Thy Will Be Done - The Next Cultural Battlefield

The furor over various evangelical Republican candidates making short-sighted comments about rape, violence, pregnancies, and women's bodies, hides a backstory conflict that is simmering during the current campaign season, but could well explode regardless of who wins in November.  The statements of Neanderthals like Akin and Mourdock regarding the events that constitute the "will of God" indicate the difficult conundrum faced by some of the devout: If all secular events are due to divine intervention, then that would make God responsible for things like the Aurora shootings, the summer wildfires, and the brutal murders of Jessica Ridgeway and Autumn Pasquale.  And that would mean God is a sadist.  The easiest alternative to this kind of demented thinking is to be an atheist.  But even those of us who stake some claim in divine forces can make things a lot easier by adopting the familiar "God as divine watchmaker" theory.  The universe is created in one or many Big Bangs, then the secular world is left to its own devices.  In short, shit happens.

     Now, I may be in a minority by positing the "Militant Enlightenmentist" theory, which insists that science and rational logic always trumps faith-based and authority-based ways of knowing for events taking place within this physical plane.  But I think that a majority of Americans are moving farther and farther away from the notion that secular events reflect the divine will.  No, God did not punish New Orleans during Katrina.  No, the people who attended the Batman movie in Aurora did not have it coming to them.  Most events on the planet are either random or the result of the errors of mortals.  To believe otherwise causes more theological problems than it alleviates.

     As the Akins and Mourdocks of the world get taken to task for their foolish anti-women screeds, people will show less and less tolerance for claims that something tragic reflects God's will.  And the devout will find themselves painted into corners, ready to lash out at science itself as the work of Satan.  What happens then?  Do we publicly mock those who believe in divine will?  Do we invade the altar during a Catholic service, saying, "Transubstantiation?  I'll prove to you that the wine and wafer remain the wine and wafer!"  There are many atheists of the Dawkins persuasion that might do just that, but I prefer to think of such direct challenges as akin to the provocateur who would kick the crutches away from wounded people merely to watch them fall.

     I'm still trying to figure out a kind and respectful way to deal with this emerging problem, but I'm willing to bet that this will be a primary theological debate space in 2013.  In a world that operates according to physical laws, the savvy are ready to say that divine will is a figment of a primitive imagination.  As a desperate reaction, this will lead to the creation of anti-science coalitions, and may lead the Republican Party to adopt a platform that is more explicitly anti-science.  The follow-on question to be asked, of course, is what kind of legitimacy we accord to the power of prayer.  At some point, I'll be ready to duck, either from invective hurled from devout mortals, or from lightning bolts hurled by divinities who don't like to be relegated to a clock-making operation.

Miss Manners' Netiquette for Social Networks - Empath or Asshole?

My friend Michele Clarke posted a New York Times piece on Oct. 15 lamenting the death of all privacy in Twitter circles - using the example of a friend who invited himself to an intimate soiree where he clearly was not on the guest list.  Author Nick Bilton made the additional critical point that one need not be on Facebook or Twitter to become the victim of FourSquare, Path, and other applications that operate far more efficiently than the National Security Agency ever could hope to do.  As long as your friends include you in their circles, everything about your life is already known.  It's been clear for years, if not decades, that fighting for any type of privacy is a hopeless rear-guard action.  We might as well report all our activities to marketing data-miners and national intelligence agencies, be our own spies, eliminate the middle-disintermediators, etc.  We could look at Bilton's example of the pushy so-called friend in the opening paragraph, and wonder how people could ever get that ugly, but you know what?  Long before the Internet existed, there were assholes that were just as pushy.  You just didn't have them in your face every day courtesy of the always-on network of 'friends.'

But there is a flip-side issue that Bilton didn't get into.  Even if we are the victims of the intrusive personality online, how often do we play perpetrator through passive-aggressive activity of various sorts?  I'm talking about far more subtler things than the outright unfriending or blocking of people.  I'm talking about the failure of most folks to examine their own behavior for a lack of empathy for how their posts are interpreted by others.  The empathic gene is either activated around age 21, or it lies dormant as you become a bigger and bigger asshole.  These days, most social networks risk being swamped by assholes, as many seem unfamilar with the concept of how to be empathetic.

