Game Over!

First, let's clear up any misconceptions: I am the same person I was yesterday, joyful to a fault and utterly convinced of the worth of the human condition. I don't think people should avoid going to the voting booth in November to keep the Tea Party at bay, and I think there are plenty of things the average citizen can do to stave off disaster. But on Sept. 25, I was slightly more willing to snap up that Republican bumper sticker, "How's that hopey changey thing working out for you?" I was slightly more ready to mouth the anarchist mantra, "If voting could change anything, it would be illegal."

The feeling has been there in the background since Scientific American published a study a few months back, saying that on at least four vectors of ten, the environment has already passed the tipping point of irreversible damage. This is not an excuse for inaction, but a reminder that the world's a shit and we're knee-deep in it.

Yesterday, I saw the movie Gasland after heavy prodding from my friend Hilary, and I'm very glad I did. Josh Fox demonstrates that natural-gas drilling is perhaps the most toxic form of resource extraction, yet there is little that can be done to mitigate the poisoning and brain lesions, because Dick Cheney's secret energy-policy meeting of 2001 was set up primarily to craft a 2005 Energy Act that exempted oil and gas drillers entirely from the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. Since hundreds of thousands of new natural-gas drilling sites now dot the U.S. landscape, it's almost too late for catch-up. And now several oil drilling advocates are actually rejoicing about the North Polar ice cap melting, since it will allow tankers to traverse the North Pole, making further exploitation easier. Shit, we won't stop until the last landscape is devastated.

Meanwhile, my annoyance with the present administration went up a notch on Friday when the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force raided peace centers and activists' homes in Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, South Carolina, and California. Oh, sure, they have great stories about looking for FARC and Palestinian connections, but at the end of the day, it sure looks like a Bush administration action - meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And this is not surprising. Obama and Clinton, as I am never tired of reminding everyone, were candidates of the Democratic Leadership Council. This is the minuscule range for change allowed in this country, yet it enrages the paleo-right to talk about "socialism in America." The only question left is whether the republic or the environmental landscape collapses first, but time's pretty much up.

No Free Passes

I (too) often complain in this blog about the tendency by many to place individuals on pedestals, and grant them groundless coolness cachets on the basis of gender, ethnicity, past accomplishments in social realms, or general reputations of being past ascended masters. We have a chance to invent ourselves anew each day, and should strive to work for kindness, integrity, and worthiness in our daily interactions with other people. Snaring a free bathroom trip from the hall monitor tends to make the anointed lazy.

Now granted, this can get pretty difficult in figuring out how to weigh the integrity of artistic vision. I might grant that a misogynist wife-beater can crank out good prose, maybe that a transcendent vision even requires a but of antisocial behavior, but I'll be damned if Ezra Pound will ever make my pantheon of poets after all his years as a Nazi sympathizer. The personal is political, and personal faults do hamper integrity of (artistic/cultural/political) vision. Why is this so hard for some camp-followers to accept?

This came to mind in early June because of all the attempts I saw by some team players to excuse the inexcusable. Examples:

* Thankfully, few feminists today are ready to say that a woman winning a political race represents a victory merely because of her sex. It was good to see two former high-tech CEOs enter California congressional races, and I would have no problem seeing either Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina be declared Republicans with a message of fiscal responsibility. Where I have a problem is watching both women pander to the tea-party irrational conservative movement. Whitman was bad enough, spending her way to certain victory and making unsupportable statements on tax policies. But Fiorina has left the sane world behind, rejecting the reality of global warming and trying to sound like Glenn Beck's best friend. Is it any wonder some Hewlett-Packard board members wanted to remove someone this disturbed from HP management?

* Barack Obama has taken hits for everything from civil liberties to the BP oil spill, but few have noticed how much his recent actions with drones and Special Operations expansion, negate most of what he has said about zero nuclear weapons and a new National Security Strategy. Granted, his views on preventive war are not as extreme as Dick Cheney's, but as Ivan Eland pointed out at antiwar.com, what you say in public is not nearly as important as actions on the ground.

