Thursday, January 31, 2008

What Is Morality?

I simply point out that this is an issue on which people of equal intelligence and equal good faith and equal vehemence have differed and have differed within this chamber.

-- Michael Mukasey, responding to Senator Richard Durbin during the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on 1/30/08

No signs from Heaven come today
To add to what the heart doth say.


-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Yesterday, your friend and mine, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, again refused to voice an opinion on waterboarding. You can watch excerpts from the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing as provided by Democracy Now!. There are a lot of things lately to which my response is mostly sadness, since my anger is reduced to impotence, and this is another one of those things. As quoted above, Mr. Mukasey contends there is an open debate on the issue of waterboarding between people of "equal good faith." I have great concern for those of you who believe that Mr. Mukasey's position has merit. I am at complete loss to discern the good faith inherent in the resurrection of a practice that has been unequivocally perceived as torture for 500 years.

What is morality? What is there to tell us that an action is right or wrong? There are studies exploring what innate sense we might have as a species to guide us in moments of uncertainty, but we don't seem to have settled much. For the most part, we're left to settle this ourselves in our own way, by following the dictates of our faith or our own conscience. I suspect that when things are most uncertain, it is our conscience alone that must determine the course we pursue.

So what is conscience? I'm sure I don't know. I believe conscience is something inherent, but also that it can grow and mature. I believe it's something with which we must take great care, as it's very fragile. I'm not going to be precise here, but I do recall that even the Bush Administration draws the line at interrogation methods that "shock the conscience." In that context, it is assumed that people of "equal good faith" may experience that shock at different points on the spectrum of these activities, which leaves us in considerable difficulty to address the issue on a global scale.

So, I don't have any answers, at least for you. For myself, there is no debate. If you knew everything about me, you might believe that I am moral, or you might not. I certainly do things that some would call immoral, and for that should I be dismissed? If there's anything beyond all our capabilities, it's the attempt to impose what you should or should not believe. If we peer into the central core of American values, you will find this sanctity of the innermost individual beneath all else. I hope it's not lost on you how much that's paradoxical to this can also be found, as we often so gratefully cede the burden of absolute freedom to "higher authorities."

The story of The Grand Inquisitor appears about one-third of the way into Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov. It's located in Spain during the time of the Inquisition, and describes a brief reappearance in its midst of the Christ, who walks amid the crowds healing the sick and raising the dead. The old Inquisitor immediately calls for His arrest, then visits Him in His prison cell for questioning, but Christ is silent. Unable to contain himself, the Inquisitor offers his defense of the path that his religion has followed, and why Christ Himself had become an impediment to the people's best interests.

We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him. Oh, ages are yet to come of the confusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism. For having begun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end, of course with cannibalism. But then the beast will crawl to us and lick our feet and spatter them with tears of blood. And we shall sit upon the beast and raise the cup, and on it will be written: "Mystery." But then, and only then, the reign of peace and happiness will come for men. Thou art proud of Thine elect, but Thou hast only the elect, while we give rest to all. And besides, how many of those elect, those mighty ones who could become elect, have grown weary waiting for Thee, and have transferred and will transfer the powers of their spirit and the warmth of their heart to the other camp, and end by raising their free banner against Thee? Thou didst Thyself lift up that banner. But with us all will be happy and will no more rebel nor destroy one another as under Thy freedom. Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us. And shall we be right or shall we be lying? They will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember the horrors of slavery and confusion to which Thy freedom brought them. Freedom, free thought and science, will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves. Others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another. The rest, weak and unhappy, will come fawning to our feet and whine to us: "Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you. Save us from ourselves."

-- The Grand Inquisitor (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)

I will not argue that freedom is not a terrible burden. I have struggled with all sorts of freedom all of my life, and though I've been modestly successful in retaining a measure of freedom, it's come at a great price. It's for that freedom that I have not remarried, that I have broken, for now, my ties to lucrative employment, and devote myself to the exercise of my freedom with as little restriction or consequence to others as I can assemble. I am as free from the daily indignities as my imagination and ill health can ever permit, and it is a burden, and a pressure, that weighs on me more than you know.

I can make almost all my own choices within this framework, or take no stand in any debate and withdraw from view, but in this paradise of uncoerced freedom I find myself explaining myself to Christ just like the Inquisitor, and cannot say if I have any argument more compelling. I only know -- but I know it deeply -- what I feel.

I'm told that Michael Mukasey has a portrait of George Orwell on the wall of his office, and his explanation for this is his admiration for the "clarity" of Orwell's writing. You can find elsewhere on this blog that I recently re-read Mr. Orwell, both 1984 and Animal Farm. There are a couple of spots in 1984 when Orwell's writing achieves a high degree of clarity: one place that contains excerpts from an underground book that exposes the behavior and motives of the Party, and the other when O'Brien, in a scene very reminiscent of The Grand Inquisitor, offers his view of events that have led to the imprisonment/torture of Winston:

You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.

