingers, invade space, bark interruptions. Obama put aside his
disdain for jousts and woke up from the “nice, long nap I had in the first
debate,” as he wryly said at Thursday’s dinner. But he was overcompensating for
the first debacle, and he still didn’t have a vision or memorable zingers or a
knockout punch for a rival who hides in plain sight. Obama’s contempt for
Romney gleamed through as Mitt got all O.C.D. with Candy Crowley about the
rules, and rambled on about his weird retro worldview, where women in binders
have to bound home to make dinner, where the problem of too-easy access to
assault weapons could be helped if, gosh, we just tell “our kids that before
they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone.”
The problem is that Romney doesn’t really care about governing,
he cares about being elected. I envision him winning, turning domestic policy
over to Ryan and foreign policy over to Paul Wolfowitz or someone of his ilk
and then spending his days at one of the various Eastern, Western, Mid-Western,
Mid-Eastern White Houses he’ll have to have. One with a ring where Ann can use
her service animal, the Horse who shall not be named, who will be taken care of
at taxpayer expense because, after all, the Horse is a service animal. You
know, I still people with service animals like Vietnamese Potbellied Pigs and
Ferrets kind of odd…(Meet Jake, my Service Animal Python?) But, a horse? After all, he’ll need to visit the Mormon
Tabernacle frequently to be applauded; he’ll need to ride up and down in the
elevator so he can exercise his cars in California and then there’s boating in
New Hampshire and petting his money at Bain Capital. The dude will be busy.
Now, Maureen Dowd points out that Obama really isn’t that
interested in politics; the things you have to do to get elected or re-elected
either irritate him or amuse him wryly. He’s interested in actually governing;
and, he has problems with people who think they are entitled to office because
of their royal status (Bush, Republican Royalty: McCain, Navy Royalty; Romney, Mormon
Royalty.) Being very much an actual
self-made man, he doesn’t get the idea of having power solely to do what,
exactly.
There’s a famous quote from Jack Kennedy about a
formal dinner at the White House for the American Nobel Winners. Now, JFK
appears to have actually enjoyed the social aspects of politics and the give
and take of what you need to do to get elected as well as govern. He was
friends with people like Barry Goldwater; he liked going to state dinners; his
sense of humor was generally directed at himself or at the pretensions
surrounding him, the White House or personalities. In his speech to honor the
laureates, Kennedy said, "I think this is the most extraordinary
collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together
in the White House -- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson
dined alone." Same sensibility, different attitude toward the process that
got him there. He appreciated the irony but reveled in it. Consider these other
quotes:
"Those of you who regard
my profession of political life with distain should remember that it made it
possible for me to move from being an obscure lieutenant in the United States
Navy to Commander-in-Chief in fourteen years with very little technical
competence."
"Politics
is an astonishing profession. It has enabled me to go from being an obscure
member of the junior varsity at Harvard to being an honorary member of the
Football Hall of Fame."
If President Obama had really wanted to nail this, he would
have quoted another JFK line continuously since taking office and finding out
what a debacle he had inherited. "When we got into office, the thing that
surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying
they were." (May 27, 1961)
The main point, however, is that the Romney team is
willfully, nakedly, distorting the record, leading Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff
— who aren’t affiliated with either campaign — to protest against “gross misinterpretations of the facts.” And this
should worry you.Look, economics isn’t as much of a science as we’d like. But
when there’s overwhelming evidence for an economic proposition — as there is
for the proposition that financial-crisis recessions are different — we have
the right to expect politicians and their advisers to respect that evidence.
Otherwise, they’ll end up making policy based on fantasies rather than
grappling with reality. And once politicians start refusing to acknowledge
inconvenient facts, where does it stop? Why, the next thing you know Republicans
will start rejecting the overwhelming evidence for man-made climate change. Oh,
wait.
As
Krugman has pointed out repeatedly, this is not rocket science, although
rocket science would do a lot for an economy in Florida and Houston and Shelby
Mississippi and California where there are a lot of out of work rocket
scientists, engineers and blue collar folks. But, it is a variation from the
Gospel of Reagan economics and therefore a lot of people will run screaming
from the room that the idea is unclean. Barrack Obama doesn’t get this – he’s a
rational man who may have lived a chaotic youth but has no affinity for chaos.
He thinks rational people should work from agreed reality, not fantasy. In
comparison to his clown-college opponents Obama wants to be a philosopher king.
Well, the track record of philosopher kings isn’t all that great –Doing policy
that is meaningful demands realizing that he’s a political entity and has to do
the things he doesn’t like that seem unworthy of the office. Mitt Romney wants
an ascension, not accepting that he’s not going to have any room to move and
will be merely a ceremonial figurehead.
The news that there may be an agreement in principle for the
Iranians to sit down directly with the US and negotiate the nuclear question is
fascinating to me; Romney is a salesman, Obama is a Wilsonian figure. Romney
will be all about the deal and any deal will be a great deal; Obama will want a
deal but he’ll want a decent deal that’s reasonably fair to all the
stakeholders. Certainly there are enough of them in the equation – if you’re in
the same time zone as Iran, you’re invested in the outcome of those talks. Who
gets the better deal – the guy who’ll be desperate to prove he’s worthy of
being president and knows nothing about foreign affairs except for what John
Bolton tells him; or the guy who channels Lincoln and selected his greatest
rival to be secretary of State but is super-willing to assume good faith on the
part of people who can’t spell it.. Of course, the White House now says that
there will be no talks soon…I’m not sure that has any meaning anyway, given the
glacial way in which US-Iran relations have staggered along since 1979.
The news that there’s been another mass shooting, this time
in Wisconsin in a Spa is somewhat intriguing at this point despite being a run-of-the
mill domestic violence case gone even further off the tracks. Obama has never,
to my knowledge claimed to have anything to do with guns as an individual;
Romney has claimed to be a life-long hunter shooting “varmints.” Of course,
this example of wanton murder and excess is undoubtedly due to…what, exactly? Violent
video games? Birth control? Abortion? Poor childhood nutrition? Lack of social
services? Jobs? Depression? Fear? Socialism? At the end of the day, there is no
one explanation for evil, but my guess is that abortion and birth control
issues are pretty remotely connected, unless the guy shot up a Planned
Parenthood office. But one thing that I do know is that if guns are less
available, it will be harder for OCD people to fixate on them because they’ll
be harder to get. In this case, it turns out the guy had a restraining order
filed by his wife, was under orders to stay away from her and to not possess
firearms. Yet, there he was. Certainly
in Scott Walker’s beloved Wisconsin there are enough laws to control domestic
violence and it has to be the fault of the unions somehow, right? No. Not
enough cops, not enough controls and too easy to get guns. Be interesting to
know where he got the gun – guns show at a church; from someone at a parking
lot? His mother?
