Be All We Tell You To Be
This is just amazing. I can imagine the recall letters:
Hi, we've decided to cut your pay and your benefits as a veteran. But now we're recalling you back into active service to go and put your ass on the line for our selfish interests in Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, you'll be protecting all the oil industry contractors from Halliburton, who are all making more than 10 times what you'll be making. Have a nice day, and may God continue to bless the United Empire of America.
Unbelievable. The fact that we have the largest military in the world, and that we're shorthanded, speaks volumes.
Presidential puppetry
I'm reading the
recent Al Gore speech called "Democracy Itself is in Grave Danger." It's a great speech, succinctly and clearly outlining the danger posed to America by the Bushites acquiring too high a concentration of power. One of the key passages:
The Bush administration's objective of establishing U.S. domination over any potential adversary led to the hubristic, tragic miscalculation of the Iraq war, a painful adventure marked by one disaster after another based on one mistaken assumption after another. But the people who paid the price have been the U.S. soldiers trapped over there and the Iraqis in prison. The top-heavy focus on dominance as a goal for the U.S. role in the world is exactly paralleled in their aspiration for the role of the president to be completely dominant in the constitutional system. Our founders understood even better than Lord Acton the inner meaning of his aphorism that power corrupts and absolutely power corrupts absolutely. The goal of dominance necessitates a focus on power. Ironically, all of their didactic messages about how democracies don't invade other nations fell on their own deaf ears. The pursuit of dominance in foreign and strategic policy led the Bush administration to ignore the United Nations, do serious damage to our most important alliances in the world, violate international law and risk the hatred of the rest of the world. The seductive exercise of unilateral power has led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that would have been the worst nightmare of our framers.
This principle of establishing domination over any potential adversary is key to understanding the actions of the US government over the past decade. Midnight Notes has written extensively about this issue. I was, frankly, surprised to see Gore mentioning this.
But it occurs to me that if Gore's election to the presidency had been permitted to stand, he would never be saying such things. In other words, the office of president inherently seems to prevent its occupants from speaking their truth, espcially political truth. Anyone with half a brain, including Gore, can see the danger of Bush's actions. And now that he's not a governmental official, he's in a position to express these truths.
While ultimately I'm glad Gore is speaking of these things, things that are glaringly obvious to many of us, it is sad that political office seems to entail obfuscation of the truth.
Authenticity and Vulnerability
I've been having the most amazing ongoing conversation with a very close friend about the connection between personal/existential authenticity, and emotional vulnerability. First, let me explain what I'm talking about.
Authenticity refers to the notion of being true to yourself, to your feelings, and your desires to be a whole person. Authenticity is not only something to be cultivated in a person, but it is also something that is elusive. It's an ideal, something that one can strive for, but never perfectly achieve.
Emotional vulnerability is the way in which one can experience negative emotional fallout from unpleasant confrontations. It is especially important for those who show a high degree of empathy; an empath will inherently be much more vulnerable to the emotional energy of others.
So my friend and I are both empaths. We talk about how to deal with it a lot. It occured to me that as we strive for authenticity, we become less vulnerable to negative emotional fallout. This idea is basically an extension of the Socratic notion that "nothing can harm a good person." A corollary to this idea is that it is better to be authentic, and to speak one's truth, and deal with the emotional fallout of authenticity than to be inauthentic and deal with the energy blockages that result. Interesting thesis. I'm not 100% sure I believe it, but so far it seems correct to me.
I feel like I have much, much more to say about this, but right now I'm at work. I've been interrupted (assuming actually doing my job can be considered interruption... heh) literally a dozen times as I've tried to type this, so I'll save more for later. Interesting thoughts to chew on, nonetheless...
Design Tweak
If you pay attention to this site, you'll notice that I tweaked the HTML layout a bit. Actually, more accurately, I tweaked the style sheet. I changed the font of the text of each entry from garamond to a free font called 'Bitstream Vera Sans', with Verdana as a backup. It's the same font that everything else on the page was. I also decreased the size of the fonts a bit.