-- O'Brien (George Orwell, 1984)

There are an unsettling number of points with which I am in complete agreement with O'Brien, including doubt whether reality exists in its own right. There is Being, and there is Becoming, and there lies freedom. What you do to inform that Becoming is up to you.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

The Smoking Gun

"Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88. And he ran a good campaign."
-- Bill Clinton today, when asked by a reporter what it said about Obama that it "took two people to beat him."

There isn't a lot one needs to say about this. It's not difficult to imagine any number of possible legitimate responses to the baiting question asked of Bill Clinton by the reporter, responses that might have sidestepped the racially divisive tone that has overshadowed the Democratic debate recently, particularly with respect to the South Carolina primary. That he chose instead to widen the divide I find enormously disappointing.

Early returns indicate that Barack Obama has won a strong victory in South Carolina, and that South Carolina's white male voters have not voted in a particularly race-conscious manner, results which, if they hold, provide their own evidence of repudiation in this modern election of the sort of regressive rhetoric that has resurfaced in recent weeks. I will confess to any South Carolinian who might chance across this blog entry that I was prepared to be more concerned about the maturity of the voters in your state than perhaps I need to be. I am very pleased when any voter selects the candidate of her choice without regard to racial or sexual differences, but by the job qualifications of that candidate. I can only hope that criteria dominates in the remaining primaries as we go forward.

News reports that are responded to in haste, as I've done in this case, can of course come back to bite the responder. There's always the possibility that some context was not provided that would have completely altered the tenor of an exchange. I will be surprised if much new information surfaces to shed more light on Mr. Clinton's response above, and I very much expect that those words are about to haunt the Clintons for the rest of their lives.

I still support Barack Obama, and of course, it has nothing to do with his color. I don't believe he's the perfect candidate, but I do believe he has exceptional intelligence, skills and sensibilities to bring to the office of the presidency in 2009. I have nonetheless continued to hope that Senator Clinton would display more sensitivity to the concerns of progressives such as I believe myself to be, especially since she's still, for the moment, the favorite to win the Democratic nomination. Now that her husband has scraped the bottom of the ethical barrel in South Carolina, some things are going to shift, and we're going to learn some important things about ourselves in the next few weeks.

The vast majority of Americans polled as to whether America is ready for a President who is not a white male have responded in the affirmative, whether that candidate is a black or a woman. That's a great step forward in America, and it's not something we can afford to take for granted. We have seen too often already in this 21st century that the wheels of progress can be reversed. We have a duty to be vigilant if we want to advance the cause of fairness in our society. We have seen that fairness does not require us to lower our sights (something I've been thinking about in depth for future comments), and we've found that our sights get lowered for us if we're inattentive. Now, the stakes in this area have been raised, and I think we're going to have to confront it to go forward.

Bill Clinton cannot be given a free pass for his comment. He has removed all ambiguity from all the somewhat more artfully disguised allusions made previously. There has been a blatant attempt to return our consciousness to the destructive infections that have blinded us until so recently. It's been a deeply damaging effort by the Clintons, and deeply unfair. I hope that we all grow out of the neuroses we've fallen back into as quickly as possible, and learn from this experience across the board. I want to move on just as soon as everyone shows me they're ready.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The Garment Of Destiny

... what people don’t realize is at the end of his life, King was looking at our crisis, a profound spiritual and material crisis, and he said that we had advanced economic growth at the expense of community and of participation, that our works had become larger and we ourselves had become smaller.
-- Grace Lee Boggs on Martin Luther King, Democracy Now!, January 22, 2008

I'm a white guy. I don't pretend to have that depth of insight into Martin Luther King that would allow me to speak with any authority about his legacy, and I'm a day late in any event. For most of his time in public life, I was attending an all-white school in Southern Ohio. The first time I sat in a classroom with a member of any minority, I was in college, barely two-and-a-half years before he was assassinated. At the time of his assassination, I was taking part in a college underground theater production, and we were all deeply affected, but still too ignorant, as I recall, of the full impact of what had occurred.

Even in the bubble environment of my high school and community, I had already had my encounters with these conflicts of values. As I began my freshman year, I took stock of my own hero worship for Frank Robinson of the Cincinnati Reds and Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns. It was not lost on me that these were black men, and the strength of my identification with them in their athletic careers spilled over into my identification with their life struggles. I may have lived a sheltered youth, but I could not even then reconcile the still-pervasive attitudes of racism with the realities of the world at large.

