The G-20 Summit and Labor

UK's National Union of Teachers one-day strike, April 24, 2008

The Nation's lead article today is a very good one by Max Fraser, called: Global Labor's G-20 Agenda. The international trade union movement is speaking out strongly about how they see the crisis. They want the world to join America in providing stimulus to the world's economy equivalent to 2% of the world's GDP, and they believe that stimulus should focus on job creation, green technology, renewable energy and similar efforts to grow the economy in a forward-looking and sustainable way. They want much stronger regulation, global recognition of workers' rights and environmental issues in trade agreements, and much greater emphasis on nationalizing troubled corporate and financial entities in order to distribute risk and reward in a fairer manner.

At some point, isn't it time to note that, if we're truly honest with ourselves, we're doing this all wrong? The world is focused on solutions to this crisis, and all of us know that the world's financial leaders are still too focused on retaining much of the system that created this mess in the first place. The iron is hot for some really fundamental changes in direction, but the majority of voices are still too dim to be heard. Labor will have its say at the G-20 summit, but in too many ways it will simply be heard politely. The depressing outcome may well be more years of depression as a system the majority have ceased to believe in is coaxed into creaking along on life support. All in all, it's hard to feel hopeful about the near term. The world seems resigned to living a lie long after it's been exposed, and it will not go well for most of its inhabitants, I'm afraid.

It's not for me to say what we should do. It makes me sad, though. I really believe it's when things get loose at the seams like this, it's one of our very few golden opportunities in the history of civilization, and once the gears are set in place to move forward in one direction, it may be a very long time before that chance appears again. This time, that direction may be a very hard one indeed for most of the world's inhabitants.

As I write this, it seems I've drawn an even bleaker picture than I'd feared. I do feel there's a very good chance we're destined for years of hard times if things continue the way they're headed, despite many good moves by Obama's administration. You can argue that there's not much time to debate while the fire is burning, and the task at hand is simply to put it out, but I don't think that analogy captures every aspect of this complex crisis. Once the flames subside, what will we see as we survey the battered landscape? There will still be initiatives to resolve the problems, but they will appear in a climate of reduced expectations, and the internal workings of the economic machinery that now lie so nakedly exposed will once again be withdrawn into opaque containers, visible to only a fortunate few. That reality will have become the new normal, where fewer still are left with resources enough to rebuild, while most are left to wander the charred remains.

John McCain

I'm doing a terrible job of updating my blog lately, but I wanted to make at least one updated entry for now, with a video that expresses some of my many concerns about John McCain's bid for the presidency. Passersby might want to take a look at it before deciding how to vote this November.

I just don't agree that everyone in American politics is truly well-intentioned. In this video, there's a clip where McCain actually admits to having acted from an excess of ambition when he failed to condemn the display of a Confederate flag. Everyone's human, of course, but the temptations accompanying the most powerful office on earth can be too great for some, and in these critical times, it's imperative that we take a close look at those who would attain that office.

If someone questions why there is no equivalent here for Obama, I can only answer that I agree that Obama has his own personal failings, but I very much believe that we need for him to win this election, so if you want ammunition to use against Obama, please look elsewhere. If there arise any questions about him as troubling to me as those in this video, I won't hesitate to bring them to everyone's attention, through this blog or whatever means I can. At this time, I believe there's plenty of reason to trust Obama, at worst as much as you can trust any Democratic presidential candidate we've seen in the last thirty years or so, and I don't believe for a moment that Obama has any "secret" schemes that he hasn't divulged. My beef is with McCain.

The emphasis in this video is McCain's potential for drawing us into further unnecessary and avoidable conflicts. That's just a tiny subset of the things that worry me, but it's important to consider what a reputation he has developed for showing a preference for the use of force. Coupled with his military background, his traumatic experiences as a prisoner of war, and a record more notable for its lack of support for legislation that would benefit soldiers and veterans, it's very difficult to feel much confidence in the way that McCain might address global issues.

Bottom line, I believe John McCain when he tells us there's going to be "more wars", at least if we elect him into office. I believe he is much too closely tied to that familiar NeoCon school of thought in American politics that heavily champions the use of American military force as a preferred method of supporting American (in this case, corporate) interests. Far from being one who might temper the ambitions of the NeoCon hawks, McCain's temperament would be more likely to exacerbate the problem. All these ingredients and more combine into perhaps an even more toxic brew than the one concocted for our distinct lack of enjoyment these last eight years.

I can't tell you that everything in the video is true, especially with regard to questions about McCain's behavior while a prisoner of war, but that's not the point. The point is to make you think about the sort of world you think this really ought to be, and whether McCain would bring us closer to that world. Since around 80% of America believes we're headed in the wrong direction now, how much sense does it make to simply speed up the pace?

I Love Life

I'm back. Sort of. I've kind of had a tough time health-wise the last few weeks, and my good intentions with this blog got waylaid just a bit. I'm going to do more to support my health -- I promise -- and we've got warmer weather coming up, and that's going to help me a lot. I'd like to see if I can get back to taking a few minutes every day to put my thoughts down. I'm not sure if I've had many worth recording the last few days, but here goes nothing.

I don't want to dwell on poor health, but it does, as they say, have a wonderfully concentrating effect on the mind. I've smoked my way into a pretty severe case of emphysema, and I'm getting serious now about wanting to kick the habit. Here's a fascinating new product: e-cigarettes! I'm seriously considering placing an order. Electronic cigarettes, good grief! But the simulation is impressive. There's actual nicotine, and smoke is simulated with water vapor. It's so close to the ritual of the real thing, complete with nicotine, that it sounds crazy enough to work. Of course, you wouldn't be saving much money. Twenty nicotine refills are equivalent to two cartons of cigarettes, and it looks like they run for about $39.00, so in essence you're still paying about two bucks a "pack". I'm gonna try it. Hey, what have I got to lose?

I'm propped up by some pretty massive drugs right now. So, now you know, you want to make something of it? I'm using the high-strength Advair (500/250), plus Spiriva, and a whopping 40 mg/day of prednisone. I won't be able to stay on the prednisone much longer, but it sure is helping for now. It's always better when your need for air doesn't outpace your capacity to take it in, but I've been on the losing end of that equation for several months now, and it's been hard even to meditate. I've tried to keep up with the outside world through all the usual sources, but I haven't had much energy to spare. Here's hoping I'll have a little reserve for a while here. My thoughts aren't worth all that much, but it helps me to sort things out. If I can start turning my focus away from the personal here, and do a little reflecting about our common experience, maybe I'll have a post here or there that says something useful. You'll never know unless you try.

I know that it's really good to be alive. It's an exquisite luxury to be a human being in this time, and attempt to process all the complexities of our experience in some meaningful way. I've been pretty vividly reminded how brief and fleeting all of this really is, and that really does make you appreciate the simple things for what they are. It's good to be here. We've got lots to do, but I don't care. I'm really excited about being around to witness this exciting time.

