Nowhere To Go

I wanted to reach some sort of resolution of the quandary I've been in before I posted anything again, but here I am, still stuck in the same rut. Everyone else has "moved on" from the confirmation of Mukasey as AG, and I have too, in a way. I just don't particularly like where I've moved on to.

The vote, if you recall, was 53-40, and it takes 41 to block the vote. That means that any single one of the presidential candidates could have arrived on the scene and made like Mr. Smith goes to Washington, blocking the vote, filibustering if necessary, and saving Congress and the Department of Justice from approving a man who refused to condemn torture. It might have been Clinton, Obama, Biden, Dodd, or even McCain. But no one showed. Personally, I haven't been able to shake the idea that, for such a thing to happen, every member of Congress must be corrupt. So, I've backed away from involvement with Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and backed away from politics in general. Maybe there's some notion in my head that, if I don't tie in with the politicians, I can retain my sense of honor, but I'm not sure if that really holds up. In any event, I'm not much inclined to be enthusiastic about the campaigns now. I watched the CNN debate last week, and thought it was pretty obscene, for the most part. That's been hashed and rehashed, so I won't go through it here. I guess I've spent enough time talking about my Quixotic quest for something really noble to happen, too. There's precious little tolerance for anything truly noble in Washington, after all. They'd much rather be waterboarding.

So, where to? I'm not sure, actually. Definitely, things have changed for me. Am I an anarchist now? Well, I don't know about that, but I'm pretty disillusioned. I think my natural tendency is toward the naive and innocent, and I'm perpetually crestfallen when the real world turns out very differently. You have to admit this is a pretty extreme case, though. Yeah, we torture, so what? Let's move on.

I can still meditate, and I'm trying to work with koans. If you've never heard of a koan, here's a little background. There are generally considered to be two schools of Zen, one called Soto and the other called Rinzai. Normally, I adhere to the Soto school of thought, with an emphasis just on sitting zazen, or some similar activity. The Rinzai method often includes the study of koans. In reality, there is no great divide between the two schools. My favorite Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, refers most frequently to Dogen among the old masters, but Dogen frequently used koans. The "knock" on koans, if there really is one, is that, although they can yield profound insight in a relatively shorter time than pure zazen, it's possible to master many koans without necessarily achieving some of the deeper effects that might lead to becoming a more mature and compassionate individual. In other words, a koan may sometimes act as a shortcut to insight, but with all the drawbacks shortcuts usually entail.

My very superficial comparison hardly does justice to koan study, which can be every bit as rigorous as pure zazen sitting, and have just as profound an effect on the personality. Real koan study involves many hundreds of koans requiring a lifetime to master, but my comparison does contain a grain of truth. Even so, I think it's useful for me to strive for a little extra insight right now, so I'm studying the classic koan known as Mu. The word Mu is Japanese for what may have been Wu in the original Chinese, and translates loosely into No, or perhaps Nothing. It was the response master Joshu gave when asked if a dog has the Buddha nature. In studying this koan, the point is just to focus on Joshu's response until Mu is fully understood. If that sounds like nonsense, that's because it is. Other koans, such as "what is the sound of one hand clapping", or "what is your original face before you were born" are just as nonsensical from the everyday point of view. A koan is unique in that it expresses a spirit that is uniquely Zen, and it's that spirit that the student is tasked to revitalize within his or her own spirit, in such a way that a Zen master might explore the student's understanding of Mu, or the sound of one hand, until the master is sure that the student has fully understood the koan. That understanding can only be gained by a dedicated, whole-hearted effort by the student. It might take months, or it might take years. I have tried to come to terms with Mu for about 34 years, albeit mostly as a dilettante. Now, I'm in the position to make a concerted effort, so here goes.

Perhaps I'm switching to koan study out of my deep frustration with everything that's going on, but it's just an experiment of sorts. In all likelihood, I'll switch back to the more even-keeled approach of Soto Zen before long. Koans have the potential to get you all worked up, partly because they don't make any rational sense no matter how you look at them. The fact that they do make sense, in a distinctly Zen way, can be even more maddening as the frustration builds.

For either method, the three pillars of Zen still provide the necessary support: great faith, great doubt, and great determination. I think I've always had faith, whether it's great or not, I suppose remains to be seen. Everything that's happened recently adds to a great sense of doubt, and I'm in a position right now to doubt most everything. That leaves great determination. I'm still working on that one.