Yes, your Facebook or Google+ wall or Twitter dashboard is your own, and you should be able to determine what you say, without censoring yourself for certain communities.  If corporations spy on you to learn of your substance abuse or questionable friends, there's always Google+.  But it behooves us to go through some basics on how to be a good netizen, and keep in mind what it takes for others to treat you as a reliable (and kind) source.

It takes plenty of fortitude and tolerance to have a bevy of friends of varying political and cultural beliefs, particularly in a bitter election season like this one - but it's better than consistently preaching to the choir.  Maintaining a network of friends just like yourself is like living in a "safe" city (say, Santa Cruz or Boulder for a liberal) - it's a good way of avoiding stimulation and surrounding yourself with yes-people.  But expanding your posse to those unlike yourself means tolerating posts and counter-posts from people who have nothing in common.  If you comment on a post you disagree with, make that comment wry and humorous, and suggest that the person posting may not have full information.  Calling names is a way to invoke empty-headed cheerleading.  And if you see other comments you don't like, be careful about denouncing the friends of others.  If you denounce those that comment directly to your post, you will lose your own friends.  If you denounce other commenters on a friend's page, you are likely to be unfriended every time you attempt this.

Maintaining tagging circles or creating special interest groups is a great way to focus discussion on social networks.  Sometimes a person can be left off a circle by accident.  Sometimes a person asking to join a private group will be ignored without deliberate malicious intent.  But often, the slightest snub with a conscious intent behind it will cause real hurt in the victim.  Know your thick-skinned friends and your emotionally-needy friends.  When in doubt, be inclusive.

Unless you have a page that is a "fan" style page for an artist, band, etc., don't let all the traffic generated by yourself be about you.  Narcissism is tedious.  Only public relations managers use pages for self-promotion.  Talk about yourself, but talk about news or unique cultural things, and be sure to comment on others.  The less things are all about you, the more empathy you show.  Remember, if the movie of your life is going to be worth watching, you should have a cameo role or a walk-on part.  The stars of the movie of your life should be those that influence you.

Belittling should be left for the truly atrocious.  It should never be used for the downtrodden or underdog.  Sometimes, people will excuse the high-school style clique denigration (that sometimes leads to teen suicide) by saying, "Well, they were only 12 or 14 or 16 or 20 (or 30 or 40 or 50)."  If you're on a social network, you've just moved beyond cliques.  Act like a fucking grown-up, even if you're 13.  Or especially if you're 40.

One aspect of acting detached and somewhat grown up involves addressing every topic with a degree of cool, rational analysis of the Mr. Spock variety.  If you are emotionally clinging to tribe or team, using all-caps and lots of exclamation points, and injecting passion into every point you try to bring across, you inevitably act like a bigger asshole in the process.  Friends of mine are sick of my mantra, but I'll say it again: If an action comes from your body, or words from your mouth (keyboard), that originate in heart or hormones, filter them through your cortex for a minimum of 10 seconds.  Even if you hit your thumb with a hammer.  Does this mean we have no passion in our discourse?  Hardly.  Earlier today, I made a very cruel tweet that deliberately belittled someone and denied his humanity.  But I did it after coolly assessing the situation for many minutes, and deciding that my deliberate intent was to deny this person's humanity.  Sometimes we do make enemies.  But we should do so with detached and delayed passion.

Following these netiquette rules will not protect you from privacy-intruders, trolls, or insufferable assholes.  But it just might make you an easier person to deal with.  You don't have to smile all the time to be kind.  But if you tell someone they are probably mentally disturbed and need to seek professional help in just the right professional tone of voice, they just might listen to you instead of unfriend you.  And if they're assholes rather than empaths, well who needs assholes for friends?
 