When I've been able to meditate, I've felt it's somehow easier than it was. I think it's something about understanding how foolish it is to try and "accomplish" something by meditating, so I'm pretty happy just to sit there. I don't know what it's good for, so I just do it, and that's that. Then I do other things. Enough on that for now.

We've got a face-off going on right now between our two candidates for the 44th Presidency of the United States, and I think it's sufficiently important to give it a lot of attention, even to the detriment of other concerns, till this is resolved. I really believe these next five months are going to be as important as any I've known in my life. I made a similar comment yesterday on Huffington Post, and got a response that I must lead a pretty sheltered life. I was a little hurt, I think. What's happened to me personally is arguably more important, I suppose, but it seems to me we're at a crisis point in the determination of our future, both as a nation and even, perhaps, as a species. We have the most historic presidential candidate ever in Barack Obama, historic on so many levels due both to his race and to the nature of the way in which his campaign was financed, by people like myself instead of by the usual suspects. On the other side it appears we have a man who has jettisoned any personal opinions he's ever had in return for power, with the support of the cancerous outgrowths of corruption that have spun the world nearly into madness and self-destruction. The contrasts would seem to be so clearly drawn that old boundaries really may have been transcended, and we may be redefining ourselves and our loyalties for some time to come.

Is the choice really black and white? And how confusing is it to even use those terms now, given the candidates? Everything's topsy-turvy. I've never in my life seen things start to fall apart all at once like this. The economy is outrageous, the current administration is twisting slowly in the wind of its own exposed corruption, and the disparate mentalities of America attempt to grapple with all this and find a way forward. John McCain is transparently championing our current directions, and I can barely take my eyes off those Americans who listen and nod in agreement. It's like watching a crash in slow motion. These are truly lemmings headed for the sea, even if they should win. There will be a new kind of dialogue this year, and I don't think most of us are prepared for it.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

-- The Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll

Hillary's Meltdown

It had to happen eventually. She's been pushing almost 24/7 for six months, or more. She's got to be exhausted. But I'm not going to give her an exhaustion pass for her remarks today. To my mind, even if you're a little tired you should have at least a minimal self-awareness about how the remarks you're making will be received, and whether or not some might consider them awkward.

Awkward? You might say that. You might, if you were possessed of at least a tiny modicum of self-reflection, consider refraining from discussing what happened to Bobby Kennedy's presidential bid in the context of Barack Obama. But not Hillary.

Some may be inclined to find a way to forgive her for these remarks. Personally, I'm more than tired of allowing Hillary to continue past all reason and dignity, especially when she speaks in a way that could potentially threaten the safety of Obama.

I don't like broaching this topic for any reason. I would like to see us quickly fall into silence about such hideous things, and return to discussing what we need to accomplish, and how we'll get there. But before we do, I hope we can finally bid farewell to the most destructive presidential candidate I've ever seen. W has certainly been the most destructive president, but in terms of a destructive candidate, it's Hillary, hands down. Obama is only 50-some delegates away from clinching, so I sincerely hope the superdelegates make a quick end of this, and send Hillary off for a long rest. I really, really think she actually needs one.

Here's Keith Olbermann's special comment on Hillary this evening. He's as upset as I am.

My concentration isn't very good tonight. If you've read many of these posts, you know I have emphysema. It's more than a little troublesome this evening. Hopefully, things will improve soon.

Pastor Problems

Yes, I know, I missed posting yesterday. And today's will be pretty short. I'm just doing the best I can. Yesterday was kind of busy.

Today was the day of the pastors, at least for Republican candidate John McCain. McCain's complete break with Texas televangelist John Hagee was followed a few hours later by another break with Ohio televangelist Rod Parsley. And for one day, at least, Obama's troubles with his former pastor Jeremiah Wright took a back seat. I'm sure this isn't the last we'll hear of religion in this presidential race, but at least we scored a couple of points for a little more rational world today.

You might know I would say this, but the GOP's pastors scare me a whole lot more than Obama's guy. Hagee already made a name for himself by calling the Catholic church "the great whore", but the latest stuff that came out was just too much. Not even McCain could tolerate someone saying that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews into Israel, and he disassociated himself, leaving Hagee and his followers to decide on their own who might be best to lead them onward to Armageddon. Rod Parsley's church is in Columbus, Ohio, not far from where my father and stepmother live, and when the media began following up on Hagee with the well-known stories of Parsley's inflamed hatred for all things Islamic, McCain made it a two-for-one day. Someday we're really going to figure this separation of church and state thing out.

I've had my say about Reverend Wright elsewhere. It would be nice if I never feel a need to discuss him at length in this blog, but I'm sure the time will come. There's not much worth saying about Parsley, at least in terms of what I know about him right now. He's just a bigot, as near as I can tell. Hagee is worth mentioning in connection with the long-neglected themes of this blog, because Hagee apparently believes he can discern the will of God. You can read up on this guy if you want to; I'm hoping he and his little following fade along with their plans to catch up the plight of the Jews in their dreams of rapture, but the whole of the story of fundamentalist visions of the Last Days most likely has yet to be told.

A Mixed Bag Kind of Day

I still have nine minutes until midnight here on the Left Coast, so if I hurry, I can keep my promise to myself of a post per day. I'd better make it short.

The primaries were the news of the day, aside from the awful news about Senator Kennedy's brain tumor. Hillary won Kentucky by about 65%-30%, and Obama is winning Oregon by about 58%-42%. The good news is Obama now has a majority of the elected delegates, which means he's the undisputed (well, to impartial observers) winner of the primary process. When delegates are totalled up for this evening, he should be only about 60 delegates away from the nomination.

What I really wanted to mention was the problem with the way Hillary has won Kentucky and West Virginia, and a portion of her votes in other states. I think it's going to be very difficult for the media to spin this any other way than the simple fact that Bill and Hillary catered to the bigot vote. There was no significant issue with "hard-working white voters" in Oregon, obviously, nor has there been in many other states, including here in Washington. The problem is that Hillary was perfectly happy to receive votes from those who weren't ready to vote for a black man, and worse yet, she implicitly encouraged it.

I seem to remember a presidential candidate who felt a need to express these sentiments: "If you wouldn't vote for Barack because he is black, or Hillary because she is a woman, then I don't want your vote." (Hint: John Edwards) Those would have been great sentiments to proclaim all through these primaries, especially in West Virginia and Kentucky. It's a great shame that not every candidate felt that way.

I understand David Gergen, the former Clinton aide, expressed similar sentiments on CNN this evening, although I missed it. But my point is, I don't think even media mindlessness or Clinton spin can gloss over the truth of what has happened to the primary process in Appalachia this year. It stands on its own as a mute reminder of one wing of a political party gone horribly, disastrously wrong, preferring to trade its core principles of equality for personal power. I was born and raised in Appalachia, so I have a pretty good understanding of the forces that have been in play for the last few weeks. Parts of America have been very cynically misused, so much so that I think the raw truth will have to come out and be discussed if we're to begin the healing process.

