we fear what we don't understand

No Stranger To Strange Lands - Chapter Outline

2011-04-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

Find more information about this book here.

Prologue:

Added in September 2010, the prologue begins with a look at modern physics, emphasizing the points that processes are more important than results, that contradiction is something we always have to work through, and that the way to navigate uncertainty is to fearlessly engage in the process.

Dedication and Apology

Introduction:

I explain my motivation for writing this book.

PART I: Movements About The Northern Hemisphere

1. Strange Coincidences:

My journey begins when I read a story by Kurt Vonnegut titled, Protocols of the Leaders of Tralfamadore, then happen upon the document that this is a satire of, the Protocols of the Leaders of Zion, and I document other strange coincidences.

2. Synchronicity:

In an attempt to explain these coincidences without resorting to spiritual paths, astrological scripts, or pseudo-science, I look at Carl Jung's theory of Synchronicity.

3. Switzerland:

My husband, Jamie, and I travel to Zürich, where I am inspired by Switzerland's long history of entrusting the people to decide their own fate; and I note the role of the Swiss in WWII.

- The Shock Doctrine: Then, I include a segment about an interview I see with Naomi Klein, about her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, where I note the connection between her thesis and my observations about democratic principles.

In Switzerland again, I become inspired on many levels. Back in Florida, I learn that Jung had lived in Zürich.

- Well, Excuse Me, Milton Friedman: In this essay, I explain how I learned about Milton Friedman purely by accident and describe his “free market ideology” as Fascism.

4. On The Road:

Jamie and I hit the road, first running down to Fr. Lauderdale, then north to Asheville, N.C., where I confront the Biltmore mansion and the terms “robber barons” vs. “captains of industry,” in the context of how the wrongs of history must be remembered in order to better understand the present. Then we head westward.

- Nouveau-Nomadism: This description of an alternative lifestyle is included in this chapter.

5. Oklahoma:

We pass by the birthplace of Woody Guthrie.

- On Sadness: In this essay, I talk about the Trail of Tears, the loss of the Bison, and the Dust Bowl.

Then I write about folk festivals, the fighting spirit with which individuals must stand up for democratic principles, how anger comes from sadness, how traditions have both beautiful and ugly parts.

- Tragedy and Irony: I point out layers of bigotry and hypocrisy that blanket this nation's history, arriving at rant about Ayn Rand's twisted morality.

6. Texas:

I talk about humans being irrational.

- Who Is Howard Zinn?: Reflections on having seen the documentary, Howard Zinn: You Can‟t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, which leads to my thoughts on Marketing and The Pursuit Of Happiness.

Next, I run down a list of what a guy Tom Delay is and describe some of the scenery of Texas.

7. New Mexico:

I detail how landscapes, climates, and human histories converge to generate the unique energies of places. We drive back roads over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, into the Santa Fe region, then head past Los Alamos National Laboratory.

- Power Requires Wisdom: This is an essay about the wisdom of knowing the limits of our control.

We go on to visit Bandelier National Monument, where I ponder the significance of the atomic bomb lab's location nearby, in light of the Ancestral Pueblo lore about the unintended consequences of power without wisdom, and I introduce my fabulous Mexican dog, Kutzie.

8. Colorado:

I talk about the nomadic tribes and their sad encounter with Capitalism; we travel through Durango, birthplace of our other fabulous dog, Ursa, over the passes to Ouray, the supposed inspiration for Ayn Rand's capitalist paradise, Galt's Gulch.

- Chief Ouray: Here, I marvel at how Ms. Rand heard the voices of Capitalism over the voices of Nature, and I discuss how monetary, social, religious systems have nothing to do with Nature.

We then pass through our favorite mountain cowboy town.

9. Utah:

We celebrate solitude in the back country, and I talk about how Property does not equal Happiness.

- Studs Speaks: This essay is based on an interview with Studs Turkel.

We go on to Moab and encounter the spirit of Edward Abbey, where I express the Passion associated with that place.

10. Heading Back East:

While heading toward Cortez, CO, I recall the incident of the fugitives who escaped from the massive federal dragnet after gunning down a cop.

- Militias To Mercenaries: I wonder about the militants who hate the government so much, also mentioning the book, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, by Naomi Wolf.

We go via the San Luis Valley and South Park to Denver to visit family, and memories of my suburban upbringing surge forth.

- Accountability: This essay explores George Lakoff’s Father Figure Framework as well as Speaking Truth to Power in connection to taking responsibility.

At the end of the chapter, we leave Kutzie with my sister and zip back to Florida.

11. String Theory:

I learn about String Theory, and wonder if thoughts might exist as closed loops of vibrating energy strings.

- Possibilities: Here, I talk about Herbie Hancock's documentary on the making of his album, Possibilities, and about his association of Jazz music with the Human Spirit.

12. Heading North To Go South:

I hear Daniel Goleman on NPR talking about mental wi-fi while driving to West Virginia. We leave Ursa with our friend, get to JFK airport, and head off to Tahiti.

PART II: Movements About French Polynesia

13. Tahiti:

We arrive to Tahiti, explore, it begins to rain, I read about Jack London, which leads me down the path of romance.

- Romancing Romanticism: Romanticism is in the air, but it corrupts our view of reality.

We emerge from our room, enjoy the spectacular scenery, and I become inspired to write the outline for the short story:

- The Man On The Tram: A Short Story.

14. Moorea:

I describe our adventures while staying at a camp ground on this fantastically green island, including visiting ancient ruins, discovering ginger liqueur, some of the people we meet, the full moon rising.

- Change?: The 2006 midterm elections occur in the States, and I discuss the consequences of those elections over one year later. I also discuss the Bertolucci movie, 1900, about Italian Fascism, pointing out disturbing similarities with the mortgage crisis as well as with New Orleans.

15. Huahine:

Here we stay at a hostel, make friends, visit a museum a few times, experience the sacred blue-eyed eels, and I end up diverging into memories of travels to Costa Rica

- Here And There: This essay lays out more of my thoughts about energies of places.

Switzerland enters the discussion, along with what one might be proud of their country about, we observe French military maneuvers, move down the beach to get naked, Synchronicity strikes again, and we depart the islands.

PART III: Movements About Australia

16. Learning Aussie Speak:

We arrive in Sydney, learn to speak Aussie, and explore. My essay,

- Cuckoo Clocks, Condottieri, And Character: This is an essay about Orson Welles' famous “cuckoo clock speech” and how he was mistaken about the Swiss having invented the cuckoo clock, the role of the House of the Borgia, the nature of power struggles in Europe, and the motivation for great art.

17. In Darwin’s Footsteps:

We travel into the mountains to Katoomba and experience the ancientness of the land.

18. Cultured In Sydney:

We go back to Sydney to take in several cultural events along with some craziness at the youth hostel.

19.The Train:

The Indian-Pacific Train takes us from Sydney to Perth on a four day odyssey, where we meet people from all over the world, see the moon hanging upside-down, and I become one very discombobulated traveler.

- Space-Time: This is the result of three days of “squishing the x-axis, stretching the y-axis, squelching the z-axis, erasing the line of Time altogether,” and trying to stand still on a moving train.

20. The Oz of Oz:

Arrived in Perth, we socialize with people from the train, explore the city, see the Indian Ocean for the first time, and then head down to a flat in Fremantle, where “Surfer Boy” from the train, who reminds me of the anti-hero, Dean Moriarty, and “Friend of Surfer Boy” pay us a visit.

21. Southwest Corner:

Stumbling upon the Daniel Goleman book I had heard about leads me to discover an amazing essay titled, No Fixed Address: Nomads and the Fate of the Planet, by Robyn Davidson, that speaks to me, especially her beautiful description of the Aboriginal Dreaming. A road trip then takes us along the southern coast to the town of Esperance, where we experience more craziness in the youth hostel, visit pristine beaches, and back at the hostel again, a drunken Jamie announces that a black man could very well become the next president of the United States. We drive west to where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean, then back to Fremantle for a quiet Christmas.

22. Dream Time:

Here, I tie together the myriad ideas that are sparking off in my head, ignited by the nomad essay and an article about neuroscience.

- Origins of Ideas: Here, I acknowledge that many of the ideas I have been expressing had originated from this brainstorm, write about offering new paradigms to replace the old paradigms, discuss Zoroastrianism, and recognize that humans are always drawn to Conflict.

23. New Year:

How we end up being the most Mexican people at our Mexican New Year’s Celebration and begin New Year’s Day with a shriek.

- From Ferlinghetti To The Beat-Les: Here, I recount an interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, write about romanticizing, critique Mr. Ferlinghetti about his view of Jazz music, and explore more about drama and conflict and scripts and the need for new patterns.

24. Across The Continent:

I discover a note in an old diary about Kurt Vonnegut and strange coincidences; We hop a plane to Adelaide, then a bus to Naracorte, visit with some real Aussies, ride another bus to Melbourne, then fly to Tasmania.

25. About Tasmania:

I describe our Tasmanian adventure, the highlight of which is our visit to the midden site of Preminghana.

- Emergent Patterns: In this essay, I consider the idea that patterns might be a way of storing information, and that active travel might be a way of using different thinking patterns.

We drive the back roads, visit Hobart, then meander back to Launceston.

26. Southeast Corner:

Back in Melbourne, we can't find a hotel room because of the Australia Open tennis tournament. Then we drive back to the edge of Sydney in a camper van, where I am thrilled to finally see the comet that has eluded me. Then we head on to a campground farther north, where I observe Muslim family dynamics and read Jack Kerouac's novel, Dr. Sax.

- Creative Spiritualism: In this essay, I connect the Dreaming to Kerouac's jazz writing style in that such imaginative thinking can free our minds and bring us spirituality.

27. Back To Sydney:

We return to Sydney to see an incredible flamenco performance.

- Skeletons And Calendars: This essay refers to the Swedish ethnologist who smuggled Aboriginal remains out of Australia and was haunted by them, then talks about the misguided “calendar change peace movement.”

- Making Things Right: I praise the new Australian prime minister for apologizing to the Aborigines.

We then return the van, and stay a couple more days in Sydney, going back to the Museum of Modern Art and enjoying our final days in Australia.

28. The Longest Day:

We leave Australia on Australia Day, flying back to JFK then driving to West Virginia just in time to start celebrating Jamie's birthday.

- The Power Of Music: I applaud Herbie Hancock for winning the Grammy for his latest album, River: The Joni Letters, I talk about jazz patterns, and about how the Beatles defeated Soviet Russian Communism, not Ronald Reagan.

PART IV: Back In North America

29. West Virginia Dreamin’:

Upon our return to the US, I immediately get back to looking at cognition and how the brain works.

- Rethinking Thinking: I explore patterns some more in Thinking, Rethinking, such as stellar constellations as an animated mapping system, how the need to keep track of Time and accounting affects our minds, and how Jazz music is expansive and barely balanced, like the universe.

30. Human-Nature:

I do more reading and think about what it is that makes us Human, what differentiates Humanity from Nature, and I decide that the best gift that Humans have to offer the cosmos is To Care.

- Someone Who Cares: This essay is based on a Bill Moyers interview with Sarah Cheyes, who stayed in Afghanistan and started a business in the spirit of helping the people there.

31. Waves:

At this time, I am obsessed with the Scooter Libby Trial.

- Duct Tape, Dick: In my essay about West Virginia, I remember Dick Cheney in his secret bunker.

- Waves: Then, I get poetically subliminalized.

32. White Lines On The Freeway:

We hit the road, and I talk about the extra resources used by speeding and rant against Nascar Racing.

- Consequences And Truth: I look at the importance of trying to follow through what the consequences of our actions might be, the Culture Wars, and how Truth is an Asymptote, which all leads me to the abortion issue, and Eliot Spitzer.

33. Synchroncity II:

We settle down in South Georgia, and I discuss the band, the Police, and their song, Synchronicity I.

- Message In A Bottle: The fifth anniversary of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2008 brings an opportunity to send a message to any remaining Iraq War apologists.

34. Confluence:

Here, the timelines of my story and my life come together, engendering reflection and a revisit of Jung’s Synchronicity and the archetypal principle. I conclude that my own idea of the creative principle better follows the line of thinking I have trying to develop, and I identify emergent patterns as major components of the complex processes that define the universe.

- Hadrons On My Mind: I invoke the CERN Large Hadron Collider to state that science also abides by the creative principle, where patterns continually emerge.

35. ...And Now, Back to You, Kurt:

Having begun this book with Kurt Vonnegut, I end with Kurt Vonnegut. I question my own conclusions, and wonder if Mr. Vonnegut ever knew that he was at the center of the workings of the universe.

Epilogue:

I add this epilogue when Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 Counts of Impeachment Against President Bush on my birthday.

- It’s About Place: Here, I point out yet another strange coincidence, discuss Homer's Odyssey as a place-mapping narrative in recognition that it is the same as the Aboriginal Dreaming, describe the rich multi- cultural energy of Latin America versus North America, and state my hopes for the future.

- George Carlin: My send-off to George Carlin.

The Mirror of History

2010-10-09T16:28:00.000-07:00

The story about medical experimentation in Guatemala is a harrowing reminder of our past, yet our reaction to this story is itself a snapshot of where our society is today, and I see a welcome image of hope for Progressives, in this time when disillusionment and disappointment seem to be almost overwhelming.

Amy Goodman's October 5 interview with Susan Reverby, the medical historian who recently brought to light the unpublished documentation of the project, puts the incident in perspective. As an authority on the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, she is very familiar with the social attitudes of those decades when the lives of some were simply and plainly not considered to be as worthy of respect as the lives of others. In the case of Tuskegee, poor black sharecroppers in Georgia who were found to already have syphilis were studied, without being told that it was syphilis that they suffered from, they were lied to about the nature of their medical treatment, and they were never treated for their disease, even after penicillin was found to be an effective cure.

The study in Guatemala is even more egregious due to the fact that individuals who were institutionalized in a prison and in an insane asylum, as well as some army soldiers, were actually infected with syphilis, surely without their knowledge, although what they were told was a detail that had been left out of these newly discovered physician's notes. And even in the atmosphere that allowed for the Tuskegee experiment to go on for forty years, from 1932 to 1972, Susan Reverby points to a comment in a letter referring to a statement by the surgeon general himself, showing that he knew that it would not be ethically acceptable in the United States, as the most shocking aspect of her discovery.

On one hand, it is difficult to acknowledge the wrongs of our nation's past. Many would prefer not to think about them. When Glenn Beck spoke of “restoring honor” to the United States during his rally in Washington, for example, his statement rang of the personal experience of a man who seeks to put his own past behind him. He said,

“Let's be honest. If you look at history, America has been both terribly good and terribly bad. It has been both, but to concentrate on the bad instead of learning from the bad and repairing the bad and then looking to the good that is still out in front of us within our reach— We have a choice today. We can either let those scars crush us or redeem us.”

When Glenn Beck looks into the mirror of history, while acknowledging the bad, he cannot bear to dwell for long on those painful aspects. Assuming that what has worked for him in his own life will work for the nation, he turns toward the language of religious redemption, seeing those shameful instances as a part of a necessary spiritual path, as all-too-human lapses, their lessons being those of faith rather than of seeking deeper self-awareness. And whenever Progressives are characterized as the “blame America first” crowd, this abject refusal to look in the mirror and take responsibility for our collective actions, particularly in the “America” that stretches all the way to Tierra del Fuego, the colossal societal disconnect is strengthened.

On the other hand is the hope that surrounds this story. I perceive this moment to be a brief flash of the hope that Barack Obama campaigned upon, the hope that progress brings. That we find this story to be so horrifying, that the president's immediate apology to the nation of Guatemala is seen nearly universally as the appropriate response, shows that the rate of progress is, like the growth of a child, slow and nearly imperceptible to those who are witness to it day in and day out, yet society is moving forward.