Ok, I’m a smart guy who can be very stupid at times. This is particularly true when it comes to physical limits. I know, for example, that enrolling in the ProAM Bull Riding contest would be a serious mistake. I know that. It would have been a serious mistake 20 years ago and there’s no reason to think it might be a good idea now. I know that El Capitan is not in my future unless they build an escalator. I’ve figured that out…
So, of course, I made a wise crack to a guy 20 some years younger than I that the Mojave Free Press ought to enter a team for the Barstow Mud Run. Figured a leisurely job across the desert, splash through some forgiving water obstacles and then pick up a T-shirt at the worst case. At the best case, he’d laugh and say no thanks, he had to cover it for the paper. How hard could it be? What could go wrong?
Most things.
Well, the principal architect of that electronic fish wrapper is a guy named Charles Waybright. He’s a nice guy, but he either has a sense of humor more twisted than mine or he’s very stupid. Charles thought it was a great idea.
So, there we were, Charles, Bruce Klein and me, surrounded by 1000 or so of like-minded lunatics set to take off across the desert to benefit the Barstow Veterans Home and the Barstow Kiwanis. Both of which are worthy of support for their services to this community which really needs it and more of it. Oh, the guys who bailed on the run so that Charles had to recruit Bruce but volunteered to video the thing and provide coverage for the paper, also bailed. Charles had his lovely wife worried that I might not show or be found and that she would have to pick up the banner. She was prescient enough to be glad to see me.
Drove up there from my home. This being primarily a fund raiser for the Vets Home there were lots of guys and gals there who were former Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who were volunteering, and of course, in charge. One of the nice things about people with military experience is that if someone needs to be in charge of something, and no one else will do it, they’ll step up. At the same time, a lot of times they’ll take charge because they need to be in charge. Of something, anything, doesn’t matter what. I work very hard at not being like that – it’s less tiring. Still, I can understand the tendency. Six to twelve of these guys were directing traffic. Guy who directed me into my parking space and made certain that I was parked on-line with the rest of the cars must have been an Aviation Bosun’s Mate in the Navy, because a couple of those folks shared with me that their primary function underway was to serve as a valet parking lot attendant for airplanes. Deviance from the line was not to be tolerated…
I kind of regretted that this guy wasn’t organizing the start. It gets hot in Barstow, in the sun, in May, and there was limited shade. Like almost none – the crowd mulled around, and the start was in heats. Somehow Charles and Bruce found me, and I pinned up my number, tied my timing chip to my shoe and we muddled our way through. One reason for running as a team – in our case, Old and Fat! – was to support each other, but somehow we all wandered into different heats. Now, back in the day, I was a distance runner. Then my back went to hell or wherever things go when they decide not to work anymore, and I don’t run. I was figuring the high intensity workouts I do in the gym would cover me. I wasn’t planning on setting records. I may have…probably was the slowest finisher. Hit the first water obstacle and found myself running through water and mud but only up to just below the knees. Climb out, over a birm and head for the next obstacle…which was slightly deeper, and had tires that had embedded themselves in the mud at this point. If you are light on your feet, long legged and run with a high knee lift, this isn’t a problem. If you’ve just turned 61, have always had a squatty body, lift weights for sport and have short legs, this is not going to work. Step, spash, fall, get caught in the mud, pull boots out of mud and repeat. This turned into an ordeal. Got out, shook my head, and started slowly jogging toward the next obstacle. More tires and a birm on each end…you get through the first one, and over it and then there’s another one, just like the other one… Crashed on the next one, which may have involved piranha but did involve a water truck raining on you as you fought you way through the mud, tires and so on. Got through, got out and started walking…got to the first water stop, and stood there drinking warm water out of a cup, which frankly didn’t help all that much. I started to feel less bad when I realized that two college girls were there, both wearing women’s cross country team t-shirts, and one of them had just had an exercise induced asthma attack. She probably weighed about 100 pounds. So, on I slogged.
Skipped an obstacle, continued to slog. Got to the water slide thing…slide down the slide into the water, what could go wrong. Well, a lot…as I found out when I landed and slammed my leg into some immovable object –heap of dead bodies? Left-over rocks? Railroad ties? – pinning my leg back. Guy manning the thing in the pond pulled me out of the way, and I realized that I was now golden – I had a low calf/high ankle strain and could hobble through the rest of the course but couldn’t go through any more obstacles. Yeah, buddy – of course, I’m soaking wet, my Palladium BUDS course boots are full of desert and water as well, my ankle is not swelling that much because it is encased in a muddy, tied running boot, but it hurts like hell, and I have a mile or so of desert to cross. And, so I did. Bumped into Charles who was having problems seeing, because he had listened to someone talking jive and decided he had to splash him, primarily splashing himself. Muddy water in the eyes…hot…dirt…he told me that I had mud on my teeth and looked like a caveman in a rugby game jersey. Didn’t see Bruce…I hope it wasn’t him dead in the mud at the water slide….
OK, I can see the attraction of this event. I think it’s important not to over- or under-think the obstacles – one tire obstacle with several non-tire obstacles before the next tire obstacle one for example would be better – more aid teams and watering spots, and more attention to safety would be helpful, and if you decide to run one of these crazy things, I strongly recommend making certain that they are in fact paying a lot of attention to safety. I heard about a couple of broken bones, and the MEDEVAC chopper taking off from near the finishing line was, well, troubling.
But, this is a budding sport similar in a lot of ways to Cross-Fitness – it’s simple, it’s cheap and anyone can play. Even 61 year old men with bad backs and a smart mouth. There were a lot of kids and families which I thought was great. I was particularly taken by the number of kids running with their moms and dads, although I did see more than a few groups where the kids who appeared to be about 9 were waiting for Mom or Dad to catch up. I saw a few people I used to work with who were volunteering and having fun. Interestingly, one guy who used to work for me and resembles Mr. Clean physically and a wimpy weasel spiritually but who always had to be taking time off to take care of his two very athletic boys was there with the boys. He was dry and clean and I overheard him say, “Oh yeah, they did good…”
The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone. Thomas Hobbes
To be educated, a person doesn't have to know much or be informed, but he or she does have to have been exposed vulnerably to the transformative events of an engaged human life. Thomas More
Can you say AN/PDR-27R? ALPHA-NOVEMBER-PAPA-DELTA-ROMEO-TWO-SEVEN-ROMEO.