* I know I bore you all with my tirades as a confirmed Apple hater, but I tried to give design expertise its due when I got an iPhone as a birthday gift in late May. As I posted in Smartbook Blog, I loved the phone and its apps, but did not love my experience after the digitizer glass smashed only one week into ownership. I could forgive this not being covered under warranty, but I could not forgive the cult-like experience of entering an Apple Store, or the staff's refusal to admit that you can buy digitizers in the after-market. Apple simply is not a company that treats its customers (or partners) fairly.


So let's go through the ground rules one more time - be you a woman, African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, disabled, LGBT, a politically-correct do-gooder or an artist with decades-long reputation, you are not entitled to a coolness quotient on the basis of identity or past actions. You must win the respect of your admirers anew every day, and those participating in bad behavior should be reported to the principal.

Hope Who?

Wow, two Curmudgeon posts in a row, suffused with joy. Can't have that. Where's the yang? Actually, focusing on small Pop Rocks of joy might be appropriate when the world seems so intent on showing that small instances of intelligent behavior on behalf of either government or people get overwhelmed by the continuous tide of bureaucracy and stupidity. The script gets so familiar, my sense of outrage is buried in ennui.

No, my problem with Washington bears little resemblance to the tea-party gang obsessed with deficits, though the deficit reduction plan does nothing to win Obama friends. I'm also through with worrying about how an Afghan surge will work, or when Gitmo might close. Rather, it's the constant fallback to the national-security position that often makes the Obama administration hard to distinguish from the previous one:

* A legal, nonviolent protest against a missile-defense test at Vandenberg Air Force Base Jan. 31 was met by greater repression than Bush initiated in the post-9/11 period. Military Police at Vandenberg went outside the gates to dismantle a demo on public property. Meanwhile, the missile test failed, while Obama planned on upgraded Patriot missile batteries throughout the Persian Gulf region. Bruce Gagnon blogs about the crackdown on MacGregor Eddy and compatriots here. (Update: Here's an article on the crackdown, with a photo showing a banner that was displayed for a total of five minutes before being pulled down.)

* Obama's nuclear-weapons budget, Pentagon budget ($708 billion), and Quadrennial Defense Review are more business-as-usual bids for more guns and less butter. At least Pell Grants are increased, but that can't make up for all the offensive parts of the present budget.

* The right wing has gone from crazy to downright dangerous, as revealed in the arrests at Sen. Mary Landrieu's office. But was it a CIA inside job? You'll never know. Just like you'll never know the death count from CIA-directed drone attacks inside Pakistan.

I almost got lifted from my sense of repressive-rerun boredom with Ruth Mowry's wonderful post on Black History Month. But then I remembered that even Woodrow Wilson supported D.W. Griffith and supported the Klan. I remembered that we still have racists who try to bury their hatred of a Black president under stories of Kenyan birth certificates. And I remember that our president who was to serve as an agent of change, isn't able to change much at all. I guess I had better chuckle as much as I can at the small stuff, because I am simply too tired and bored to engage in passionate outrage over a world that still seems bent on unraveling its better works.

The Culture of "No We Can't"

It took less than 48 hours after the president's health-care speech for even the liberal media outlets like NPR and The New York Times to point out the obvious problems of White House numbers for health-care options that were simply unworkable, and the additional problems faced in planning for a surge in Afghanistan that the Democratic Party is loath to approve. It's not just that Obama is being shot by both sides, with the left now taking the place of Joe Wilson. It's that Obama still longs for the days of a 1962 Camelot, and those days ain't comin' back.

I give Obama endless credit for being frank about global warming, the financial meltdown, etc. at times when few in either party (almost none in the Republican) show such ability for forthrightness. The problem is, massive Keynesianism is unlikely to be paid down in an era of declining resources.

Let's face it: the United States is a declining global empire at a time when most capitalist goods-and-service flows will be moving to Asia, but when all nations will face limits to market expansion they have never faced in past decades. U.S. citizens need to start thinking of themselves as UK post-1956 or Germany post-1945. Is there anyone in the political leadership willing to steer citizens in such directions? Are citizens themselves capable of associating American exceptionalism with something other than continuous territorial expansion? I doubt it.