Carolyn Srygley-Moore: Trauma and the Unified Vision

     

Fans of Carolyn Srygley-Moore already questioning her mere mortality no doubt had more reasons to believe in her superhero status in September, as she began posting impressive pencil works even as she expanded her posting of shorter fragmentary poetic works.  If we assemble the text and visual jigsaw puzzle pieces scattered over Facebook pages, a fairly coherent picture emerges.  Nevertheless, I chased Carolyn down to find out if she sees the same complex Mandelbrot patterns in her memories that seem to be left in her wake, bread crumbs for the lost children.

     Many people who suffer significant trauma in childhood years, or in post-college crashes, preserve blank pages in the internal mental narrative, if only as a form of self-preservation.  Srygley-Moore will have none of that.  Extended hospital trips might leave hazy vapor trails at times, but the life story linearity is there, just under the surface.  Experiencing the violence of a father who lived through World War 2 atrocities did not cancel out the memories of older brothers and treehouses during childhood, nor the images of a kind mother who remained an ally to the present day.  CSM said she even has clear memories of first finding her visual-arts voice at age 7, though after five years of drawing and painting in her younger childhood, she gave it up at adolescence.  She returned through later teen years, but abandoned art at 18 when she discovered her intense love for language, and did not return to the voice of the charcoal  and colored pencil drawing until the 21^st century.

     “I started visual art again because I looked through a magazine my poetry was published in, and realized the visual art published there was something I was capable of doing,” she said.  “I went from there, and verbally contracted with A Razor, the editor/publisher of my upcoming book on the Miracle series of poems, to do the cover of the book.  It was baby steps from there.  I bought a sketchbook, charcoal, and colored pencil, and went at it.  It feeds into my writing, very much so.  It is a more relaxed form of art, for me, and I just have an absolute blast going after the mix of dream and realism that comes to me.”

     Srygley-Moore’s poems carry the most bite when she addresses the betrayal of family and others, because she considers the transgression of trust a critical issue.  She often asks herself, would the perpetrator of violence, the betrayer of trust, act the same if forced to confront the long-term effects on victims and others of the violent act?  At the same time, there are no blank pages allowed in the processing of memory.  Does that bring an element of catharsis to her poetry?  She said that her work is achieved under a conscious discipline that leaves pure catharsis “a little strained.”      

     Recent fragment-poems have arisen in order to accommodate the need to write while at work, since a longer form would be too difficult to bring to fruition, while her own handwriting, Srygley-Moore said, is illegible.  Because the fragments are delivered directly online, they have attracted the attention of outsiders, including online publishers Bone Orchard, and Srygley-Moore’s friend Lee Tromboudin, who would like to set some of the fragments to music.

     Seeing the audience grow for art and fragmentary poems, as well as her more traditional work, has left Srygley-Moore feeling more confident that she is expanding the definition of translator.  More and more fans seem to expect a daily poem or two with their morning coffee, which helps drive a sense of obligation to a fervent, if modest, fan base.

     Broadening her genres and base of expression has made Srygley-Moore a happier person, she freely admitted.  The addition of visual art in recent months  "opens apertures, wormholes, distances that otherwise are inaccessible," she said.  "I believe that to show how far I have come, in various avenues as a woman with bipolar disorder, who has managed to overcome PTSD, is something good for those still stuck in the trenches.” 

Lee Upton's 'Swallowing the Sea'

I'm attaching the review of Lee Upton's new book of essays on writing, which I just posted to Goodreads.  Definitely worth your while.




Fans of Lee Upton's poetry already know she is an ascended master, both feet firmly anchored to the planet even as she shares visions to make any bodhisattva jealous. So it's no surprise to see her assembled essays on the ambitions of the writer be presented as a distilled series of stories and aphorisms, almost overwhelming in scope. The book has a very particular focus for a developing writer facing unique challenges, and thus warrants a high four rather than a perfect five stars, if only for the eclectic target audience.

This is not a traditional instruction manual of writing as a craft - no guide to clarity in presentation, effective character development, parsing and pruning of lines. Instead, 'Swallowing the Sea' is meant to give writers who have a decent grasp of their own goals and methods a better understanding of how to interpret their ambitions, how to deal with dry spells and ennui, and how to disclose secrets deliberately and effectively.

