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.

Beginner's Mind

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

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

Suzuki Roshi's words are more relevant now than ever. In a time when legendary economists innocently reveal the most damning truth of the Bush Administration so far, yet fail to envision a world where such obscenities might have been avoided, we see the limitations of the box we've been so reluctant to "think outside of", as they say. The extension of such thinking has led the Senate to make a virtual declaration of war against yet another nation being drawn into the morass that is Iraq.

I just made a post on the MSNBC site on the message board discussing the Democratic debate. I was really disheartened, and more than usual, by the ignorance and tightly closed minds of too many posters. I tried to add a little historical context to the topic:

The United States of America was created, and defined in its historic Constitution, to be a nation governed by the people themselves. Out of the long human history of rule by kings whose powers were decreed by God, America flowered as a testament that we are all children of God, and no less capable of governing than kings.

More than two centuries later, there is still insufficient appreciation for the revolutionary nature of this country. For many, the temptation to imbue special qualities to the wielders of power is still too great. In America, at least for the moment, each one of us is powerful in ways the Medieval spirit could scarcely have imagined, but we've been painfully slow to assume the accompanying responsibilities.

We have all been declared as noble by the law of our land, yet too often we still cling to our savage nature. We are each of us tasked to meet the hopes and expectations of Washington and Jefferson in our daily lives, to live the dream of America and protect its birthright of liberty. As citizens of this extraordinary republic, we all have much to learn, and obviously much studying yet to do. Each of us must ask the hard questions once only the province of kings, and assume our portion of the nation's burden. That's a serious commitment, and we must not abdicate, because this world does have evil in it, and we should strive to be alert to threats from every
direction.

Far from a gloomy responsibility, the task assigned to each American is a joyous one, with a vision of freedom not defined by docile ignorance, but of empowerment, opportunity, maturity and understanding. It is the spark of the Divine in every living being, unfettered by tyranny and oppression. It is not just George Bush's responsibility, or Hillary Clinton's.

It's yours.

OK, that's a little heavy for the MSNBC message board. But I almost know how Jesus felt when he cried "Oh, Jerusalem!" Do you know what I mean? I see such potential, such unrealized potential.

It's hard for me to realize my own potential, needless to say. I didn't really need more physical difficulties, but I'm on extra meds again, and I'm not happy about it. I'm still having more troubles than I'm supposed to be having, so more 'roids, and a different antibiotic this time, called Ceftin, or something. I don't know much about it yet, but so far, none of the bad reactions I had to the sulfa-based SMZ/TMP, to which I'm obviously allergic. So, I'm not feeling that great, but I have so many thoughts I'd like to write down over the next few days. We'll see what happens.

There is so much going on in the world, and so much I'd like to see headed for the right path while I'm still around to enjoy it, but I always find strength in the words of men like Shunryu Suzuki. There are two primary books associated with the teachings of this Zen master who came to California and established the first Soto Zen monastery in the West before he died in 1971. I have been reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind periodically for more than thirty years, and more recently, a compilation called Not Always So. It's been fascinating to chart my progress in understanding the simple words of Suzuki. Great books such as these are not necessarily the literary achievements of Shakespeare and Goethe, but share their ability to measure our growth in understanding as we pass through life. Just as a passage of Shakespeare reveals new layers of meaning as I grow older, so I seem to fall slowly through my own layers of misunderstanding each time I read Suzuki, and sense just a little more of the kernel of meaning he tried to convey. Without question, that task will be incomplete when my time is up.

I still can feel intensely bored by meditation, but I am confident in my will to persevere. If something about that practice has undergone any subtle changes, I am only reminded what a beginner I truly am. I know that the deeper I reach within myself, the closer I feel to all of you, my living teachers. I am touched by the deep inability of words to express that sort of paradox, yet I know it's in the riddles that we find a touchstone of our journey to understanding, and that they resonate with the jangled tune of our crisis-ridden planet as it speeds through vast, vast emptiness.

Bill Clinton has made some remarks of great importance. If you haven't heard them, please play this short video.

I might update a given blog to correct a spelling error or add a tag, but I don't like adding content after the fact. I'm making a late addition here, but I'll try not to make this a habit.

Toward the end of the MSNBC debate, Tim Russert asked one of those hypothetical questions. The scenario here, if I recall, was a prisoner formerly 3rd in command of a terrorist group with information about a pending terrorist attack. The question posed to the candidates was whether an interrogator of this prisoner might be pardoned for using torture to thwart the attack.

The Democratic candidates all condemned the use of torture under any circumstances, and of course, that's the answer we must give in response to such questions, if we are to make any claim to legitimacy as a leader in the free world. But I want to look a bit deeper into the implications of this stance, and imagine myself, not as the President, but as the interrogator in the critical moment of decision. If I were this person, I think I should feel the full weight of all crimes against humanity that hung in the balance, through terrorism and torture alike. At such a moment, it should be clear to me that, should I choose my own criminal path, there will be no pardon, no subsequent redemption no matter the outcome. Let this be the sobering context of this drama.

As a trained, experienced interrogator, of course, I would know how to apply far more effective techniques than torture, and be much more prepared to respond to the crisis than any of the stars of 24. This was another fake question, based on one of the many steps backwards in understanding we've taken this century. Until they burn the books, we can recover forgotten knowledge, and move forward.