There's so much healing we need to do. I'm not sure how it's going to happen if we continue to intentionally wound ourselves.

Peace Offerings

I went back to Huffington Post this morning and made a posting. Just one. But it got a "HuffPost's Pick" award, so I guess I'll share it. The comment was made to the lead article, written by Arianna Huffington herself, as a peace offering to the much-abused Hillary Clinton, titled Hillary Clinton's Defeat: A Historic Triumph. By far the bulk of the posted comments were still highly critical of Mrs. Clinton, and that's just the honest truth of the feelings about her and the way that she's run her campaign. I've been concerned, as I mentioned yesterday, that in trying too hard to accommodate both sides, we would shy away from the intellectual honesty we need to retain or run the risk of alliances that turn out to be all too fragile. Since the comments were not being censored, I saw that the truth was still coming out, so I took the opportunity to list what I think are her strongest qualities. Please keep in mind there's a great deal that I've left unsaid, but you can scan through the other comments to see what I mean. Here then is my own little homage to Hillary's good side:

I'm glad the posters have been allowed to express themselves. I appreciate Ms. Huffington's post, but I was concerned that we still need to be honest. With much of the dirty laundry already aired, I feel like I have the luxury of focusing on what I too find to be positive about Hillary Clinton.

Although her name recognition accrues from the former president, Hillary Clinton proved beyond a doubt that she belongs in the rarefied atmosphere of presidential politics. Her knowledge of policies and issues is sweeping and detailed, and her command of the material is second to none. She is forceful and direct in debates, clear and convincing, and her responses have the authority and confidence of a leader. She is, as Senator Obama himself proclaims her, "formidable". Far more than an impressive woman, she is an imposing person. She successfully transcended gender in terms of her suitability as the nation's leader in the overwhelming majority of voters' minds. For all the criticisms aimed her way, no one I've heard has ever implied she does not possess absolutely superior skills to bring to the job. For these things, Hillary Clinton has sharpened the imprint in our minds that gender prejudice has no place in politics or society.

You have to look at everything if you're going to be honest, the good and the bad. But I think that Hillary and her supporters can clearly take pride in the things that I've mentioned here, and much more, I'm certain.

Another item of note is the endorsement of Senator Obama by none other than Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). The 90-year-old Senator from the state of my birth has had quite a history, including a brief membership in the Ku Klux Klan in his youth. It's a shame he didn't endorse before Obama's embarrassing defeat in West Virginia, but it may have some effect in tomorrow's primary in the neighboring state of Kentucky. When Senator Byrd tells Appalachia that Obama is "a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian", that has a chance of getting even the most narrow-minded voters to sit up and listen.

Resistance Is Futile

Barack Obama speaking to an estimated 75,000 people in Portland, OR May 18

What a reception for Barack Obama in Portland, Oregon! If ever there was an appropriate time to use the hackneyed phrase "a sea of humanity", this is it. I know the Ohio State-Michigan game would draw more fans, but this is to hear someone give a speech. That makes this special.

Hello again. It's been quite some time since I last posted. I've been meaning to get back to this blog again, and I'm not sure we can take this as much indication that I've been successful, but it's a start. We'll have to see how it goes from here. For the past two or three months, most of my internet time has been monopolized by the web site called Huffington Post. Since I still can't get around much, I've taken to the liberal blog sites to battle the storm of misinformation that has been raging around the first serious African-American candidate for the President of the United States. It saddens me terribly to see how many people are willing to recklessly propagate so many lies and misrepresentations about one individual, and unless you've been living under a rock for the past few months, I'm sure I'm not telling you a thing. Obama has gone from Muslim to Liberation Theologist to elitist snob, and back again, and all of this is nothing but vicious smears. For example, the other day one of the posters -- undoubtedly of the species we commonly refer to as a troll -- presented the following phrase as a "quote" from Obama's recent book The Audacity Of Hope: "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." Whoa Nellie! That's a strange thing for a presidential candidate to say, I have to admit. Sounds like Obama's taking sides against the Christians, doesn't it? Worse yet, I did a Google search on the phrase "I will stand with the Muslims" and got around 20,000 hits, many of them pointing to conservative web sites or blogs. Looks like Obama's secret is out!

Except, of course, that I read the book. The quote is, as you might expect, a misquote, and the context is horribly skewed. The phrase in question occurs on page 261, and the context is actually a discussion about immigration and immigrants. He wrote about speaking to immigrant audiences during campaigns and other occasions, and he noted the special problems some immigrants face in the current climate:

In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detention and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that Americans have learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

Quite a difference from the explosive quote offered initially, don't you think? A little twist of a phrase, a little lifting out of context, and it's possible to destroy a man with barely an effort at all. This is the environment in which we now live and struggle to bring new meaning and hope to democracy. It isn't pretty.

This morning, I was browsing again through Huffington Post, and the topmost story was about the potential "merging" of the Obama and Clinton camps. That struck me as seeming rather arbitrary and pretentious, and I imagined how I'd feel if my candidate was holding the short end, and I was told I was being merged. I decided to write a brief comment, two or three short paragraphs that complained that such things seemed a bit artificial and catered more to the herd mentality. I recommended that Clinton supporters search their own consciences for guidance on how to proceed, and make their own judgments accordingly. The post was not anti-Clinton, nor was it demeaning or profane. I checked back once, and noticed I'd gotten several very positive responses. Then I clicked to refresh the post again, and it was gone. My independent-minded little comment had been scrubbed, lost forever in the Huffington Post bit bucket trashcan. I was ticked.

I know that Huffington Post closely moderates threads on the week-ends, and clears posts with far more regularity than during the week. But I'm still fuming about that one. I don't feel as if I've written any miniature masterpieces in my time there, but sometimes, as with this one, I actually take a little time, exert a little effort, and I have this peculiar notion that my time and effort has some value all its own that ought to be honored. I don't much like the feeling I've just wasted my time, and unfortunately, that's how I felt this morning. I also felt it was a post that needed to be written. I feel pretty strongly that some overly enthusiastic supporters have lost touch with their sense of intellectual honesty, and I think it's important to make sure we get back there, because we're going to need cool heads and strong convictions if we're going to get through these next few months and secure the win. Apparently, the Huffington moderators decided my post wasn't offered in the new "team spirit", so I've gone off for a while to retch in my private disgust.

How should I feel about what I've seen so far in this primary race? Am I looking at a glass that's half-full or half-empty? I guess I need to punt for now, and say that it's just too early. When I see a crowd like the one in Portland, I think we're looking at a new age for America, bright with hope for a safe and peaceful future. But when I reflect on what just occurred in my old stomping grounds, West Virginia, I'm very sad. When I hear the President use the occasion of Israel's 60th anniversary celebration to take a broadside shot at his political opponents back home, I'm sadder still. Even Obama's skilled and powerful response wasn't enough to completely lift my spirits. It's so strange to see how much the shade of a person's skin still helps to shape the opinions of so many in our world. Barring the success of continuing attempts to discredit the talented Senator, however, he soon will be the Democratic nominee, the first ever in America to be anything other than a white male. And no, I don't support Obama because he's a black man, but I'm pleased by the extra bonus that presents. It's his ideas, his approach, his humor and positive outlook that won me over, and if he'd looked like a clone of John Edwards or Chris Dodd I would feel the same.