Those veterans among us have no problem with that, since it’s basic military phonetic alphabet and is the name of a pretty common piece of stuff that most were exposed to at one time or another. It’s the Geiger Counter used by the military in its various configurations over the years. For a part of my career as a grunt, I had to use these things as a Chemical Operations type – NO LIGHT TOO BRIGHT/NO BLAST TOO FAST/SO UP YOUR ASS/WITH BUGS AND GAS! (Being the unofficial motto of the Army’s Chemical Corps.) Training people to use these things was part of the gig, and they’re frighteningly easy to use wrong; they’re reasonably delicate and fairly easy to contaminate or peg. Walk up to a hot source and check it with the meter on one of the lower scales, and bad things could happen. Open the shield to check for beta radiation, and pass it to close to a blade of grass, and you risked puncturing the shield. IF the numbers get high, you get out if you can.
While there are lots of emitters – particles that have become radioactive or are by their nature radioactive such as uranium – the primary ones monitored for in the field are GAMMA radiation, which is the most immediately deadly, Beta radiation which can be very hot but has a real limited range of its emissions, and then Alpha Radiation which is most dangerous if it gets inside the body. Think of barriers – lead is a great barrier for gamma; beta can be blocked by clothing and dust masks and goggles. Alpha is pretty insidious – the meters to detect its presence are specialized and primarily available to emergency reaction teams who would respond to a nuclear accident or a dirty bomb. IF it gets into the water table of the food chain, it can be a problem. If you inhale it or it gets into a cut, it can be a problem. Not quickly, but down the road a piece.
OK, welcome to the modern world. We have to deal with dirty water, dirty air, global climate change, extreme weather, decreasing availability of cheap energy, overcrowding, pandemics, potential famine, potential shortage of potable water…everything except the viral crop of right wing, isolationist, brain dead bigots that currently infect the US and indeed the entire civilized world. Thomas Hobbes and Thomas More weren’t exactly contemporaries, but I’ve come to believe of late that the Tea Party and their ilk, the Grover Norquist-Herman Cain-Joe Walsh axis of that world, mistook the two. They read Leviathan, and then they read Utopia and then got confused as to which one was supposed to reflect the good idea and which the bad. (This is kind of like confusing The Joy of Sex with The Joy of Cooking, but more dangerous to civil society.)Hobbes believed that in the absence of a strong central power, “Life is nasty, brutish, and short,” and advocated a very strong central government as essential to a civilized society. More described an ideal society – Utopia – where the absence of distractor and distinctions allowed for a classless and a rather bland society. But, he pointed out in the book itself that it was an intellectual exercise and in real life, he advocated a very strong central government. When that central government decided to execute him, his final speech was brief and to the point, saying in large part “I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first.”
There is a rhetorical tool called reduction ad absurdum that doesn’t work with these people. We’ve seen it several times this year in debates; the famous “Let him die!” crowd cheer in the Republican debate in response to Ron Paul’s brief hesitation in his response to Wolf Blitzer is the most distinct. I’ve had it happen in discussion with students who hold these beliefs; I first felt the change in argument when I said to one of the folks who was paying my salary by attending class on a mix of GI Bill and Pell Grants and Federally Guaranteed Loans that “Look, the government needs to be able to help people. No one wants to see beggars and kids starving…” The guy responded, “Who cares? That’s their problem.”
How do you argue with that sort of stuff? More, I think, encountered the same thing, as did Hobbes. More’s comment is more immediately apropos, since this was a student in a graduate business economics class –“One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated.” I’d like to think that I had the same thought and possibly did at the time, but it was probably punctuated with obscenities, curses and commands to get his ass off his head and back where it belonged. I kept quiet – you don’t get to curse students until you have tenure. But, I think Hobbes again adds clarity to the argument, about the role and responsibility of government. “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.”
OK, Brother AXE, how exactly do you get from Geiger counters to the Tea Party to Hobbes and More and beyond. Well, it’s relatively easy…all it takes is following More, being transformatively exposed to an engaged human life…
The discovery came in the midst of the largest federal effort to date to clean up uranium mines on the vast Indian reservation. A hearing in 2007 before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform led to a multiagency effort to assess and clean up hundreds of structures on the reservation through a five-year plan that ends this year….Yet while some mines have been “surgically scraped” of contamination and are impressive showpieces for the E.P.A., others, like the Cameron site, are still contaminated. Officials at the E.P.A. and the Department of Energy attribute the delay to the complexity of prioritizing mine sites. Some say it is also about politics and money… “The government can’t afford it; that’s a big reason why it hasn’t stepped in and done more,” said Bob Darr, a spokesman for the Department of Energy. “The contamination problem is vast.” Leslie MacMillan, NY Times, April 1, 2012.
The article describes another moment in the timeline of exploitation and destruction of Native American culture and people by corporate and government greed and indifference. In this case, during the great uranium boom of the 1956-period, the government not only allowed but encouraged various people ranging from major mining interests to irresponsible nutjobs – not that the two are mutually exclusive – to seek deposits of uranium on reservation land in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. When the boom died, the various mining interests left – and since then, it became obvious that they left a lot of junk behind poisoning the land. Hey, the Navajos have a lot of space, who cares? Well, that sort of lasiez-faire nonsense fails to consider the Navajo cultural and religious ties to the land. I am not an expert on Navajo religious beliefs, but their origin myth has a very strong tie not only to nature but to the very ground itself and what is beneath it. The Old Man of the story is as close to a god figure as we get here:
The Coyote of the east came where the people were and asked Old Man where he came from. Old Man told him from three worlds down below and also told Coyote how he came up, also saying “If you (Coyote) are a clever man, I will teach you all we know about our religion, etc.” So he taught him everything.
Well, one thing Old Man did not teach Coyote was how politics work. In most cultures, including the western culture we supposedly represent, when you make a promise you fulfill it. The relationship between the US and the Navajo isn’t simple – no relationship between sovereign states where one is in fact subservient to the other can be simple. But, the role of the US in this equation is to protect the Navajo and to act as stewards so that they can maintain their way of life. Obviously, the great Uranium rush resulted in a lot of undocumented craziness in isolated backlands. Problem is, many of the reservations people live out in those backlands and are pastoral in existence…sheepherders. Sheep need to roam, and one might wonder if the reservation is huge enough to support a relatively large population in the high desert of the American Southwest. When you poison hunks of the land, it’s difficult to maintain and use. When you don’t tell people the hazards you are exposing them to, you risk exposing them to patterns of illness and sickness that they may not recognize or have the resources to care for.