I'm usually bashing exceptionalism as a philosophy, particularly when tied to that "city on a hill" crap. But we can indeed be exceptionalist in an era of decline. In culture, for example, the world is likely to continue to look to the U.S. for most arts ideas and capitalist innovation, unless China manages to make great leaps forward in making Asian consciousness cool. As the Brits discovered in the early 1990s, the UK could still be considered "coolest country in the world" long after its empire collapsed. (Of course, it had to work its way through dark 70s and Thatcherist 80s to get there.) But to come to terms with that, U.S. citizens need to start accepting concepts of financial limits, territorial limits, even consciousness limits (What's that? We can't afford another trip to the moon, let alone Mars?) that politicians will avoid like a Bill O'Reilly appearance.

The Republicans show no tendencies to drop the caveman clubs and the attitude that we can keep our imperial position through might and fight. The Democrats show no willingness to admit that deficits incurred now may be impossible to pay down by mid-century. An effective president might have to be the kind of school marm that preaches austerity and humble spirit to a public that is not going to listen. The leaders we need right about now are the ones we'll never get.

I'm glad Obama infused optimism in a jaded public in 2008, but I'm worried that his supporters don't recognize that Camelot will never be resurrected. (And truth be told, the Kennedy brothers engaged in some pretty nasty covert foreign business behind the scenes during those years.) Does Obama work on health care for six months, re-work the numbers, and say, Hillary-style, "Oh, never mind"? Does he reject a troop surge and approve an exponential increase in armed UAV flights over Afghanistan, thereby limiting body bags but buying into a moral argument that says standoff warfare with massive collateral damage is OK?

I empathize with Obama for the tough choices he will have to make over the next three years. But I feel even more sorrow for the American people, who live by many fairy tales and few facts. They are totally unwilling to recognize the reality that the superpower they grew up with has reached its limits, and that the next 50 years will represent an inevitable decline in political influence and purchasing power.

Scott Moss Riffs on Barack Obama and the Supremes

Scott Moss, who teaches constitutional law at CU, was the guest speaker at the Colorado state ACLU annual meeting Feb. 21. I captured most of his speech in three segments: the one above, followed by Part 2 and Part 3. I ran out of memory for the last couple minutes of his speech, where he adds the final two elements of his Top Five Rights Issues:

4. Civil Rights Enforcement: will be aggressive, but could be severely limited by budget constraints.

5. Legislation on issues such as gay rights, union rights (Employee Free Choice Act) and the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act may be supported, but a lower priority due to the crisis in the economy.

Moss ended with a discussion of whether the glass is half-empty or half-full on state secrets. Obama's poor position on the fight with the British High Court over Binyam Mohamed has been followed up by disturbing signs on extraordinary rendition, secret bombing in Pakistan, and restrictions on National Security Agency information.

"When the information relates directly to a war being waged, secrets will be kept, though Obama will not adopt the kind of broad definitions we saw on the War On Terror," Moss said. "Remember, Obama was never part of the pacifist wing of the party. There will be interceptions, there will be detentions, but there will be limits on what is considered state secrets during time of war."

The ACLU meeting also heard from State Board Chairman Lino Lipinsky, who reminded attendees that without ACLU cases, the Denver police would have continued their common trend in 2005-2008 of locking up the wrong people in outstanding warrants (occasionally even mixing up race and legal status in the mistaken identity), and leaving innocent people in jail for days or weeks.

Cathy Hazouri, executive director of the state office, said that some members may have not liked the actions the ACLU took to defend demonstrators during the Democratic National Convention, but that the ACLU needs to be inherently contrarian with everyone, even its loyal members.

"We are the permanent loyal opposition," she said. "Sometimes, even we don't agree with what we do."

Limbic or Cortical?

As someone who never succumbed to the audacity of hope, I have a hard time deciding how to respond to the anti-Obama alarmism of the post-stimulus week. Since Obama caved on FISA back in July, I was not that surprised to see his administration similarly cave on the secrecy issues raised by the British High Court a week ago, and I am glad to see The New York Times waste no words to tell him this was not acceptable. Similarly, I thought Tim Geithner's bailout plan was almost as lame as Paulson's. Sources inside the White House say he didn't want to over-upset the banking executives, yet as Congress learned Feb. 11, there's simply no nice way to tell someone they need to have their asshole reamed. Punishment implies cruelty.