Furthermore, by facing up to the attitudes that decided that it was acceptable to do in Guatemala what was not acceptable to do in the United States, the story links us to other past actions that our nation has taken in the Americas that merit attention, if we want to find realistic answers to problems such as illegal immigration or improve our relations within the rest of America. Rather than fearing that our scars will crush us, or refusing to accept blame beyond doing so in seeking redemption, we must study our image in that mirror in order to link our past actions to issues that continue to affect us today.

Walt Long's novel, The Travelers, achieves this goal. It is a story about the smuggling of illegal immigrants through a community in southern New Mexico that not only humanizes all of the factions involved, but also makes the link between the social realities that so many of the travelers are escaping in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and the part that the United States has played in helping to create those situations. This novel evenhandedly depicts the complexities of a vexing issue, offering not answers, but respect for the fact that it is as complex as the human character is.

Similarly, the past year's unveiling of classified State Department documents from the Nixon era merit close examination, as they go a long way in explaining how the brutal dictatorships that gripped the Southern Cone region of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay were the results of a concentrated effort by the United States to weaken social movements that were becoming legitimized through democratic processes, thus threatening the veracity of the neo-liberal narrative.

“History does not refer merely […] to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it, the past, with us. And we’re ‘unconsciously controlled’ in so many ways, that history, the past, is present now in all we do.” - James Baldwin

Someone Who Cares

2010-07-27T19:53:00.000-07:00

This is excerpted from No Stranger to Strange Lands: A Journey Through Strange Coincidences, Connective Thoughts, and Far Flung Places

In light of the recent Wikileaks of the Afghan War Logs, I am posting this segment from my book (which will be available VERY SOON) regarding the mess in Afghanistan.

Talk about someone who cares: Bill Moyers had an inspiring interview on his show, Bill Moyers Journal, last night, with Sarah Chayes. She used to be an intrepid journalist for National Public Radio, but was moved to action after the United States attacked Afghanistan to supposedly topple the Taliban, which, of course, we had originally empowered during the good old Cold War days to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union's occupation of that country. She had been reporting from there, and decided to do something to try to actually help the beleaguered people of Afghanistan in some little way. So she opened a small natural soap factory, putting people to work on a sustainable product that gives them an alternative to poppy farming that is so prevalent there. Her company is called Arghand, and the all-natural hand-crafted soaps are available in the United States and Canada. The woman is a goddess of strength, love, intelligence, and determination, and Bill Moyers asked her great questions about what is really going on over there. The poppy business, she reports, is not being conducted by any criminal enterprise, nor by the evil Taliban, as our government likes to claim, but by regular businessmen, who are the only entities in the country to dole out any kind of credit to farmers, and so that is what they farm. Their business dealings are only slightly more complicated than any other business there by having to pay more bribes than usual. The term 'criminal' has no real meaning there, because everyone in the entire society is forced to be 'criminal' because of the lack of any kind of oversight or system of accountability. Everyone is forced to pay bribes up and down the line to get anything done, and to skim resources like development aid money just to survive, because a lethal combination of inflation and unemployment is crushing families there. She says that the Afghans don't want handouts, they want jobs and a government that functions. She draws a metaphorical picture of a town in the Wild West, where the sheriff needs to catch some bad guys, so he hires a posse, which is probably made up of some criminals willing to go and catch those bad guys for money, but when the feat is accomplished, the sheriff does not then put the posse in charge of the town. In Afghanistan, however, that is exactly what United States did. They placed real criminals in charge of the government, except for Karzai, who was the only one elected by the people, but who is powerless against the hugely corrupted system he oversees. Now, the U.S. claims that the Afghan people had their democratic vote, and it is up to them to hold their government accountable, which, of course, is impossible because they are being shaken down by their own government, not helped by it in any way. She is the only foreigner that people there see doing what should be done, which is to help rebuild the economy through business investments that offer jobs that will help them get back on their feet.

On Pakistan, she says, “It's been very clear to me, watching since 2002, that Pakistan has been buying us off, by a well-timed delivery of an Al Qaeda operative, which has then caused us to look the other way about the Taliban.”

On why the southern part of the country is so important, she says, “It's kind of like the marrow of the country's bones. Afghanistan was founded in Kandahar. Later the capital was moved to Kabul. It was really the capitol, the Taliban's capitol. It's also the part of the country that the Pakistani government has been able to control most successfully by-proxy. So, this is why 99 percent of the people in Kandahar believe that we are allied with the Taliban. Everybody thinks that America is allied with the Taliban.”

On the nature of the Afghan government, “We keep hearing in the West, about the democratically-elected Afghan government. And, oh, no, we can't get in there and interfere with any of these people, because they're the government of a sovereign country. Well, you could have fooled the Afghans. The Afghans – the only person who's really elected, who has any power, is president Karzai. But every other government official that Afghans interact with on a daily basis, they didn't elect. And they don't have any recourse. They've got no way of lodging a complaint against this person. Or nobody who can put any leverage on them... We're only fooling ourselves when we talk about this democratically-elected Afghan government.”

And on why Afghanistan is so important to the future of the entire world, "There are a lot of people, I think, both in the West and in the Muslim world, who believe in clash of civilization, who want to see the world as a place dominated by two irrevocably hostile blocs. I don't want to live in that kind of world. I think that we live in an interconnected world full of rich, flawed, varied civilizations that are inextricably intertwined. And, so what I'm doing in Afghanistan is working for that intertwined world."

In that sense, George Bush and Osama bin Laden are on the same team. Also, I would note that Afghanistan is in a state of true and absolute free-market capitalism, the kind that Milton Friedman had wet dreams about. That is the true result of that type of system – an unfettered, unregulated, free-for-all, where everyone has to fend for themselves, and only the strong and powerful survive. Lovely, isn't it? Maybe Grover Norquist would like to move there and see what it is really like to have a government small enough to drown in a bathtub.

see: No Stranger to Strange Lands Chapter Outline

other book excerpts: Studs Turkel, King Marketing and His Queen, Pursuit of Happiness, and Three essays from No Stranger to Strange Lands in which the topic ineluctably turns into an Ayn Rant

On Zeitgeist

2010-05-27T17:36:00.000-07:00

My answer to the question, "Have you seen Zeitgeist?"

Yes, I have now seen Zeitgeist, after having put it off for a long time because I had read the transcript. But it was important to see the effects of the whole sound and visual deal to find out why this movie seems to be so persuasive to so many people.

While I agree with many of the basic sentiments, like how we are all connected, and greed and war and war-profiteering are evil, and organized religion is little more than a power trip, I have to say that this movie is completely misguided. It really bothers me that most people are uninformed about Egyptian mythology, and so they will simply accept the assertions that Horus was born to a virgin mother, was the sun god, died and was resurrected three days later, and on and on. But all you have to do is look up Horus on any internet source you like (other than those connected with the movie - don't be a lazy sourcer!), and you will find that he was the god of the sky, that Isis was by no stretch of the imagination a virgin, and that nearly all of the other connections made in the opening segment are tenuous, at best.

You don't even have to look on the internet - just watch for the three stars of Orion's belt in the night sky (you will have to be up before dawn in the southern hemisphere to see it at this time of year (the end of May), while up north, you people with your long summer days will have to wait for a few months to see it at all). Or better yet, do yourself the favor of purchasing a star chart, so you can connect with the big wide wonderful universe. You will not find a constellation named "The Tree Kings," but you will see that Orion's belt ALWAYS points to Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest star in the sky. (This star is useful, if it is visible, for figuring out if another bright star is really a planet. If the "star" in question is brighter than Sirius, which is easy to find - those three stars are ALWAYS pointing at it - then, by golly, that ain't no star! This would all be so much easier if the little buggers would stop moving around all the time.) Then, once you have become a junior astronomer, you might reconsider the meaning of statements like this:

"The star in the east is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, which, on December 24th, aligns with the 3 brightest stars in Orion's Belt. These 3 bright stars are called today what they were called in ancient times: The Three Kings. The Three Kings and the brightest star, Sirius, all point to the place of the sunrise on December 25th. This is why the Three Kings "follow" the star in the east, in order to locate the sunrise -- the birth of the sun."

Really - when it is Canis Major, the Big Dog that follows Orion, the Hunter in their continual march from east to west across the night sky - are they Sirius?!

I am in complete agreement that Christianity is a myth-based belief system that borrows many ideas from other belief systems. Joseph Campbell wrote about this decades ago, without diminishing the power of these myths to enhance people's lives in positive ways. Unfortunately, the movie develops its own set of myths, presented as facts, to establish another belief system: that because Christianity has been used as an instrument of control, is based on myths that some claim to be "truths," and often demands blind submission to its authority, so, too, is the government doing the same thing in regard to 9/11 and to the banking system and the education system and the secret North American Union, and so on.

As to the 9/11 stuff - the Bush administration had a lot of shit to cover up, but pulling off the 9/11 attacks was not one of them. What they covered up was their total incompetence and/or having allowed the attacks to happen to fit their agenda. But that's all the credit that I am willing to give those douche bags. All of the supposed proof that the official story is false can be explained by regular old physics, from the way that the Twin Towers, building 7, and the Pentagon were constructed and affected, to the crash site in Pennsylvania, to the capacity of the amateur pilots to pull off the maneuvers, to the fact that airplane aluminum melts...

The 9/11 conspiracies are not just a matter of not understanding physics, but also of ignoring all of the eye-witness accounts that disagree with their assertions, especially all of the people who saw the airplane strike the Pentagon, and all of the people who immediately went to the crash sites in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon to try to help in whatever rescue operation there might have been, who saw mangled airplane parts and the devastating horrors of these unusually high-speed impacts.

The eye-witness accounts that they do focus on, which are used for emotional emphasis in the movie, are the accounts of explosions being heard by people in and near the World Trade Center. But the trauma, anxiety, and stress, in addition to what is referred to as "reconstructive memory," which is the brain's mechanism for trying to put things into context, can greatly affect memories of an event witnessed at close-range. Add to these factors the power of suggestion and the probability that there were some huge explosions involved in the chaotic catastrophic failure of these humongous towers, and the jump to the conclusion that there must have been explosives planted in the basement must be further questioned.

Then, the third section goes back to just making stuff up out of thin air - misquoting, taking things out of context, failing to point out that Nazis and other antisemitic types believed that the Jews ran a secret international banking cartel, which was their basis for fear and loathing of "international bankers," and flat out getting it wrong that the gold standard was abolished in 1933, when this didn't happen until 1971, for just a few examples.

I am really concerned about all of this because I keep meeting people who believe every word of this movie. It is so strange because I wrote a book, long before I ever heard of Zeitgeist, that I have been trying to get published, which begins with the idea that fear-mongering can be so persuasive, and ends up grappling with how our understandings, or rather, misunderstandings, of cause and effect are at the base of our belief systems - and here is this movie that takes the same ideas and uses them to create fear of the government as an agent of a secret cabal (so secret that it can't be proven to exist) and a whole cause-and-effect scenario of its own. What really bothers me is that anyone who disagrees with any of it is considered to be under the influence of the evil powers that be - it's exactly like how Christians will argue that ideas that oppose their belief system are the work of the devil, who is just trying to confuse us and turn us away from God.

HERE is a good debunking website, if you want to get another opinion. And HERE is an awesome article about real corporate greed by Matt Taibbi, who is also the author of The Great Derangement, and he has debated Griffith, who is in the movie. Additionally, I wrote a long essay titled, Secrecy, Democracy, and Fascism: Lessons from History, that, in part, looks into how fascism came to be in Germany, with frightening similarities to what is happening in the United States right now. Racism (which is at the base of this North American Union myth, and is very similar to how the Jewish banking cabal conspiracy was at the base of the Holocaust), fear-mongering, and a crisis of confidence in the government were all major factors, all of which this movie plays right into.

I also write a lot about how different societies deal with complexity, and how Latin American culture deals with this so much better than US culture, due to complex histories and other sensibilities. They know what real tyranny is, and have often had very personal experience with US-sponsored greed and hypocrisy. We just found out the other day that our landlord was imprisoned and tortured with electric probes during the dictatorship - and it is well documented that the US supported all of the dictatorships in Latin America, due to fear of socialism, plain and simple. He is very skeptical of his government as well as of the US government, yet he is still a patriotic Argentine. He said simply that every experience in life has its lessons to teach. He is not a bitter man. He is the opposite - very kind and gentle and thoughtful. Life goes on, and he is still a socialist, in the spirit of the self-sufficient individualist that so defines Patagonian heritage. And this is my whole point: that he can be an individualist AND a socialist. He can be an atheist AND a spiritual person. He can see things in terms that are more complicated than "You're either with us or against us." This is what I mean when I speak of dealing with complexity, and I'm afraid that this Zeitgeist movie encourages people to fall right into George Bush's simplistic thinking pattern in a world that is far from black and white.

So do not think that just because I do not agree with what the movie promotes I therefore believe all of the lies of the US government or that it is somehow inherently good. It isn't that simple. Nothing is ever simple. I don't believe what the movie says, AND I don't believe everything the US government says. I even believe that the Bush administration might like for people to think that they were involved in 9/11 in order to distract from their real crimes and muddy the waters of what issues citizens should really be concerned about. And if the "logic" of this movie is followed through, it points to the existence of a One World Order, to which the response is so often to run away and hide, giving up on the democratic process on the premise that individuals can have no effect, whatsoever, against the secret uber-rulers. It's called "silent consent," and the powers that actually do exist are diggin' it.

One of the things that I love most about Latin America is that people do not take their democracy for granted - they get out on the street and make their voices heard and struggle for what they believe in, instead of accepting that they have no power against huge financial and military interests, which is what this movie basically comes down to. Just live your life, and don't pay any attention to the men behind the curtain. It is supposedly a wake-up call, but to what effect? And if their concerns are so legitimate, why do they lie and make shit up - including that they don't make any money selling their DVD - to make their point? Inquiring minds want to know!

Small Change

2010-04-01T17:04:00.000-07:00

The small steps that lead to giant leaps for humankind are usually not recognized as such when they are taken. They may require some time for discovery, or processing, or convincing. They may be small occurrences that pass by, hardly noticed, or big events that are celebrated, but for small reasons. Despite the deep-seated fears that are being played upon by forces that have a vested interest in preventing humanity's progress toward creating a more tolerant and just society, and despite the woeful cries of those who bemoan the slow pace of such progress, I believe that this health care reform represents one of these unrecognized small steps.

It is Rosa Parks, refusing to sit at the back of the bus - an unremarkable event that followed several other such acts of resistance to racial segregation, except that Ms. Parks was already part of a larger movement that was peacefully pushing for progressive change. The other persons on the bus that day could not have known of the potential that her small act of tired defiance held, but Rosa Parks did.

She intuitively felt the spark that lit the fire that was the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which inspired U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. to call for a movement of "Massive Resistance," which was met by the Southern Manifesto, which was followed by Browder v. Gayle, the civil action law suit that outlawed racial segregation on buses within each state under the Fourteenth Amendment "equal protection of the laws," which lead to sniping and bombings of Martin Luther King Jr.'s and other civil rights leaders' homes and churches and the formation of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, and on and on, back and forth, with the Freedom Riders testing the law on buses, lunch counter sit-ins, and other non-violent demonstrations against bigotry in the South, opposed by more lynchings, bombings, and defiance against the federal government, until the unified dignity of the civil rights movement won out over horrific images of police brutality and the news of little girls dying in their church finally ushering in a era of equal rights legislation and Supreme Court decisions that insisted upon the wholeness of racial integration.

The health care reform is being celebrate as a political victory for President Obama and for the Democrats. It is possibly the most controversial issue the nation has faced in recent history, with opponents on the right furious that it has gone too far, while progressives are angry that it didn't go far enough. But despite all of the vicious politics surrounding it, the passage of this legislation is about something much bigger than all of that. At the same time, despite the monumental effort it took the Democrats to finally pass it, and the emotional fervor stirred up by the Republicans and their backers in the insurance industry in opposition to it, it is really rather less than all of that. This is only a small step forward, a tiny spark that helps to keep the flame of human progress alive, but its potential to set a new fire aglow must be properly understood if it is to spread to something far greater than the people on the proverbial bus could ever imagine.