The Fierce Urgency of Now

I am running in this race because of what Dr. King called "the fierce urgency of now." Because I believe that there's such a thing as being too late. And that hour is almost upon us.
-- Barack Obama

I've been a staunch Barack Obama supporter for some months now, but I've been mostly inactive for the past few days, just as I've avoided this blog. I've been somewhat busy, but I've also been scanning the news, the internet sites, and elsewhere for some story, some reaction that would make me feel that I'm not alone trying to deal with the feelings I've been having. They started the middle of last week, when I realized the confirmation of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General was inevitable, and I guess I should have been prepared for the abrupt swiftness of the actual confirmation vote and the swear-in, but it hit me like a sucker punch to the solar plexus, and for someone who already has breathing issues, I felt like it did a lot more than take my breath away. I just didn't know what to do anymore. I still don't.

I watched a video of an inspiring speech Obama gave over the weekend in South Carolina, and I'm embedding a YouTube video of that speech at the bottom of this blog. I recommend that you watch this video, especially if you like fiery political speeches. This is a good example of the charisma of Barack Obama. But I'm not necessarily here to praise Barack Obama. I'm trying to write about the difficulty I'm having supporting him, or any other candidate, right now.

There was plenty of protest over Mukasey while the Judicial Committee was deliberating, but once Schumer and Feinstein voiced their support for his confirmation, it was stunning how quickly and smoothly the confirmation process proceeded from there. Obama had issued his three-paragraph objection, but neither he nor any other Presidential candidate even bothered to cast a vote when the decision was passed to the Senate. Mukasey more or less breezed through with a 53-40 vote, and was sworn in within 24 hours, I believe. Obama continued to make speeches in Iowa, and fielded questions from Tim Russert yesterday on Meet The Press, where the question of Mukasey never arose. Now, as I look through the stories, articles, and blogs, everyone seems to have forgotten all about it, and moved on. Everyone except me.

I'm still sort of having a problem adjusting to this torture idea. Perhaps I need counseling. I have a problem that no one but me seemed to think that an Attorney General of the United States who wouldn't denounce waterboarding or declare limits to Presidential power was so unacceptable that it had to be fought, by blocking the vote, filibustering, or whatever had to be done. I have a really serious problem that the candidates thought they could largely ignore the whole thing. Finally, I have a problem realizing that so few, if any, have the same problem as I do. Is there something wrong with me? Perhaps I should rethink torture, and maybe cannibalism and child molestation as well. It's possible I've been too harsh in condemning these practices. Different strokes, and all that.

The quote at the top of this blog is from the speech you can watch at the bottom of this entry. I found it somewhat ironic in my current state of mind, because I take "the fierce urgency of now" perhaps a bit more literally. When I think of now, I think of today, not next November. Perhaps many view the ugly politics that have brought us Michael Mukasey as merely the death throes of a discredited administration, but I rather doubt that the Bush Administration people feel the same, nor does the Republican party and its wealthy financiers. It seems to me that Washington corruption continues pretty much unabated, except for some scattered resignations that allow a few on the hot seat to lay low for a while. In this time right now, it almost seems that everyone, in fact, might be corrupt.

When I watch and listen to Obama's speech, I certainly don't feel like I'm listening to someone who's been corrupted, but I still can't forget that he allowed what should have never been allowed. My mental image of the Statue of Liberty now has her holding a piece of gauze and a jug of water. We've been sullied, pulled down into the mud right with this corrupt Administration, and by confirming Mukasey, we have become complicit. That's why I've taken this so hard, and that's why I believe any Senator with a voice and a conscience should have filibustered for days on end to prevent this. I don't know why I should have expected it, since no one except for Kucinich has done anything really brave in Congress for quite some time, but for me there is a special filth to this one, and I've taken it pretty hard. I've taken enough hard hits in life to recognize when something is going to take some recovery time, and this is one of those times. Whether I can justify snuggling up to our political system again, once I feel better, is a question I just can't answer right now.