If we could be transported now to those times in the late sixties, to April 4, 1968 when King was murdered, we would be overcome with the level of racism, not to mention the widespread jingoism, of that time. By today's standards, we were shockingly primitive. I bring some of that perspective to the table as I look at King's legacy today. Those of you still in your twenties, or even thirties, can't even imagine how far we've truly come, although many of us can see how far we have yet to go. I mention our progress in these areas not to provide an opportunity for self-congratulation, but to note that change does and will occur, for all the rhetorical flourishes of today, and that change will in the long run, God willing, not favor the regressive voices who still compete for dominance in our discussions. The long view of history points to greater understanding between all people, so there is hope.

I've listened to some of King's speeches the last couple of days. Sometimes I was a little irritated by the sing-song inflections of the old-time preacher in his delivery, and wished he would have spoken in more natural tones, but I understood the importance of the religious tradition for what he was and what he needed to accomplish. It's in keeping with the themes of this blog that I voice my appreciation for his faith as well. I've had conversations recently with my family, my aging father and stepmother, regarding topics like Creationism, and whether Barack Obama is really a Muslim. I understand how a changing world can seem like a threat to the simple faith that is the core of America's heartland. It's very important, then, that a man such as Martin Luther King, whose message resonates so deeply within the context of the kind of changes we need today, saw no conflict whatsoever with his fundamental Christian faith. Quite the contrary, his faith was his constant source of strength, and a tie that bound his cause to the "single garment of destiny" into which we are all interwoven.

The challenges of today may be, in some respects, a challenge of faith. While the influence of conservative fundamentalism may be seen by some as declining, I'm not as certain. Even in so-called progressive churches there is a tendency to resist confronting issues directly, and some tacit acceptance of injustices in exchange for a morally deficient stability. The deep grooves of well-travelled paths are still followed, even after they've sunk into ruts that mire us in place. In this atmosphere of failed leadership and looming storm clouds over the climate, the economy, and the misunderstandings between all people, men like Dr. King still have a destiny to reach battered hearts and minds when the need is greatest. Was I the only one to feel that his voice was louder this year, more insistent of its relevance to the issues of today? I strongly think not.

Not only his willingness to lead, but his simple unwavering faith, has made his memory especially powerful this year. He was the proof that we can celebrate, just as we are, that fabric of eternity that's beyond our separate selves, and gives life to what he called a "dangerous selflessness," in me, in you, in our best hopes for the safe harbor ahead in this storm-tossed sea. We have everything it takes, right here this minute, to succeed.

It shouldn't be surprising that Barack Obama would provide the most eloquent expression for this moment when we all have paused to reflect, although the things we've heard have been mostly far removed from such topics. I've been hard on all politicians for their unwillingness to stand firm against some of the worst abuses of the administration in the past year, but the potential of Obama has still tempted me to hope that he might be different. I still can't say, but Obama's speech at King's Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta last Sunday fulfilled all his promise as an inspiring speaker, and then some. The video below has been posted everywhere, and has probably been seen by millions already, but if you haven't heard this speech yet, you're in for quite a treat.

Friday, January 18, 2008

So Long, Bobby


Bobby Fischer died yesterday, apparently of kidney failure. He was 64. There's an article about it in the Washington Post.

I was fascinated by Fischer and his memorable World Chess Championship match against Boris Spassky back in 1972. I was even more impressed when I began to study his style. My favorite book on chess was Fischer's own, Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, which still has an honored place on my bookshelf. In the Washington Post article above, Frank Brady, a long-time Fischer associate and biographer, described Fischer's style as "more like Bach than Beethoven." I don't want to pretend to a level of appreciation for classical music that I don't possess, but I wanted to make sure it was noted that Bobby's style was unique, and very striking. For a time, I was fascinated by the way a master's style of chess playing opened an intriguing window into the mind of the player, and mental activity in general. I studied the games of Lasker, Nimzowich, and many others, but Fischer's style was a straight line where the others were arcs and ellipses. For all his idiosyncracies away from the chessboard, his style of play displayed a facility for getting through the bs and cutting right to the chase that was like a streak of lightning through a gray and hazy fog. His chess mind was one of bracing clarity.

Perhaps it was partly my youth that contributed to my strong impressions, but I think there was something timeless about Fischer's brief moment in the limelight. I'm not sure I could say what it means, or why I felt so strongly that I should commemorate his passing here. It's enough that I want to; it's my blog, after all.

I'll miss you, Bobby. You really inspired me, and many others as well, I'm sure. I can't speak to the totality of your life, but in those brief moments when you turned on the light in your mind, you told us something, and I think it was pretty important.

Checkmate.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Love Of Money



"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money." [Or words to that effect.]
-- Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill)
This is pretty personal. I almost got killed off last Sunday. No exaggeration, I'm serious.