The EPA has done a lot more than would be done without it, but these areas are environmental disasters. The Navajo don’t have the resources or the money or the expertise to handle 6-7-9=800 documented and undocumented hazmat sites. No one does, except the US. If you can identify the company that poisoned and failed to remediate the site and the company is still in business, you can take them to court if you’re either the Navajo or the US government and force them to remediate it. However, a lot of these diggings are anonymous or were dug by individuals 50 years ago and are no longer in business. I suspect it’s obvious – the US has a responsibility to fix this; someone needs to get incensed and question whether or not the senior member of the partnership of sovereigns in this case is fulfilling its responsibilities.
Of course, the Navajo people are American citizens. If the government of the United States allows and encourages Bob’s Radioactive Mining and Waste Creation service to dig up and contaminate my back yard, I have a valid claim for the US government to honor. If I get sick, I have a valid claim against Bob’s – who either goes bankrupt or has died – and against the US government.
So, the problem is money. Let’s turn briefly to another money issue.
When the Army was made up of draftees and folks who “volunteered” to avoid being drafted, drawing down after a war wasn’t a problem. You pointed at the door and said who wants to go home first. However, after Vietnam, a lot of enlisted guys who become commissioned officers found themselves being told that they weren’t needed as officers; they could, however, stay on as NCOs. And, as a benefit, they could continue to serve in the active, individual reserve so that when they retired they could do so at whatever reserve officer rank they achieved. I know a lot of guys who were Staff Sergeants and Sergeant First Class and even a few Sergeant Majors and such who retired as…Lieutenant Colonels. In one case, the only person who could rate a SFC in my section was the Brigade Commander, because he was senior to everyone else. Weird. Most of these guys were great soldiers, but there was always some fear and resentment, no so much on their parts but on the part of the guys who were now giving them orders.
Minor problem. Solved by 1981 or so; but the problem is greater when you have a volunteer force that you’ve used in the longest war in the Nation’s history and the Iraq war. These folks have been told they are heroes, that the nation is forever indebted to them. They are also literate and engaged human beings – they realize that they are facing a period of arbitrary eliminations and downsizings. They also are learning that the quality of life for those who remain on active duty will decrease significantly. This makes them unhappy.
As it should. It always has…you want to see a portrait of a lost soldier, check out Rome on DVD or Blue Ray and see what happens to soldiers who suddenly and without reasonable transition find themselves tossed into society. Read about what went on with the various paramilitary groups in Germany after World War I. One reason our friend Winston Churchill was able to find a small army and call it a police force, deploying it to Ireland to handle the Irish Revolution was because they had tons of veterans who had no way to make it as civilians after four years in the trenches and the Army was drawing down because of peace. So, the Black and Tans entered Irish history – it may seem a benign mixed drink of lager and stout here, but it Ireland it’s something else entirely.
Now, I served through one peace dividend, the post Soviet Union-post Gulf I drawdown. Operations Temp became absolutely insane for units, particularly in the support base, Intelligence, Logistics and Maintenance for the Army. As a First Sergeant in a Corps Support Brigade in Germany, I was deploying people to Africa, Greece, the Balkans and Belarus on a monthly basis. It was slightly crazy. The OPTEMPO increased when Bosnia and Kosovo came into the picture; when I returned to Fort Lewis, I got another Company as First Sergeant, and went through the same stuff, deploying people to every place from Port Au Prince to Princeton. We were as an Army and as a military far busier during this period than we’d been during the Cold War.
However, since 9/11 the military has been on continuous insanity as an OPTEMPO. What I see in my various wanderings is a force that is largely stressed by insecurity and craziness imposed by a chain of command and then further stressed when they hear that 70000 soldiers will go home this coming year, that standards for weight, PT, body art and so on are going to ratcheted up and that any screw-up will result in getting the boot. Posts are becoming overcrowded which will negatively impact both mission and quality of life. Benefits are being cut. The services are showing their loyalty to the nation and will continue to do so; but, they’d like something in return. Fulfillment of what is seen as promised –Old Veterans can smile cynically but it’s not because we don’t agree with them. It’s because we know. We’ve known since Socrates mustered out in Athens; Kipling said it for all of us --
Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap; An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit. Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?" But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll, The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll, O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll…
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot; An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please; An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!
Now, as a special disabled veteran and a retiree, I have a doctor at the local Army installation, in this case, the clinic at Fort Irwin. Now, Irwin in some ways reminds me of Fort Apache…the Army has done a tremendous amount to make it more livable, but the fact remains that you’re forty miles not from civilization but from the interstate. I make the drive when I need to see my doctor or when I need to pick up a prescription. When I was in to see my Doctor recently, she informed me that she was leaving because her husband was retiring from active duty in June and she had no idea what staff they’d have after she left but was sure they’d find some good ones. She also handed me a prescription for one of my medications, written for a civilian drug store, telling me that the Pharmacy wasn’t going to stock it or many other drugs that had been a normal item in their formulary. I was curious as to this, thinking that the drugs were things that were normally used by retirees and frankly, that made sense. I have had a number of conversations with the soldiers working in the pharmacy over the past couple of years as well as several with the senior officer in the Pharmacy, a Captain. I had to pick up something else, and got a chance to talk to a young sergeant with a close combat badge and a 10th Mountain combat patch. She’s in her early 20s and would like to make this a career but said, “they’re throwing soldiers out and they’re cutting back support to the rest of us. What the hell, First Sergeant?” The Captain was very direct with me; when I said I’d leave her name out of this piece she said, “I don’t care!! I’m getting ready to PCS and the command loves me because I always come in on budget. They know what I think, but it doesn’t matter. If I make the budget they’re happy with me.”
It takes a lot to bitch slap me with a piece of reality, but I’d never heard about the number one thing on an OER for a company grade officer being “come in at or according to plan.” That’s a civilian bean counter approach. But she told me that the particular thing I’m now getting through RiteAid -- Androgel, I am seriously old although not as old as Gordon or Trowbridge, hehhehehe – is used by a lot of younger soldiers. The reason for the reduction in formulary –drugs carried in the pharmacy – is simple; her budget has been cut by 40% with minimal warning. Of course, the patient load is increasing.
I find this somewhat disturbing on several fronts. If it’s only retired old farts who need something, of course, send up to the pharmacy in town. The co-pay is unpleasant but I can live with it. But, a soldier on active duty, a spouse, a child who’s treatment is delayed while finding a way to Walmart (50 miles away) or waiting for a delivery through ExpressScripts is unconscionable. More than that, the feeling becomes more that they – the Army, the Nation, the People, the Congress, the Government – don’t care.