I have been reading, though. I read Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal, which was high on my current reading list. I enjoy Krugman's writing style. Although he's an economist, his primary concern is people, not numbers, and he has a flair for packing information into interesting and highly readable prose that kept me turning the pages. His analysis of the evolution of the two political parties over the past century was very insightful, and very blunt in illustrating the manipulation of such elements as racism to drive the political agenda of what he terms "movement conservatives." Paul seemed so unrelentingly optimistic in his view of the future, though, I sometimes wondered what he was smoking. Perhaps I needed a dose of his irritating cheeriness in my current state, but it managed to grate on my nerves more than once. Perhaps if I had the ability to turn out a summary as succinct and withering as the following, I'd be more optimistic about the future, too:

Thanks to their organization, the interlocking institutions that constitute the reality of the vast right-wing conspiracy, movement conservatives were able to take over the Republican Party, and move its policies sharply to the right. In most of the country this rightward shift alienated voters, who gradually moved toward the Democrats. But Republicans were nonetheless able to win presidential elections, and eventually gain control of Congress, because they were able to exploit the race issue to win political dominance of the South. End of story.

-- Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal

I look at the elements in power now, and think about the people with bottomless bank accounts who support them, and I have trouble feeling sunny about the future, even if I manage to forget about global warming and Pakistan. Partly because the arguments of Paul Krugman and many others are so well honed, and partly because so many react so strongly to the message of Barack Obama, I worry even more about the other side. The progressive side has reasoned argument all in its favor, while the other side has money, racism, fundamentalism and Blackwater. Did I mention the other side has money? When the arguments for change are as strong as they are now, and the realities are instead Michael Mukasey and immunity for telecoms, I sense a disconnect that has me reeling for the moment. I'm not so sure this is going to be as easy as people think, and I'm not even so sure about the people.

Whenever I think I'm going to be free to just build on themes that I've introduced here, something comes along to put a monkey wrench in the whole machinery. I still have a lot of things to sort out, but in the meantime, this is a very good speech, so enjoy it.

What, Me Worry?

"You are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

-- Lewis Carroll

I took my last prednisone today, hopefully for at least a while. That stuff makes you jumpy. It upsets your sleep patterns, it's no help at all in meditation, and I've been taking the stuff in big doses the last two months. It's been some benefit, not as much as I'd hoped, but I'll take what I can get, especially while I muddle through a transition in doctors, since the pulmonologist I'd been seeing has decided to leave his private practice. Meantime, my prescription for Advair (yay, another steroid!) unexpectedly expired, and I felt briefly as if I had myself fallen through the cracks of our dysfunctional medical system. By chance, I had visited a colleague of my new doctor some time back, which is more than I can say for my new doctor, who won't see me until next month. Only that visit to his colleague prompted his office to send a renewal of that prescription. Without it, and with my old doctor off to who knows where, I would have been in a world of hurt. Welcome to the Great Society!

Be that as it may... at least I'm getting a little more comfortable in my meditation again, with far fewer drugs in my system. Since I'm not so jumpy, I'm feeling less bored with sitting still, and I'm able to be consistently more quiet overall, and it feels good. I might even try to talk a bit about Zen this time. Let's just throw caution to the wind, what do you say!

If you're interested in Zen, but don't know much about it, I would certainly suggest you visit a Zen Center near you, and to buy or borrow some good books on the topic. I would hate to think you learned all you know from me. But I'll be happy to describe a little of what I do. You can compare it to what the experts say. I'm just a semi-retired actor/programmer. I know nothing.

I have the requisite Zen cushions, called a zafu and a zabuton, wherein the small round pillow (the zafu) is placed on the mat (the zabuton), so that one can sit on the small zafu cross-legged, with good support, and meditate in relative comfort for extended sessions. Of course, I don't always use the pillows. Sometimes, I defer to age, or perhaps laziness, and simply sit cross-legged in my large recliner chair. I personally think some formalities are overrated, but then, I told you I'm not the expert. For me, the important thing is to sit with good balanced posture and a straight, upright back. I really can't do the lotus; my legs are fairly muscular and thick, and they weren't close to being flexible enough even when I was meditating in my twenties. The lotus is better if you can do it, but mostly my legs are just crossed. I appreciate that form is very important in Zen, but I try to honor that mostly with my straight back and my cupped hands forming my mudra.

The mudra is very important. I relax my arms, but keep them slightly away from my sides, and lay the fingers of my left hand over those of my right, in front of me. My thumbs touch each other gently to form the "cosmic" oval close to my navel. My mudra has become pretty solid, my hands relaxed, and from there I just breathe, and focus on following my breathing.