This potential lies in a serene place, away from all the rabble of misplaced anger and repressed entitlement on the one hand and disillusionment mixed with sadness about being so demonized on the other. It is the promise of patient, yet persistent change, the same promise that the election of this president represented, and it is a part of the same march forward that the civil rights movement was a part of, and the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the women's rights movement, and all other human rights movements that continue to push for the social evolution of our species.

This change requires an elegant kind of thought process that is somewhat foreign to the either/or, absolutist mentality that seems to be encouraged by the culture of the United States today. This thinking tolerates the coexistence of what, on the surface, might appear to be conflicting ideas, so that ideology will give way to the flexibility that is necessary to get things done in society. It is the kind of thinking that is necessary for social change to take place, because its flexibility allows those who are trying to introduce new ideas to do so in a way that assuages the fears of those who are resistant to change. It is incumbent upon progressives to be careful in our push for change, to show that we are not a threat to others in our quest to reform an unjust system. While we must stand by our ideals, we must also be able to recognize the limits of society's willingness to change and find creative ways to nudge at those limits. In the face of exasperating misinformation and mis-characterizations of our intentions, we must be content to take baby steps and let time be the messenger of the good news that social cooperation is actually less costly than separation and divisiveness.

Such maturity of thought can recognize that individual liberty and social responsibility are interrelated; that democratic principles and social welfare policies are not mutually exclusive; that ownership of property and wealth is not equivalent to freedom; that tyranny and hidden taxes can be imposed by private institutions as well as by governments; that giving can be receiving and big can be small and patriotism can be other than the uncritical acceptance of a self-serving narrative.

Such thinking makes sense out of the actions of a man who campaigned on the promise of "change," who was supported by progressives because he seemed to have literally come out of left field and was seen to be uncorrupted by the political process. He spoke of the civil rights struggle and the "end of small politics,"constantly drilling at his message of "change," which spoke to progressives as a change from the right to the left. It was a brilliant campaign slogan, a nebulous, open promise that could mean almost anything. And when things came down to the wire, voters who were offered two images of "change" chose the one that looked and sounded and acted the most like real change. But this change turned out to be less dramatic, less obvious, less palpable than we would have liked to see, and many progressives soon gave up on the new president, expressing the kind of dismay that Frank Rich and Micheal Moore and many other disillusioned supporters have expressed.

But perhaps the president's apparent timidity to make big changes is not due to weakness, nor inexperience, nor naivety, nor crass political maneuvering, but instead comes from an insight that is difficult for all but those few who have faced the struggle to succeed in a covertly racist society can immediately comprehend. The man has spent his whole life honing his ability to convince others to overlook the color of his skin, his unconventional upbringing, and his unusual name to give him a chance to show what he is really made of. It has not only been his persuasiveness that has been most crucial to Barack Obama's success, but his ability to follow it through with action, intelligence, and by asserting himself in a measured and non-threatening way. This is a kind of progress that connects individual achievement with social responsibility, that works from the inside while never forgetting all those who remain on the outside, that understands that one must sometimes tack in one direction to create the headwind that will move them in another direction, that utilizes subtle, patient, and even controversial techniques to slowly soften hard-edged thought structures and create small but significant change.

When we see the health care reform from a larger historic perspective, we can begin to understand how President Obama's actions mirror those of the man that he admires so much, Abraham Lincoln, and how the current situation mirrors the abolition of slavery. Lincoln ran for office as a vociferous opponent of slavery in the United States, and as soon as it became clear that he would soon become the President of the United States of America, the secessionists began to form the Confederacy. The attempts to find a compromise by President-elect Lincoln and outgoing President Buchanan that would convince the southern states to remain part of the Union could not go far, because the stance that one class of people had the right to enslave other human beings in the names of "heritage" and "freedom" and "states' rights" had become entrenched and non-negotiable. Lincoln pointed out during his inaugural address that the stated purpose of the U.S. Constitution was "to form a more perfect union," and offered up the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution that would have protected slavery in those states where it already existed in order to ensure that new territories would not become slave states. He was criticized by the Copperheads for not giving in on the issue of slavery and thus taking the nation into civil war, criticized by the abolitionists who felt that he was not doing enough to end slavery, and deeply despised by those who put their own desires above their allegiance to the principle of democracy as social progress toward becoming a better and stronger union. Lincoln could not prevent the Confederacy from being formed, but he refused to negotiate with Confederate agents and thus legitimize the Confederacy, and both the Union and the Confederacy danced around the issue of who would be the aggressor in the ensuing civil war, until Confederates in South Carolina, with the aim of claiming U.S. federal property, could not contain themselves any longer.

Now, as then, it is not the proponents of progressive change who are causing the divisiveness that is tearing at the heart of the nation, rather, it is those who refuse to let go of an ideology that is, at its core, a claim of entitlement of the "haves" at the expense of the "have nots," the clamoring for the rights of corporations to enslave individuals in the names of "heritage" and "freedom" and "states' rights," that is dividing the nation.

The passing of the health care reform legislation by the Democrats and the vow by the Republicans to use the dwindling resources of the states to fight against it is a huge political deal, as what will surely be torrid midterm elections approach, but it will only be a small chapter in the nation's history. Whatever increase in the level of anger and, as many are worried about, violence on the part of those on the right who see this as a major threat to their idea of what the nation is supposed to be about, will reveal the deeper core of this issue, that sense of entitlement that manifests itself as racism and sexism and homophobia and religious- or class-based exceptionalism when the veneer of civility is worn thin by fundamentalist populism, and it will all lead back to the 2008 elections that brought the Democrats into power in Congress and an unusual black man into the White House. But as the civil rights leaders who were brutally attacked by the police in Selma, Alabama know from experience, these kinds of outbreaks open up those people's eyes who want their nation to be a shining example of humanity's best character, who were previously unaware of the deep level of contempt for universal human dignity as well as for the federal government that underlies conservative ideology.

The images pile on: Representative John Lewis, a long-time veteran of the civil rights struggle, and others on their way to vote for the legislation being spat upon; reports of death threats and brick throwing; Sarah Palin's goading of violence by presenting individuals in the cross hairs of a gun; President Bush wiping his hand on President Clinton's shirtsleeve after shaking a Haitian person's hand... These images speak far louder than any denials of reality can. And they present conservatives with the dilemma of looking at their own contradictions, because they can't have it both ways. They cannot label William Ayers as a terrorist and a traitor to the nation and at the same time hold up those who are willing to commit acts of violence against members of the government as patriots for a cause. I believe that most sympathizers of what William Ayers did thirty years ago have matured and now see the enormous error of trying to further a just cause through the instigation of violence. (To those who disagree with this conclusion, I would point out the fact that the radical elements of the anti-war movement in Berkeley were the original cause of the Reagan backlash against liberal ideologies that has persisted throughout these thirty years and remains as a bedrock of conservative thought structures today.) If it is democracy that is at stake, then non-democratic means cannot be the answer. If nationalism is the calling, then states' rights cannot trump federal law. If government is the problem, then making the government work better is the solution.

Perhaps this rise in anger is a direction that President Obama foresaw, and chose to take on in order to force the nation to deal with the polarization that has been increasing in recent years. Perhaps he knew that the level of contempt that so many would hold toward him is deeply rooted in our society, yet it is no match for the will for humanity to progress, with the weight of all of history behind it. Perhaps he understood the larger significance of his presidency, and saw the opportunity to use his skills as a real "uniter," taking on the dual role of president of all of the people of the United States and at the same time gently, patiently, through persuasion and follow through, inching the nation forward in its quest to be more perfect. And perhaps this is the answer to his non-involvement in the political struggles of the legislature on an issue that is so important to his presidency, as he was attempting to set the example of how a president should be everyone's president and not simply be the leader of one party. That the Democrats could not see the forest for the trees, having wasted an entire year being, themselves, too timid to come together and get this task completed was painful to observe. It took the president's final stepping in, convincing such actors on the far left as Dennis Kucinich that there was a larger cause at stake, then conceding to the antiabortion contingency on the right in a big way, thus providing the political party leadership that the Democrats are so desperately lacking.

Of course, many concessions were made, from the very beginning, in order to get this legislation passed. That is why this is really just a small step forward. But the fact of its passage, no matter how watered down or what was necessary to secure it, is the spark that could lead to the fire that brings the United States to face its inner demons. The political victory is just a small reason to celebrate. The spark that has been lit lies in the potential to change the politics, themselves.

President Obama will have learned from this experience, during which many have labeled his leadership as weak, wobbly, foggy, uninspiring... But he seems to have come to the realization that the nation was not ready for his attempt to be a national leader by distancing himself from the political ring or refusing to be a bully. He has been faced with the classic progressive dilemma of how to be ahead of the curve, yet be able to relate to the bulk of those who are following behind in a way that makes sense to them. Real leadership means that someone is ahead of the pack, leading the way, setting an example, not that someone is powerful because they are the most forceful or have hung around the longest, having amassed their power, essentially, by default. But the president may have just learned the difficult lesson that the entrenched political system in the United States only understands the language of force, and that changing this system will be a much longer-term project that will have to remain secondary to the project of ensuring that the Democrats can address the current economic situation in demonstrably effective ways while at the same time defending themselves with honor and finesse against the vengeance of the party that knows how to raise a rabble and manipulate the fears and emotions of their constituency to gain support for their causes.

For their part, the Democrats could muster some finesse by looking at the larger significance of the health care reform not as a victory so much as the continuity of a long struggle for human rights. It follows the Constitutional mandate "to promote the general Welfare and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" by limiting the tyranny of the insurance companies that separates society into those who can afford health care and the astounding number of those who cannot, which weakens the nation's work force, and which imposes hidden costs on employers.

Let us fan the flames of what has been sparked, that is, a movement that is willing to stand before the clamor of the fearful and the misguided, just as Martin Luther King Jr. and so many others bravely did, and insist that the country come together to reclaim our government so that it will work for the people instead of for the corporate financiers of all of the politicians. The next political battle will be over the ideology of deregulation, but to get at that issue we will need to force our representatives to take a long, hard look at the way that government works, focus on why it is so frustratingly inept and wasteful, and figure out how to limit the corrupting influences of lobbying and campaign financing as a better fix than simply dismantling it. Today, health care - tomorrow, returning our democracy to its most basic principle of "government by the people." Now that would be one giant leap for humankind.

Monkey Business

2010-01-28T17:32:00.000-08:00

Things To Do To Throw A Monkey Wrentch In The System And Get Our Government Back - Naomi Klein's suggestion comes at the end of this segment with Amy Goodman. The link to the interview with her and Noam Chomsky follows. And then follows the link to Micheal Moore's interview with Amy, where he is also demanding we find some way to get our country back from corporate control.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, right now—well, you just flew into Park City, Utah just before President Obama’s State of the Union address. Your reaction to it?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I mean, we knew the spending freeze was going to come, but to me, it’s really striking. I think what this moment represents is the decision, which we all feared would come, to pass the bill on from saving Wall Street, from saving the elites of this country from their own mess, a bill worth trillions of dollars, to regular people in need in this country. I mean, that’s what a spending freeze really means.

And we have to look at it in the context of the debt crisis that is occurring at the state level. There’s deficit—huge deficits being run up. California is the most dramatic example, but you’re already seeing how students are facing things like 30 percent tuition increases. Women’s shelters are being closed. So, you know, when the President says freeze spending, that’s saying to the states, “We’re not going to help you. We’re not going to bail you out.”

So this is really—this, to me, all comes back to the top-down bailout that should never have taken place in the first place, the decision that was made to throw the taxpayer dollars at the banks, at the elites, no strings attached, not to help the people losing their jobs, losing their homes. And now the bill is being passed on, because the debt crisis, the private-sector debt crisis, which started this, the banks racking up these huge debts, was never solved. It was just moved. It was just moved to the public coffers.

And now Obama is—this is a Hoover move. This is a Herbert Hoover move. And I think we have to say very clearly, he is not FDR. And, you know, in the spirit of Howard Zinn, who passed yesterday, I keep thinking, you know, what would he say about the State of the Union? And I think he would tell us to refuse to pay this bill, that we need a debtors’ revolt.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/28/noam_chomsky_and_naomi_klein_respond

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/26/michael_moore_on_haiti_the_supreme

And here is a segment from Thursday's Headlines on DemocracyNow! about something very important that everyone can get involved in making happen:

Dems Seek to Undo Supreme Court Ruling on Corporate ElectioneeringAnd Democrats are gearing up to try to counter the Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to elect and defeat candidates. In a five-to-four decision, the Court overturned century-old restrictions on corporations, unions and other interest groups from using their vast treasuries to advocate for a specific candidate. Speaking on the House floor, Democratic Congress member Donna Edwards of Maryland said she’ll introduce a constitutional amendment to revoke the Supreme Court ruling.
Rep. Donna Edwards:

“The American people already believe that corporate special interests and their lobbyists run the show around here. I mean, the halls are crawling with them. But that’s not enough. Now the Court says to the big banks, to the drug companies, to the insurance companies, ‘Hey, all bets are off, and it’s open season. Our elections are for sale.’ A law won’t fix this; we have to fix it in the Constitution. So today I’ll introduce a constitutional amendment so that we, the people, can take back our elections and our democracy. This is not the People’s House Incorporated. We are the people. It’s our house, it’s our Constitution, and it’s our elections. And we plan to take it back from the United States Supreme Court.”

In his State of the Union address, President Obama renewed his criticism of the Supreme Court ruling, saying he hopes Congress passes legislation “that helps to right this wrong.”

Here is a link to Guernica Magazine's interview of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur that show that there is hope from within the system to find ways to fix it:

http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/1432/kaptur/

And finally, the link to the second segment of Thursday's DemocracyNow!, which pays tribute to Howard Zinn, who passed away on Wednesday. The world will miss you, Howard Zinn, but we are so glad that you could share your wisdom - that war is unpredictable; war involves committing evil for the sake of a possible future good; war corrupts everybody involved with it; and that Democracy is The People, not the structures of government.

Thank you, Howard Zinn, for your active patience.

http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/1432/kaptur/

Shoeless in Cairo

2010-01-02T09:17:00.000-08:00

I began this blog back in September of 2008 by posting an inspiring letter written by Jeff Halper of the Free Gaza Movement, which described his obsevations after his experence an Isreali jail. Now, I post again a letter from a Gaza Freedom activist, because the world cannot forget the plight of the Palestinians and the complicity of the world's most powerful forces to keep these people under a barbaric and siege.

Written by Mary Hughes-Thompson, part of the GFM (Gaza Freedom March) convoy that has been trying to
get into Gaza.

In about an hour the Gaza Freedom Marchers in Cairo will be meeting in Tahrir
Square to celebrate the beginning of 2010. January 1st will be the fifth day
of my hunger strike.

It was an eventful and exhilarating day for all of us here in Cairo. This
morning we began to arrive in small groups at a couple of locations in downtown
Cairo, intending to join and up and begin a solidarity march to Gaza. We
didn't expect to get far before being stopped, so we took what things we had
that would make it easier to spend the night in the street. As soon as we got
out of our taxi near the Museum, Hedy and I and Hedy's two friends from St
Louis were immediately surrounded by security police who tried to lead us away
from the area.

All around us we saw other small groups receiving the same reception. After
sitting on a bench in front of the Nile Hilton for half an hour, with half a
dozen police standing close and trying to persuade us to continue walking away,
we suddenly saw a surge of people crossing the street a few yards from us, and
we quickly rushed to join them. Free Gaza signs appeared, chants of "Free
Gaza" were heard. Passengers in cars and buses gave us a wave and a smile. We
were immediately encircled by several hundred policemen who placed barriers
around us and began to push us more tightly together. We tried to keep space
around Hedy, as we were pushed and squeezed. I feared my ribs would be
crushed as I was squeezed tighter and closer to people around me. A few people
fell or tried to sit in the middle of the circle and the police went after
them.