Please leave comments under this entry if you have an opinion about the new look.
The Tide
Just a brief note to say that I'm very encouraged by the direction of public sentiment against the Bush cabal in Washington. Virtually no one I know is for Bush anymore. The prime legacy of the Bush administration, I believe, is that they have brought corruption, greed, and cronyism into the foreground. In other words, a lot of the stuff they pull has been going on for a long time. But with the Bushites, they do it openly for all to see. No wonder the world hates what the American government stands for...
The amount of cognitive dissonance that a Bush supporter has to have -- the sheer number of utter contradictions that Bush supporters have to hold in their mind -- means that anytime you question one of them, you can actually smell the smoke. Sometimes you can even see the sparks.
I can't see how Bush can "win" an "election" in November. This does not mean, of course, that he won't be president again. It will be interesting to watch.
The Winds Get Warmer
It's been an insanely busy few weeks. I've actually had a complaint from one of my faithful readers (!) about the lack of activity on my blog. I imagine the other one will be complaining shortly... ;-)
Last weekend, I went 3 hours up the coast for a small, intimate retreat with some very close friends. It was a bit stressful due to some of the dynamics at work, but all in all a nice weekend.
I climbed my first mountain ever, Acadia Mountain on Mt. Desert Island just off the coast of Ellsworth, Maine. Though it's a small mountain, it was very cool to go for a nice climb. My legs are, frankly, still recovering, though their weariness has been exacerbated by lots of walking and biking since I got back. It was a very surreal experience; the day we chose to go hiking was cloudy and misty. What could have been a fantastic view of Soames Sound, the inlet that nearly divides the island in two, was a glimpse into the gray abyss of nothingness. It was quite an existential moment actually; it forced us in a sort of mystical way to focus on the immediacy of the mountain itself. The hike itself was short, but somewhat strenuous. It wasn't just follow-the-uphill-path; there was definitely some climbing involved. It started to rain as we came down, so the rocks were a bit slippery. But we all survived, and went into Bar Harbor afterwards for lunch. My daughter, who would turn 7 2 days after the hike, did very well. She beat me by 28 years, in the age-at-which-we-climb-our-first-mountain category.
Things Quitchy continue to progress. I'm getting better at programming drums, and with Matt's help, I'm learning to put the drum fills and flourishes in the right spaces around the songs, accenting the vocal lines. I'm quite pleased with how well this is turning out. Forward momentum.
I also met a "virtual" friend for the first time last week. We have a lot in common, we're both musicians, we're both setting up sonar-based studios, and we both share a love for prog rock, and an appreciation for our mutual friend and cosmic adventurer Buzz Bakewell.
I've also been reconnecting with my wife in a wonderful way. We're doing good work together, while still managing to find time to play. Our relationship is growing in interesting and magical ways. We're also getting closer to other people in our community, which continues to amaze and excite me. Yes, I can say with some amount of certainty, my life rocks.
Because I took last weekend off from work, I've been working more this week to make up the hours. So my schedule has been insanely busy. It's funny that in order to carve space in my reality for a vacation, I have to make the time around the vacation very busy. Ah well. So it goes.
I'm not a happy camper either
According to
this story on CNN, Colin Powell is "not a happy camper" about the fact that someone lied about the levels of terrorist activity. Originally, they claimed that terrorism was on the decline, which would imply that the ludicrous "war on terror" is somehow being effective.
The fact is, however, that "figures from a corrected report 'will be up sharply,'" according to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
Does anyone else see this as further evidence that this ridiculous "war on terror" is only exacerbating the situation? This is not difficult, folks. I wrote about this in November, 2001. I am far from an expert, but this just seems obvious to me.
a slow fast
Last Friday, for the first time in my life, I fasted. There are many reasons for this. The most immediate is that my wife decided to fast, and asked me if I wanted to join her. But a deeper reason is that I had never done it before in my life. It was only a 24 hour fast, but it felt good. It was surprisingly easy. I felt very good afterwards.