For what this was worth, I think this is enough of an attempt to get back in the blogging vein. My intention -- and we know what the road to Hell is paved with -- is to make at least some little blog post every day, at least something to record what caught my eye that day, and hopefully the force of habit will take over and get this little journalized perspective back on track. I don't know if I'll go back to posting at Huffington or not; I feel like what happened today was symptomatic of larger issues. I could get my opinions off my chest just as well at DailyKos, but there's something a little more dynamic about Huffington Post when I'm not being censored; some of the comments aren't terribly smart, but some of them are, and for all the phoniness of posters pretending they're something they're not, something of a real sense of the mood of the nation sometimes comes through.

Maybe if I reserve this little blog as the place to say stuff without being censored, I can shrug off the silliness of what goes on at these web sites with more aplomb. I guess I'll just take it a day at a time.

Hillary, Please Go Away

I'm getting really sick of this.

I didn't hate Hillary Clinton when all this started. Plus, I've always been kind of a champion for women's rights. I've been a fairly typical male in a lot of respects, but I've been out there for women quite a lot in my life, and I don't mean Eliot Spitzer-style. I don't think there is any male who wants to see women achieve equal rights and respect in every area more than I do, and I can say that with conviction. I know that if the United States is around long enough, there will be a lot of capable and talented women holding the office of the Chief Executive. I have felt strongly about this sort of thing long enough that I don't have to consider voting for someone out of sexist or racist guilt. I feel free to consider candidates based on their merits, and I'm confident that neither racism nor sexism will be involved in my decision, including reverse racism or sexism. I'm going to try and pick the best person. Just so you know.

Hillary, please go away. I can't believe your capacity for screwing things up. You've lost, dear. It's over. Better luck next time, and thanks for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts. Please get out of here before you take all the hope and promise of the 2008 Presidential Campaign and turn it into yet another chapter in the total nightmare that has been the 21st Century up to now. To a very great extent, your base has become Rush Limbaugh Republicans who flood the voting booths of open primaries at the behest of their chubby spokesman to prop up support for the candidate they would prefer to face this fall. You have never embraced the really progressive principles of the Democratic side of the fence, preferring instead the big business of backroom deals and cynical posturing. You voted for war, and you voted for tough talk, you lied about NAFTA in a couple of dozen different ways, you have reveled in the politics of fear and of racial division, and you've taken the excitement of a nation and twisted it up in a manner reminiscent of Bush's squandering of global good will after 9/11. This isn't how it's supposed to be, and I venture there's as little real support for you right now as there is for W. I had some hopes for you, despite your reputation as a Centrist, but you're simply proof of how corrupt our system has become.

Drop out of the race. Now! America is sick of you! We're sick of Mark Penn and Ed Rendell and Eliot Spitzer and Geraldine Ferraro and the whole ulcerous corrupt lot of you. We're sick of the way you're playing with Florida and Michigan, the way you skirt around the edges of race, good grief, don't get me started again, just go!

Fortunately, there seems to be precious little chance you're going to win. You've started the worst of these games too late, and the lead is just a little too big. You're not going to get there. At this point, you'd need to win about 62-63% of the votes remaining even to get anyone to listen to you, and only your blindest followers believe you can do that. If you simply planned to compete, fairly and honestly, then I'd say go for it. I love a good competition, and I'd be more than happy to go toe to toe on the issues with you the rest of the way. But that's not what's going on, is it? We're all going to have to start wearing athletic cups the rest of the way over here, even the women, because the frequency of hits below the belt is beyond belief.

Politics just isn't the way it used to be, is it? Time was, when most of these tricks could be pulled off pretty much unchallenged. We'd get maybe a sniff of what was going on in the paper and on the evening news, but that's all we knew. Now, it's a new ball game. Now, the whole filthy game plan is laid out on the internet for inspection, and we can decide what we like for ourselves. Even so, you came awfully close to pulling it off, and you can still do so much damage that even a sorry old loser like John McCain might come out of this thing with the prize when it's all said and done.

I've already done a fair amount of ranting on this topic before I started to write this post. I've been over at Huffington Post, among other places, getting all this off my chest. Here's one I wrote in response to a nice post by Jane Smiley, called I'm Already Against The Next War:

Hillary's right, you know.

You've got to be a little bit crazy to take on the entrenched interests in D.C. Hillary's been there, and she knows how corrupt it really is. When you think of the tremendous power and influence, permeating every aspect of government, military, corporations and the media, it's absolutely hopeless. Unquestionably, the only sensible thing to do is not try to beat them, and to make the best of things by slapping them on the back and trading shots with them on long flights. We're all doomed, anyway. If global warming doesn't get us, a loose nuke will, because we're driving everyone on the planet crazy, and it's going to take a whole lot more than a president to stop us. I mean, get real, people!

The trouble is, I guess I'm a little bit crazy, deep down. I still believe that as long as there are just a few of us who cling to the real principles of democracy, and the highest aspirations of humanity, we are charged to defend those principles and aspirations to our final breath. For the most part, the odds are stacked against us, and try as we might to shake off the Clintons of the world, she is, as Jon Stewart claims, like The Terminator. You think you've destroyed her, but then all the little globs start rolling back together, and she rises up again.

Yes, she's corrupt. She's the perfect candidate for the nation that has taken corruption to its grandest scale, and I can see her extensive experience informing all that she says and does. I am beyond impressed by how well she has learned her lessons. By all accounts, she is indeed the perfect choice to carry this nation forward in the coming years. Except that every sign and signal of nature and the soul tells us that now, and not a moment later, we have to bring our current momentum to a halt, and for once as a nation stop and reflect on what it all means, and for that task Hillary is completely unprepared.

It has long seemed foolish and naive to me to think that we would ever have a chance to turn things around, and then I watched a young man from Illinois last year announce his candidacy before the same courthouse where another young man named Abraham Lincoln once did the same thing. I knew then that he was different, and if the impossible ever had a chance to occur in my lifetime, it would be because of him. In the year since, I've watched him closely. I haven't always been overjoyed, but most of the time my admiration of his abilities has only deepened. I am no blind Moonie-style follower. There are no rose-colored glasses perched on the bridge of my aging nose. I've seen a whole lot of politicians come and go, and I've seen a whole lot of talented careers in a great many fields. The first time I saw Robin Williams on the stage, I knew -- and told my friends -- that he'd be huge. My friends just laughed. The first time Jerry Rice stepped on the football field for the 49ers, I told my co-worker that he would be to receivers what Jim Brown had been to running backs. My co-worker scoffed.