Suddenly I was pushed to the ground and fell flat on my face. As people around
me were pushed more tightly to the center, I feared I would be trampled.
Perhaps the police thought I had been sitting, because they grabbed my arms and
began to drag me along the ground. I felt my one shoe fall off, then the other
I tried to hang onto my things as some French people came to my rescue,
reaching out to help lift me to my feet, then leading me away next to the wall
and away from the police.

My shoes and my cane were swallowed up and could not be located amid the mass
of people. We stayed together for many hours, held tightly in our circle by
the police. It was very warm, but as always spirits were high, some enormous
signs were raised by young men who climbed the only tree we had in our
enclosure. It was a laurel tree, and many people raised branches above their
heads as we called for peace and freedom for Gaza. At the moment we knew the
march was taking place inside Gaza we chanted again: Free Gaza, Free Gaza.
Someone began to play an accordian, and I was pulled, shoeless, into a circle
of women, including Hedy, as we danced in a circle while people around us
cheered.

Eventually, after several hours, some members of American Veterans for Peace
who had been watching over Hedy persuaded her it would be safer if she left.
They felt the police were getting more threatening and were worried they
wouldn't be able to keep her safe if we were rushed and attacked. Hedy
reluctantly agreed to go outside the circle to talk to some press who wanted to
interview her, so Hedy, Sandra, J'Ann and I were, after some negotiations,
escorted outside where Hedy was greeted by reporters.

So here I stay in Cairo, grateful to be merely shoeless, somewhat bruised and
only slightly battered, still strong and determined, proud and humbled to be a
part of this amazing family that has come together from around the world to
stand in solidarity with Gaza, Palestine and to remember what happened in Gaza
a year ago. We may not get to Gaza this time, but we believe we have made a
joyful noise in Cairo.

Happy New Year everybody. Free Gaza. Free Palestine.

PS: One of my shoes was later found.

Visit http://www.freegaza.org/

Seven Twenty-First Century Social Sins

2009-12-11T14:54:00.000-08:00

In honor of International Human Rights Day, The Seven Twenty-First Century Social Sins

1.Power without Wisdom
2.Pleasure without Awareness
3.Science without Humanity
4.Knowledge without Understanding
5.Politics without Accountability
6.Commerce without Conscience
7.Spirituality without Connection

I believe in a progressive philosophy of examining ideas from the past, processing them to find what about them is useful and not so useful in the present, and reworking them so that they can help us to move society forward - to progress. In this way, beautiful customs that have passed on through time can be respected and continued, notions that may have been the product of ignorance or that have become obsolete can be discarded, and new customs and traditions can be woven from those most durable threads of tradition, being reinforced in the process.

In keeping with this philosophy, here is my updated version of the list that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi laid out in 1925 in the journal, "Young India." His list of social behaviors to avoid was, of course, the product of his place and time, which was Colonial India struggling for self-determination and social justice. Gandhi's Indian revolution was truly innovative as a widespread social movement in its rejection of the use of violence, and his ideas, manifested by his actions, have been an inspiration to all who have advocated for social change through peaceful resistance – from figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Cesar Chavez, Lech Walesa, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, Howard Zinn, Wangari Maathai in Africa, Ramzi Kysia of the Free Gaza Movement, to artists and musicians such as John Lennon, Bob Marley, and many, many more, from around the globe, representing all walks of life.

Although Gandhi's potent demonstration of the power of non-violent insistence upon change is timeless wisdom, this updated version of Gandhi's Seven Social Sins is necessary because the original applied to a world that has changed significantly since that time. In 1925, the idea of Communism was gaining ground, the European Empires were experiencing their final decline, oil dependency was on the rise, geopolitics were undergoing tectonic shifts, and Free Market Capitalism had yet to become the weapon of choice to be wielded by the United States in order to maintain its total dominance upon the world stage of today. In those years between the two World Wars, workers and poorer people of the world were demanding inclusion in the new kinds of governments that were replacing the waning monarchies, while those who had benefited from the monarchical structures and their hierarchical social constructs sought to hold on to their power and wealth. This was only one chapter in the eternal class struggle that stretches throughout the story of human civilization, but at no other time in history was the notion that the lesser classes might become enfolded into the structures of governance more energized, as the dismantling of old regimes gave way to new opportunities.

It was this wave of opportunity that opened the door to new ideas about how societies should structure themselves, and what pitfalls they should avoid, that Gandhi was boldly walking through when he presented his Seven Social Sins to the subcontinent of India and to the world. Here is his original list:

1.Wealth without Work
2.Pleasure without Conscience
3.Science without Humanity
4.Knowledge without Character
5.Politics without Principle
6.Commerce without Morality
7.Worship without Sacrifice

The differences between the two lists reflect very different attitudes that have arisen with time. Gandhi's version was just like his dress - simple, basic, unadorned. The list appeared, with no discussion whatsoever, for his followers to contemplate as they struggled to recreate an independent India. I have recycled Gandhi's list, demonstrating my philosophy of examining, processing, progressing, and have adorned it with a few new ideas of my own. As the people of the world seek ways to demand social justice in the face of the current economic uncertainty, a cohesive foundation for how to challenge social policies and philosophies that have failed to live up to their promises will be of the utmost importance. It must be stressed that this is a matter of basic human rights, not one of capital flow or market readjustments. Gandhi framed the struggle of the poorest classes of India as being the same struggle as the entire society's right to self-determination against British colonialism. This lesson that various social struggles are not fragmented, but rather, are all one and the same - struggles against wildly unequal distribution of wealth, against the hoarding of power, against the undermining of democratic principles, against environmental destruction - are all connected.

1. Wealth without Work - Power without Wisdom

The idea of, “no wealth without work” has its origins in the ethical argument against usury, or the charging of interest on loans, long seen as a social evil as well as a weakness of character. This idea appeared in the form of "just price theory," from the economic thought of the Middle Ages, and later, in Adam Smith's "Labor Theory of Value," both connecting a product's value to the labor used to produce it, which was further connected to the greater social good by its promotion of industriousness in individuals. As the Industrial Revolution dramatically raised the level of the world's commerce to new heights, economic theory leap towards new understandings, and capitalism based on credit and investment banking did away with the ethical frown upon what was once called "usury." In response to new imbalances that arose along with these changes, socialist philosophy took up the old slogan anew, as laborers felt the need to stand up for themselves, striving to once again recognize the value and dignity of work, to instil pride in each individual's role in society, to raise the status of the worker from that of the mere commodity belonging to the wealthy owners of the corporations that were steadily building their own empires.

Although the ideals behind "no wealth without work" may be noble and just, I feel that this phrase no longer resonates in today's world, where investment strategies and the use of credit have become acceptable means of obtaining wealth that offer some level of greater social good in society. The caveat here is that these means not be taken to excess, which is the hard-learned lesson of the economic collapse of recent years. There is a point of balance between being too dependent on borrowing and not borrowing at all. In a system that thrives on the flow of capital, more than anything else, it is of the greatest import to make sure that not only those who already have large amounts of capital to invest have access to credit. And, despite that tough lesson about handing out credit as if it were Halloween candy (indeed, on college campuses, credit card applications were literally handed out along with candy bars), there are some positive signs that "usury," when carefully initiated and vigorously regulated, can offer a greater good to society, as evidenced by the growing movement of "micro loans" to the world's poorest citizens. These people, often women who have come together to form small cooperatives in impoverished regions, do not need much to help them improve themselves and their communities.

My idea is to look at financing of any sort, in any amount, not simply as a means of trade for goods and services, but as a source of power. Money is power. Many things offer power, including social status, physical strength, pure numbers, access to government representatives, charisma, the secret to nuclear fusion, etcetera. As the lesson about depending too strongly on credit has taught us, so, too, does any kind of power require moderation. This moderation is a kind of Wisdom. Therefore, Power Requires Wisdom.

No power without wisdom. No mere marketing of ideas without digging into the basis of those ideas, who is paying for the marketing of them, how they benefit certain individuals more than they offer any greater good, and how their very veracity might be in question. No unfettered freedom of access to government officials without some show of how the policies that one is pushing for would actually offer some greater good for society. No governmental position of power without strict mediation of how that power can and cannot be used. No trusting that those in power are there because they somehow deserve to be there, without any proof that they are capable or to be trusted with their power. No monarchy or dynasty. No impunity. No lack of oversight and regulation.

To tie power with wisdom is also to re-assert the relationship of those who hold power with those who allow them to hold that power. It is a reminder that in society, the many give tacit consent to their rulers when they do not voice their opposition to this relationship. If the many would understand that they, too, hold power - of numbers, of denial of services, of the ability to stop commerce, in entirely peaceful ways, especially when they can become organized and act in unison - then the powerful would be wise to look after the well-being of the larger community instead of only their own self-interests. And wisdom is, further, a connective and expansive force. It sees in terms of interaction rather than competition, relationships rather than enmities, community rather than self.

I feel that this framing of the issue, of no power without wisdom, without oversight or moderation, without connection, without a larger scope of vision addresses the ills of the modern world more than the framing of the issue as no wealth without work, as the former can be seen as a divisive point that can only degenerate into class struggle, in which the lower classes are viewed as committing one of the biblical seven cardinal sins - envy - while the upper classes are viewed as committing another - gluttony. The real sin here is that of generalization, which feeds the perception that the extremes of a situation are the norm, and that the actions of some represents the sentiments of all. The issues involved in class struggle are not simple. Rather, they are infinitely complicated, easily misunderstood by oversimplification, and inherently divisive. So, by replacing the reference to class struggle, as well as to the outdated connection of wealth to physical labor, with a very different characterization of wealth as a form of power, I hope to take a positive step forward toward the goal of reformulating how societies understand the problems presented by inequities of wealth and other types of power.

2. Pleasure without Conscience - Pleasure without Awareness

Mahatma Gandhi was devoted to a life of simple living, weaving his own clothing out of cotton, and minimizing pleasure and extravagances for the sake of spiritual purity. In this context, pleasure itself was to be avoided, and the having of pleasure was, if not sinful, then connected with guilt. I reject the idea of guilt trips that religious codes tend to impose, so I have substituted "awareness" for "conscience," and I believe that this admonition fits in with modern attitudes about how pleasure enhances our lives, which we should not constantly feel conscientious or riddled with guilt about. I feel that the 1960's cultural revolution - of progressive rock music, personal and sexual freedom, use of mind-altering drugs - ushered in a new understanding of how pleasure can actually enhance one's awareness in surprising ways, and is not always an act of pure hedonism, when that expanded awareness is a connective force instead of an isolating one. It is possible to have keen awareness while experiencing pleasure, if we put our minds to it, as opposed to closing ourselves off to the wider world and pretending that we are in some other reality. Celebrations such as Christmas and Thanksgiving are other examples of how we can enjoy ourselves while at the same time being thankful for the source of our joy. As long as we do not take things to extremes, do not celebrate for the sake of the pleasure itself, and make sure to remain aware of and connected to the larger situations around us, pleasure does not have to bring on pangs of conscience. Pleasure with awareness has the power to heal and re-energizing us to face larger realities with renewed vitality.

3. Science without Humanity

Einstein reiterated this idea with his famous quote, "It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity." What Gandhi warned the world against, Einstein commiserated had happened. Einstein spoke of atomic weapons, but his observation goes well beyond that in today's world of i-phones and c-scans and gm-foods. The degree to which we do not understand how our gadgets work, let alone the consequences of their manufacture, distribution, and use, has lagged farther and farther behind the level at which we are enamored with them. And from this level of comfort with not understanding derives a tremendous disconnect, a fatal attraction to having no interest in understanding the world around us which leaves us dangerously vulnerable to campaigns of misinformation - the ultimate paradox of the "information age." So society becomes fractionalized, compartmentalized, separated into clusters of special interest groups, digesting information in small bits, sound bites, disambiguated twitters, and our ability to comprehend what it all means for our society, and what it says about us as human beings, gets lost in the onslaught of fragmentized info-porn. This is the nightmare that science fiction writers could not have dreamed up. The computers have not become frighteningly human-like, rather, the humans have become like machines. We must work to regain our humanity in the face of this advanced dependence upon technology.

4. Knowledge without Character - Knowledge without Understanding

Gandhi's idea of "no knowledge without character" carries the implicit meaning that it is "moral" character that must not be lacking. It seems to me that this kind of language was the norm in Gandhi's day, when speaking of how persons were to act in society, with all of the religious connotations included, whether those be Hindu or Muslim or Christian or any other. However, being a proponent of the idea that religion and "morality" are not necessary to motivate people to be upstanding and kind and generous, I want to get away from moralizing. The idea of "no knowledge without understanding," does just that - it takes knowledge out of the realm of a gift that must be paid for with morality and places it in the realm of a kind of power that requires a moderator.

To moderate knowledge with understanding seeks to take knowledge further than the mere collection of information. It ensures that the human element will be present, so that we will not be machines, nor will machines that collect information be anything like humans. To actually understand something is connective. It looks beyond the information and tries to make sense of it, using capabilities that only the human mind possesses. This is, in large part, what makes us human - to understand past, present, and future; to understand that when I do a certain thing, a predictable outcome will occur; to understand that symbolic sounds can be developed into language...

But "no knowledge without understanding" pushes us further, to keep learning new things, to strive to make sense out of what we know so far, to ask "why" after we know "what" and "where" and "how." It goads us toward the wisdom that, to paraphrase Socrates, a wise man understands how little he knows. And it entreats us to continuously connect all of the tidbits of information together into a larger understanding.

5. Politics without Principle - Politics without Accountability

Gandhi hoped that politics could be principled, that the political arena would be self-regulating, in a way similar to how the world of business was supposed to be mediated by such economic theories as the "invisible hand." Politics that lacked principle would be unacceptable to the citizens of a democracy. However, it seems that the opposite has come to pass, that politicians who choose to be principled cannot compete against those who are willing to market themselves insincerely, and worse, spend much of their energy attempting to demonize their political opponents - a process that continues on far past the political campaigns to infect governance itself. The result is that truths become buried under infinite levels of rhetoric, all constructive conversation on issues gets left by the wayside, and citizens become either polarized or cynical about the process, a situation that can only lead to a crisis of confidence in government. So the foundations of democracy - government by the people - begin to crack.

While one would reasonably expect politics to be principled, in its absence, what is needed is accountability. When individuals are found to be in blatant disregard of facts in their politicking, they need to be expelled from being involved in any way from the political process. Accountability would literally apply to accounting in terms of how much money is being spent on campaigns, and limits need to be placed, so that the process is not infected by its insipid undermining of the democratic process. And accountability would also apply in regard to openness of government, with fair access of all to their representatives, and a tracking of how much time and resources are being spent on the actual work of governance, along with further limits on how much precious time and resources can be spent politicking. Forcing the agents of government to account for their actions in a much more immediate and transparent way would go far to reign in the unprincipled politics that have caused so much confusion, polarization, and cynicism in today's political arena, and would begin to repair the foundation of democracy upon which the nation stands.

6. Commerce without Morality - Commerce without Conscience

While Gandhi spoke in terms of morality, I wish to move away from such terminology, for the reason that I have already stated, and also because of the danger of moral relativism. Morality is not universal.
It is dependent on society's mores, understandings, and distinct viewpoints. Not only does morality differ from society to society, but from individual to individual, as each one of us is free to develop our own belief systems within pluralistic societies that include many different religions and philosophies. Yet, some sort of code of conduct, some moderator, some set of principles, must apply to everyone in society, where we must all treat each other with a certain amount of respect, regardless of our personal moralities. A different framing of this concept would be to turn to "conscience," instead.

In this context, "conscience" does not imply guilt so much as empathy and compassion. When we are considering how to treat others in society, conscience can be our guide, as this goes beyond any religious moral code or belief system. The logic of "do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is as universal as any principle gets, having been present in systems of thought from Confucianism to Buddhism to Judeo-Christian-Muslim traditions to New Age philosophies to any thoughtful consideration of how to be a conscientious person. Similarly, when we have conscience about how our actions will effect the different strata of society and the environment, those larger entities within which we all operate, we connect ourselves with our surroundings and thus have a vested interest in doing those things that will help to keep those bodies vibrant and healthy.