And yet, it's hard to start taking apart the stimulus package without running into the tin-foil types who seriously believe that Obama is ushering in a socialist dynasty of scary proportions. I consistently set up a rule for those with whom I would engage on debating points: use your cortex, not your limbic system. Apparently, for many people this is hard. Hard for arch-conservatives, of course, but hard for some Obamaniacs as well. Most people do not respond to facts assembled in a linear and logical way, but to emotional appeals to myth. Often, this myth is supporting and covering up a set of deeply racist fears. But even among those who have no subconscious racial blocks in dealing with the new president, there is this narrative from the Hannity-O'Reilly-Limbaugh camp that assumes all financial planning is socialism. At least Mitch McConnell was intelligent enough to say that Obama's stimulus plan could take us further toward a European Union-style economy. Flash news for frantic anti-Obama-ites: There are no socialist nations in Western Europe. McConnell may be right or wrong, but at least he doesn't uphold myths.

There are dangerous potholes ahead as we talk about financial recovery, the U.S. place in a new multipolar world, and even simple things like the 200th anniversary of Darwin. We can't remove the influence of our limbic system, but we can choose to relegate our emotions to a second order, beneath the cortex. The more the emotions or the hormones speak first regarding complex topics like economics, the more we sound like primates - and ones not very highly evolved.

Purpose-Driven Obama

Sometimes the cultural choices made by political figures can be as revealing as their alliances for getting things done. The down sides of cabinet picks like Hillary Clinton, Jim Jones, Ken Salazar, and retained Robert Gates were obvious to all, but Obama is taking the most heat for the invocation beginning his inauguration, which will be led by the author of The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren of the Saddleback (Mega-)Church. The minute I heard the pick (and before griping emerged), I knew Warren was likely to be shot by both sides - conservative evangelists consider him a liberal poseur for the evangelical movement, while liberals don't like his stances against abortion and gay marriage.

I've seen Warren's videos for Purpose-Driven Life, and I find him nerdy with a disarming high-pitched laugh, but not filled with the Calvinist venom of many of his brethren. I could live with the invocation, albeit with annoyance, just as I lived with Obama saying conclusively that he doesn't believe in gay marriage. Maybe Obama felt he had to pay penance for the ramblings of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Still, you're judged by the company you keep, and in this case, maybe Obama feels his position is strong enough so that he does not have to throw doggie bones to the progressives. Michael Albert of Z magazine gave us three alternatives to understanding the directions Obama might take after winning the election. Obama's actual trajectory was more conservative than the worst of Albert's predictions. I won't join any protests against Warren, and I hope he gives a good invocation. But I am looking to 2009 with more skepticism every day.

Elections 2008 and the Ezra Pound Problem

Can a fascist ever be a good poet? I'm not making the value judgment here of demanding an artist be politically correct. If Christopher Hitchens wanted to write a poem in praise of Dick Cheney, well, more power to him, provided he sobers up first. Rather, I'm asking if someone who espouses a doctrine that overtly destroys dialog, demands compliance, and punishes those who stray, can ever be considered a worthy artist. I answer this in the negative. Ezra Pound was a shitty poet because he was fascist. Similarly, hagiographers to Stalin or Mugabe can never be assessed as genuine artists because they are making the case for closed minds, not open ones.

Now I don't take this too far, particularly because many people believe that only a partially troubled life can yield good art. On the Ted Hughes/Sylvia Plath dispute, for example, I will acknowledge some sympathy for Hughes, since he made some attempt to provide Plath with a good atmosphere, and Plath's troubles were so deep-seated, Hughes ultimately was not responsible for her suicide. But I would say that a serial abuser of women, like a serial killer, cannot be considered a worthwhile artist because their personal foibles trump their personal visions.

In the aftermath of the election, I've seen some essays and blogs that mimic the kind of language one hears from extreme evangelicals or racists. These people are sure that a Democrat victory gives rise to insta-socialism (just add water), and that anyone who voted for Obama is a dupe for some undefined conspiracy. I don't drink Obama Kool-Aid. Like Hillary Clinton, Obama was a flawed, centrist candidate with Democratic Leadership Council support. But he has an honest intent, and it sure as hell is clear that he's no more socialist than George Bush, post-bank-nationalization.