Barack Obama will be to American Presidents what no other politician has been in my lifetime, if he can get through these final hurdles. And in the end, it may still be only a fool's errand, because the deck really is stacked against any serious attempt to turn back the tsunami waves of American money and power, but you've got to at least try. You put your best man (or woman) out there and give it a shot. He may not be the best candidate for the America we've come to know, but he's the best one we have for the America I want to see.

I can tell you all this, Ms. Smiley, because from what I've read in this and other excellent posts you've made, I think you will understand. I can't say this to Hillary and her supporters. They don't know what I'm talking about at all.

"Bill Clinton was the best Republican president I ever worked for." -- Alan Greenspan

Catching Up

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

It's been a while since I made an entry. All the focus is on the primaries, and I'd like to move ahead to the general election and take on the Republicans. It looks like my candidate Obama is in a strong position, so much of the recent happenings seem like noise that must be endured, lots of sound and fury signifying nothing. We'll know more after Tuesday.

I'm thinking about how to take on the arguments of McCain. My own stance is probably more pointedly opposite him than even Obama's arguments may be when this debate starts heating up. I'm happy that with Obama as the candidate, there's much less chance for the Iraq discussion to deteriorate into how the "war" was simply mismanaged. Senator Obama will forcefully argue that there should never have been a war in the first place. There are a great many reasons why we shouldn't have gone into Iraq, and Obama correctly stated many of those back in 2002. Beyond the obvious misdirection of the battle against Al Qaeda to a country that had no role in 9/11, Obama knew that such a war would further damage relations, both within and outside the Muslim world, that it would require occupation resources and heavy cost, and that such endeavors are really doomed from the start. Obama's judgment on this issue is so inarguably correct, or at least it should be by now, that it's just a question of whether Americans are really ready to hear it.

Throughout history, occupying forces have never been able to fully conquer any nation. The pitiful excuse for a government now in Baghdad will never be truly accepted by the Iraqis. Democracy probably has a lot less chance of taking root in Iraq than it would have if we hadn't been meddling in that country since the 1950's, but until we get out of there, it has no chance at all. Will Obama talk much about the truth of why we're there? Will he discuss the heavy pressure being brought to bear by multinational energy firms such as ExxonMobil for control of Iraq's oil wealth under the guise of Iraq's oil "revenue sharing" plans? Will he mention the international leverage we want to possess by having our hands on the spigot of such an important resource right in the middle of the world's biggest region for it? There are many reasons why he might not. The forces that want to exercise that sort of control in the region will still be around after the election, and they'll continue to make an impact on how we behave. It's going to be up to us to make sure the whole argument gets laid out, because I don't think any President is going to be able to stand up to all this alone. It's still going to be up to us to drive the argument forward, and force America to face the truth about its own imperialistic pursuits. These problems extend beyond whatever administration is in power, and they don't go away simply by electing a relatively progressive Democrat. It's not that simple, folks. We have work to do.

If we simply accept that the world is a nasty place, and we have to be nasty if we want to be a part of it, I think we're failing to examine that position in sufficient depth. For myself, I can't lay claim to being an international expert, but I've known and worked with people from an enormous range of countries, and I think I've developed a pretty good sense of people overall. There are certainly some very violent pockets in the world, and there are some attitudes in the world that defy belief. Even in some countries we think of as being developed, there are nakedly racist attitudes toward other peoples that are beyond shocking to our American sensibilities. I wouldn't try to tell you for a moment that there isn't a whole lot to worry about with respect to our security. A lot of this planet is just plain crazy, make no mistake. Still, so much of the worst part of the craziness stems from patterns we can follow by studying history and related areas. When you look at what's happened, and after the shock has worn off a little, there's nothing very surprising that we haven't known all along about human nature. We know that too much power corrupts, that greed is too prevalent, and that we've become sort of a power-hungry, greedy nation. So what did you expect? I expect that we can improve things, perhaps beyond anything we could currently imagine, if we stay involved enough to examine the motives for our actions, and actually exercise the best judgment instead of opting for the most material gain. There's a lot we wouldn't solve by such a change, but we might start cutting some of our problems down to size.

Noam Chomsky resurfaced to give a talk about Iraq in Massachusetts the other day, and an article for The Nation called The Most-Wanted List that examines the terror of recently assassinated Hezbollah commander Imad Moughniyeh in the light of other violent activities in that part of the world. These are invaluable perspectives if we really want to understand the events of today's world as a caring human being, and not as an ideologue or unquestioning supporter of U.S. administration policies. I need to remind you now that I'm looking at all this in somewhat of an attitude of retrospective, as someone who's grown older and is no longer in the prime of health. I need you to understand how clearly the things that really matter stand out within that context, and the clarity doesn't represent a shift, such that some things should have mattered before, but other things matter now; what's clear is that these are always the things that really mattered, the things that provide a broad and deep sense of meaning and value throughout all phases of our lives without regard to age or life situation.

If you've read some of these entries, you know I've been studying the world situation very closely, and I've seen that our policies have done at least as much harm as good, and that's putting it mildly. I know that many of you just haven't had the time to pull back the curtain and see the sham for what it is, and I feel that many of you would be prepared to take very strong action if you really knew the truth. There are still too many, though, who would still try to ignore what's going on, who would hope that someone else could fix things, or afraid to try to fix things for fear of upsetting the status quo. What I have to tell you is that you absolutely must stop these things from happening because we're at multiple tipping points, for democracy, the climate, and the world. As long as we let George do it, he or Cheney most certainly will, and the world will suffer.

I've never said this won't be a long struggle. We can't just elect a progressive candidate and take a snooze. We not only have to wake up, we're going to have some long nights ahead, and we're going to have to upset some applecarts along the way. I'm the last person that will ever advocate any sort of violence. Don't look for that sort of thing here, because any attempt to solve problems with violence immediately destroys the solutions. What we do have to be is strong, and steadfast, and confident that we'll know what has to be done when the time comes as long as we listen equally to our heart and our head when we're asked to decide.

An election is a good time to shake things up, but we need to shake things up every day from now on. I don't want anarchy. I don't want everyone to give away all their belongings and renounce materialism. I don't want to open the door for every crazy who shows up. I just want you to start making your decisions with a thought to the things that are really important. I want you to imagine how you'll feel about things when it's nearly over, and how you'll feel then about some of the choices you made. Will you rationalize about that compromise that helped to exploit a few hundred workers in some obscure part of the world, or will you look for some way to ask for some kind of forgiveness for having come up short when you didn't really need to? I don't think we always need to think in big, revolutionary terms, even to achieve something big and revolutionary. Sometimes we just need to start taking care of the little things, and the big things will start to fall into place.