This connective principle applies to all aspects of our lives, extending into how we conduct the commerce that is required in modern society to obtain most if not all of our vital needs. The idea that commerce is not a part of the human experience, that the same codes of conduct do not apply to the businesses that we create, participate in, and interact with, because these entities are not actual human beings, makes no sense, whatsoever. The strongest moderator of them all, beyond principle, beyond meek attempts at accountability that consist of fines which are simply worked into the cost of doing business, beyond awareness, which informs, but does not motivate to act conscientiously - conscience must be the moderator of commerce, as it is not something separate, but something that is at the very heart of the human experience and what society is all about.

Economic understandings that separate the "market" out from our daily lives and assume that scientific theories and numeric formulas hold all the answers to how money flows through society have been called into question again and again. Their failures to describe, let alone predict, economic realities might be remedied if they were to be reunited with human considerations, such as defining costs in terms of loss of productivity due to workers' health issues and attitudes, and with even more expansive evaluations of cost, such as the costs to the ecosystem imposed by pollution and environmental destruction. This expansive view of cost analysis might just find that there is a correlation between conscience and the well-being of our businesses in the same way that individuals find themselves to be happier when they are conscientious members of society.

7. Worship without Sacrifice - Spirituality without Connection

The name of "Mahatma" meaning "Great Soul," was given to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi while he was agitating for improvements in the desperate living conditions of poor workers in 1918, against largely British landlords, their militias, and their government supporters. He was arrested for his "agitating," which consisted of making detailed studies of the atrocious living conditions, leading clean-up campaigns, helping village leadership to initiate new school and hospital building, and advocating for the rights of the untouchables. He practiced Hinduism all his life, insisting that all religions were equal, their main purposes being to encourage compassion and brotherhood, while also all having their weaknesses to hypocrisy and dogma. As the title of his autobiography indicates, "The Story of My Experiments with Truth," he was dedicated to the search for Satya, or Truth. And he sought purity, simplicity, and self-sufficiency, practicing spiritual as well as politically-motivated fasting.

Mahatmas Gandhi was, of course, an extraordinary man, and his radical simplicity would be unacceptable in today's world, where appearances are all-important and we are bombarded by commercial messaging from all sides. Jimmy Carter was laughed out of office when he suggested that we all turn down our thermostats in the winter and wear sweaters instead. When the mantra of a whole society is "consumerism," because going without is pessimistic, unsupportive, and unpatriotic, it is extremely difficult to change attitudes and habits that seem to be rights rather than privileges. I can't help but note that Micheal Moore, who certainly isn't one for spending big on fancy wardrobes or expensive haircuts, is the closest thing to a modern-day Gandhi as we are likely to have, as he has been advocating an action plan that combines going without in order to get our personal finances back under control after such over-dependence on credit, involvement in the processes of government, and a program of person health as a microcosm of public health. In his most recent film, Micheal Moore, like Gandhi before him, has tied economic justice with religious-based ethics. Certainly, such concepts can
be seen as a kind of "sacrifice" that can be practical as well as spiritual.

Although this is a holistic approach to social ethics that seeks spiritual guidance, expressed as "worship" by Gandhi, once again, my concern about resonance in a society that emphasizes materialism over spirituality drives me to seek some other way of framing the issue that he was getting at that does not tie worship and spirituality to sacrifice. The idea is to find an approach that nurtures the whole person, so that however we each see ourselves, some sort of a spiritual dimension would be present in our attempts to find a social code that makes sense. My feelings on how this spiritual dimension can be interpreted in the most wide range of possibilities, by adherents to many different religions, or to no religion at all, is to advocate for spirituality as connection.

This connection would be with what we each understand to be "God," and with each other, and with nature. Any sacrifice that would come from the seeking of spirituality would be generated by the desire to connect, and therefore to give something of oneself, to look beyond personal gain, to purify ourselves with the aim of achieving deeper connections through such practices as meditation or prayer or ritual or song and dance or simply taking a moment to be in awe of the universe around us. At the heart of what it means to be a human being is to connect, in mirror of the synapses in our brains. Connecting is conscience, is accountability, is understanding, is humanity, is awareness, is wisdom. The connective principle is what I believe God to be, a higher purpose than the individual, that which we all seek in the form of love, comfort, community, one-ness of being.

This kind of spirituality does the opposite of separating us into different religions and sects. It manifests the idea that Gandhi expressed about the purpose of all religions being to instill compassion and brotherhood. Tragically, he was not successful at convincing the Hindus and the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent that their religions were of this nature, instead of allowing distrust and enmity to cause the division into what is today India and Pakistan. Gandhi was, in fact, murdered because of this rivalry, which he was trying to mediate, and today, these nations are still plagued with ethnic and religious violence.

Nonetheless, I believe in the will of the people to work together to bring an end suffering, to put a stop to violence that only leads to more violence, to push our societies toward progressive change by challenging the status quo and insisting, non-violently, that society must re-order itself so that all will enjoy the benefits of peace and more equitable prosperity. As for the current situation in the United States, the biggest hurdle that must be overcome is the influence of lobbyists and campaign donations on the political process. There needs to be a concerted, focused campaign toward reforming this system, led by a massive citizen's movement, because the politicians are not going to do it on their own. But behind this focused campaign, let there be a set of guiding principles. These are a start, a push toward the process of innovation to come up with new kinds of ideas that might resonate even more strongly. For if we consider the huge success of freeing India from British ownership that Gandhi did achieve through years of influential writing and speaking about his new ideas, acting positively, and sacrificing his freedom as he languished in jail for years, only to come out fighting once again, and then go on to look at all those who he inspired who have also been successful at instituting changes large and small, then our tasks will also appear to have achievable solutions.

Peace is a State of Mind

2009-10-31T07:48:00.000-07:00

President Obama's success depends upon the bravery of trust in the process of creating peaceful change.

I recognized the power of his motivations early on, and I have supported him despite several faltering steps that he made at the beginning of his presidency. It was only when I learned that President Obama had made a deal with the pharmaceutical companies to help pass his health care reform that my support had wavered, as I wondered just how far President Obama would go in playing this kind of politics, after winning the presidency on the strength of his inspiring speech titled, The End of Small Politics. But, when he won the Nobel Peace Prize, my trust in the bigger process prevailed.

I had allowed myself to wander, briefly, away from my own arguments about why President Obama deserves our trust and support, even though many of his actions seemed contrary to his message of “change.” I had seen in his visage a figure who did have big plans to end small politics, but who was a practical visionary, who understood that he had to work carefully within the system as it exists. I saw a man with ideas that were more expansive than most people could even comprehend, a longer-term plan that involved patiently negotiating the change that he had promised, and a keen intelligence about how to face the world's colossal complexities. I had seen great promise in his cross-racial identity. And I had hoped that I was right and everybody else was simply wrong who immediately jumped to the conclusion that, because everything was so complicated and his actions were confusing, he had been a fraud during the election, that there never was any “change we can believe in.” By taking this attitude, they have joined the ranks of those who had always disliked and mistrusted Barack Obama, for whatever reasons were in their hearts, and are thus failing to provide the support that he told us that he was going to need to enact that change. As I wrote on my blog, “Change We Can Believe In” is not a spectator sport.

For those of us who believe that this could and should be a less violent world, that nations could solve their differences through peaceful negotiation instead of through war, that a great nation does not need the greatest show of military might to sustain its greatness, it seems that our ideas are always being brushed aside as naive, as politically unfeasible, as unrealistic idealism. And now, we who see in President Barack Hussein Obama a truly transformative figure, because we understand the stupendous scope of his vision and see the alert shine of competence in his eyes, are again and again being sidelined by so many skeptics who do not believe that President Obama is interested in creating peace in the world, and that the Nobel Peace Prize was just so much wishful thinking.

When the President of the United States already has a record of working on nuclear disarmament, and this President had immediately, upon taking office, moved to show his commitment to changing policies of the previous president that were offensive to the ideas of democracy and world citizenship by signing the statement about closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay and then stressing the importance of the State Department in creating less militaristic, much more negotiation-oriented foreign policy, and furthermore, when this President reaches out to the Muslim world with a truly inspiring speech in Cairo, then backs off of an aggressive and destabilizing plan to place missiles in Eastern Europe, and actually takes action to engage with repressive regimes in Iran, Burma, and the Sudan in order to apply this nation's power peacefully, I say that this is major change toward a more stable and peaceful world that is more than worthy of a prize.

President Obama is making huge strides in several important areas in the world already, yet I find that people focus only on the difficult domestic situation wherein the military, as well as other organizations that operate in the murky, secret realm of “national defense,” such as the CIA, are made up of career operators who have other ideas than creating peace in the world. President Obama faces the conundrum that he is expected to act militaristic, as the Commander in Chief of the world's largest military, so it is difficult for people in this society to see him as an agent of peace. I would go so far as to say that peace is, in fact, regarded in this society merely as an ideal that dreamers and artists dwell in, not a viable reality.

The question that we must ask ourselves is, why is the idea of peace so unthinkable? Could it be that our society is afraid of peace? In a society that is afraid to trust anyone, a society where violence is a social norm, born of the swagger of entitlement, there is a deep-seated fear of what might happen if everybody were to lay down their arms, as well as their cynicism. Therefore, we must tear down this wall of fear, and find in ourselves the strength of character to admit that it is war and state aggression that is not viable. It is not naive to realize that modern warfare is not a noble endeavor, as it invariably either devolves into an asymmetrical morass or an unthinkable nuclear confrontation. There are no longer any “good wars,” and I believe that President Obama does understand this.

The situation in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, is not a simple matter of drawing down troops and walking away from a disaster of our own making. Whatever solutions there are will involve patient unraveling and insistent determination. And while it is a long-term process, we must all not only support but actively work diligently to help enact a change toward greater stability, because ultimately, peace is a state of mind.

Secrecy, Democracy, and Fascism: It Looks Like You've Blown A Seal

2009-09-22T16:59:00.000-07:00

The “national conversation” about the direction in which the United States is moving has grown ridiculouser and ridiculouser, if it can even be called a “conversation” at all. In fact, the definite lack of anything even resembling a “conversation” has turned the entire country into a madhouse of hyped-up fears and misdirected anger that are tearing the fabric of democracy into tiny, tattered pieces. While they see themselves as “patriots,” defending what they believe to be the real values and integrity of the United States of America against the agenda of a group of less-righteous reformers, these quite recently fired-up conservative activists are doing the nation a terrible disservice by preventing any constructive conversation from occurring, thus subverting the process of deliberative democracy and laying the groundwork for the very kind of social disharmony that Mussolini played upon in Italy and Hitler utilized in Germany.

The largest point that the “Teabaggers” are missing is the concept of “speaking truth to power,” where such tactics as citizen protests and street marches are necessitated by groups who have no voice in a national conversation, due to repression or social inequality instituted by the state, itself. But the people who are causing such a scene now are by no means a repressed group. They already have a seat at the table and are fully able to make their voices heard through regular channels of communication, through public discussion forums, through the news media, through access to their representatives, etcetera. Unlike the Iraq War protesters, for example, whose reasonable opposition to the attacking of a nation without any discernible proof of the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction or connection between Saddam Hussein and the actual 9/11 attackers was completely ignored by the Bush Administration and subverted by the war-mongering media, having been labeled as “unpatriotic” for wanting to be sure about these things before sending our troops into battle, not to mention destroying the lives of innocent people in Iraq and destabilizing the entire Middle East, there is no silencing and no sidelining of the groups who are taking to the streets now. The Obama Administration has been trying to invite conversation with conservative groups, and because of the fear that the president would be labeled as a “socialist” by these groups that it is actually the progressive, single-payer supporters who are being left out of the discussion.

So, whereas legitimate protest movements can only arise organically through bottom-up, grassroots community organization of repressed voices, which is actually the case for the single-payer movement, what is occurring now is an attempt by a set of top-down, well-funded, politically-connected, behind-the-scenes power brokers – insurance and health industry lobbyists, small-government ideologues, and other social and economic conservatives – to stir up unwarranted fear and underlying prejudices in order to simply shout down their opposition, instead of allowing any conversation to occur at all. This is a dangerous situation, indeed, for let us not forget that the Nazis came to power within the framework of a democratic government, and were enabled to commit their atrocities against the Jewish people by demonizing them as internal enemies of the state, just as progressives are being demonized by the right today. Italy was not a democracy when Mussolini rose to power, but there, too, internal enemies of the state were declared and targeted, Jewish people being primary among them, as well as anyone who did not go along with Mussolini's single-minded plan to create a better, stronger, and more pure Roman Empire.

In the face of these disgraceful and entirely undemocratic tactics, where facts do not seem to hold any sway and even the very nature of what democracy is supposed to be about has been co-opted by religious and economic ideologues, those who believe themselves to be centrist as a way of bringing the nation together have been bending farther and farther over under their pressure, which means that the result of the Obama presidency, so far, has been a reactionary lean to the right instead of the opening up of the national political discussion that progressives believed that Mr. Obama represented during the election.

Up until, well, today, when I read Matt Taibbi's recent articles on the fuckfest that “health care reform” has become (Sick_and_Wrong; PhRMA's Big Bribe Comes In) I had been arguing that President Obama has been cunningly biding his time to be able to work forward an eventual and practical progressive agenda, patiently negotiating the political landscape, showing Solomon-like leadership qualities, and living up to his promise to be everyone's president, not just the partisan Democratic party leader. However, I have finally come to the conclusion that he has, indeed, fallen prey to the Presidential Bubble, surrounded as he is by his army of advisers and assistants, out of touch with his campaign promises and his earliest grassroots progressive supporters. As Matt Taibbi so expressively points out, President Obama has already sold the country out on health care reform, and unless something changes drastically very soon, there will be no meaningful reform at all, rather, things look to get even worse for the citizens of the United States.

This is disastrous for democracy, for the nation, for the Democratic party, for progressives, and for virtually everyone except the healthcare industry. I am glad that I was able to get out of the United States and into a country where reasonably-priced healthcare is available (Uruguay) before this shit-storm hit the fan. The man who campaigned on a platform of change – and, very specifically, on health care reform - has turned out to be more timid about this change than his rhetoric promised. He has let the political hacks persuade him to retain the status quo, to not upset the apple cart too much, to take bribes from the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that his campaign coffers will be full. He has acquiesced to the demands of the noisy, violent, and misguided right, which is beyond disappointing. While I believe that Barack Obama is in no way fascist, I do believe that by allowing this health care reform “debate” to be guided by the industry lobbyists and their reverberating echo chamber on the right, who do not see the connection between individuals' access to health care and the health of the nation, itself, by failing to show leadership and direction on this, one of the most important issues that he campaigned on, Mr. Obama is allowing insipid fascism to sneak into his presidency and infect everyone that it touches more severely than the swine flu virus ever could.

Looking back again at History's lessons, let us remember that both Italian fascism and German Aryan fascism grew out of a desire to find a centrist, “Third Way” that would bring all segments of society together as one in service of a stronger, more unified, more pure, more directed, and supposedly more superior nation. Both of these fascist movements originally portended to represent this centrist middle way between the conservative, wealthy old guard who sought to maintain their positions of exclusive power, and the organizations of low-class laborers who were demanding more opportunities to participate in their own governance, the great promise of a new type of government called “democracy.” Fascism grew out of the desire to quell divisive polarizations, and the draw of this centralizing idea around the strength of the unified nation makes the present day struggle between the left and the right and the desire of this president to draw them both together, however that can be achieved, concerning to behold from this historic perspective. For what was accepted as the “middle ground” was, in truth, quite a bit further to the right than what was publicly admitted by the fascists who needed the support of the masses, the workers, at the same time that they much more discretely sought the wealth of the elite. It is this behind-the-scenes connection with sources of wealth, while purporting to be working in the interests of the general population, that is of greatest concern to me, and it defines the connection between Secrecy, Democracy, and Fascism that I have been exploring in these essays.