Don't be fooled by the apparent brevity of the book. This is the type of distilled narrative where every word counts (scarcely surprising to find a virtual prose-poem comprising an essay about genre-hopping). Upton makes heavy use of other writers' observations, albeit in very unexpected and startling ways, almost approaching the style of a music mash-up at times. Those who might be frightened by dense and obscure references, however, should be delighted by Upton's warmth, humor, and directness. Just about the time we've had it with kibitzing by Salman Rushdie or Muriel Spark, we get a simple aw-shucks story of growing up on a Michigan farm. This book always puts its passionate humanity first, even if it's adorned with plenty of accessories at times.

The value of the essays will vary with what the reader brings to the book as opening assumptions, though any reader might agree that the final 40 pages of the book contain examples of some of the finest essay writing of the last century. The categories of ambition, failure, boredom, purity, bigamy, and secrecy will play in different accentuated movements for each reader. Leading with ambition and failure was wise, as the experiences are at least partially valid for any experienced or would-be writer. The examples of obsessive ambition in writers like Balzac are provided to bring us back to the theme of obsession at the book's end. Most worthy in these initial pages, though, is the description of examining a Titian painting from every possible angle, gaining new insights by seeing the obvious while it's askew. The topsy-turvy approach is applied liberally in the section on failure, examining everything from rejection to incapacitation.

The section on boredom will be invaluable for those whose wheels often spin in deep mud, though I had specific reasons for not finding resonance. Upton is not talking about writer's block here, as much as pointing to the places and times (committee meetings) where experience is a looped rerun, an infinite plain. In training for discovering the joy of small, almost inconsequential experience, I stopped suffering boredom a few years ago. In the process, I willed myself to almost an artificial autistic state - accept all perceptual inputs with equal status, then apply bandpass filters to keep from going crazy. Some of Upton's observations in the boredom section can be applied to the filtering problem, but it required some digging.

Upton makes clear in the purity section that the notion of cleansing and purging rituals must be applied with extreme care, and is not for everyone. Early on, she provides us with Pablo Neruda's virtual rejection of purity in poetry (an opinion I largely share). But the book provides a teasing suggestion that a ritual of stripping away is worthwhile, not just for reaching a minimalist core, but to let us know when we are filled with too much baggage.

The last two sections climax the book's hidden power with the unexpected directness of a suddenly-lopsided prize fight in its final rounds. Upton uses the term "bigamy" to refer to the melding of genres and the willingness to experiment outside familiar domains. Perhaps genre holds some mysterious power in academia - I don't see it as mattering very much in a world where improvisational musicians move into spoken-word performance, and Latin American poets give us hundreds of pages of police reports as the backbone for a new type of fiction. But even if the notion of bigamy means little in loosely-defined worlds, the observations in this section are astonishing.

Announcing up front that you are concluding with a section on secrecy may spook the reader into expecting a declaration that all writers should be enigmas to the outside world. That is hardly what Upton is about. She is talking about a strategy of disclosure in every work of prose or poetry, a process that begins with the crafting of a world too puzzling and personal to be relevant to a reader, and the means of carefully revealing the secret core in a manner that can makes the most monotonous of poems as much a cliffhanger as a detective novel. There are some startling, occasionally terrifying, passages in these final pages - poetry from Lawrence Joseph and Paul Celan, and an excerpt from a Don DeLillo novel, used in a discussion of the possible meanings of the word "embedded," that will chill many readers.

Upton's final page comes upon us abruptly, but with such love and hope that any reader can feel the book was a personal pep talk. Yet there are dimensions Upton chose not to explore. While a critic should never suggest what type of book should have been written if the author determines it to be outside a domain, Upton herself talks about the "schizophrenia of publishers," but never addresses the virtual disappearance of the traditional publishing industry. While most advisories within the book can apply to an online world, traditional notions of editing and vetting are vanishing at light speed, and it would have been nice to see an exploration of what a book-and-audience world devoid of moorings might look like. Oh well, that's another book. Upton has given us a collection of a half-dozen essays as radically unique as Giorgio Agamben's 'The End of the Poem." It seems difficult to imagine another set of honed and distilled observations that could even cover similar grounds, let alone do so as exquisitely as 'Swallowing the Sea' managed to do.