For me, a fast (at least for now) means "no solid food." I still drink coffee, and I've been drinking lots of water, some fruit juice, and broth.
Those who know me will know that I have a complex relationship with food. Indeed, this is one of the prime areas of my own spiritual work over the past few years. I have undone some very bad habits I picked up growing up. But it is a constant struggle for me.
Furthermore, I think fasting will have some good political benefits. It is not difficult for me to imagine a time when food will not be nearly as plentiful for us as it is now. So if I get used to going without food now, it could help down the road. Who knows. I don't want to get all apocalyptic, much less feed that energy pattern, but fasting for me is a way to attune to those who suffer under the imbalances of capitalist food distribution in the world.
Anyway, this week I decided to extend my fast for 48 hours. So no solid food until tomorrow morning. This is a personal challenge. I've never known hunger in my life. This will be the longest I've ever gone without food.
Non Liberty
This article details the results of a very interesting experiment involving copyright law enforcement and a text that is in the public domain (John Stuart Mill's
On Liberty:
As part of a recent research project, I posted a section of Mill's On Liberty on the internet (which is clearly in the public domain), then issued unfounded copyright complaints against it. One internet service provider (ISP) removed the chapter almost immediately. This illustrates the problem with self-censorship procedures, which rely on hidden judgements being made by unaccountable bodies.
Interesting story. This points out yet another flaw with copyright law -- which was originally architected to govern print media -- as applied to the digital age. As the article explains:
ISPs are acting as judge, jury and private investigator at the same time. They not only have to make a judgement whether a website is illegal or not - they also have to act as a private detective agency, investigating the accusations and deciding on the merits of the evidence they gather. Nevertheless, when an ISP removes content it invokes the cyber equivalent to the death sentence. When an ISP acts it can effectively destroy a business or censor a political campaign, by making access to that website impossible.
I would add to this that the British ISP who removed Mill probably has a policy to instantly remove all copyright claims, regardless of validity, simply because it is cheaper to do so than to investigate all copyright claims.
Who should pay for these investigations? That's a tough call. Either way, this model of copyright is way too topheavy and unwieldy. It is obsolete.
Someone had to say it
And Greg Palast has the guts to. You can't really call
his article on Ronald Reagan an obituary, precisely. It's far too bitter. And realistic.
But as I wrote in another forum:
I'm sorry for those close to him and for those who loved him, but I can't exactly say with good conscience that we lost a great man.
Who knows how history will remember him. I think if you go out far enough into the future, he'll be remembered as being deeply connected to the process of American global hegemony, neoliberalism, and imperialism. And I can't see how this will be regarded as a good thing.
But Palast pulls no punches. Again, someone had to say it.
Now, this is comforting...
I mean, sure. Bush is experiencing cognitive dissonance on an extreme level, dissonance that is producing energy blockages that will have to be released. But
this report describes some seriously crazy behavior from him. He's nuts. We all knew that. But now his own people are starting to turn against him.
Wil, to power
This is a flawless rant from
Wil Wheaton, author and actor (you know him as Wesley from Star Trek, also from the movie Stand By Me). It's from an
interview he did recently. Great stuff.
You know, I have always been pretty moderate. I'm socially liberal, but fiscally conservative ... until now. In the last three years, I have been radicalized by the Bush administration because I believe them to be incredibly dishonest and incredibly divisive, and acting not in the best interests of the vast majority of Americans. Remember "I'm a uniter, not a divider"? What ever happened to that? Bush has divided the country at every opportunity. It's just a modern updating of the old Nixonian "Southern Strategy". Look, to give these comments some context: I was not a huge supporter of the Clinton administration. That whole lying thing really bothered me. I don't care what it's about; I don't like to be lied to by my leaders, regardless of what party they're from. Truth has always been more important to me than anything else, and I resent it when politicians lie to us. I resent it even more when the media make them repeat their lies over and over again. Judith Miller at The New York Times, I'm looking in your direction.