The key here is to determine what fascism really is, and to not make false accusations. President Obama is not a fascist, as he has been accused of being by elements on the right. Socialism is not the same thing as fascism. And Obama is nowhere near being a socialist, anyway, having, for example, rejected offhand the single-payer option and accepted those pharmaceutical industry bribes. It is, frankly, ridiculous to even insinuate that a single-payer health insurance plan is somehow tyrannical socialist fascism. What it is is the government using its massive size to drive down the cost of health care, a notion that is actually highly capitalistic. What we have right now is actually more tyrannical and anti-capitalistic, where insurance companies interfere with the real supply-and-demand equations and create an inefficient, bloated, and politically protected system that costs the consumer more than what the services and products are actually worth, considering that the whole rest of the world pays less for their healthcare needs than the citizens of the United States are forced to pay. Just look at the financial disclosures of these companies – they are up there with the oil companies in percentages of pure profit that they are raking in as more and more U.S. citizens fall behinderer and behinderer.

If government officials insist on listening only to the health industry lobbyists, with their campaign contributions and exclusive party favors in hand, who have been infecting the “national discussion” about health care reform with self-serving vitriol that plays upon the emotions of people who are easily led astray by media personalities who gleefully revel in the effects that their enormous, gaseous egos have upon the single-minded and ill-informed, well, then that is what is fascist in this equation: the secretive collusion of business interests with government, along with their emotionally-laden, propaganda, dispersed by their allies in the media posing as independent agents, preaching uber-nationalism and phaux-populism and laying false blame for the nation's financial problems upon illegal aliens and big-government teat-suckers and hippie-dippie, love-in lovin', peace-nickety, morally-deprived, long-haired, dirty, Air America-listening, socialistical, untrustworthy intellectualistic, community-organizing “America”-haters...

To sum up, dear citizens of the United States of America: You are foaming at the mouth, and your engine is smoking, and in every sense of the phrase imaginable, it looks like you've blown a seal!

Secrecy, Democracy, and Fascism: How Fear and Laziness Lead To A Headache-Inducing Web of Conspiracies

2009-08-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

In my essay titled, Secrecy, Democracy, and Fascism: Lessons from History, I began by decrying the polarization in the United States with the view that it is extremism on the religious, economic, and political right that is causing division, while the ideology of the progressive left works toward freedom, democracy, and respect. However, I did not elaborate on this introductory point, only returning to it at the end of the essay, where I addressed Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism. Rather, I went on to express dismay about the New World Order conspiracy theory, how it diverts attention from the real culprits of greed and repression, and then I launched into my exploration of what a failed democracy might be, looking into several terms in their historical usages, and thus arriving at “fascism,” to embark on a more detailed study of its complicated nature. After showing how fascism can creep insidiously into democracy when democratic principles are not adhered to, I summed up my conclusions about what constitutes fascism:

“The tendency toward totalitarianism, militarism, fundamentalism, populism, in conjunction with the economic-political policy of corporate collusion with top members of the state, the perpetuation of the idea that the workers and middle class must depend on those same corporate leaders as the best path between the extremes of oligarchy and socialism, the deceitful way that popular support is gathered, and the opportunistic method of utilizing crises to gain inexorable power and control – all of this describes what fascism is.”

That essay was written back in the fall of 2008. Now, there is a new president, a man who I consider to be an honest broker, a progressive, a natural-born leader with amazing skills of communication, intellect, and patient practicality. He is a relatively dark-skinned man with African ancestry, but not simply a black man, rather, a man of mixed race, which, to me, is a beautiful realization of the connective principle, a representation of complexity, and a hopeful symbol of real, peaceful, progressive change. During the election, he promised government transparency and inclusiveness. He said he wanted to make government work for everybody. He moved people in a way that no politician in recent memory had. Perhaps I am now wrong to stave off the cynicism that has caused so many in the United States to give up all hope for real change because they cannot believe that such a man as I have described could actually exist, that his presidential campaign rhetoric had been politics as usual, and that the “change” that he spoke of was a hollow promise, a ruse. While many of his initial supporters on the left have already become disillusioned, there are all of the people who opposed his candidacy in the first place, who do not trust him, who even fear him, either because they are ideologically opposed to progressive ideals themselves, or because they believe in the conspiracy that Barack Obama is an agent of the dark forces that rule the workings of the world from behind their secretive curtain, that he is actually a Secret Militant Muslim, CIA-sponsored, America-hating, Tyrannical Fascist, or some combination thereof.

So, in this essay, I intend to go back through those different characteristics, which, as I explained in the previous essay, do not each on their own indicate fascism, but which do tend to be expressed in some degree or other in fascism, to take a close look at how Barack Obama is not a fascist, and then to examine how this conspiracy theory, combined with the politics of the United States' democratic system, has brought its society to this level of insanity.

Let me begin with populism, since it is this characteristic that those who see fascism in the face of President Obama seem very concerned about. Yes, Barack Obama was swept into office by what might legitimately be called a massive wave of populist support. This wave was even more populist, in the sense of a grassroots groundswell, than any other popular support for a candidate in recent memory, because Barack Obama overwhelmed the Democratic Machinery itself, defeating seven other candidates and the heir apparent, herself, moving literally from the fringes to the center of attention, with historic amounts of small donations at the beginning. This presidential campaign was a particularly heady one, after eight years of Republican stewardship of a nation that was plunging into the abyss of economic uncertainly. The stakes were high, and people actually cared, getting involved within their communities and showing up by the tens of thousands to hear a man speak who actually made sense to them and gave them hope. All of this was, indeed, frightening to his political opponents, and so they did their best to paint the scene as a mob-mentality, his enthusiasts as blind lemmings, his campaign's stage-craft as nefarious, dangerous, cult-of-personality-building propaganda. Well, duh – it was an emotionally-charged national political campaign, brilliantly run, headed up by a man who actually HAS a magnetic personality and is able to communicate eloquently, sound sincere, look good, and appear presidential, all qualities that are sorely lacking in most of our politicians. The whole point of what has long been referred to as “political pageantry,” since well before Mr. Obama and his team came along, is to get the supporters riled up and active. As far as mindlessness and a mob-mentality is concerned, I never witnessed any unruly behavior or heard any sloganeering or hateful rhetoric at his gatherings, nothing as inane as the bizarre “Drill, baby, drill!” that the Republicans were mindlessly chanting at their convention, due to a lack of any other issue that excited them. As the Ayn Randers like to point out, envy is one of the deadly sins, and first the Clnton campaign, then the Republican Party were as green as Kermit the Frog when they saw the amazing power that Barack Obama had over people. Populism, in the simple sense of a popular majority, is precisely how United States presidents get elected, when they are not being appointed by the Supreme Court. And just because a candidate is more popular than, say, the Beatles, does not mean that there is something frightening afoot. It simply means that more people than ever are getting involved in the democratic process, and that somebody actually shows real leadership abilities.

Militarism – Candidate Obama had to present himself as tough and capable enough to be the Commander In Chief of the world's most powerful military. It is a job requirement of any president of the United States of America. I would characterize the culture in the United States as being pretty militant in general, and Obama had to appeal to this character to get elected. But one of his major campaign points was the pulling out of the United States military from Iraq, because we had no business being there, and to instead re-focus on the Taliban in Afghanistan. The reality is that that is an even bigger quagmire than Iraq, and in my opinion, we do not really have any business being there, either, but the Democrats cannot afford to be peaceniks when it comes to national presidential elections. Other than that, President Obama has very clearly put an emphasis on the State Department and the Special Envoys to help negotiate peace in both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in Pakistan, deliberately rejecting the belligerent, militaristic foreign policy stance of his predecessor. Additionally, he has been trying to clear up the mess that the military confinements of the men at Guantanamo Bay present to the United States, returning the rule of law where the military tribunal system had been failing miserably. And as to the United States themselves, there has been no sign of any military crackdown on anyone, no rise in police brutality, nothing – not even domestic spying – that would indicate the usual signs of brutal fascism. It is, in fact, citizens who are ideologically opposed to everything about President Barack Hussein Obama who are becoming militant in the United States at this time, not the President nor any of his supporters.

Fundamentalism – In my previous essay, I tied the willingness to use violence toward some “higher cause” with fundamentalism, and again, the opponents of President Obama are the ones showing themselves to be fundamentalists, not the president. I, myself, am a dyed-in-the-wool liberal progressive, and I consider Barack Obama to be a practical progressive. However, he has, from the moment he was elected, made a concerted effort to reach out, to talk to everyone, to negotiate and deliberate, to bend toward whoever is willing to constructively discuss issues with him, to be inclusive. This, to the chagrin of us lefties, at times. But he said, “I will be your president, too.” to the entire nation, and that is certainly far from the exclusive attitude that George W. Bush and Karl Rove had taken, and far from the usual politics on Capital Hill. Although the right is throwing a tizzy fit about his emergency spending in light of the unprecedented economic crisis the country is facing, the left is also angry that he has not done more to reign in the financial institutions that were bailed out with taxpayer dollars (during the still-Bush Administration, mind you). Another example of his straying from the liberal game plan was his turnaround on his promise of transparency, where he decided that he should keep the most recent prisoner abuse pictures secret, as well as deciding with the CIA on some other issues that angered us liberals. That is not fundamentalism. That is practicalism, and I give him credit for that, even though I disagree with him. If anything, his fundamental issue is to make the government work properly again, more democratically, as well as more efficiently, and there is really no fundamentalism present, in the sense that I described it, as reductionist ideology riddled with contradiction, in anything that Mr. Obama has said or done.

In the health care reform debate, the President is most definitely not the fundamentalist. The reform was one of his election mandates, and it must be done. The health care system in the United States is an absurdity. Access to health care is a human right, not something to make maximum profits off of. Lack of health care in the United States is weighing the nation's productivity, as well as its spirit, down. It is one of the founding principles in the United States Constitution, the part about, “We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.” That means that it is one of the government's jobs to promote the well being of the people of this nation. The fact that it is the insurance companies, the for-profit health centers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that are behind the “grassroots” protests, where uninformed people are screaming and shouting and threatening violence because they are being told that this is some kind of government tyranny, speaks for itself. (Look it up – politifact.com, snopes.com, factcheck.org.) The President has not said anything like, “You're either with us or against us.” He has continually said that he invites constructive conversation, yet all he gets in return is yelling and screaming and threats with guns.

Totalitarianism – Observers have pointed to the unusually large number of “czars” that President Obama has appointed to help him sort out the mess that George W. Bush left him as a sign that he has made a power grab that amounts to totalitarianism. To those who distrust him, I concede that this looks scary. However, as with the fears about his mob-mentality following, one need only observe actual reality to see that, at least so far, nothing nefarious has happened. These so-called “czars” made a cleaver talking point for his political opponents, namely Senator McCain, the man who doesn't know how many houses he owns, so he must know something about delegating authority, and House Minority Whip, Eric Cantor, who is desperate to keep his name in the news cycles as a future Republican presidential contender. The reality is that they are presidential aids that have been appointed to keep particular focus on specific issues, as a practical way for the President to efficiently deal with many different issues at once. None of the czars have done anything crazy, other than to try to solve complicated problems. So the man can multitask – not scary, not totalitarian, at least not so far.

A real totalitarian state subordinates all of its individual parts to the service of the state. The cult-like leaders that usually represent totalitarian states are god-like embodiments of that state. Everything is about the state, itself, which demands unquestioning loyalty to itself and its leader. That is the face of totalitarianism, and I do not see any of that in the Barack Obama presidency. No-one is being silenced. No-one is being forced to submit to the demands of the state. The “death panels” that Sarah Palin thinks are a part of the government health insurance package are a myth, a scare tactic that anyone who seeks real information can see to be the exaggerations that they are. Everyone has continued to live their life just as they were before he was elected, well, as long as they have not lost their job or their health care or their bank accounts, which has by no means been a totalitarian plot to ruin everyone's wonderful Bush-era sunny days. There has been a certain fascination with Barack Obama and his family, which some might see as a cult following, but I do not see it as any more than the media's obsession with Brittany Spears or Micheal Jackson or Governor Sanford's love life.

None of these overt characteristics that may be present in a fascist state actually stands up to any close examination of the Barack Obama presidency, particularly the two possible characteristics that have been singled out and exaggerated by his political opponents that say that he is fascist. However, there are the more complicated, more covert factors to consider. First is the set of characteristics that are actually areas of some concern to me, because they are more systematic problems as well as holdovers from the previous administration, having to do with political-economic policies that tie business interests with agents of the government in a way that undermines democracy itself. Corporate collusion with government officials, the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman school of thought about trusting the business elites to lead to the highest form of freedom, and the opportunistic use of crises to grab more wealth and power all fit into the conversation about what happened with the financial institution bailout that occurred just at the end of Bush's days, and then with President Elect Obama's earliest decisions about who would lead his all-important economic team. It was the bailout, with its total lack of oversight over all that money being doled out to the irresponsibly greedy financiers by other financiers, that was so infuriating, and which lead me to write about insidious fascism sneaking into our beautiful democracy in the first place, not any spectre of a populist candidate that made me think of Hitler or Mussolini speaking of the need for purity and cleansing of the nation in front of giant crowds. Then came the Obama economic adviser decisions, which caused me to question my faith in the man, as so many others were loosing theirs or pointing to that action as a distinctive lack of any promised “change” whatsoever. In order to maintain continuity, the reasoning went, Mr. Obama chose men from Goldman Sachs and the likes, the same group of people that had created the whole mess in the first place and then cleaned up to their own outrageous advantage. It seemed that the president-elect was doing exactly what the liberal left was afraid of, which was being corrupted by the same powerful business interests that had helped to get him elected – not much of a change at all. Those seeds of fascism do exist, and they must be watched closely, to see if they sprout, or to see if they will get weeded out by this president if they do sprout.

The final issue is one of deception. This is difficult, because it might lead to my having to face the fact that I have been deceived. If this is so, then either Barack Hussein Obama was simply toying with my heart, whispering sweet nothings in my ear, buying me chocolates and flowers, all as a ruse to get himself, well, we all know where that all leads. No-one likes to have their heart broken, thinking there is love when it was really just lust, or greed, or self-aggrandizement. Yet, we have to continue to try...

A much worse-case scenario is that the Obama presidency is not just a matter of one man's political ambitions, but rather, a conspiracy by the darkest of figures, who worked in the shadows to set Barack Obama up with a fake birth certificate, funneled money from his “rich father in Africa,” placed him in the nation's most prestigious law school, put him to work for the CIA through the guise of being an editor at Business International Corporation, got William Ayers to ghostwrite his fake biography, had him live in a small apartment in Chicago and pretend to be a “community activist,” moved him through the corrupt Illinois political process, and then orchestrated his presidential campaign, all in order to place him as their puppet in the White House in order to continue to amass even more power, to enslave the world's population to death, destruction, and indentured servitude from behind their evil curtain of already omnipotent hidden power.

Sadly, I am not making this conspiracy stuff up. Sadly, people fall prey to this kind of complicated conspiracy because they fear what they do not understand, they sense that, somehow, there have been lies and manipulations that were hidden by secrecy, and then the perpetrators of the conspiracy are able to convince them that any “information” that comes from outside the circle of conspirators themselves is suspect, and that it is they who shed light in the dark corners of the world. It was the secrecy itself that lead to the mistrust in the first place, the kind of secrecy that the Bush Administration was so fond of, but which goes well beyond that, with the secret workings of the CIA and other black operations by the United States government to destabilize democratic governments that have been considered to be dangerous to the economic prosperity of the United States throughout the world. In fact, an archive of classified documents from the Nixon Administration has just come to light, about the abhorrent behavior of United States government operatives in South America. The truth that these secret operations exist should appall all citizens of this nation that holds itself so proudly to be the beacon of Freedom and Democracy to the world, and now would be a good time to call for an end to the web of operators that work in the shadows of the world, even within the United States, one must assume, affecting political outcomes of democratic elections and spreading rumors and lies, and even actively removing leaders, such as Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, or Salvador Allende of Chile, or stopping the left-wing “Frente Amplio,” which, ironically, is now in power in Uruguay, in order that the people of the United States may have more gasoline to guzzle and more sugar to consume and cheaper goods, produced by laborers whose lives have been kept miserable so that we could live more comfortably.