So, when the House Armed Services Committee grill the Joint Chiefs wanting to know why the Army and the Marines aren’t looking for new tanks and a new generation of tanks in what is supposedly a time of austerity, you have to wonder. The Army says no thanks, we got lots of tanks and nobody to really fight with…with tanks. The Abrams and Bradley and to a lesser extent the Stryker are excellent platforms and weapon systems and WE HAVE ALL WE NEED. Then, the Budget Committee led by Paul Ryan who looks like a cross between a weasel, snake and Eddie Munster to me from some weird progressive sci-fi novel, ignore the Joint Chiefs and say in effect, “They’re lying to us!” as they flood more money into the defense budget, you have to wonder. I personally wouldn’t tell General’s Dempsey, Odierno, and Amos that they were lying to me unless we were playing poker. But Ryan felt comfortable with this gem. General Dempsey’s response would scare me if I was simpering chicken hawk like Ryan and his gang…
"We don't think the generals are giving us their true advice," Ryan had said, according to Politico. "We don't think the generals believe their budget is really the right budget."
Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took issue with those comments.
"There’s a difference between having someone say they don't believe what you said versus ... calling us, collectively, liars," the general told reporters on Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal. "My response is: I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget."
Lest someone say something along the lines of “you can’t have it both ways, Brother AXE!” I have to explain something – they’re not interested in improving quality of life for soldiers on the Hill; they’re interested in keeping the Defense Contractors happy. My own representative is Chairman Buck McKeon who is pretty much on the dole from Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. The only reason they would be interested in maintaining the formulary in the Army Medical System is if Merck and Pfizer weighed in. Total BS – these are the guys who want more tanks, more systems that don’t require soldiers but cost a lot of money, more defense contractors doing things soldiers can and should do. Rachel Maddow made the comment on the Jon Stewart show that she didn’t think the Army needed people from KBR peeling potatoes; we could probably figure out some way to have soldiers do that. We don’t people from Cubic managing airspace or logistics. A lot of these people are great folks – lots of former military and retirees. But, they’re doing work that should be done by soldiers.
The number of broken promises and bad judgments made over the last 30 years is incredible. Each bad judgment ends up causing more broken promises. However, the majority of the problems I see – crumbling infrastructure, lousy schools, increased long-term unemployment, mounting debt, lagging modernization, lack of a coherent energy plan and so on and on and on as well as what has happened to Native Americans, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsman, Civil Servants, Labor Unions, and on and on comes from the idea that we don’t have the wherewithal to pay for what we need to do. That is bullshit. We may all be Travon Martin to some extent; we are also all General Dempsey being insulted and talked down to by Ryan who now claims that he misspoke. Yeah, he’s sorry if General Dempsey didn’t understand what he was saying…if General Dempsey was offended, he’s sorry that General Dempsey was offended.
"General Dempsey and I spoke after that, and I wanted to give that to him, which was that's not what I was attempting to say," Ryan said on CNN. "What I was attempting to say is that President Obama put out his budget number for the Pentagon first ... and then they began the strategy review to conform the budget to meet that number. We think it should have been the other way around."
We are all the early 20s spouse who’s told that while her husband is deployed to Afghanistan and she’s just taken her child to the emergency room at Fort Irwin for some condition that she’s going to have to drive in to beautiful to get the medication the kid needs; we’re all the poor pharmacy specialist who has to deliver this news to a scared and lonely woman. We’re all the school teacher who has to buy supplies for her room while trying to pay student loans and for a Master’s degree that she’s required to have but is also required to pay for. We’re all the Navajo farmer who just discovered that his sheep have been munching contaminated grass and have to be put down…
What we’re all not is Paul Ryan. What we’re all not is Buck McKeon. What we’re all not is Mitt Romney – we’re closer to Shamus on the trip to Canada. We’re not the Koch brothers. We’re not worrying about how many millions of dollars we can make in bonuses; we’re not wondering about how much money we need to put into the Cayman Islands this year. We’re not GE, with a 1000 people in their tax department figuring out how little tax they can pay; we’re not the head of Goldman Sachs mortifiedthat the word has gotten out that we’ve financed a human trafficking website…
There are things that we can do to solve our problems. First of all, we have to acknowledge that taxes are too low and the lowness is progressive. I have no problem with current tax rates so long as at the top end, they are flat above some limit. No deductions. Sorry. So if you’re Mitt Romney, you can claim standard deductions on some portion of your income – say the first million – but the $277M after that should be taxed at the full 35%. Capital Gains up to some limit can continue to be taxed at the current rate – say, up to $2M but above that, it should be taxed at the normal income tax rate. Have somebody rational calculate the shortfall and come up with strategies to overcome it. The SHORTFALL IS NOT SOME NUMBER THAT PAUL RYAN COMES UP WITH. IT NEEDS TO BE BASED ON WHAT WE ACTUALLY NEED TO DO SO THAT THE SOVERIEGN ENTITY CAN FULFILL ITS FUNCTION ACCORDING TO HOBBES.
In Romney’s case, under my plan, assuming he’s able to deduct everything up 1 Million and all but a half million total is capital gains, he’d still have well over $180 mil in income this year. I think they could get by, just fun. Failing to do something like this, and letting the Randian nutcases and economic libertarians/Austrian School reactionaries and malefactors of great wealth continue to get away with things will result in another Hobbesian diagnosed problem …
During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.
Well, what needs to happen to get there? That’s the next piece. I’ll have it posted in a few days.
So, in the proper spirit of the thing. Ok. Yesterday was our 36th anniversary. We are very fond of each other and have a reasonably complex financial life that would make disengaging difficult. We don't want to cause the other pain or even inconvenience. I rate this as a successful marriage. We don't hate each other, wish the other grevious harm, and try not to act contrary to our mutual best interests.
That said, we got married on Friday the 13th. My thought, being a strategic thinker, was that this way I would not forget both Valentine's day or the Anniversary and hopefully, one would key my brain as to the other. Generally has worked...I see the Valentine's bullshit in the stores, and it triggers the response that I need to do something to commemorate the day so as not to violate the "first, do no harm or cause unnecessary pain" part of my ethic. It does not make me happy. This makes me happy...
I hate Valentine's Day. It is part of the conspiracy of the consumer society that begins in pre-school to make us all ready for a life of disappointment and conspicuous consumption.
When you're working in a group, it's hard to know what you truly think. We're such social animals that we instinctively mimic others' opinions, often without realizing we're doing it. And when we do disagree consciously, we pay a psychic price. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that people who dissent from group wisdom show heightened activation in the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the sting of social rejection. Berns calls this the "pain of independence."