I suppose the most difficult thing for anyone to deal with in zazen, other than some discomfort maintaining the zazen posture, is what to think. I have read and listened to many Zen masters on that topic for many years, and while they've all mostly said the same things, I have managed to remain confused for most of those years. Now, I'm much more ready to take what they said at the face value, and literally just think about each breath going in and out. I've dealt with the frustration of that seeming complete waste of time, and I've let my mind wander in fantasies more often than I'd care to admit. After a while, though, it starts to sink in, and I just pay attention.

I know the most completely wasted times I've spent in meditation were the times I felt like I was "making progress" toward being a "better me." Master Shunryu Suzuki would tell me that no time is really wasted, but it seems like nothing disrupts meditation faster than trying to see how well it's working. If you've read Buddhist literature of any kind, you know that the desire for personal gain is our fatal attachment, the root cause of all our pain and suffering. But that seems a very conceptual thing, and it's hard to imagine not being attached to this world and our ability to make ourselves useful to it in some way. Fortunately, Zen doesn't put much stock in concepts.

Now when I meditate, I feel the difference between the calm moment by moment experience of sitting and breathing slowly, and the tense diffusion of thoughts as I focus on goals and achievements while each of those moments drift slowly away. I am learning to appreciate those homely little moments on my zafu or chair, even if they're not very special. It's a little easier to see now that those moments will never come again, and if I don't enjoy them just a little bit now, the chance is lost forever. I know that when I stopped trying so hard to be a Zen master in my meditation, I started to feel just a little bit of what they must have felt. I know, too, that you may read this paragraph over and over again, but you'll only understand that when you are ready.

When I've written about Zen, I've tried to make it seem so prosaic one might wonder why bother to do it at all. I've described it as little more than calisthenics, and I'm not backing down on that score. Zen is terribly misunderstood here in the West. I think we're so anxious to imbue something like Zen with such extraordinary qualities that we completely cover it with our own opinions until it can't even be found. Folks, it really is just what it looks like. It's nothing fancy. You're more likely to improve yourself reading Chomsky, or watching Hardball, for goodness' sake. You're sitting cross-legged like a lump. It is what it is.

I've done a lot of calisthenics over the years. Until my condition began to really slow me down nearly two years ago, I was doing 300 toe-touches, 200 push-ups, and 150 sit-ups every day like clockwork, and I enjoyed being fit and energetic from that discipline. Even there, I knew the best push-ups were those when I really concentrated and paid attention. Even there, it took a focused mind to get results. That's all to say that there is something else about Zen that's a little like attitude. Perhaps a better way to put it is it's about heart. Beyond that, I would be hard pressed to give a description. If you try zazen, I think you'll understand.

I've often referred to my spiritual hero Shunryu Suzuki, and this is a good place to plug the late master's most famous books: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and Not Always So. Master Suzuki writes far better than I can about the delicate topic of the mental approach to zazen. For the most part, I would say don't worry about it. Don't be upset when your focus is poor, or your mind wanders. A standard approach that I still use myself on many occasions is to count your breaths from one to ten, and then start over. It helps to keep the mind focused on the breathing, and gives the mind less chance to get lost in its random thoughts. But that's bound to happen over and over again for quite a while. When it does, don't beat yourself up. It's part of the process. Just go back and start counting your breaths all over again.

If you start thinking about something, it's ok to go with that, and think that thought all the way through to its end. A good rule of thumb, though, is, as Master Suzuki would say, "there are no second thoughts in Zen." Don't look to follow up on that random thought once it's completed. Just go back to counting, or just following, the breaths. If and when another "compelling" thought wants attention, deal with it, don't just try and push it away. Soon enough, the more distracting thoughts are fewer, and your mind becomes calm and quiet as your breathing deepens. For me, this feels like coming back to point zero.

I'm not going to try and make you believe I know all about point zero. I've never actually made it that far, as near as I can tell. It's not that out of reach to get fairly close, though, and I think this may be one of the best ways to see the advantages of Zen. To use a truly disturbing analogy, the old (but still sometimes useful) practice of electroshock therapy has been used to disrupt the destructive patterns of mental patients. I think that approaching point zero in meditation might be a preferable approach to getting out of those mental ruts, if I'm allowed to choose. Once I go back to thinking again, my thought patterns may not have improved, but I've gotten them off to a little bit of a fresher start. I think it helps me to be more flexible and resilient.