Pardon my anger. It is this secrecy, along with the sheer hypocrisy, that leads to the anger and the distrust. But the anger and distrust must be directed at the proper culprits. To simply throw anger and distrust around, willy-nilly, eventually consumes the individual. Finding the proper target can be extremely difficult and frustrating, especially when the anger and distrust are being manipulated for some ulterior purpose. But being lazy or giving in to the frustration in the search for a culprit is the easy way out. And all of this is compounded by the state of the culture in the United States today, for as life grows more and more complicated, with new technology, the world wide web of infinite imagery and information and entertainment, new and more complex understandings the universe, and simply more and more people, it seems that the basic response to all of this complexity is to compartmentalize and to reduce and to simplify in order to try to make some sense out of it all. Sound bites, text messaging, and Twitter all exemplify this tendency to abbreviate and reduce, and it leads to a sort of mental laziness, an unwillingness to try to understand the details and the complexity of the world. So rumors and misinformation spread more quickly than ever before, fed off of this reductive tendency, and spurred on by the gullibility inherent in the notion that, because you perceive that you have been lied to and deceived by “them,” you can therefore only trust “us.”

Barack Hussein Obama is a figure upon whom the conspiratorial lies and misperceptions are grafting at lightening speed. The conspiracy theory that I had been so concerned about in my first essay was the 9/11 conspiracy, which had expanded into the idea that the elections didn't matter, because the powers that be were going to manipulate everything to their own benefit. They supposedly have the awesome power to affect everything, from the government policymakers, to the votes that disappeared into the Diebold voting machines, to the whole charade of Sarah Palin having been put forth, all parts of their evil plan. And now that Barack Obama emerged as the winner, he is assumedly their agent of choice. Now, I distrust the voting machines, because there is no way to verify the votes. However, to take my distrust of the Diebold machines, and place it in the hands of an international cabal of powerful puppet masters lets the Republican operatives, who have been in charge of the voting system and completely capable of stealing votes all on their own, off the hook. But the perception that the election was illegitimate, bizarrely, not only fits the narrative of the One World Order conspirators, but the same rumors about villainous manipulations of the whole political process have been swallowed line, hook, and sinker by Barack Obama's political opponents, who are gullible to the tale because they neither like nor trust this man who has darker colored skin, international family connections, and ideas that are admittedly vaguely socialist, but which are being conflated with fascism for purely political gain.

The whole thing is beginning to make my head spin. That Hitler used conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers and others whose international ties amongst the Jewish diaspora were supposed to have caused them to have undermined the Germans during and after the Great War, in order to enslave the German workers, and now, we have conspiracy theories about international bankers who have been undermining the United States so that their evil enslavement can be exacted, wherein the belief is that the international conspirators are also the fascists, is headache-inducing to think about, at the very least. Where does the irony end – and where oh where is my bottle of aspirin? People have been whipped into a frenzy over government involvement in lowering the price of health insurance as a form of government tyranny, yet they didn't mind the spying, infiltration of organizations trying to counter repression and injustice, and deregulation of the banking and mortgage industries that looted everyone's pensions and 401K plans. And a smart guy, from a single-parent home, who made his way through the world with his brains and his good looks, who has some refreshingly different ideas about how government can function, well, he just isn't to be trusted... Isn't innovation and being able to rise up to higher levels of society supposed to be, uh, the “American Dream?” The real conspiracy is that the “American Dream” is a nightmare, not because of any international overloards maliciously manipulating everything from above, nor because envious socialists want to get their hands on everything in sight, but because of plain old greed and a thought system that praises selfishness, and the most greedy and selfish will play on the fears and ignorance of those who do not bother to see the world as complex, yet knowable, if they would only continue to seek answers from many different sources and viewpoints.

on religious violence against medicine

2009-06-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

I am now writing as an expatriate in Argentina, as a person who had to get out of the United States because life was just too frustrating for me there, in many different respects. From where I am right now, I can observe major happenings in the States from afar, and not get so caught up in all the drama. There is plenty of drama in the national news here to get caught up in, if I want. From afar, I am not unaware of what is going in in the United States, rather, I have an entirely different viewpoint, filtered through Spanish-speaking news casters in Argentina, Venezuela, Spain, Miami, all further informed by my more familiar news sources on the internet.

And so, on this day, a cool fall day in June, I am compelled to comment on the cold-blooded murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, who has been running a women’s health clinic that women from all over the world come to. The trained physicians and psychiatrists at the clinic literally risk their own lives in order to save the lives of women who need late-term abortions, women who are denied these medical services in the places where they come from. This doctor and all of his colleagues are very principled in their commitments to aid women whose lives are truly at stake, who may have discovered that they have cancer, or that some other life-threatening emergency has come up, or that the birth process endangers them, or that the fetus has not developed a brain or has other drastic medical problems that would deny them any kind of meaningful life. All of these reasons are legitimate, complicated reasons why a woman might need a late-term abortion, and there are many others, as well. The doctor, who was shot while he was at church, was simply being a doctor, a person who does not judge the patient and does not ignore what she – her body, her mind, her intuition, her will - is telling her to do, in the face of pressure from others who, because of religious ideology, are dangerously simplifying a complex issue that they are not very well informed about. Religion is a very powerful thing, but it is not medicine.

Dr. Tiller has been harassed in every way possible by single-minded opponents of women’s rights to safe abortions, from intimidation to threats to actual physical violence to the spreading of misinformation to use of the legal system. Citizen groups have forced him into court several times in recent years, and every time, they have lost their cases. They have been accusing Dr. Tiller of providing late-term abortions without any medical justifications, and they have tried to force the patients’ medical records into the public record, and every time, the doctor has prevailed, the medical records kept confidential, and his practices proven to be medically necessary and legal.

Because of all this, I been thinking about the issue of women’s rights to abortion, and have added a few words to my essay on the subject over on the writers’ website, Helium. Also, see the Democracy Now! show on this subject (as well as Amy Goodman’s blog post) for some insight into who Dr. George Tiller was and what his clinic was doing for desperate women in need. Perhaps this slaying of a medical professional by a religious zealot will bring the national discussion about women’s rights to proper health care into the spotlight in a way that brings the real issues forward, instead of just grazing the philosophical ideologies that people hold on the subject, ideologies that can lead to grave consequences when they are allowed to be pushed forward to the extent that this shooter did. Did that man consider the psychological effects that a bloody murder in a church would have on not only the witnesses in the church, but on the entire nation and the world?

Richie Havens Magic

2009-04-29T11:50:00.000-07:00

The following is an essay I wrote back in March, just before the flurry of activity - the selling of all my belongings and settling of affairs - that has brought me here to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Having been here for just over a week now, I am finally getting settled into the pace and customs of this amazing country, so that I hope to have more time to write.

Today marks the 100 day anniversary of Barack Obama's presidency, and much analysis of his tenure is circulating in the thought-o-sphere. This article fits into the theme of the day because it is in tune with what Robert L. Borsage, Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future, has to say about judging not what our president can do for our country, but what our country can do for our president.

Richie Havens Magic

Richie Havens performed along with an accompanist on guitar at the Suwannee Springfest back in March, and I was lucky enough to get to see him. What a beautiful, shining example of a Wonderful Human Being he is! Jamie and I were standing together down in the amphitheater, and a good friend came and enjoyed the show with us, and then another beautiful friend found us, too. The whole incident was about peace and love and compassion, and was truly a moving experience. I must admit, I didn’t previously know who Richie Havens was. Our young friend knew because of her parents’ record collection. All the older hippie types knew very well who he was – Jamie had been very excited to see him. He had explained to me that Richie Havens is the guy who sings, “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” I hadn’t known what that was all about, but as soon as the man started strumming his guitar with his intense energy, and then singing with his unique voice, so urgently insistent upon empathy and caring, I was very happy that he had come to our sweet little music festival there under the live oak trees, all decorated with Spanish moss, amidst the sand and fine black dirt, the results of the same dark leaf matter that stains the meandering Suwannee River black as tea, while a gentle rain did little to dampen the air of wonderment that enveloped us all – a subtle reminder of the power of our gathering to part the clouds and send the majority of the Lioness’ March Furies around us - quiet rain that cleanses our hippie camp-sweat and dirty sand-feet, then seeps underground to the river, nourishing spring waters that hearty music lovers know will likely rain down upon us, so be ready to get wet... And then, after the rains move out during the night, the haunting morning mist starts the new day with yoga and hungry children and up-all-night seekers of coffee, and as the day progresses, the hot Florida sun burns the mist away, high clouds fly overhead, sudden wild gusts of wind steal unsecured hats, and then the evening brings back the calm, the moisture, the changing of the seasons night time chill.

The two annual Magnolia Music events at the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park display the very best qualities inherent in the United States of America – they move beyond the realm of the enjoyable and into that of the life-changing experience. They are a coming together of the most amazing community of music lovers in a sacred place, gatherings of just the nicest people you would ever want to meet – a few thousand of them, all happy to be there, sharing the love all around. I am sad if anyone thinks that this lovey-dovey-ness sounds corny, but a good dose of it makes those of us who have been there wish that the whole world could be like this, with everybody friendly and happy and at one with the enjoyment of the whole experience. It works nearly perfectly at the Magnolia Music festivals, similar to how it worked at Woodstock, the original, minus all the chaos of the new and the masses, and as it often works when people gather together for something that they enjoy – except that Magnolia Music has the concept down to a fine art, a well-established musical phenomenon and an all around dependably good time. It’s like going to worship at our lovely, outdoor church, complete with shrines to Bill Monroe and Vassar Clemens, where we camp, relax, and commune with each other and with nature, engaged in long days and late nights full of great performances and campfire gatherings by the most excellent, down-to-earth, heartfelt musicians that nobody has ever heard of, unless someone previously dragged them to a similar Americana music festival, (or they happen to be the festival headliner on Friday night), and celebrating the best qualities that humanity has to offer, all without suffering very much beyond maybe some wet clothes, a stubbed toe, lack of sleep, or the pain of having had too much fun the night before.

Literally everyone who is there is happy to be there. The kids love it. The parents love it. The young adults love it, the old hippies, and everyone in all the generations in between love it. The performers love it. Everyone, save perhaps a contrarian or melancholy teenager and the local and mostly unnecessary security guys, loves it. It refreshes our souls and our very faith in humanity to be there. It is something that a bunch of human beings are actually doing right on this planet. We all gather and have a wonderful time, and then we scatter to the winds and return to normalcy, to the black and white reality of the Kansases we call home. We go back to our own welcoming kitchens and our private bathrooms and our comfy beds and our daily routines, and I know that we all try to live lives that carry out the Spirit of the Suwannee to the rest of the world, to whatever degree we can – the love, the kindness, the all getting along – and that is, indeed a wonderful thing.

But this festival was different for Jamie and me, and I have been extra-inspired, maybe by Richie Havens, or by the freedom of not having to depend on making money in the booth that we have had there for the past eleven years (having missed only the very first Springfest). We were free, free, free little birds at this festival, just as we are soon to be expressing the ultimate freedom with our move to Uruguay. We are freeing ourselves from the burdens of possessions. We will be free to make of our lives something different, free to reinvent ourselves, free to truly express ourselves in a way that we have not been free before. For, although those who know Jamie and I well know our general opinions and outlooks, we have been silenced by our need to make sales in our booth, our sole means of income, and even at events like the Magnolia Music festivals, we have only whispered our true feelings. We have been silenced by the unspoken agreement that these festivals are not the place to talk about anything that might cloud everyone’s sunny day with thoughts that are not so happy. It’s not that we don’t know how to have a good time – Jamie is always having a good time, even when he is not. It’s just that I cannot separate my different experiences of life. I refuse to ignore certain realities that exist. Good times can be had, with the understanding that we must not take those good times for granted, that such good times are not sub-realities of some larger reality, but are rather a part of the continuum of our lives. When we attend our church, we must recognize the healing energy that is generated there, energy that could serve a larger purpose outside the festival bubble, if we would only allow the entirety of life to accompany us inside, if we would learn to connect all of our experiences instead of compartmentalizing, if we could see that the problems of inequity and violence around the world exist, even as we are enjoying our fleeting moments of joy and happiness, even if we choose to ignore it all, and so the way to make the world a better place is not to banish, but to acknowledge all of the world’s suffering by dedicating our celebrations to healing the pain of others as well as of ourselves. I believe that we can change the world with empathy, by being connected, by finding room in our hearts for all of reality simultaneously, by seeing our festivals not as a protective bubble of contentment and good weather amidst the world’s storms, but rather as a generator of energy that emanates from the banks of the Suwannee River up into the atmosphere and interacts with all the other energies that are constantly swirling around the planet Earth.

Richie Havens very much impressed me with his demonstration of our human connectedness, and he also did not shy away from the reality of politics. He was, I now know, a vanguard of the sixties social movement, whose gentle persona still has the power to awaken the soul. He appeared as a mystic, all in black, upon the scenic, beloved, lit-up-at-night amphitheater stage, transforming us all as if with a whisper of wise words and mesmerizingly energetic songs of peace, love, and action. Just seeing him there, still kicking – literally, as in his amazing karate kick at the end of the performance, to prove that he really is a master of great strength and beauty – his spoken words reminded everyone there that he had been a member of the Greenwich Village scene, along with other poets like Bob Dylan, and that along with the feelings of love and peace that we all experienced in those magical moments when he was on stage comes the work of utilizing that energy to change the world around us in a significant way. That is what the sixties social movements were all about, motivated by music and art and drug-induced awakenings of the soul and the exploration of true freedom, with the focus on building more peaceful and open societies, not just engaging in hedonism, as those who are too resistant to all that strangeness and change to actually listen to the deeper message believe.

I felt changed after that performance. Richie Havens lifted a cloud of concern that I have carried with me at the Magnolia Music events, the troubled feeling that all the magic and wonderment of the festivals was simply a far-too-well-kept secret, a bubble to remain un-popped, to which those of us in the know could turn to for comfort and a little taste of Heaven on Earth. Indeed, especially for those of us who have been living in the Deep South, this has been an oasis in a desert of closed-minded colloquialism and unacknowledged fear of real freedom. And while it has always felt good to recharge the old “soul-ar” battery, to participate in such a harmonious happening, to see that not everyone in this country is brainwashed by the militaristic, exceptionalistic national narrative that the entrenched powers constantly disseminate in order to hoard their power, it has also always bothered me that the bubble has remained so closed, that that glorious energy has not translated into any kind of momentum for wider social change. Even as music festivals have proliferated over the past decade, each one is its own bubble of joy through music, all of them isolated, each its own separate over-the-rainbow, Technocolor Oz, just dreams to be awakened from to our regular daily grinds, and none of them motivating anyone to do anything at all, once we drive out the gates and onto the highways with all the other traffic of the world. There has been no call to social action, only murmurs of “Can’t we all just get along?” tucked into sweet love songs and bouncy Donna Cajun rhythms that are impossible not to dance to and be cheered by.

Sweet Magnolia, where everything IS beautiful and we CAN all get along, setting for one of the most poignant and bittersweet moments of my life: when the United States began bombing Baghdad, on the eve of Springfest, 2003. I stayed up nearly all night on the eve of the destruction, wondering how it could come to this, a nation of free people, a supposed democracy and shining beacon on the hill, all falling in line behind the unsubstantiated statements of our so-called “leaders” - fear-mongers, oil and other big industry representatives, war-profiteers, capitalist empire-builders, one and all. If I had learned from reports of experts in the field that the aluminum tubes that were being claimed to be part of a secret, mobile, as-of-yet undetected nuclear bomb factory were actually the wrong kind of tubes for nuclear bomb making, then how did that President of the United States of America not know that? If the President had already been caught red-handed, lying to the world through the mechanism of his hyper-marketing message machine, then how could he be trusted by anyone at all by then? And when I heard Bill Bennett incredibly, disturbingly, disgustingly, mangle the words of John Lennon, stating that we needed to “give war a chance,” yet there was no outcry of righteous rage that I could register, beyond the knot that tied itself up in my own gut, I became so grief-stricken, so disparaged, that I had looked toward the Springfest with a glimmer of hope that my feelings would be widely expressed and that the missing outrage would materialize in an explosion of anti-war activism that might stop the madness from unfolding.