Take the example of brainstorming sessions, which have been wildly popular in corporate America since the 1950s, when they were pioneered by a charismatic ad executive named Alex Osborn. Forty years of research shows that brainstorming in groups is a terrible way to produce creative ideas. The organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham puts it pretty bluntly: The "evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups. If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority."
This is not to say that we should abolish groupwork. But we should use it a lot more judiciously than we do today.
A while back, I did a post on politics over at the Defeatists recently. One of my frustrations with blogging and one reason that I have cut back is the lack of feedback, by the way. Comments are welcome, good, bad or indifferent. Anyway, most of the comments over there seem to come from people who are trying to sell something like Gucci handbags but have been fascinated by some brilliant thing one of us said, either recently or a couple of years ago. We're about due for the annual "How dare you say anything bad about boy bands, you misogynist bastards, especially you, Commandante AGI!" which has some interesting semiotic undertext in it. However, this one was from a real human being who was interested in what I said and conflicted…I might be right, but what the hell…
Here's the conversation. Any emphasis is mine…
Good post, good post...but what if the "middle" is, objectively moronic and absolutely wrong? The middle says:
"We need to invade Iraq and kill or displace a million people and turn the country over to the Shiite theocrats, but we will do so with properly audited spending and well-trained troops who will follow the letter of the rules"
The middle says: "Medical care funding in this country is broken so let's require people to buy overpriced private insurance with their minimum wage jobs".
Sometimes, to parpaphrase Jim Hightower, "the only thing in the middle of the road are yellow lines or dead armadillos"
And...do you really see any Democratic Party politicians with any position or any influence in the party (which means...Jesse Jackson does not really count) as being anywhere near as crazy as the current GOP? Really? Which ones? I can't think of any...I'm a little younger than you but I remember Jimmy Carter and Dukakis and their ilk...and they are NOT Santorum or Gingrich, let alone Bachmann.
The middle is also gung ho about the upcoming hot war with Iran...either run driectly by the United States or by our good buddies in Israel. (Another nuclear power. Hmmmm....why is Israel "allowed" to have nuclear weapons?"
Not sure where the middle is...you see it further off to the right than I do. Oddly, we could take either Eisenhower or Nixon and their social policies as a starting point for the middle, and we'd look pretty leftist today. Imagine the New Deal or the Fair Deal or the Great Society in swing today...but, of course, what we got is what we got and determines what we're gonna get near term and possibly long term. What that doesn't do is allow us to just give up. I remain convinced that the lesser of two evils is the better choice. By having Bush beat Gore, how did Nader make things better? Devolve for 8 years and here we go again? (Nader is not to blame completely for Bush -- lots of things conspired to make things this bad.) However, the difference between John Kerry and George Bush can be summed up with two names -- Samuel Alito and John Roberts as well as one Supreme Court Decision -- Citizens United. A Democrat wins in 2000 or in 2004, even an uninspiring Democrat like Kerry, and money doesn't equal speech. However, it's probably time for my periodic Yeats post...
I wished I believed things could be "reformed". I think Chalmers Johnston nailed it. Even as things devolve and crash and burn, the people that benefit from the system still have plentiful opportunities for looting and rent seeking. And, the system promotes sociopaths (no...I am not saying everyone in government is a sociopath...but still, there are a lot of 'em).
People like Obama merely provide a cover, a gloss, for the ongoing predation. Arguably, Obama has made things worse in that the "anti-war left" (a feeble force given America's history as a violent culture based on conquest)) was lulled to sleep and ineffectiveness.
You can refuse to play either of their terrible games. You can resist them. Most of all, you have the power to give up the deception that Barack Obama is a hero because he might murder "fewer" innocent people. The crucial difference between voting for Obama in the real world, and choosing to allow him to murder only 3 preschoolers in the example above, is that the example above describes a terrible choice being made one time only. The presidential farce is recurring. Imagine the preschool example, but this time imagine that it happens every day. Times ten or fifty or a hundred. Every day, you go by the preschool, and every day the madmen execute either 3 or 5 children--your choice. At what point do you stop choosing? At what point do you stop playing along and say, "Enough"? At some point, it must become apparent to you that the game is never going to end.
The children are going to keep dying--there will always be new madmen willing to take the hostages, make the speeches, and carry out the killings. Choose your decade. Choose your war. Choose your murders. Choose your "party." How long can you justify this morbid farce? How long will you play the terrible game with the killer? Go back to Vietnam, if you like. Go back to Hiroshima and "choose" which rich, powerful national leader you want to press the button. Go back to the invasion of the Philippines. Go back to the Mexican American War. The fucking crusades, or the genocide of the neanderthals. Count the bodies. Is it ever going to end? Are you ever going to say, "Enough"?
Every day you walk by the school. Every day the madmen are there. When are you going to stop giving them what they want? When are you going to stop validating not only the deaths they cause, but their entire horrific game? It will never stop unless we stop it. If we keep supporting it, year after year, always justifying it as "a little less murder than we could otherwise commit," it will never end. When you refuse to vote, or vote for someone else, you are a grain of sand. But at some point, change has to happen, and it will take individual people willing to refuse to support the killing. A few crazies, at first, who refuse to compromise by saying, "I guess it's fine if Obama kills people, because he'll kill fewer than Gingrich will." (This is, essentially, what that haughty piece of shit George Clooney is saying as the televised 2012 contest approaches) A few crazies, and maybe someday, more. It's as daunting a task as any, but it has to happen for the killing to stop: human individuals--without an automatic, reassuring group consensus--refusing to support killing any longer.
I'm guessing Brian isn't the High Arka, but HA is definitely invited to the conversation…
This bothered me, and I was blogging about it. However, I was composing on Typepad, which my Defeatist brothers continually caution me against because a couple of times a year the Google or the Typepad Hobbits decide to fuck me over and eat everything I had written. I learn for a while, and then revert to form…so, I have brief moments of sanity, interspersing the Einsteinian standard insanity of doing something again and again and being surprised when it goes wrong. Terribly wrong. So, I dropped it for a while.