I have a condition called COPD, which is the new designer acronym for emphysema. I take several medications like Advair and Spriva, and I've also used an Albuterol inhaler for some time. My condition worsened late last Summer, and I was being prescribed combinations of prednisone (steroids) and antibiotics. The first antibiotic used was labeled SMZ/TMP (short for sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim, or something like that), but I had a bad reaction. Apparently, I'm allergic to sulfa-based drugs. We tried other antibiotics, with little effect, and I kept getting worse. In December, I had to switch doctors because the one I'd been seeing left private practice, and the new doctor prescribed the Nebulizer for an Albuterol vapor therapy. Initially, when I tried this, I started feeling better, sort of, and mentioned the Nebulizer in my New Year's Day blog. But wait! There's more!

The full name for Albuterol is Albuterol Sulfate. Sulfate, get it? Sulfa-based. Uh-oh! Gradually, my system's intolerance for sulfa drugs began to take over. I'd been having enough physical problems anyway, it was hard to sort out what was going on. I was thinking more that my health was deteriorating badly, and was becoming concerned that I might soon become unable to care for myself. As far back as Christmas, I'd had such difficulty getting around that I whimpered about it a little bit to my therapist (yes, I have a therapist. Surprised?). By last Sunday, January 13th, I was in a pretty bad state.

I was in between NFL playoff games, and I needed food. Going to the super market had begun to be a rather harrowing adventure. I'd become so short of breath that I could only go so far through the grocery aisles without having to find somewhere to pause and catch my breath. By the time I got back to the car, I would be exhausted. Sunday, however, was much worse. I started out by hitting the shower, but I really couldn't breathe at all. I hung to the shower rod a while, lifting my arms to try and provide extra leverage for air to come in, but I was losing ground. Afterward, I lunged into the bedroom and fell backwards onto the (unmade) bed. The coverlets bunched at the bottom of the bed raised my buttocks above my head, and I felt as if I were being waterboarded. My bronchial tubes had slammed entirely shut, and only sheer force sent any air through my system at all. The position I was in wasn't helping, and I was starting to lose it. I was able to force myself to a more level situation, fortunately, and felt marginally better after another twenty minutes or so. If I'd passed out a few minutes earlier, I might not be writing this now.

I went ahead to the grocery store. Basically, I was just crazed at this point. I was already straining badly just to get inside the store, and by that point I knew I was in trouble. I clung to a display as inconspicuously as possible, and looked around. The inside of the store might as well have been the Grand Canyon, it seemed so vast to me, but somehow I made it through and paid for my items. It must have taken forty-five minutes, all for a small hand basket of things. After paying, and having to acknowledge my difficulties with the cashier who couldn't avoid noticing, I grabbed one of the chairs at the pharmacy and sat for a while trying to collect myself and get back to the car. Again someone checked on me, but I assured them I just needed to "catch my breath." The truth was, my bronchial tubes still weren't working at all, and I actually started to worry about the oxygen supply to my brain. I think that part's ok, as I still appear able to solve relatively complex equations (2+2=5, right? I remember reading that in a book last week.).

Long story short, I got back to the car, finally. There were more struggles, and a couple more inquiries about my health just outside the store when I had to pause yet again, but I made it. The experience was oddly like one of those nightmares, when you discover you've been going around unclothed, because I felt so exposed. Things were so obviously bad, I realized I needed to analyze this situation further, and I decided that since the Albuterol Nebulizer treatment had been the most recent change in my routine, it had to go. For the remainder of the day, about all I could do was veg out, and make sure at least some air was working its way through my dysfunctional pulmonary system, and I called the doctor's office on Monday to request changes in my medication.

I'm feeling a whole lot better. I'm not ready for cartwheels, but my bronchial tubes are almost working again. They're not wide-open superhighways, but they're somewhat flexible and yielding, almost like what you'd expect in a living system. I had an extreme reaction to the sulfa-based medication, one that really might have been the last reaction I would have to anything. How does that sort of thing happen? When I switched doctors, I noted on the first papers I filled out for them that I had a probable allergy to sulfa-based stuff, and I probably should have checked out the Nebulizer setup more carefully myself, but hey, I'm the patient, they're supposed to know what they're doing, right?

So, was this malpractice? Oh, I don't know. I don't think the Seattle area is overrun with pulmonologists, so I kind of need these people. I can burn bridges with these doctors, but that may not be the best idea. Did I get superior quality treatment? I will leave the answer to that as an exercise for the reader. I mean, me and the tobacco companies have worked very hard together for many years to get me to this point, and by the time I come to the pulmonologists, it might be understandable if they just throw up their hands and ask what on earth I expect them to do. In a way, in a kind of abstract sense, I can see that. Of course, if it's the very last thing I see, that colors my perspective a little.