I really think that history is going to remember George W. Bush and eventually Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld ... and the rest of the neo-conservatives (neocons) as the most corrupt, dishonest, dangerous and damaging group of people to hold the reins of American power in history.
I really try to be middle-of-the-road. But when the President of the United States uses his bully pulpit to call for an amending of the Constitution -- a document that should be guaranteeing freedoms to the people, not taking them away -- to deny basic rights to an entire class of people (in this case homosexuals) it makes me explode. Bush's call to amend it to deny homosexuals a right that heterosexual people take for granted was really the last straw for me, and now I am officially On The Left. The purpose of the Constitution as I understand it is to put limits on what the government can do, not who can get married to whom. These Republicans talk about smaller government, but that's such a lie! What they really mean is "smaller government programs to help out the less fortunate people in our country so we can get rich, and bigger government intrusion into your private lives so we can control you." It's such blatant pandering to intolerant religious extremists who are trying to force their mythology down the throats of the entire country. Guess what? That's not Democracy. That's Theocracy. Isn't that one of the major reasons we left England in the first place? The separation of Church and State was pretty goddamned important to the Founding Fathers, but the Bush administration is trying to shove a far-right, ultra-conservative, mythological Christian agenda on the rest of the country, and by extension, the rest of the world. I mean, it's like he's using Revelations to get his foreign policy!
You know what? In a rational world most of those guys in the Bush administration would not have jobs right now. Remember Bush smirking through the 2000 campaign, saying, "I will return honor and dignity to the White House" and "I will restore accountability"? Where's the fucking accountability?! Donald Rumsfeld should have resigned months ago because of the lies about Iraq. George W. Bush should be impeached for lying and deliberately misleading America and the world into an unnecessary, illegal war that violates the Geneva Convention, and goes against international law. He should be impeached. If Bill Clinton can be impeached for lying about sex -- And it doesn't matter what he lied about: he was impeached for lying, okay? And that's not alright. It's not okay to lie under oath; that's perjury and he should have been held accountable for that. But if he can be impeached for that, if he can be investigated for something so stupid like Whitewater, where the fuck is the Congressional investigation of the Bush administration? My God! They've lied about everything, and thousands of human beings have died because of it!
I just want to know where all these conservatives are who were so concerned about truth and honesty when Clinton was in office. Their silence about the outrageous lies of the Bush administration is deafening. Why did Bush try so hard to prevent the creation of the 9/11 Commission? Why did he put Henry Kissenger in charge of it, and fight it, and fight it, and fight it, every step of the way? Why did he try so hard to prevent us from finding out what happened? What's he afraid of? It's our fucking right as Americans to know what happened. This is our country. Those were our fellow citizens who were murdered on that day. He will gleefully stand on the ashes of the World Trade Center to make a campaign speech, but he won't give the 9/11 Commission everything they need to find out what happened? It shouldn't even be a question. The worst terrorist attack on American soil in history, he's exploiting our fear and our national outrage for political gain, and he is doing everything he can to hamstring the commission. Who is he protecting? Who does he care about? Does he care about his buddies in Saudi Arabia who are funding al-Qaeda? Or does he care about the Americans that he was allegedly elected to represent? Just -- The fucking duplicitousness of this administration is so offensive to me and the cognitive dissonance that you have to have to support these people is stunning. Donald Rumsfeld goes on Face the Nation on Sunday and he says, "Nobody ever said it [Iraq] was an 'imminent threat.' We never said that." Well, we all know that's false. And thank God there was a reporter from The New York Times who said, "Well, as a matter of fact here, Secretary Rumsfeld, you said, 'They have the most lethal weapons presented ... They are an imminent threat.' It's right here! You said it. Answer that now." And Rumsfeld goes, "Um ... uh ... er ..." He said, "Well, what I meant was, um ... Well, he sort of, uh ... I mean, he -- We're going to find it." And he got away with that! Where is the outrage? Paul Wolfowitz admitted that the neocons focused on WMDs to justify the war, and now we know that everyone except the Iraqi National Congress -- who have been totally discredited as liars -- told the Pentagon they just weren't there. The Secretary of Defense is caught repeatedly lying about the main justification for the war and Congress doesn't even flinch! Can you imagine what would have happened if that had been William Cohen? There would have been 50,000 Republican operatives marching on the Pentagon with pitchforks and torches, and you can bet your life that it's all we'd hear about from the so-called liberal media until he was forced to resign. It just drives me crazy. Until this administration, I was never a partisan. I always put principals before party -- I mean, I'm registered as a non-partisan!