However, it's still bugging me. I'm a lifelong Democrat who thinks that Jefferson, Jackson, both Roosevelts and Truman were among the great presidents, but the greatest was Lincoln. Lincoln would have serious problems in today's Republican party of course. In fact, he'd probably either be a Democrat or possibly something further left. It's fun to imagine him with David Boies, arguing Citizen's United against some Koch brothers mercenary. Of course, as Jesus wouldn't be allowed to preach in modern Christianity, Lincoln could never be admitted to the bar. Paul Tillich, the Existentialist Christian theologian and philosopher wrote in the introductory remarks to his most approachable work, The Dynamics of Faith, a series of lectures given at Cambridge in the 50s that "Today, faith is more productive of disease than of health. It confuses, misleads, creates alternately skepticism and fanaticism, intellectual resistance and emotional surrender…"
One reason that I admire Lincoln is simple – he personifies human compassion. Lincoln wasn't overtly religious publicly, but he was a man of deep spirituality and concern. Tillich contends that "Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The dymanics of faith are the dynamics of ultimate concern…" Lincoln's ultimate concern was justice which he saw as fairness, compassion, compromise and the acceptance of the other side's humanity. He was generally disappointed, but he strove to achieve that world by doing what he could to maintain the union based on that idea of justice – not because the Union was itself just, but because he saw the potential for justice as lying in the Union, depending on it, deriving it's future from it. And, in order to preserve it as source of ultimate good, he was willing to risk everything, including his soul and sanity and sense of self to preserve it. Had the South been victorious, would he have been treated like a hero by the North? He'd have been hung…he was risking his life, and the irony of his assassination lies in the reality that Wilkes egotistical madness created.
Today's political world is based largely on something that goes back to the beginning – between those who are ALWAYS RIGHT and those who suspect quietly that they could have made a mistake. I don't think Lincoln ever signed an execution order easily or without struggle; we know that George W. Bush had no such concerns, and that Rick Perry was almost gleeful about it at times. And, we know that the people who go to Republican debates cheer executions. Where would Lincoln have been on that? I suspect he'd have vomited…
I've been doing some reading about Afghanistan and our continued adventures there. Now, I have colleagues who are 9/11 Truthers, which I am not. I have colleagues who think Osama bin Laden was killed years ago and then dumped in the Ocean for a propaganda victory; I have colleagues that believe that Israel and the Mossad did 9/11 and got us into the various mid-eastern debacles. Well, if I were Israel I would probably have reacted to the news of 9/11 attacks with some restrained glee especially if I was concerned about the US cutting a separate deal that would be to Israel's disadvantage. Churchill confessed to a feeling of relief and happiness when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Do we really think Churchill planned Pearl Harbor? I know that the Israelis and their various lobbies in this country really want Iran to go away – and, they'd like us to do it. However, as Zbigniew Brzezinski argued on Hardball on Friday we're facing a reality. There is nothing that makes sense about backing an attack on Iran for us; lots to make it a really bad idea; and, exactly what does Israel get out of the attack? NBC's chief "go get shot at" correspondent Richard Engle was in the same segment, and he indicated that the political leadership in Israel might be really excited by the possibility of an attack on Iran, but the actual soldiers and covert operators think it would be stupid, that their focus needs to be on Egypt and Jordan. Brzezinski argued that Iran may be crazy, but that particular empire in various incarnations has been around for 0ver 3000 years, and do we really think they're suicidal? He also points out to those who say "Israel can't live under the threat of nuclear attack" the degree of fatuous reasoning. We did it for over 40 years as did the Soviets and Western Europe. If Iran gets a bomb and uses it, do they expect to survive? Everybody in the neighborhood who counts, including Israel, has a credible nuclear deterrent, as well as delivery systems. The Iranians are depending in so far as they are on anything, on North Korean technology…what the hell. Let them spend themselves into oblivion, which was Reagan's strategy in the 80s. It works…unless you screw up and spend yourself into oblivion.
This is relevant to Afghanistan for a number of reasons. I know that the administration has agreed to stop combat operations sooner than later, but I'm really wondering why not now! It really helps to have some historical awareness, and the only tactic that has worked with Afghanistan is the punitive raid. Get in, fuck up the bad guys and anybody in the vicinity, threaten worse if they do it again, unass the AO. Invade and try to make it better, and you'll just make it a helluva lot worse, and you'll suffer for it. By April of 2002, the Taliban is gone from power although still there; al Queida was severely damaged there; Pakistan is/was/will be totally fucked up; and we're there because…we're going to turn it into a Jeffersonian Democracy? As soon as the Taliban was defeated and Osama bin Laden et al were in Tora Bora, we should have declared victory, given them a check, possibly re-established the monarchy and gotten out. The Afghan people don't want western culture; they don't want women to have any rights; they don't want to not kill each other. It's that simple – we're trying to impose an improvement on people who see no reason to change and regard the "improvements" as evil. NATO and the US would be further ahead to fund emigration to some reasonable location – Barstow, California for example – for those who want to live under something other than Sharia law. That'll assuage some consciences. But whether we leave now or in five years or in ten years, it will be the same…only worse.
The piece from Susan Cain is very relevant here. We got into Iraq due to a rush to judgment and the influence of Ike's military industrial complex combined with green, hubris and myopia. It's interesting in comparing our Iraq-Afghanistan experience to the Soviet experience. Unlike the Soviets, we did have a reason for attacking within Afghanistan – they were harboring a threat, and we had a just reason for wanting to eliminate that threat. The Soviets had been dithering around with the Afghans for years and chose to invade because of the Brezhnev doctrine that once a Red Block Country always a Red Block combined with the belief that they could control matters. They sold themselves a bill of goods. The Soviet experience looks a lot like US experience in Vietnam – lots of people with good intentions and an absolute inability to see the consequences of their actions. I've been reading former British Ambassador to Moscow Rodric Braithwaite's Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-1989 with a degree of déjà vu combined with a strong sense of WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING? Working from Russian sources and interviews, Braithwaite has a history of a cosmic comedy of errors that looks and smells a lot like Vietnam. Lousy policy, self-delusion, group-think run amuck, combined with inefficient tactics, lousy planning, and dumbfounding mismatches between outcomes, methods and resources. The good news for the Soviets was that Spetznaz was really well honed in Afghanistan. The bad news is that they failed to achieve any of their goals while turning the Red Block essentially into Cuba and North Korea. We achieved our initial goals, dithered and screwed around for the next 10 years and are still looking for a goal that we can achieve. Somebody in power needs to stop talking, listen to the record and the history and start focusing on ultimate concerns, desired outcomes – I define a desired outcome as something that can be achieved within the reasonable constraints of blood, time, treasure and lost opportunity. The most desirable outcome today is not to listen to the congressional storm or the media tumult but to listen to the inner voice of reason and make the sort of courageous decision that Lincoln made routinely. And, don't wait for elections or consensus. Do what's right, now…for Lincoln's sake.