One expects to see myth-based pseudo-thought from the religious right, because the devout value faith-based truth more than rational discussion - in fact, they shy away from the scientific method as the devil's own. One does not expect to see it from writers and artists. There are plenty of neocons who love to debate issues with liberals and radicals, and more power to them. But there are writers and artists who assume that Obama's election means the world has come to an end, and they are not willing to discuss these issues. Such people are hagiographers for faith-based truth, and have no right to be considered artists in a post-Enlightenment world. An artist does not function as a toady for closed faiths, closed minds, closed political systems, or closed cultures. This is why Ezra Pound sucked by nature.

OK, It's Over, and Congrats

I really never had a doubt that this would happen. Obama's acceptance and McCain's concession speeches were both classy. The only thing not classy is this die-hard core of neocons and oddballs with strange beliefs about Obama bringing about a "socialist USA" (hell, he's a centrist). Look, we had to put up with eight years of the biggest global terrorist imaginable in the Oval Office, so just shut the fuck up, OK?

John and Barack Sitting in a Tree...

The Progressive magazine always goes out of its way to be provocative in both artwork and essay content, regularly spurring squeamish readers to go through the "Cancel My Subscription!" ritual. They've topped themselves with the October issue's cover art by Sako Shahinian. Not sure what is being said here, but I'll cherish this issue as a collector's item.

Discernment and the Bullshit Detector

Two interesting stories today about freedom of speech and the use of propaganda. First, several Denver groups called for banning the free in-the-newspaper distribution of the DVD Obsession, a puff piece about radical Islam. Second, an 11-year-old is suspended from a Denver-area elementary school for wearing a home-made T-shirt saying "Obama is a terrorist's best friend."

OK, I'm on the board of the local and state ACLU, so my opinion is worth more than yours, mofo! Obsession is highly offensive but totally legal. It's an advertising insert. The energy on this one should not be wasted on getting its distribution banned, but in finding out whose money is behind the mysterious and despicable Clarion Fund who bankrolled this. And don't tell me this isn't partisan propaganda - Clarion drove around a semi truck at the Democratic National Convention, advertising Obsession with a huge portrait of Osama bin Laden, featured no doubt to draw some subconscious connection between Osama and Obama.

The Aurora school district was in their rights in suspending Daxx Dalton. The courts have continuously held that students do not have unlimited rights of free speech if the message is obscene or disruptive - in fact, one district's efforts to ban Oakland Raiders jackets as gang-related have been continuously upheld in court! An elementary-school student should have every right to wear a campaign button for Obama or McCain, or wear something that says "Nobama" or "Obama means higher taxes." If the student is of high school age, there might be a good civil suit as to whether that student could wear a shirt charging a candidate with being aligned with terrorists. With a younger student, it's just provocative and almost certainly a setup planned by the parent, Dann Dalton.

The point about such propaganda is that most Americans are too superficial to analyze propaganda and determine when they are the victims of vicious messages. My mother-in-law tells me she will vote on initiatives based on what the TV advertisements tell her. I say they are all paid garbage, and that she'd be better off studying voter guides from LWV, etc. She won't have any of that. If it's on TV, it must be true. We can't ban everything that tells a lie, we simply have to keep shouting louder.

OK, folks, I'm the civil liberties oracle around here, and if you begin to doubt what I am saying, you are probably hallucinating. You are certainly just plain wrong. Shut up and go back to work.

FARC Follies and Ergenekon Eruptions

Forget Seymour Hersh's obsessions with a U.S. invasion of Iran, the real action is going in the peripheries, places like Colombia and Turkey. In Colombia, we can all give loud "huzzahs" that the FARC hostages are free, while realizing the political benefits John McCain will just happen to realize by just happening to be there when a Colombian military commando operation freed 15 hostages held for up to six years by the FARC. Let me say up front that I may not like Alvaro Uribe and I smell the hand of Bush everywhere, but I consider the FARC an illegitimate gang of thugs with no claim to a coherent political agenda. Hell, even Hugo Chavez says he doesn't like them any more. But before we say, "Job well done!" to the Colombian military, we have to ask how this all just happened to coincide with the McCain visit. Uh huh. Right. (Meanwhile, Obama visits Colorado Springs and waxes poetic about faith-based initiatives, even as his supporters chide him for caving in on the NSA-telephone-company-immunity issue. Politics as usual.)