Changing The Mindset

I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.
-- Barack Obama (any of a thousand stump speeches)

Feeling sorry for Hillary yet? I am, a little. We don't actually need to get out the handkerchiefs, as she seems to be having a pretty good life, all in all. But I know she's been working hard, and it's got to be pretty devastating at this point. Of course, she still has a shot, but she has to know it's going to be an uphill battle from here. Obama's momentum is incredible, and folks are starting to climb aboard the bandwagon all over the country, and from all the ubiquitous demographics. The mood of the electorate has seen a significant shift.

But I have to say that Hillary, for all her differences with Bush & Co., is nonetheless part of that mindset we need to outgrow. And yes, I know Obama may, when it's all over, prove to have been yet another politician who was nothing but talk. I've chosen to believe that his heart is in the right place, for all his failings, and it looks like there are a lot of Americans besides just me who yearn to believe. That could translate into big numbers for other Democratic candidates this fall as well, riding the coattails of Yes We Can, and give the Democrats increased majorities in both the House and Senate for the 111th Congress in 2009. The stage could be set for dramatic progress soon in all the areas that trouble those of us who think about the world from a humanist perspective: war, human rights, global warming, economic injustice, corporate greed, and so on. So why am I still so uneasy?

Even a man -- or woman -- whose heart is in the right place has an uphill battle in the halls of American government right now, even with solid majorities in Congress. There will still be enormous pressure from powerful influences, there will still be all kinds of elected officials and many of them will still be corrupt, and there will still be a host of Bush appointees, including those new guys on the Supreme Court, to throw monkey wrenches into the machinery at every turn. Nobody said it would be easy.

So why do I think Hillary is part of the outmoded mindset of war? Well, there's her voting record, after all. It's hard to take her spin on the Iraq vote, since I'm one of those odd people capable of remembering back further than two weeks. I was paying attention, at least out of the corner of my eye while writing software, to that vote that authorized W to lead us into battle, and you would have had to be an idiot not to know what was going on. The same was true of last year's Iran vote, although so far we've lucked out thanks to "disloyal" officials who've let us in on the truth about Iran's WMD capabilities. There's more, though. In general, Hillary favors a more hard-line stance with those nations who've dared to disagree with us, and the more you know about U. S. history, the more offensive it really is that we continue to think we can cop these attitudes with countries where we've meddled and disrupted things so horribly, we've got a nerve saying anything at all. But that's America, the last great power, and what we say goes. Iran's been a mess since Operation Ajax in 1953 when we installed our own friendly puppet, the Shah, and all that crumbled into fundamentalism in 1979, another great victory for American can-do government.

All that's to say, the more you know about what the U. S. has really been up to basically since World War II, the more hypocritical the status quo holier-than-thou attitude really seems. Obama is very up front about wanting to change all that, although some of the details of his plans for the future make you wonder. I'm not sure how a huge increase in the size of the military squares with getting us out of the mindset of war, but hey, we've got to take this a step at a time. I'm hoping that Obama isn't a liar, because changing this mindset is really what I'm all about.

It's always been one of the most frustrating aspects of this blog that I can't transmit all the insight I've gained by my own reading to the reader that happens across this page. There are many entries here that point to a lot of good sources, and all I can say is it's important to be well read, because you certainly can't rely on today's media, owned as it is by either right-wing crackpots or huge corporate entities who profit greatly in times of war. You have to access information not generated by those who don't always find it in their best interests to tell the truth. The truth is, the United States has made excessive use of power during the sixty years I've been alive, and it has made life far more miserable, and far less hopeful, for hundreds of millions -- no, let's use the billions designator -- around the world. If the United States were actually to change its mindset, and it's why the whole world is watching this election with bated breath, and began to truly support bottom-up democracies throughout the world instead of dictatorships, elitism and corporate exploitation, the world could be utterly, profoundly, dramatically and beautifully transformed.

Obama has said the right things, and whether most Americans really understand why they're so right I rather doubt, but they really are the right things. They speak to the deepest hopes and most noble aspirations of humanity the world over, not just Americans, but they are a special challenge to those of us who are American, if we and the speaker are truly ready to turn words into action. He talks about hope, and he could soon be in position to turn some of those hopes to reality. I'm sure he knows, as I've discovered, how truly powerful a force the United States of America really is for good or ill, and I'm sure he knows that too often, and for far too long, we have not lived up to that promise.

America is far more than its president, or the thousands of government officials good and bad that may soon be under his charge. America is the home of the world's most powerful multi-national corporations, the world's most overwhelming military force, the most influential media, and so on. In many ways, the new president will find himself (yeah, himself) still a small cog in the larger machine. Of course, he could use all the snazzy new powers George Bush will leave him, such as unaccountable intelligence, mercenary, and justice divisions, an escalated priority for signing statements that makes the president a virtual dictator, and a vast array of judicial and administrative appointees deeply committed to unitary executive power. Or not. I'd certainly prefer that he didn't, because then we'd still have the dictatorship Bush created, just with a new dictator. That would do little to change the mindset.

The truth is, I think he's going to need a lot of help. He strikes me as someone who welcomes a helping hand or two, and I believe there'll be a lot of us anxious to put in a little time for a good cause. There hasn't been much out of Washington lately I'd want to sign onto, but times change. At least we can Hope.

The Stakes

There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

-- Arthur Jensen explaining the world to Howard Beale, from the film Network (1976)

For a little while, many of you are turning briefly from your everyday concerns, and thinking about some of the things I've been thinking about. You can see that things have turned sour in many respects -- Americans are losing their jobs and homes, the economy is in freefall, Iraq is still an atrocity, global warming is heating up, and nuclear nations are imploding and headed for crisis. The promises of the politicians were just so much hot air, as usual, and now, for your quatrennial moment of participation in this process that determines so much of your lives, you're going to begin choosing between the remaining list of candidates, and cast your vote on the direction you want this nation and the world to go.

If you've not been paying much attention, I can't blame you. For years, I was only able to glance from the corner of my eye as I worked 80-100 hours a week on various projects, the last my five-year contribution to Windows Vista. For nearly a year now, I've stepped back from all that, and really have paid attention to things, and have been sobered by how actually reliable my instincts have been, and yet how dulled they were by the distractions of everyday living. I need to make a choice as well, not on "Super Tuesday", but in the caucuses that will take place in the state of Washington on the 19th. I'm fortunate, I suppose, that the candidate I've been supporting is still in the mix, as I've been a Barack Obama supporter all along. Obviously, I will be supporting Obama in the caucus, unless something changes dramatically.

There were other candidates, like Dennis Kucinich, who really stated the problems more plainly, but I've been around for a while, and I know when some things just aren't going to happen. It's sort of amazing that I would assess, correctly, that the candidacy of a fellow white male from my home state of Ohio would be less viable than that of a black man born of a Kenyan father, but this is a pretty amazing time. Now it's time I tried to state some of the problems plainly, since my candidate still has to play the game and garner votes.

There are real issues at stake. This election won't necessarily be the defining moment that marks the turning point for America and the world, but then again, it might be. At the very least, it will make a critical statement about how we perceive ourselves and our current dilemma, and whether the odds for the future will have improved, or sunk to new lows. We're going to be voting for individuals, Republicans and Democrats, and you've heard a lot about the various candidates. I don't feel like speaking in specific terms today. I feel like making some generalities, working out of that instinct that has been validated and sensitized by my year of examining our current milieu.