It's good to take a little time out here and run my mouth about Zen a bit. I don't want to get too carried away with it. I definitely think it's useful not to make too much of Zen, and it's really counter-productive to get all excited about it. I like haikus as much as the next guy, but it's nice to just keep things in perspective. A fresh and flexible mind has a lot of potential, perhaps even the mind rattling around in my much-battered skull, but it certainly won't change things as much as you might hope. It's just a mind that's a little more ready for the task at hand.

Is there a way to prepare the mind for the things we're having to wrap our heads around now in this troubled world? Can we look at Musharraf in Pakistan without at least half a dozen really cataclysmic thoughts clamoring for dominance? Who's guarding the nukes? Is Musharraf giving George any ideas? Where's Osama? Then there's the redoubtable Michael Mukasey and his champions in the Senate. I know I'll always think of him as Mr. Waterboard. But hey, America was always over-rated anyway, right? I'm sure gonna miss it, though. We're just another country that tortures now. America is what you read about in history books.

I recommend a lot of meditation in the coming weeks. I think it will be important to stay as fresh as possible. There aren't many out there who act like they're paying much attention to that Big Mind that may be the better part of us all, but I'll do what I can to be quiet for Big Mind if it so much as whispers. I think right now we're going to need all the help we can get.

Silly Me

This is kind of a strange little blog, isn't it? Why would I want to have written such a thing, exposing myself to embarrassment for my somewhat unmetered remarks, admissions, and freewheeling assessments of current events and the state of our world? In this politically correct society, it's more advantageous to pull our appendages back into our shell, and go along to get along. How do my friends react? (Answer: I haven't told any of them about this, and if any have discovered this blog, they haven't confessed it to me.) Certainly, this blog represents an injudicious move on my part when it comes to preservation of my personal dignity within the social and professional circles within which I move. A better approach would have been to select purely non-controversial topics, such as programming, where I can lay some claim to professional expertise, and could quietly, uncontroversially, pass along some small packets of wisdom gained from experience to novice developers. That would have been the more prudent course of action.

What can I hope to contribute to the national debate, after all? I'm reaching far beyond my professional areas in my discussions, and often well beyond any personal decorum in the persona I project. It's pretty shameless, probably egotistical, and in the long run, just plain silly, especially given that the amount of effect I'm likely to have would be far outweighed by the sidelong glances cast by professional colleagues toward this endeavor. I'm just sort of urinating in the wind, as it were, and some of it is more than likely to just blow right back in my face. Now that's a disquieting image!

Why do I bother? Well, for one thing, I'm reminded, in ways some of my colleagues have not yet been forced to confront, of the very brief time we're allotted to make our little marks on society. I became somewhat frustrated in that attempt at Microsoft, because my health situation had begun to rob me of the physical capacities I needed to be fully effective in that environment. Perhaps, also, I knew that something else, of which this blog is but one visible attribute, was struggling inside of me to find expression. My background and education is in the arts, not computers. I had come to Microsoft specifically in the hope that I might add something to the digital environment that made life just a little bit easier somehow. That was always the promise of computing from my perspective, that it could take on some tedious task and relieve that burden from the humans who could benefit from the fruits of that labor. I have had occasion, especially in my earlier years of software development, to see my programs physically replace some of those human efforts, and see a chore that had once required hours become available at the press of a single button. In my world, I didn't eliminate workers; I freed them to spend more time solving the myriad other problems of their complex and multi-tasked professions. It was a collaboration that, when successful, provided benefits for all. I looked forward to finding some way to extend that path of involvement to the whole overburdened world. If I succeeded in some way, I can't say for certain. My work at Microsoft has borne little resemblance to the cul-de-sac environments of my earlier days, and any effect I may have had will be more difficult to measure. But I tried.

So what now? Should I continue to post these odd personal notations, as if my thoughts might actually make a difference in this world? It's apparent they've had little effect so far. From my little corner of the world, I can honestly say that I've never seen us collectively in such a mess, so perhaps my disconnected ramblings are justifiable in a society that's already out of control. I'm listening now to Thom Hartmann's radio show, as I often do, and he's interviewing Naomi Wolf about her recently published book The End of America. Thom commented that only a year ago, Naomi had been his guest to discuss the fairly innocuous subject of cosmetics, prompting Ms. Wolf to remark on how much has changed in only a year. Unless you've paid no attention at all, I suspect you'll agree, surely to some extent. This blog can be seen as another example of how much has changed.