The Fire Next Time - Three Waldo Canyon Poems

It's the Fourth of July.  The fires have been 80 percent contained.  There was a soaking, almost punishing rain last night that overwhelmed the pitiful dry showers of the week previous, with a promise of more rains in the days ahead.  The beast is behind us.

I realized that there is a physical, if not psychological, price to be paid for days of adrenaline fight-or-flight reactions, of using sheer terror as your accompanying soundtrack.  I've been physically sick for 48 hours with something that is not viral or depression-based, but a malady that might be called post-fire ennui.

The local landscape is much more physically sick, of course, though it's surprising how much green is still in view.  June 26 was not just a breakout day, it was an epic firestorm in an urban area, unprecedented in the state of Colorado, at any rate.  The deep scars at the saddle of Queens Canyon and the ridge at Blodgett's Peak won't be showing healthy signs of new growth until the years when my life on this planet will end, assuming no early exit.  Then again, I won't be seeing too many new-shoot results near Deckers from regrowth after the 2002 Mt. Herman fire.  So it goes.

It's forgivable, I suppose, that the three poems below all demonstrate apocalypse in their own way, but I'm so through with End Times right about now.  The indirect use in the third poem of the collapse-and-hope quote of US Forest Service official Jerri Marr (pictured above) is intended, not only to indicate that hope never dies in the scariest of armageddons, but something more lasting as well.  There is beauty in living through collapse, honor in documenting the decades after Rome was sacked, after the Black Death decimated Europe, after the damage stemming from the multitude of climate-change localized atrocities have moved through your town.  We might as well get used to such a concept, because we get no vote about living in an era when the F. Scott Fitzgerald parties are long gone.  If Amy Hubbard's column in the Los Angeles Times is correct, all forest fires might be super-fires from now on.  Or as Denver economist Sanjay Ramchander said last fall, "Maybe volatility is the new normal." No sense being a Debbie Downer, this is the hand that is dealt.  Rejoice this Fourth of July.  But put away those sparklers, damn it!


Lot's Wife
(for the northeast perimeter of Waldo Canyon)

Buy into the latest Essene fables
where fire is to guide
and salt is to condemn,
while nonetheless realizing
destiny turns all mumbly-tumbly
in such an intolerant heat.
Enough to submerge Duluth,
enough to microburst Tampa’s Sunshine Skyway,
while surrounding Santa’s Workshop
with the abject terror of explosive pine cones.

The pillar shimmers orange 24/7
a shade midway between caution and halt
but beckoning even so,
whispering in your ear
that the inconvenient truth
is the orgasm of perpetual wildfire
of beachfront property in Wainwright Alaska
of all that is
verboten
west of 30th Street
and the Flying W Ranch.

The garden variety CPA will not buy into
the insistent clarion from heaven,
but will tabulate,
3,446 acres, 5 percent contained.
as Julianza throws in higher-order divisors from Utah,
79 into 1,063
which of course gives a prime factor
of the number of people at Utah Lake Shooting Range
the day the Dump Fire is contained,
the day Bluffdale beckons,
the day Waldo Canyon finds its itinerant pillar,
drowning out D.A. Pennebacker shouting
Don’t.
Look.
Back.
Renounce all sin and vice.


Loring Wirbel
June 25, 2012 (5 percent contained)
Copyright 2012 Loring Wirbel

Blodgett or Bowie: A Triage Conundrum
There are few modern guides to etiquette that include chapters on effective disclosure to evacuated guests that their home may be cinders.  Geomap interactive web sites and dynamic city-county best-practice apps don’t provide direct addresses of devastation, so one is left with police scanners, a lonely and frightened cry of “Fall back to the Woodmen perimeter, we can’t defend Blodgett!”, and the certainty that the Blodgett Loop is a mobius of fire-starter, the little running fire demon collapsing into itself until Giganta the Fire Monster crests Blodgett Peak as all is certainly lost.  Time for the single-malt scotch and the gentle hand on a wrist, the throat catching in smoke inhalation or compassion at the phrase “About that garage…”