I've mentioned elsewhere, though I don't think I've mentioned it yet in this blog, having watched a re-broadcast of a talk given by the Dalai Lama on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. I don't recall now where the talk was given, although it was out of doors, sometimes in the rain, with the Dalai Lama holding an umbrella over his head while he spoke. He talked a little about violence and discord, and he spoke about anger, even admitting that he himself gets angry sometimes. Then he made an assertion that stuck with me, claiming that when you're angry, 90% of what you feel is exaggeration. I don't know about the percentage, but I know there's more than a grain of truth in that. That's part of why I want to continue today's post more in generalities than specifically directed toward individuals, because people are more complex in many ways than even some of the most complex forces at work in our society, and people's motives on an individual basis are rarely entirely good or bad. It's probably a little more accurate to point to a direction and call it pernicious than to point to a person and do the same. I'll leave you to extrapolate conclusions on your own.

There are things going on now that reveal the most cancerous, destructive, tormented aspects of human nature imaginable. There are people who, for whatever reasons, are sowing seeds of misery throughout the world to such an extent that it beggars imagination. The word Evil is such a loaded and absolute term, but I don't think it can be avoided here. If we try to view the world as a struggle between good and evil, we become lazy, and quickly oversimplify everything in black and white. It's hard not to characterize individual actions as Evil, like the bombings in Baghdad this week, and as such, it's hard not to characterize the active promotion of conditions that engender such actions as embodying that same Evil, in all respects.

There is a possibility that you could make a choice soon to support someone who really doesn't care about you at all. Not the least little bit. The simple truth is, there is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, or whatever names those corporations operate under now, and they don't care the first thing about you. They aren't people, they're corporations. They care about, are created, charted, and under legislative dictum to care about, only the bottom line. Left to themselves, they will chew up the earth and spit it out in little pieces, strewing pieces of bone and hair through a barren landscape. They are mechanisms, soulless to their core, and they don't want democracy, they don't want you to have equality and dignity, they want profit. We are, indeed, trying to meddle with the primal forces of nature in this election, and whatever happens, we may not be able to meddle enough. But I want you to know that we really do have a lot to lose. It's more than Kucinich talked about, more than John Edwards told us, it's more along the lines of what we heard from Arthur Jensen over thirty years ago. We've allowed it to happen, and now it's reached us in every part of our lives, and we have to choose now if that's still the way that it's going to be.

It's incredible they would actually give us the chance to choose, isn't it? If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. What we can really do is mostly push back just a little, hold it off while we marshal our forces and add reinforcements, and keep hanging on. Maybe there is no America and no democracy, but there's still just enough an appearance of it that we can find a reason for hope, and a way to move forward. As we applaud ourselves for all this, millions more will die without hope, ExxonMobil will gouge out more wounds in the earth, and more profits will go to the few while the many are starving. All this will happen almost unaffected by even the most optimistic outcome of this year's selection process. If you think we will find a hero, please think again. This is just about a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a difference, but even then, in the whole scheme of things, it's a drop in a storm.

Many of you are afraid to take any sort of a chance. Let someone make you a soothing promise, and you're all ears. Daddy would never hurt you, would he? I hate to break it to you. There are an awful lot of bad daddies in the world, and there's been an awful lot of hurt. I wish I could take what's inside me right now and transmit it directly. Once it's put into words, it's all relative and subject to doubts. I'll tell you what I know with the only tools I have. Over the years, we've made a lot of bad choices. We've allowed ourselves to be fooled so many times by all the ways that have been devised to manage the outcome, by propaganda -- don't kid yourself -- that's reached a level of efficiency with the modern media so overwhelming that it's amazing we can have any sense of the truth at all.

We've had no shortage of courageous examples who tell us about how things really are. We've had our Orwells, our Chayevskys, our Zinns and Chomskys. Now we can take just a moment and think if they might not be right, if we might not be sliding in our meek passivity right down the cosmic drain and into oblivion. We have to consider if we, in the long run, are being controlled. I'm asking you now, can you really imagine we aren't? Do you really think that wealth and power are benign? Do you really imagine that their continually redefined definition of our security is any security at all, instead of a dreamy opiate of lies? You think you can keep your nose clean and retire, and the truth is you'll end up working until you die. In one future, the elderly have no recourse and are left to wither, the sick and infirm are discarded, the weak are crushed. The profits are all that will matter, and they will grow, and among the few there will be the opulent trappings of kings. Keep on voting as you have been, my friends. We'll be there soon.

I recorded the film Network and watched it the other night. I'd forgotten that one of my old friends was in it. Her name is Conchata Ferrell (Chatti to us). She and I were part of a circle of friends that saw the protests, and the Manhattan theater scene, in the sixties and seventies. We were part of a very close-knit group that grew apart. Chatti was a close friend of my first, perhaps only, Great Love, and was witness to all my passionate suffering for that girl's affection, and much more over the years. I was always shy, and much of what Chatti knew of me was of someone so twisted up in his emotions he was barely sane, but I know those years meant just as much to her as me, and I bet I still cross her mind in some way when she thinks of that time. If I think of you now as I watched your wonderful movie, Chatti, it's not for the fame you've enjoyed; I've had my successes as well. It's for that time when we all lived with complete intensity, truly candles that burned completely in each instant of time. I hope you're well. You were great in Network. You're better now than you were even then, because you were perfect.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Experts, Pt. 1

In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

-- Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

I have used that quote before, only about a month ago, and I'm sure I will use it again. It's one of my favorites. We have a lot of experts around. I've known some of them. It's a major achievement when a person gains a reputation of genuine expertise in his or her chosen field.

When I reflect on my past, I can boast of having gained sufficient respect for my own expertise that I was allowed into the inner circles of development efforts that resulted in the latest edition of the operating system known as Windows Vista® (and Windows Live®, too, by the way). I have written many thousands of lines of code as my part of that effort, and if we discard false showings of either humility or pride, I can be considered an expert repository of knowledge that's of no small importance to our world.

I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had in the past, and perhaps will again in the future, to acquire and build on that reputation in the interest of stretching the boundaries of the digital aspects of our lives. The sales figures of Windows Vista® attest, hopefully, to real acceptance of our efforts, and the promise of Vista® for its advancements and support for new and exciting possibilities of working with information and communicating it to others. It all could have been done without me, of course, but it couldn't have happened without The Experts.

At Microsoft, there is a very healthy respect for expertise. The amazing people who can navigate comfortably through the labyrinthian core of Windows source code with deep understanding and respect for the intentions and far-reaching impact of seemingly obscure subroutines and branches have my deepest respect. They are the foundation, and theirs are the shoulders whereon we stand as we explore those possibilities they've helped to enable. And I've been often amused when the experts are pulled up short by a novice whose question the experts might choose to reject.