So, we've really gotten autobiographical here, but hey, how many more chances might I have to talk about me just a little bit? If I actually should kick off sometime soon here, I'd want to have made this entry in the blog, just for the record. But this ties into a lot of themes, and there's nothing like a stark encounter with mortality to sharpen the focus. My preferred exit would be at the age of ninety while in mid-tryst with a beautiful woman, but my bad habits are going to seriously truncate such expectations. Nonetheless, I'm not ready to go just today, or tomorrow either. I want to see the Cleveland Browns win the Super Bowl, and to see George Bush leave the White House voluntarily to be replaced by a truly progressive leader. I want to learn more about how to live a more enlightened life, and maybe to have some effect on the dialogue we're having now. I want us to think just a little about the basic premises we want to live by, while we still can. I want to be around you folks just a little while longer.

Most of the goods and services we have available now don't really reflect the spirit of craftsmanship that's been so highly valued throughout history. The mechanization of society has placed us on an assembly line on a global scale. Medicine is certainly all about the profit margin, and those in the medical profession are mostly swept along in a direction they might not have chosen for themselves. Even at Microsoft, where craftsmanship is often so very good, I had difficulties maintaining my own standards in that area due to the pace and the volume of what was expected. We're so tilted toward production that we've lost sight of too much of the process, I suspect, and we've lost some appreciation for each little step along the way. Our perceptions are skewed, and I still think it's causing more problems than we've come to accept.

I can breathe a little bit easier now, and each breath is a little more special. If I think about how many breaths I've got left, I'll get in too much of a hurry again. I look around, and I think we've really gone through the looking glass. We know that we have to change things, but we cling to the coattails of anyone who promises to keep us safe. I hate to tell you this, but it's not you they're going to be looking out for when the stuff starts flying. You're going to have to learn to deal with some of these problems yourselves.

We have so much unreasoning fear. In my years in New York theater, and in software development in Columbus, Chicago, and Redmond, I've existed in an exuberantly global environment, filled with talented people from literally all over the world. I've argued world problems over lunch with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians all at once, and I've come to know just how deeply alike people are the world over. There's a whole lot of globalization I'm not only not afraid of, but look forward to with eager anticipation. I like the people of this world, and while there is certainly plenty to fear, by and large, it's not the people. FDR was right, you know, that fear is still the only thing worth fearing. When we're afraid, we look for protectors and shrink from contact; when we're brave, we speak up for ourselves, and reach out to others. I say, be brave!

In our heart of hearts, we know the right path to take. If we can stay calm, and keep that path in sight, we'll know how to proceed. We'll understand how we need to compromise, how to bridge the divide between one way of doing things and another. It's when we lose sight of the basic values, the essential craftsmanship of our efforts, that we start to flail.

You want to find the truth of Zen to help you go forward? Go out to a lovely spot in the woods, or a peak that overlooks a beautiful vista, and sit quietly for just a moment. The thing you first felt in that first brief moment of silence is all there is of Zen. There is nothing else, except to try and gauge your behavior in the world to be more in line with the simple truth of such moments. It's in that spirit, and with that knowledge of the truth in all our hearts, that I say go forward. Let's see what happens next.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

the book

The book fascinated him, or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction. It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, were those that tell you what you know already.

--George Orwell, 1984

I finished re-reading 1984 (yesterday, actually), and it generated some strong impressions. I'm sure it made an impression when I last read it early in college, but in many respects I certainly wasn't ready for the book at that time. I repurchased the book the other day, since my original copy appears to be yet another book that was somehow bequeathed to my ex-wife during the divorce. It's not actually necessary to buy the book now. You can read it online here: http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/index.html

The passage I've cited above is just after Winston Smith has finished reading a section of "the book", the underground treatise by Emmanuel Goldstein and the shadowy Brotherhood of resistance to The Party. Smith's sentiments echo some of my own reactions to "the book", and to Orwell's book in general. I expected to sense some echoes of today in the themes of this classic, but there were more than echoes. I think that in many ways 1984 already happened. Take, for instance, "the book"'s description of the ideal Party member:

Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he have a mentality appropriate to a state of war.

-- excerpt from "the book", George Orwell, 1984

I know these guys!

The shock of recognition occurred all too frequently throughout the book, and "the book". We have, in too many ways, allowed ourselves to become a managed society, with narrow parameters for the range of thought we're actually allowed to have, and certainly for what we're allowed to read and hear from the media. The first quote reminds me of my own reaction to Chomsky. He presents a framework, not for my paranoid fantasies, but rather for my human instincts with regard to the world around me. Orwell's book is a companion volume in that collection.

I might turn this into a longer rant, and perhaps will at some point. Right now, I'm trying just to make the thought somewhat coherent, and publish.

Down with Big Brother.