ST: You just vote with your heart.
WW: I vote with my conscience. I believe in the values I was told America stands for, and all my life I have loved America. "One man, one vote." "A nation of laws, not men." "Truth before all else" -- that's just going to be a myth (if it isn't already) if we don't get these psychos out of power. I believe in equality. I believe in freedom of the press. I believe in the separation of church and state. I believe in protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority. And these people ... are the most anti-American people to ever have power. Ever. The things this administration has done have gone totally against traditional American values. I wonder if the vast majority of Americans even know how virulently hated we are in the rest of the world now, because of the Bushies. I wonder if they even care. And you know what's awful? In some twisted way, conservatives take my criticism of the lies of the Bush administration and turn it into support for our enemies ... what a load of crap. I opposed the war in Iraq all along, and it's not because I love terrorists, you morons. I completely support our military. I honor and respect the men and women who took an oath to defend our country and my freedom. That is why I have always opposed, and continue to oppose, the war in Iraq, because it was unnecessary and took our focus away from stopping al-Qaeda. And the best argument war supporters can come up with is, "Well, isn't the world better with Saddam Hussein not in power?" You know what? Fuck Saddam Hussein. I don't care about Saddam Hussein, and the only reason he ever even had power in the first place is because he was funded and given weapons and intelligence information by the Reagan and Bush I administrations. He was created by the United States, just like the Taliban was. And don't take my word for it. Read [the book] House of Bush, House of Saud. Saddam Hussein was never a threat to the United States. Osama Bin Laden was, and is. If you think the world is better off without Saddam Hussein rattling his sword in the middle of the desert, try asking someone who has lost a family member in Iraq if they think it was worth it. Ask yourself if you feel safer getting on a plane now that they tore down that statue in Baghdad, but Osama is still running around.
You asked what causes I believe in, and care about, and I care about taking care of Americans in America. I am not worried about taking care of the rest of the world. That's not our problem! We can provide leadership, which we should do because we're currently the toughest guy on the block, but this idea that we can go out and engage in nation-building and shoving Democracy down the throats of people who don't want it -- look, our economy is falling apart. People are losing their jobs and their homes, while CEOs buy more yachts. Some Americans may have gotten a few hundred dollars from the Bush tax cut, but their health care costs have soared by thousands. Gasoline is nearing three bucks a gallon, and we are facing the biggest outbreak of herpes since the 70s, because the Republicans won't let us teach safe sex to teenagers. Our country is in danger of collapsing under the weight of the hubris of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearle, Tom DeLay, and the rest of them. We are in serious trouble. You don't go cleaning up your neighbor's garage when your own house is falling apart. And during the 2000 campaign, Bush said, "America shouldn't be policing the world." Well, what are you doing then, you fucking liar? There was a time when I could honestly say, "I don't hate George W. Bush. I strongly disagree with him, but I don't hate him." Well, I sure hate him now. And with each soldier and innocent Iraqi civilian who is killed, because of his incompetence and hubris, I hate him a little bit more.
Nothing I can add to that...