Innovation at Microsoft has always been a collaborative effort between the experts and the novices. It's an ideal laboratory for examining the compartmentalization of thinking, and the frequently encountered "inside-the-box" limitations of standardized thinking. Fortunately for Microsoft developers, we have frequently been forced to come to grips with those limitations, and to reach out in innovative directions that challenge our mental routines. That's an experience not to be minimized, and I bring that element of my background to this effort with unchecked enthusiasm.

This is part 1 of my rant on The Experts. I have much more on this topic bouncing around in my head, but it's almost time for the #1 Ohio State Buckeyes to play Penn State (can you tell I was born and raised in Ohio?), so I'll stop for now. I'll pick this up again within the next posting or two.

I want to leave a link to a short blog I posted today on my.barack.obama. I've already stated my support for his campaign, and that I maintain a small, more "politically-correct" blog there on his web site. The theme of that post is very relevant to this topic, so if you'd like to read that as well, here it is: When Will We Learn?

Too Much Truth

There are many ways to promote democracy at home, carrying it to new
dimensions. Opportunities are ample, and failure to grasp them is likely to have
ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future
generations.
-- Noam Chomsky, Failed States

How much truth is too much? Can you handle the truth? I've been trying to learn a few things about what's true and what isn't these last few months, and I feel as if I've climbed at least a plateau or two in understanding. I'd like to be able to communicate some of that here, for what it's worth, but this is just a personal blog, just a half-step above Dear Diary. The longest of my entries, printed out, would barely cover five pages. Who wants to read a long blog? Go read a book or something. I'm just posting a few pictures, a few videos, and trying to say a few short words to express how I feel, and allow random chance to find a receptive reader. If you're looking for War and Peace, this ain't the place. But there's a Pulitzer Prize winner in my immediate family (have I ever lied to you?), and while I'm not likely ever to receive Joseph's highest honor, I'm not afraid to think that I might have just a little bit of my own worth saying.

I've completed Noam Chomsky's Failed States, and have begun reading Hegemony or Survival. There are many who find Chomsky's point of view disturbing. That's a laugh, because it certainly is. Everyone has a point of view, and Noam Chomsky is no exception, but we can try and stick to the facts; they're quite sufficient. You don't have to be a student of the Noam Chomsky School of Philosophy, or whatever, to study the public records with him, and others, and come away with much greater insight into the forces that shape our world.

It is a dark vision, for the most part. I won't tell you that Chomsky is an optimist, though he may be. I suspect Howard Zinn is irrepressible in his optimism, and I love him for it. Noam Chomsky doesn't let us see quite so much of himself. The facts tend to speak for themselves.

Can you handle the truth?

I have followed this process in many phases of my life. I have seen the weight of evidence collect on numerous topics until I've attained a level of knowledge about certain things. If you touch a hot stove, you'll be sorry. If you go out in the rain with your head wet, you'll catch a cold. Smoking has bitter consequences. I've learned a lot, by trial and error. I know how it works, and I know when to say I understand.

We here in America are in the midst of momentous crisis. We are in danger of losing democracy if we're not careful. We are indeed being manipulated, make no mistake. The overwhelming majority in this country is deeply at odds with the direction we're headed, and we're being lulled to sleep by propaganda and American Idol. You, you conservative Evangelic Christian. You, you Wall Street Administrative Assistant. You, you soldier headed out for your third tour in Iraq. You are being toyed with and played for just a pathetic sucker. You have to fight!

What can you say in a little blog? After all that I've learned, what can I tell you? That politicians are corrupt, corporations are greedy, and nobody gives a damn about the little guy? Well, hot dang, you could have told me that! You don't need me! There's no room for the details here. I can't take you through it with me. But I can tell you that the devil really does reside in those details, and He's (did I really just capitalize that?) just as strong as ever. The playing field has always been tilted toward the elite and privileged, that isn't news. What's news is that it's gotten a lot more serious, and things are moving quickly now. Specific measures have been, and are being, undertaken that profoundly erode our freedoms. It's a pattern with historical parallels, and you know what they say about those who don't learn from history. It's just that we here in America can't afford to fall victim to that vicious cycle, not here, not now. The stakes are much too high, for us, and for the world.

LISTEN!

The United States of America is largely controlled by corporations. That's upside down. Now, I don't hate corporations. I really, truly, love Microsoft, for all its flaws. But how many times can we be told that power corrupts before we actually believe it? The Ring of Power corrupts all who wear it, and it's a burden that must be fully shared, if we're to go forward. I am here to tell you that a struggle is beginning now that has all the earmarks of being more terrible than we could ever imagine, far, far worse than World War II. I am here to tell you just how bad it really is.

We live in a perfect storm of global crisis, of which we're dimly, barely aware. We're literally melting the polar ice caps off our planet because we're madly uncontrolled, in a world whose religion has become the Bottom Line. We've already become immersed in this climate of fear, and by my speaking out in this manner, I think I may actually risk imprisonment and torture. It's happened already, and it will happen again. You and I, the vast majority, from all walks of life and all points of view, are, unbeknown to our everyday selves, already hostage, and smack dab in the middle of the fight of our unassuming lives.

With our dwindling resources, our overheating globe, our rapidly (thank God!) awakening public, and the growing impatience of the really nasty ones to get their power base sewn up once and for all, the battle lines are being more clearly drawn. I'm not sure which factor will finally push us off the edge, but the cliff is near, and I can see it, and you will, too. The lobster in the pot doesn't know he's being boiled, but I strongly suspect there's at least one moment of bright awareness. Do you have a boiling point? You are, I guarantee you, about to find out.

Take a breath, now. Calm down. I'm here. It's all right. We're going to get through this. I have a little blog I write occasionally over on Barack Obama's web site, and on my Profile Page I paid homage to Yoda for my favorite quote:

"Fear is the path to the dark side: fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering."
-- Yoda (Star Wars: Episode I)

I'm a little angry now myself, a little afraid, but I'll get over it. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." (Who said that?) I don't believe we're all evil. I believe there are billions of people in the world who just want to do the right thing. I am saying that we're not the ones in control now, and that the ones who are, are the same ones who've been there all through recorded time. They don't like you and me much. We were very foolish to trust them. Stop listening to their commercials, their mindless entertainment, and remember how truly dignified and noble you really are.

We're not powerless, not yet, anyway. The incredible thing about the United States of America is that its underlying structure is still based on the noblest ideals. That's the really dangerous thing about democracy with regard to the rich and powerful; there's always the chance the people themselves could win!

(Upcoming: On Monday, October 15th, I'll publish a blog in honor of Blog Action Day, when over 12,000 bloggers on blogger.com will all write a piece on the environment for an audience of millions. I suspect I'll write about Al Gore's Nobel award, and related issues. Then on Thursday, October 18th, stay tuned for my Sixtieth Birthday blog, and see what I write while in a drunken, self-pitying stupor.)