I've stopped to listen to the interview of Naomi Wolf, and it's continuing through several of the ubiquitous commercial breaks. Ms. Wolf might be considered the Cassandra of today's progressive thinking, and her tone can sometimes strike the listener as over the top. My own perspective has changed in pretty obvious ways over the months of this blog's existence, and it's valuable to me to review these postings to see the changes over time. I'm beginning to wonder how many of us there are who still think the warnings of Ms. Wolf go overboard, and I suspect the entries here can serve, in their own way, as a chronicle of our dwindling sense of our comfort level about how things will work themselves out. The interview is over now, with a plug for the web site americanfreedomcampaign.org, which you may want to visit. I have, and I used it just now to send my senators a little reminder note about the confirmation of Michael Mukasey. Maybe every little bit does help. Or not. Who really knows?

Things have changed a lot over the past year. I really suspect you sense it as much as I do, although it's hard to tell. I went through this sort of agonizing, narcissistic self-assessment a couple of months ago, though not to this extent, and blogged about it here, of course. I tend to think my ravings may be viewed a little more sympathetically now. It's hard not to see that we're in trouble.

I do suspect that global warming is a far worse problem than we've even begun to come to grips with yet. I believe that feeds into the political climate in many ways, and lends to this accelerating sense of attempts at national redefinition. I'm not a climate expert, and don't expect my voice regarding climate change to ever rise above the level of vague and semi-apocalyptic warnings, so you're free to take that for what it's worth. I have paid sufficient attention to some of the details, even beyond just the details, of some of the questions we're asking now. I will soon be pausing to watch a show I'm recording from LinkTV called "Nobelity", a two-hour talk by a group of Nobel laureates on the problems we face today. You're still at work, most likely. I am watching, reading, thinking. I'm probably supposed to report on this somehow, so here I am.

My sense of things right now is that Michael Mukasey's confirmation is one more of those watershed moments. So far, those watersheds haven't done much beyond sending it all downhill. This one seems extra special, however. Our esteemed Senators poise on the verge of actually institutionalizing torture and imperial executives. Now that's a watershed moment we can be proud of! America will in a very real sense be redefined in this coming week, so try not to view such events as the writer's strike in complete isolation. All things work together, etc., as someone once may have stated.

My Tivo is busy in two directions, as it's also recording Wolf Blitzer for three solid hours. I'll put the Wolf on fast-forward mostly, but I'll get the gist. It appears to be a pretty eventful news day all around.

What We Owe To George Bush

Satar Jabar has a difficult day at Abu Ghraib

A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will ever become the laughing-stock of the world.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Try to look at the bright side. One day, we might look back and have to admit that we owe a great debt of gratitude to George Bush. No, I don't believe he will be vindicated by history, but it is possible that he will be seen as having inspired the people of the United States to confront great moral decisions with profound consequences for the world.

At this time, Congress, and the general public, is being asked to consider a new Attorney General of the United States to fill the post left vacant by the infamous Alberto Gonzales. The nominee, Michael Mukasey, would like to be confirmed despite his complete lack of clarity regarding practices of torture such as waterboarding. It has reached the stage where some citizens have taken it upon themselves to defend this practice as legitimate effort to acquire accurate and actionable information necessary to defend the liberty and freedom of Americans. The "debate", such as it is, mirrors numerous others in our society, and assists in sharpening the focus of a fundamental dichotomy. We are now forced to start making these decisions inside a context that defines our perception of ourselves as human beings. Thanks in no small part to George Bush, we are near to making the kind of brutally honest self-assessments we might otherwise have managed to avoid for at least another generation, probably more. I think we should be grateful.

I've had some brief conversations recently with some of my friends from Microsoft, but not enough to get any sense of their reactions to current events. There are a couple of guys I'd like to talk to, so I'm putting that on my to-do list. I don't know of many workplaces that allow politics to creep in very much, but everyone talks a little, and I'd like to have more perspective on how my colleagues have reacted to the stark exposures of the last few months. I tend to expect an understated response, but you never know.

A segment today on Keith Olbermann's Countdown discussed the difficulties with Mr. Mukasey's confirmation, aired the reactions today from President Bush, and offered some analysis from Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. Mr. Alter makes some very good points, but I was most struck when he noted that "there's a kind of cognitive dissonance here that's breathtaking." I've heard that term "cognitive dissonance" many times, and I'm sure I've even used it more than once. But quick! Tell me what it means, without looking it up! Hmm. Before looking it up, I see the word "cognitive" and know that refers to the thought process. "Dissonance" I'm a little fuzzier on, but I believe it's similar to "discordant" when referring to musical sound. Let's look it up: cognitive dissonance. (I'm hooked on Wikipedia. A side note: when I look up "dissonance" by itself, and also when I look up "discordant", I'm directed to the topic "consonance and dissonance" that defines "dissonance", and presumably some variant of "discordant", as "the quality of sounds which seems "unstable", and has an aural need to "resolve" to a "stable" consonance. At any rate ...) The Wikipedia definition begins: "Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs, or from experiencing apparently conflicting phenomena."