Except that our Incident Coordinator tells us there is a Stanley Trail involved in the mystery, a radio repeater and a Tesla Hydro Facility no one knew was there, invoking images of Bowie as Tesla in The Prestige, Sammie Joe Kinnett in the eponymous Tesla, both hoping to foil the evil Edison before he murders more animal innocents through high-voltage torture.  The failure to suppress may well be one of triage between the hydroelectric plant and the radio repeater, realized solely on the basis of whether direct or alternating current would be employed, just as Tesla would have wanted it.  A home saved?  Perhaps, or maybe just an independent currency in a year all euros fell victim to fire damage.

While just down the road, Mt. St. Francis nuns of sound mind and body are missing in action, the feebler residents of the nursing home sent to the double-digit floors of local hospitals, and the chickens sent to alleys behind the Rio Grande police substation.  Our wayward fowl become new evacuated neighbors of a peace-in-space activist on the very day that Air Force Space Command sends its Vandenberg hot-shot crew for Giganta suppression.  It is in just such alleys where a rooster crows every morning through the duration of the fire, reminding everyone that in the choice between AC and DC, there are always sacrifices to be made.


Loring Wirbel
June 27, 2012 (Day 5 of Waldo Canyon)
Copyright 2012 Loring Wirbel

Weimar

I’ll be the first to admit
there’s no evident screaming Aryan
immolating illegals in the borderlands,
only the desecration of shrines in a Timbuktu far from public view.


I’ll be the first to admit
there are few hints of million-percent hyperinflation,
not even the banging pots of Buenos Aires,
only the exhaustion of purchasing power
that leaves the wrinkle in Angela’s face,
the tea-leaf reading that says
nothing ever works nothing ever will.


Still, the clearing sky leaves a Brechtian vapor trail.
Babette held her cabaret Saturday as the flames were tamped,
long black sequined dress, pearl-tipped cigarette holder,
as we tiptoed our way through Bauhaus ashes
expecting Marlene to emerge from Majestic Drive
covertly displaying black-market silk stockings,
the kind men like.


Hold fast the Marr Hypothesis at all times in this incessant heat:
Even in collapse there is hope.


I slowly circumnavigated the Blodgett Loop this afternoon,
Mistaking the open-space char scar for Dietrich runny mascara.
The first Weimar
ended in the Swiffer expunging all that was not Nordic blonde.
The second Weimar
was the grain of sand,
dropped into a cascade that collapsed its anthill long ago.
Few tasks remain aside from documenting the flash shadows
of the dozens of subtler Hiroshimas to come.





Loring Wirbel
July 2, 2012
Copyright 2012 Loring Wirbel

 

The Importance of Being Fendersoned

How many strange-music lovers out there will step up to admit, "Were it not for Deral Fenderson, I would never have made it through...." It's like admitting to the necessity of Alfred Jarry, John Cage, Pere Ubu, some people just want to do those things silently.  OK, I'll step up - those last days of the previous millenium, when a faux war for coolness was undertaken by Mr. Fenderson and the prolific Graham Smith, the era when Smith was touting Ponyoak and Fenderson shot back with Donkeylarch, when Mr. Fenderson appeared at certain West Virginia Bunky festivals and all-night shows in warehouses in Tennessee mill towns, when all relevant personnel were "Wined Dined Entranced Sliced Diced Romanced," and if there had not been a Mucilage singing "Raised By Robots," it would have been necessary for JJ to invent one.  Or maybe he did.  In any event, I'll do the testimonial and say that Deral Fenderson allowed me to enter the 21st century, or at least vouched for my papers.

The Dada critics and dubstep snobs who eat all the canapes at art openings and wiggle their pinkies at the Shock of the New will no doubt say that there is no longer call for a Fenderson in 2012.  These are the people who have worn out their Zorn Tzadik welcomes, the kind who have not heard the extended 'Junkie Mom' mix on Soundcloud.  Sisters and brothers, I am here to tell you that I visited the Fenderson homestead on the Fourth of July two not-so-long years ago, and was washed in the blood of the lamb, courtesy of improv percussion music from Amy Splitt and friends, and a patriotic reading by the campfire by some crazy-ass guy who Deral counts as A Friend.