Braithwaite begins the third portion of his book, the Long Goodbye with a poem by one the Russian Afghan veterans, Igor Morozov. It reads, in part –
Down from the heights we once commanded/ with burning feet we descend to the ground/ bombarded with calumny, slander and lies/ we're leaving, we're leaving, we're leaving.
Farewell you mountains you know best/ what prices paid while we were here/what foes unconquered still survive/what friends we had to leave behind…
I generally find Russian poems and song lyrics somewhat of a blend of overly didactic and overly romantic…peasant and soldier poetry. The Soviet Army and its soldiers deserved a better use; so did the British with Lord Elphinstone in 1820. The Soviets in many ways repeated the British experience. We repeat the Soviety experience…if history repeats itself with the first time as tragedy and the second as farce, what exactly is our experience going to be? Tragical farce? We deserve better, and if someone listens not to the crowd but to the inner voices or reason, creativity and common sense, we may get it. I remain pessimistically hopeful…
Jerry Harvey, expert on management dysfunction and organizational behavior, has a classic finding called The Abilene Paradox. Basically, it discusses our inability to deconflict -- agreement. We may all "want to do X but there are hidden voices saying, We should do Y because..." His story involves the disruption of a family afternoon in north Texas in the summer because his mother in law figured that he and his wife were probably bored. This resulted in a four hour car trip over beat up roads in a beat up, unairconditioned car to a Rexall Drug Store and Lunch Counter in Abilene. It was hot, it was dusty, it was a lot like the Texas in The Last Picture Show. When they finally got home and collapsed in the living room, there was dead silence punctuated by gas and burps from that fine Rexall Lunch Counter cusine for about 45 mintues. As Harvey tells the story, realizing that he was a trained social scientist with a PhD in Organizational Psychology and Behavior, felt compelled "to make a behavioral intervention." So, he said, "That was fun now, wasn't it?" To which his father-in-law responded by looking at him and visibly questioning the wisdom of letting his daughter marry this clown and then saying as only someone who's from Texas or at least spent a lot of time there can say it, "SSSSHHHEEEEIIITTTT --that was awful." The family did a post mortem, and when their reasoning got exposed -- Momma thought the kids were bored and wouldn't want to eat left overs, the kids didn't want to deny Momma anything, Papa wasn't going to push back against eveyone else so...the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and in the early 70s, the road to Abilene was paved with kind thoughts and care for other people's feelings. Book is a classic, and I recommend it to anyone -- Harvey is one of my heroes along with Keith Richards, Guy Clark and Kierkegaard.
This war was a terrible idea as a use of blood, power, treasure and time. Our soldiers performed incredibly well -- the average enlisted guy in Vietnam served one tour of 11.5 months. Once. In World War II and Korea, once you got there, you stayed until you couldn't fight anymore but there were long lulls between battle and fear. But in Iraq, it was never quiet, never safe, never secure, never lulled -- every day, anywhere, was a day in combat. Everybody hated you, and if they didn't, you figured that there was something wrong with them. As I talked to our kids returning from this cauldron, the general theme echoed one I heard from a British Peacekeeper in 1994 -- "They're all guilty bastards."
Were there problems? Hell yes; war is nothing but problems. This one was fought so poorly that it makes you wonder if Rumsfeld, Cheney and Tommy Franks had bet against at some British bookies...their ignorance, stupidity and basic inhumanity wasn't just criminal. It was of some other dimension -- as if the DOD was run by Reptilian-Alien overlords. Bizzare...
Did we have soldiers do some bad things? Yup -- every war has soldiers do bad things. But, the vast, vast majority of the American military served incredibly well, honorably and effectively. It was a bad idea; it's the Iraqis country; we broke it, we fixed it, and we need to get our guys all home. Now.
So, it was with a certain degree of stunned outrage that the drumbeat from the Republican party managed to get through my skull. The leadership of the Republican party is so committed to reflexive condemnation of anything that this White House does that they're not only willing to destroy the economy of the foreseeable future, the lives and hopes of millions of Americans; they are willing to denigrate the sacrifices of the people in the boots on the ground by saying that this war was in vain because we didn't stay there. Motherfuckers...American values were defeated in Iraq, and American interests were crushed in Iraq. They were crushed when the first bombs fell in Bagdad; they were defeated when the first tanks rolled across the Kuwaiti border. We lost the war then, in early 2003; our political leaders, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton, etc., dealt us this defeat as sure as the Austrian high command dealt their army and empire defeat in 1914. Criminal ignorance, stupidity, cupidity, intellectual sloth and emergent dementia later, and here we are...again.
If you recall when the agreement to end the war was signed, GW Bush was president, Condi Rice was Secretary of State, and Petraeus was still in charge of the Army in Iraq. That team didn't negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement; the Iraqis want us gone. We just lost 4500 killed, thousands of lives shortened by wounds both physical and psychological fighting a war to bring self-determination and Jeffersonian Democracy to a nation made up of various ethnic, religious and cultural groups that all hate each other. As a whole, they want us gone, and we need to go.
Of course, these guys are all operating in a vacuum. What we do to them, they can do to us. If we torture prisoners, they will torture prisoners. If we bomb indiscriminately, they will bomb indiscriminately.
It's important as this mess ends that we honor the victors, the American Armed Forces and Veterans who overcame the strategic defeat that was the whole war, and won an operational and tactical success in conditions of incredible difficulty.
So, while I find Barrack Obama less than a success, and I resent the mistake that you can have bi-partisan cooperation when only one side cooperates as being the worst of new age gibbersih made into policy, we need to make certain that he is re-elected but, more importantly, that the Democrats take back the congress, a greater majority in the Senate and begin to work dismantling the Oligarchs on the right side of the Supreme Court.
Or, fuck it. We have backed a mythical monster -- Cthulhu -- an anarchist analytic philosopher --my brother from another mother, Crispin Sartwell -- and a dead Communist -- Gus Hall -- for President. We were being satirical...but, if you can't get your head out of your ass far enough to care this time around, just vote for our new ticket of Gary Busey and Callista Gingrich. What the hell -- he's beyond certifiable and she's obviously controlling Newt through a combination of shiny things and sexual deviance. At somepoint Gingrich will either choke on a ring or she'll suck his brains out; might as well get it over with.
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Oh, where have you been, my darling young one? I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’ I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’ I saw a white ladder all covered with water I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’ Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’ Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’ Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’ Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son? Who did you meet, my darling young one? I met a young child beside a dead pony I met a white man who walked a black dog I met a young woman whose body was burning I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow I met one man who was wounded in love I met another man who was wounded with hatred And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one? I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’ I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest Where the people are many and their hands are all empty Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten Where black is the color, where none is the number And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’ But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’ And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
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