The current Turkish comedy of terrors is harder to decipher. Over the past few days, 21 nationalist militants have been arrested for being members of Ergenekon, yet another secret Turkish fascist society dedicated to preserving secularism and eradicating Muslims. Now, in past coups -- 1960, 1980, 1997 quasi-coup, take your pick -- the CIA has clearly been involved in funding groups like Gray Wolves. Hell, in 1980, even mild-mannered Jimmy Carter was directly involved in supporting the Turkish military in crushing citizen democracy movements.

The AK Party of Recep Erdogan represents a different beast. Many players in the Bush administration, particularly in State and Treasury, see the Muslim party ruling Turkey as one that aids the economy and respects democracy. In fact, the European Union has warned Turkish judicial sources that any attempt to remove AKP will virtually end Turkey's chances of joining the EU. And yet, there seem to be members of the U.S. defense and intelligence community who have secret admiration for the attempts by the Turkish chief prosecutor to bring the AKP before the constitutional court as an illegitimate government. Certainly, US Vice President Dick Cheney does not tolerate the concept of Muslims running democratic governments, and probably admires the Ergenekon efforts to prod the constitutional court with a little organized violence. Where does the CIA stand? The Pentagon? The EU? US Congress? These seem far more interesting questions than ponderings on Iran.

[JULY 6 UPDATE: Two more key generals were arrested over the weekend for Ergenekon involvement. The leader of the Republican People's Party says that those in favor of Kemalist secularism are under attack. Try "those that are opposed to democracy by supporting secularism through fascist systems."]

NY Times and Obama: Honeymoon is Over

Well, here's an odd twist I hadn't expected. The NY Times dissed the Obama campaign on the front page of the print edition for two days in a row. On Monday, June 23, it was about corn-based ethanol and Obama's deference to ethanol promoters. The next day, there was a front-pager about Obama's handlers trying to discourage campaign help from American Muslims, saying "we have a very tightly wrapped message." Yeah, I just bet they do.

This is not a sudden bashing session paid for by Hillary or motivated out of concern that coverage in the past had been weighted to open Obama worship. It's simply a recognition by the Times that Obama is a centrist, manufactured product who has some serious shortcomings. He's still a strong candidate. But Obamaniacs have got to stop putting the guy on a pedestal.

Beyond Sex or Race

I'm really trying to minimize comments in this blog on the presidential campaign, from an underlying belief that the United States holds "demonstration elections" in which no candidate is allowed to compete who would really have the power of changing anything. In particular, I don't pay a lot of attention to the Clinton vs. Obama slugfest because I see fundamental weaknesses in both candidates.

Nevertheless, Marcia Pappas of New York National Organization of Women stirred me from my stupor Jan. 29 with her profoundly stupid comments railing against Ted and Caroline Kennedy for backing Obama. Both Hillary and Barack insist they have no interest in playing the sex or race card - they just let others, like Bill Clinton, do it for them. In the case of NOW, Pappas acts as though working for another candidate than Hillary is a fundamental betrayal of women.

I have news for Pappas and NY NOW - Hillary Clinton is a very flawed candidate for reasons that have nothing to do with her sex. Like her husband, Hillary is a triangulator. Rather than reach her positions from a passionate commitment to core values, she tries to decide where a majority is on the basis of polling, and positions herself accordingly. In particular, her key consultant Mark Penn, author of the book Microtrends, epitomizes for me everything that is wrong with American politics. If Clinton wants to be treated seriously, she has to get rid of Penn and the very concept of triangulation, develop a platform based on consistent and passionately-held positions on issues, and operate accordingly. Pappas and NOW need to realize that until Clinton is willing to do that, she will not be treated seriously by many who would love to see a woman president.

Obama is far from an ideal candidate. Caroline Kennedy's comments in The New York Times comparing Obama to her father would be laughable, if I didn't think that JFK himself was so highly overrated. Later this year, we can argue over whether Clinton or Obama shows the most superficiality. But for now, we can insist that endorsement of Obama scarcely constitutes a vote against women.