Down with Big Brother.

Down with Big Brother.

Monday, January 7, 2008

Seven Years In Hell

Last Thursday night, after watching Barack Obama's impressive caucus win in Iowa, I wrote a blog entry on Obama's web site. I used to make a fair number of blog postings on Obama's site, until the lack of opposition to Michael Mukasey soured me on the current political scene. Thursday's entry pretty much speaks for itself:

Over this past year, I've become rather cynical and hard to please when it comes to politics, not because I'm contrary, but because people die and people suffer, and we haven't done enough to help them. Tonight, some of my cynicism is in at least a temporary retreat.

I'm proud to be a supporter of Barack Obama. I think we have a long way to go, and I think the fierce urgency of now still means we need to think about those people who suffer needlessly right now, not just in 2009 and after. But we're all growing and changing, and that includes Barack Obama. I believe I saw him grow still more in his caucus acceptance speech tonight in Iowa.

America means so much to us, and it means so much to the world. It's too much to take in, and I wonder that Senator Obama must feel a sense of things that could even overwhelm him if he doesn't remain focused. So far, his focus seems pretty good.

I cannot give myself unreservedly to the political process while laws are still allowed to be broken, and people are still allowed to be tortured, no matter who they are. I am not ready to say we've broken our ties to the corrupt values that have threatened to diminish our sense of honor and country, but we've made a start. I believe Senator Obama has a great chance to be the best thing that's happened to our country since George Washington himself, and I'm not exaggerating. There's a chance that we can make this a momentous time, and it will be even better if we focus on justice and cooperation, and not on power and revenge. I believe Senator Obama can be the man to lead us to a new vision of America. We need to remember that the old vision is still very much with us for those to whom that perspective has given advantage.

I've heard inspiring words, and I've seen an impressive victory. I don't prefer cynicism, but we all have to admit that what we need is action. There are many who wait for America to put its mighty power to best use, and there are some who may not be around to see it. The urgency of now is at its most fierce for them.
With polls showing Obama leading in New Hampshire by as much as 13%, and the media beginning to recognize the phenomenon that Obama is, the race for the Democratic nomination may soon be over. You never know about these things, of course, but it is possible to feel a little optimistic while remaining cautious.

If you need a reminder as to why America is responding to a hopeful progressive message, lawyer Mike Papantonio, who teams with Robert Kennedy Jr. on Air America every Saturday on a show called Ring of Fire, produced a memorable version of his periodic diatribes that he offers in a segment called "The Pap Attack". This one was aired last Saturday on the show, and you can watch and listen to more Papantonio "attacks" on GoLeft TV.





I'll stop for now with a brief quote from a novel I've been re-reading, for the first time since early college:

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
-- George Orwell, 1984

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Democracy Now!

Ideally, I prefer to jump around the various alternate media outlets when I point to sources that I think are relevant, but Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! has outdone itself with today's broadcast. Here is a link:

http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2008/1/3

The show explores two topics of great relevance to our lives -- the presidential race, and the situation in Pakistan. The very fact of this broadcast might be deemed as sufficient evidence that the mainstream media is failing us completely. There is probably as much or more very important information provided here within a few minutes than all the mainstream media coverage combined. In addition, it features, among other thought-provoking speakers, journalist Allan Nairn, who views the election with an unashamedly "Chomskyesque" perspective. I almost felt I was listening to Chomsky himself, although that's uncharitable. Mr. Nairn is quite eloquent in his own right, and there's nothing particularly esoteric about Professor Chomsky's perspective, anyway. The astonishing thing is when you apply the most basic morality to the topic of American foreign policy, the problems of our world quickly achieve the status of actions for which we must take personal responsibility and endeavor to correct as quickly as possible.

The theme of the coverage for the presidential race was a look at the people who are solicited to advise the various candidates. The rogues gallery of advisors in every camp offers a dim prospect for real change from any corner, including the most progressive. It lends credence to my claim on New Year's Day that this crop of hopefuls is likely to still disappoint, and emphasizes how much work we need to do to bring new perspective to American government.