So, "cognitive dissonance" can refer to a conflict in one's belief, or value, system. I know this is getting terribly convoluted, but we're working our way back around now. The issue of torture is a perfect microcosm of the larger cognitive dissonances I've been describing in my last few blogs. We as a nation are poised to sign off on a policy that diverges so fundamentally from our human instincts that we have, finally, stopped for a moment, possibly genetically unable to simply press on in our usual numbness, and instead we're forced to confront ourselves in something approaching genuine self-appraisal. Thanks, George!

That waterboarding is torture can't really even be open to question. The victim feels she is drowning, because she is. She is then brought back, from the brink as it were, and made to endure it yet again, perhaps many times. Afterwards, there are no physical scars or disfigurement, but mentally and emotionally, PTSD might be one way to describe the residual symptoms, not to mention the potential for complications such as pneumonia due to the large amounts of water that had been forced into her lungs.

Rear Admiral John Hutson testified at the confirmation hearings. Rear Admiral Hutson is an officer, a lawyer, judge advocate general of the Navy, and recipient of more medals and awards than I feel like recounting here. He was testifying at his second confirmation of an Attorney General, having also testified against the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales. After some formal statements, Admiral Hutson offered some additional comments:

You know, torture is the method of choice of the lazy, the stupid and the pseudo-tough. And that should not be the United States. No matter how you define torture. It's unconstitutional, it violates statutes, it violates the UCMJ, it violates Common Article 3, it violates what your mother taught you and it violates what you learned in kindergarten. And we ought not be even close to it.

...

Other than, perhaps the rack and thumbscrews, water-boarding is the most iconic example of torture in history. It was devised, I believe, in the Spanish Inquisition. It has been repudiated for centuries.

It's a little disconcerting to hear now that we're not quite sure where water-boarding fits in the scheme of things.

Disconcerting. A disconcerting cognitive dissonance.

A lie.

I appreciate what George Bush has done for us as a nation. He has brought us together perhaps as no other President before him. We stand amid the rubble of our seemingly adolescent image of our country as a protecter of our value system, and have found it to be an abusive father. We are without question in a state of shock, but I think we're coming out of it. I am still somewhat isolated by my condition, but I imagine the murmurings in offices and break rooms, over drinks after hours, even in meetings and town halls across the country, and of course, on the internet, where I see it happening. We know we have to come together and make some decisions.

We can see the unspeakable horror that is Iraq. We can hear Hamid Karzai's plea from Afghanistan for America to stop dropping bombs on his people. We hear the world's disillusionment with America, even if Bush and Cheney do not, and our pride is deeply wounded.

We have heard of the Hadley Rules, or perhaps you may not have heard them. If not, you can scan through this article by Scott Ritter, called On the Eve of Destruction for more information. Ritter almost seems to imply that American policy, as defined by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, is something new, but my reading reveals it as much more a consistent continuation of the long-standing policies of American "Exceptionalism" than is commonly accepted. Nevertheless, the positions implied by Mr. Hadley are shocking in themselves. Negotiation with an adversary such as Iran is deemed to be stalemated until Iran accepts the view of the United States, or there can be no negotiation. That this is nothing like real negotiation is apparently irrelevant. The United States is, quite literally, correct simply because it is the United States.

The underbelly of American government has never been so completely exposed, again thanks to George Bush and his temptingly small group of allies. If we peer at it closely enough, we may actually see the disgusting bloat that has fed the wealthy and the privileged, the military and industrial elite, at the expense of all the rest of Americans since the Constitution was first ratified and immediately hijacked for private ends. If we are finally shocked sufficiently, we just might awaken.

I have a decent reading voice, and have considerable storage facility reserved for me on the internet. I'm considering whether to pursue negotiation with Professor Chomsky's publishers regarding the possibility of my podcasting a chapter a day of his latest two books. Maybe there is a way to get it all into this blog.