If it isn't clear by now, I provide these testimonials as part of an infomercial to prod you to go over to Indiegogo and throw some money in the tip jar for the Fenderson Prescription Series.  You are lucky enough to live in a universe in which Deral Fenderson exists.  Don't blow this chance.

Automated Warfare and the Offense vs. Defense Conundrum

On June 1, intelligence expert and ace reporter David Sanger offered up a front-page story in The New York Times revealing that the ultimate source of the Stuxnet (and presumably, Flame) worms and viruses was not Mossad Unit 8200 or the Likud Party, but President Obama, working through the National Security Agency and Cyber Command.  It came two days after another NYT front-page story (this one not by Sanger) indicating that the president himself approved the targets for drone strikes in Pakistan.

Given the way the Justice Department has gone after journalists under Espionage Act prosecutions, one might think Sanger at least, and possibly Jo Becker and Scott Shane, have reason to be concerned.  But wait - the White House deliberations described by Sanger sound very much like inside baseball.  Could it be that Obama campaign managers leaked both stories in order to give the president an aura of military resolve?  If so, it could end up being effective for his campaign.  Cyber war is seen by many as victimless, and drone war is interpreted by many as a way to get the bad guys while hiding the blood.  Obama not only can get troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, he can tout himself as the master of the new automated robot wars.  A lot of liberals and conservatives alike see that as an unabashed good thing.

You know I couldn't let that one go without comment, but the rant in this case is not merely a means of exercising sour grapes.  In the case of cyber war, the methods of cyber defense practiced by NSA and Air Force Space Command/Cyber Command over several decades can have few critics.  But the lesson with past computer war-games is that cyber-defense almost always is combined with cyber-assault.  In this respect, it is much like the arcane arguments over missile defense and missile offense.  Most U.S. citizens would say, "Let's use our advantages, and see cyber assault as preferable to real-world military assault."  If that is the rationale, let us remember that no assault comes without expanding the footprint of results under the Law of Unintended Consequences.  This happened with Stuxnet when the computer worm moved far outside the Siemens embedded controllers for which it was designed.  Similar worms and viruses that impact critical safety systems and public utility systems are bound to have negative consequences as well.  Protecting U.S. critical systems against hackers from China is a safe and prudent operation.  Engaging in cyber assault has ethical implications that cannot be swept under the rug by saying that Stuxnet is better than bombs from Tel Aviv.

Such ethical consequences are even greater when one uses the precise targeting power of armed drones to craft the drone as a tool of targeted assassination.  Sure, a drone is safer than a SEAL Team 6 that goes in-country to take down al-Qaeda operatives, and much safer than a large scale CIA or Special Ops assault.  But the CIA and military intelligence agreed in 1976 not to engage in targeted assassination.  This pledge was ripped apart by Dick Cheney when he hired Blackwater to create the kind of hit squads later used by Obama to get Bin Laden.  The abrogation of the deal was regularized by President Obama in February 2009, when he developed regular lists of Pakistani and Afghan bad guys to take out of commission.  Maybe this is a good thing, a cheap, sanitized, and relatively secret way to take down al-Qaeda one terrorist at a time.  But you and I never voted on removing the assassination ban.  This was simply considered fair game in the highly-touted War on Terror.

What President Obama has become expert in, might be called the new face of war.  It is highly automated, quite secret, and very asymmetric.  Who knows, maybe an attack by a flock of drones might be used against Baath officials in Syria, as might a computer assault on public utility systems.  But asymmetric advantages are unstable by nature.  Cyber war and drone war virtually guarantees blowback, which might include direct robotic assault on the U.S. homeland.  Before blowback happens, it is useful to remind U.S. citizens that assault remains assault, whether it is conducted by bomber, JSOC squads, drones, or a computer virus.