The conclusion reached by Goodman, Nairn and fellow journalist Kelly Vlahos was that there is almost no difference between the candidates, even across party lines. My own opinion is there is some significant difference regarding some domestice policies, and even in foreign policy, which was the focus in this context. As we've seen all too often, however, foreign policy problems result from both Democratic and Republican administrations. Mr. Nairn is at his most eloquent when he makes the most natural, and most Chomskyesque, connection between American foreign policy and human rights abuses around the world. Speaking of Hillary Clinton's advisors, for example:


Madeleine Albright, she was the main force behind the Iraq sanctions that killed more than 400,000 Iraqi civilians. General Wesley Clark, he was the one who ran the bombing of Serbia in the former Yugoslavia, came out and publicly said that he was going after civilian targets, like electrical plants, like the TV station there. Richard Holbrooke, in the Carter administration he was the one who oversaw the shipment of weapons to the Indonesian military as they were invading—illegally invading East Timor and killing a third of the population there, and he was the one who kept the UN Security Council from enforcing its resolution against that invasion. Strobe Talbott, he was the one who, during the Clinton administration, oversaw Russia policy, a backing of Yeltsin, which resulted in turning over the national wealth to the oligarchs and a drop in life expectancy in much of Russia of about fifteen years—massive, massive death. And you have various backers of the Iraq invasion and occupation and the recent escalation, people like General Jack Keane, Michael O’Hanlon and others. That’s just Clinton.


Mr. Nairn is actually being somewhat conservative in his accounting of such events as the tragic sanctions on Iraqi citizens. It was in 1999, I believe, that Madeleine Albright was asked on 60 Minutes about reports that the sanctions had led to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. She responded that she thought it was worth it. I remember that one.

None of the candidates look very impressive regarding their choice of advisers, including Obama, and when you consider how independent Obama's internet financing could allow him to be, it's very troubling. I'm hoping that, as we become more clearly aware that we are our brother's keeper, we can continue to put more people in office who balk, as we would, at these abuses. I'm betting that most of you, when you're made aware of what's going on, will be active in helping to put some genuinely moral, and preferably courageous, people in office, and as long as facilities such as this open internet -- and Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! -- exist, you're going to be made aware.

The second segment about Pakistan is just disturbing, and well worth your time if you watch the entire show. It's a more realistic look at Benazir Bhutto, along with legitimate concerns over how many Al Qaeda sympathizers might have infiltrated Pakistan's half-million strong military with potential access to their nuclear weapons. Can you say "blowback"?

All we can do is take things one step at a time. Vote for your candidate, and work on those candidates after they're elected, in particular to enable full public funding of elections. One of the problems with public funding is the courts tend to view spending limits as unconstitutional, and they're likely to find new justifications to limit public funding in the future. This is probably an excellent candidate for constitutional amendment. We have-nots are going to have a tough time battling the haves until big money is neutralized in election politics.

I can lead you horses to water, but it's still up to you. Please, please watch this show. I promise you it will be among the most valuable time you spend on this year's presidential election.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Point Zero

Happy New Year! We're starting fresh, sort of. If anyone thinks 2007 wasn't a long, strange year, I can't believe you were actually paying attention. We began with a new, Democratic-led Congress in Washington, and ended with an assassination in Pakistan. Along the way, 900 more American soldiers were killed in Iraq, 110 were killed in Afghanistan, and untold thousands around the world died needlessly. Now that 2008 is here, there is some sense that this will still be a year "on hold", waiting still another year for the end of the Bush Administration's "assault on reason", as Al Gore might describe it. With luck, there'll still be something left to salvage by 2009, but waiting still seems an insufficient response to the problems we're facing.

Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! broadcast reviewed 2007 with a two-part retrospective that aired on December 31st and today. Here are the links to the online webcasts of those shows:

2007 in Review: Power Politics and Resistance, Pt. 1
2007 in Review: Power Politics and Resistance, Pt. 2

Democracy Now! is somewhat of an acquired taste. Their budget is so low that their broadcasts can seem amateurish, but it's an incredible resource for news from a more international perspective. The 2007 retrospective certainly lacks the glitz that might have been provided by the major networks, had they seen fit to provide such programming, and as such they require a little effort on the part of the viewer, but they're well worth it. Two hours of video clips is hardly sufficient to qualify as a definitive look at 2007, but this panoramic view is useful as we begin to look ahead. Please take some time to look at these programs, to think about where we've been, and hopefully, what we can start to do to change things.

It's been a very strange year for me. I've seen my personal health decline somewhat alarmingly, but I've had some improvement from a breathing device called a Nebulizer. Of course, I might see much more improvement if I could fully break myself of smoking. I'm working on it, but the addiction has a serious hold on me. At least this nearly full year of withdrawing from active participation has allowed me to reflect on the world, and I've learned more than I thought possible. Really. I want to take a few minutes here to share some of my thoughts about last year and this, and I promise to lend my voice on this blog from time to time in the coming year, especially if I think I see something that should be getting more attention.

When I started this blog last April, I hoped that my MidWest upbringing and eclectic background might help to bridge the gap between the liberal and conservative elements of our society. I still believe I have something to contribute in that regard, and I still believe that most people want the same things I do, if we could only find better common approaches to solving problems. However, it's been awfully tough to remain calm and conciliatory these past several months, as I've had to admit that some bad things happen because bad people want them to happen, and that some of those bad people ostensibly work for us. I've gained considerable perspective by reading history, a lot of it, by many authors, and of course, by reading a number of books about today's political crises. I've seen that greed, religion and racism have set patterns of history in motion that are paralleled by many things in today's world, and I'm not sure how much the extensive knowledge I've gained is reflected through the public at large, most of whom are still too busy making a living to pay close attention. I suspect even the busiest of you are much less naive than when Nancy Pelosi first banged her gavel last January. I know many of you can't take the time to study that I have, and I wish I could provide more than the links and encapsulations that I have to offer, but I know you're listening, and I know you share my sense of urgency about these times. I'll try to help as I can, but I have to focus on my own development as well.

I believe we've had too little sense of the role we can play in the outcome. The presidential campaigns have reinvigorated our sense of participation somewhat, but for now I'm concerned that the current crop of politicians may still disappoint. That's caused me to retreat from my earlier, more active involvement in the campaigns, but it's no reason to give up hope. I believe more people all over the world are becoming aware that democracy is a powerful tool that has yet to be fully leveraged, and I think it's as much a time of great hope as one of great peril. But perils exist, and we can't afford to be personally complacent. It's really up to each one of us to start making our little bit of difference in the world. If we fail, at least we tried, but I don't want to fail.

We don't have all that many new years in a single span of life. Double digit numbers is pretty much all we can hope for, and I've already used up the bulk of those double digits. I'm not inclined, from a selfish standpoint, to be particularly patient about some of the changes I want to see. I want to see some real progress in my lifetime, and it's hard to see how many delays, and how many destructive backward movements, have occurred in the last few years. We've seen the gap between rich and poor return to the disparities of the Gilded Age at the turn of the twentieth century. We've seen the United States Government sanction illegal wars and torture. Worse yet, I've seen a long history of regressive behavior as far too central to United States policies, from the genocide of native Americans to violent imperialistic pursuits all over the world, that makes the Bush Administration seem less an aberration than simply an exposure of abuses that have been with us all along. The battles between the haves and the have-nots have been going on for thousands of years, so it seems foolish to think we can change things. I submit that we have more ability to do just that than you may realize. What we need to have is the will.

If I could recommend one book from 2007, it would probably be Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal. It's not that I think the book tells the whole story. There are dark elements that I don't believe are given sufficient weight in Mr. Krugman's book. But it's a very hopeful book, and I believe that much of that hope is realistic. It's good to remind ourselves that we live in a country where we can still have a say in how things should be done, and about the really positive things we can achieve on a "bipartisan" basis, as it were, when we cut through the rhetoric and begin to treat each other as human beings. I believe Mr. Krugman went to a lot of effort to make this book an easy read, and I heartily recommend it. We need to start 2008 with a sense of hope, and this book can generate some of that feeling.

It may still be that religion is both the greatest hope and the greatest threat for humanity. I don't personally believe that Jesus would be anti-science if he walked the earth in the 21st century. His approach was appropriate for 2000 years ago, but overall, His words reveal an open mind, not a closed and narrow one. I still think we have trouble understanding His message. His focus has always been on what's in the core of your heart, not what's visible of the outer trappings. I think we need to revisit our attitude to our neighbor, whoever he or she may be, and rediscover our common bonds regardless of race, color, and yes, creed. If you can truly start loving your neighbor as yourself, I think you'll start to see that religion means a lot more than which church you belong to, and how much work we need to do to turn things around. If we keep hurtling down the path of I'm right, you must be wrong, 2008 might make 2007 seem like the good old days.

I think I've "learned" a lot from my persistence with meditation through 2007. I'll admit my level of achievement, if we're tracking these things, is pretty low compared to the Dalai Lama. I've had occasion to benefit from persistence before, however. I want my meditation studies to be my third, and perhaps final, accomplishment in this life, and I believe that goal stems from a desire to continue to be useful to society in some small way, and not from a desire to retreat. I've mentioned Point Zero before with regard to meditation, and I've confessed that I've not really reached it. Actually, I think Point Zero is somewhat of a misnomer. I think it's really more like Point 50%, as in centering the personality and regaining balance. Along the way, I do need to be able to stop my wandering thoughts, however, so the terminology can be confusing. But I don't know if there's ever some really dramatic moment when we become enlightened and reborn. I think it's more like we're all pretty well enlightened by now, but we're challenged to respond to life in an enlightened way. Meditation can help to toughen the mind and reflexes and allow more appropriate, less self-conscious, responses to our environment. I shouldn't say much more until my experience is better. I think I've had some small flashes of insight, momentary but quickly forgotten and irreclaimable, that still have strengthened my faith to continue just trying to shut up and listen. And on occasion, if I think I have something to say, I'll write something here.

Meantime, have a safe and happy 2008. I have high hopes for all of us.