But, alas, no such thing happened. My heart ached upon hearing people state that this attack may well be all for the best – those were the high times of the “it’s all good” mentality, after all, a mentality that drove inaction and live-your-own-life sentiment, so that the Bush administration was enabled to get away with all of the undemocratic pillage that they wreaked upon the planet for eight excruciatingly long years. I, too, had participated in not raising a ruckus in the months leading up to then. I had emailed my government representatives, and sent a little bag of rice to the White House along with others who were registering our plea to send food, not bombs. Jamie and I had continued to set up our life-sustaining “magic stand” at those early spring festivals in Florida, where the theme was always fun and sun and good times, and there was no room for ruckuses amongst our slowly declining sales figures, nor for dissent amongst the unabashed Bush administration supporters, confidant that the forces of good inherent in our nation’s character would prevail. My tiny little protests did not make me feel very good about myself, and then I remember driving north past Tampa to Live Oak, and hearing that the student activist, Rachel Corrie, a U.S. citizen, had been run over and killed by an Israeli bulldozer while she was trying to prevent the destruction Palestinian homes and water wells and gardens – my rude awakening to the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government, with the aid and support of the United States of America, home of the free, land of the brave, world leader in the gobbling up of natural resources, and glaring example of what happens when the citizens of a democracy fail to participate in their governance, thus becoming complicit in the running roughshod over poor and beleaguered people all over the world by that same government due to sheer complacency and ignorance of happenings of the wider world.

And so, my solace, the Suwannee Springfest, was a huge disappointment to me that year, when we all only whispered in dark corners about what our nation was doing, largely divorcing ourselves from the reality of the lives that our bombs were destroying. No outcry was heard, at least that I was aware of from inside my little booth/cage, inside the festival bubble, inside the surreality of a country that thinks that it can do no wrong. That dark cloud has haunted me and made me angry from the inside out – to the point that Jamie and I have finally broken free of our gilded cage; free of our cycle of money in, more money out; free of the vast circles driven in pursuit of our own American Dream; free of the necessity for limits on our self-expression; free of the society that has so foiled my visions of what the promise of progress and social change was supposed to entail. I speak out now, inspired by Richie Havens, and by his call, not only for "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!," but also for strength of character and purpose, for speaking truth, and for connecting with the larger world around us. We are all connected, as individuals, and we really should all take responsibility for what our government does, because we are our own government. We all must remember, as was the whole point of the emergence of prophets like Richie Havens back in the day, to embrace the political as the personal, because just living our lives in peace and harmony isn’t getting the job of changing the world done. And just watching passively to see what happens won’t help our new president to achieve all that he can. Connect. Engage. Join with Richie Havens, and now the Dead, and everyone else who is voicing the need for us to keep alive the flame of social change that Barack Hussein Obama’s election ignited.

This final Springfest marked the end of a beautiful thing for Jamie and I, and we both thank everyone who supported our business at the Magnolia festivals through the years – we truly think of everyone at the festivals as our family, and we consider the festivals themselves to be our real “home,” whether we were living in a house or in our vehicle. We will very much miss the Spirit of the Suwanee, as expressed by everyone involved in the Magnolia Music events. But we are travelers who must move on or be consumed with the despair of stagnation. We are just wired that way – wired to move on, to explore new horizons, to visit far corners of the world, to detach ourselves from the comforts of a home and the blessings of being surrounded by friends and family. Without such movement, the weight of our world becomes unbearably heavy for us and crushes our souls. But the vacuum of our physical presence will quickly be filled with a new opportunity for me and Jamie to entertain you all not with personal adornments, the wonders of nature’s artifacts, and other colorful mementos to take home from festivals, but with some of our other skills, such as my writing, and Jamie’s photography. For those of you who don’t know, I actually have a degree in Philosophy: Values and Social Policies, and I guess I have been a frustrated writer for long enough, now – time to de-frustrate myself and open up that proverbial philosophy store I have always dreamed of. Through the wonders of the internet, we can maintain contacts and remain connected. I am planning to try to keep a journal here of our activities in South America, something along the lines of “Lo Que Pasa en Sudamerica – What’s Up in South America,” just little reminders that “America” encompasses more than just the United States; and that the world is big and diverse and interesting and interconnected; perhaps a little musical reportage; possibly some interviews with people we meet; certainly quite a bit of expatriate gadfliery. We will not be absent, just down south a bit farther, and I am looking forward to sharing the view from there. This is not an act of disconnection so much as it is a reconnection with life’s vital forces, a realigning of our fates, a revival of our spirits.

Viva la Vida!

note: Our South America Cultural blog is at: Because The Wrold Is Round...

Felicidades, El Salvador – Viva la Democracia!

2009-03-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

After decades of undue influence by the fascist corporatists in our government, starting with Ronald Reagan’s support for the Death Squads that terrorized the people who were fighting for social justice in the 1980’s, Democracy has finally prevailed in El Salvador, and the leftist FMLN party has won the presidency. Mauricio Funes was never one of the rebel fighters, but a strong philosophical supporter of the cause. He is reportedly a very smart man who had a popular talk show on TV, which represents a freedom of speech that only became possible after the FMNL negotiated peace accords with the ruling ARENA party, along with their ally, the United States, and he says that he wants to retain good relations with the United States, even after all the death and destruction our nation has caused there.

I believe that this is a direct result of Barack Obama becoming President of the United States of America, that the people of El Salvador were inspired and emboldened by his rise to that position, and they voted for the leftist candidate, despite threats from Congressmen Trent Franks of Arizona and Dan Burton of Indiana that El Salvadoran citizens would lose their immigration status here in the United States as well as their right to send remittances home, despite all the government propaganda by the ruling party, and despite the memories of violent U.S. backed suppression that haunt their recent history. Although he himself never came out with a strong statement of neutrality in these elections, the Obama administration did put out a quiet statement to that effect – as I keep pointing out, President Barack Hussein Obama is trying very hard not to appear too socialistical, to present his agenda of “change” as a matter of practicality, not as a radical social revolution.

As the Latin American movement toward true democracy creeps closer and closer to our southern border, this could be an opportunity to prove the point that socialism is not the enemy of the United States. Mexico is also beginning to move toward a rejection of financial tyranny by the United States, cleverly billed as “free trade,” but which has only repressed the vast majority of people of this hemisphere to the benefit of the corporatists here in the States and their wealthy allies in the governments to the south. Mexico has retaliated to the United States’ decision to end the policy of allowing their trucks on our highways, citing some kind of “danger” under protectionist pressure from the Teamsters, by imposing tariffs on items from the U.S. NAFTA has not been good for the people of Mexico, as their farmers could not compete with the corn that is subsidized by our Department of Agriculture and sold to Mexico at bulk prices, much of which is genetically altered, which is in turn ending up infecting what remains of their beautiful and diverse local varieties, developed over thousands of years to be best suited to their unique climates, and which, after the local farmers threw in the towel and sent their kids north to try to support their families, has been susceptible to rises in the price of oil for transporting it from far away, not to mention the further skyrocketing price of corn because the United States decided to divert food crops into our big, gas-guzzling, All-American trucks in a despicable corn ethanol greenwashing campaign.

Perhaps this marks the beginning of the end of the myth of “free trade” and the pretense that the subjugation of the people of the Americas by U.S. corporate powers is the spreading of democracy and freedom. Freedom does not march, it is passed from on human being to another, as shackles are removed, one by one, as ideas are spread, as families are reunited, as fears are dissipated, as participation is widened, as voices are heard, as human rights are respected, as illusions are dispelled, as dreams are realized. Trade is not “free” when one partner strong-arms another, forcing them to adhere to policies that the bully party did not itself adhere to when it was a developing power, that it insists on only now that it has the upper hand. And democracy is not defined by the absence of socialism. In fact, real democracy logically tends toward socialism, if the population is truly informed, the government is truly transparent, and everyone is truly allowed to participate. Doesn’t “government by the people, for the people” mean exactly that the government should work for the people?

Meanwhile, capitalism naturally tends toward fascism, as it seeks more and more money and power through influence of government policy, the spreading of propaganda, and the convincing of the population that they are furthering their own freedom and dignity when the reality is the exact opposite, that the workers have enslaved themselves through debt and the fear that they will not have access to health care; enslaved themselves to the illusion that the products that are pushed onto the marketplace are somehow magically inspired by their wants and needs, like big trucks and I-phones; enslaved themselves to a system that cannot sustain itself without massive consumption of resources; enslaved themselves to the double speak that capitalism is the noblest form of humanity, that it is all about individual rights and personal responsibility, when its dark underbelly is anti-democratic, duplicitous, murderous, insipid fascism, the true face of which appears in developing countries that are under the shadow of the United States and at the mercy of our IMS and World Bank.

Latin America has had no choice but to reject the United States – blow-back is a bitch, and the venom with which Salvadorans utter the words “Ronald Reagan” shows that his legacy lives on there. But the increasing tendency of governments in the western hemisphere to enact socialism, to nationalize their utilities and services so that everyone will have access to them, as a matter of human rights, and to turn away from unfair policies that only serve to delegate the masses to lives of despair and poverty does not mean that these nations are our enemies. In this nascent century, with this new kind of world leader, and with changing political atmospheres around the globe, there is much work to be done to convince the people of the United States of America that our faith in capitalism has led us astray, has been the downfall of the entire world financial system, and that only by joining together with other human beings, learning that the raising up of the weakest among us raises us all up, and ensuring that everyone understands that the benefits that people enjoy in the wealthier nations are intimately linked to how people are treated in the poorest nations - only by these means will we build an international system that benefits everybody and represses none. That is the promise of socialism, linked with democracy, and it is fair-minded and egalitarian, not a scary monster to use as an excuse to kill and terrorize people in the name of corporate profits.

see:
Democracy Now! March 16, 2009 "Leftist FMLN Candidate Mauricio Funes Wins El Salvador Presidential Election, Ending Two Decades of Conservative Rule
"

“Change We Can Believe In” Is Not A Spectator Sport

2009-03-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

Naomi Klein, one of my heroes, believes that the dynamics for a new New Deal to help mitigate the pain of the current financial crisis do not exist today, because President Obama is under immense pressure from the elite wealth and power brokers to continue with the tradition of making policies in their favor, while his “super-fans” keep apologizing and making excuses for his actions that do not reflect the progressive desire for real social change. As the political right, with their ever-so-voluminous noise machine, refuses to trust or even listen to what he has to say with any seriousness, many on the left no longer trust him either, seeing him as just another lying politician who said whatever was necessary to get elected. And then there are the “super-fans.” Ms. Klein framed the issue in this way in her appearance on Democracy Now! back on November 25, when then President Elect Obama was putting together his financial team, which is headed up by Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, both major former propagators of the deregulation, privatization, and “free trade” policies:

“...the issue is Obama is coming to these decisions because he is under enormous pressure from above, Wall Street. How do you transition from a pro Obama campaign movement to an independent social movement that puts counter-pressure on him from below? Those are the conditions under which Roosevelt sold the new deal as a compromise to elite. We do not have those dynamics right now. We have a situation where we have super-fans for Obama, constantly apologizing for every decision that he makes versus a gloves-off elite who are putting real pressure on him behind the scenes. And we are seeing the result.”

I admit, I have been one of those “super-fans,” rationalizing, apologizing and finding excuses not to give up on the hope that he ignited. Yes, he has taken small steps forward in the direction of progressive policies, such as the ending of Bush's ban on stem cell research, promising to close down Guantanamo Bay, undertaking a huge stimulus plan to help keep the economy going, and other measures. But in his attempts to make everyone happy, to assure the right that he is not a “socialist,” nor a wimpy peacenic who wants to dismantle the military and invite the terrorists over for tea, it could be said that he has been too timid with the progressive agenda where it matters the most, too deferential to the very financial and military forces that got us into the horrible messes we are in to begin with. It is easy to feel betrayed, to give up on hope that things will truly change and fall into the despair that the forces of greed and power are just too strong for even the President of the United States to repel – but I have found a way to escape the giving up of faith in President Obama just yet.

Although Naomi Klein was never a big fan of Barack Obama, I think she is right about the dynamics for the kind of change that Mr. Obama campaigned on not being in place. The real problem is that, while the elites have their gloves off in order to fight to hold on to their power, the pressure from below, from the electorate, the progressive left, and the super-fans, has disintegrated into the atmosphere in a sigh of - “Whew, we did it - we got him elected, now let's sit back and watch him go to work.” The thing is, Barack Obama told us that he could not do this alone, that he needed our help - over and over, he said that, and he did not just mean that he needed help getting elected. What everyone who has lost faith in the man fails to understand is that this “change” that he promised, this new kind of post-political governance, this idea that government can work for the people, all depends on the counter-pressure from We, the People. Candidate Obama had been talking about momentum, about participation and engagement, and now, he needs the momentum of all the activists who worked so hard during the election to keep up in order to remind everyone else in Washington that we elected this new guy to change things there - to restore our confidence in our supposedly democratic system. The fact that many on the left are upset about quite a few of the decisions he has made so far should, indeed, be seen as a move toward the very “change” that he promised to bring, that “post-ideological approach to government,” which was something that he has been talking about for several years, now. If his supporters, or his detractors, have not understood this, it may well be because that is the very nature of “change” and of newness: they are different, new, and easily misunderstood by those who are still thinking with the same old mindsets that are steeped in the very ideologies that Obama has promised to leave behind.

In an election where both tickets were promising “change,” it is apparent that the term is rather nebulous, meaning very different things to different people. Both opponents were advocating a change in the way that governing takes place, both claiming to want to bring the country together, to move past party divisions, and to clear out corruption and manipulations of the process of government. But one of the candidates was more convincing than the other. And so, we elected the man who we thought would enact more change than the other. The “change” that we chose was not just a change of the color of the face of the President, nor just a change of the color of the political party he represents. So what about “them changes?” I believe that President Obama is trying to balance the bringing of major change whith trying to instill confidence that he is not interested in sudden and possibly destabilizing Gorbachev-style revolution. After all, Russia lost it's status as the other Superpower when it made such a radical change away from Soviet Communism. Obama cannot be faulted for trying to avoid the fate of Jimmy Carter, either, another man at the forefront of the progressive movement.

W hat is happening is that President Barack Hussein Obama now finds himself facing the ultimate progressive dilemma: how to institute societal change, how to revamp a corrupt system, how to break down the walls built by the elites, behind which neo-liberal fascism masquerades as the highest form of freedom and democracy, but to do so in a fashion that is respectful of the humans who are being manipulated by the forces of corporate (as well as racist, sexist, religious, military) power, and are therefore fearful of any changes to the system that they have become accustomed to. How can the work of changing how our government functions and creating a more equitable society be carried out when those who the president ideologically opposes do not respect or trust him, and when those who wish to hold on to their power, who have been enabled by the corrupted political system, will staunchly resist any attempts at reducing their power that will be required to make our government more accountable to the people instead of to the high-dollar campaign donors, entrenched special interests, and lobbyists?

Well, the answer is for us regular citizens to keep the pressure up from below, the counterbalance to the elite pressure from above, to take our gloves off, too, and to find new ways to create the change that we all want. “Change we can believe in” is not a spectator sport. And non-violent, progressive change requires massive people power. We got our guy into the White House, now we need to push for the causes that will restore our faith in democracy harder than ever before, even as our guy does his job as President of the entire United States of America, Commander in Chief, Chief Executive, and Most Powerful Person on the Face of the Planet. The man has a lot on his plate - he is still building a government, trying to deal with the economic crisis, juggling situations around the world that require the United States to be engaged, running military actions that are extremely complex, trying to convince Congress to follow his leadership, and, indeed, trying to convince the country to trust him and, after inheriting a government that has been sabotaged to the point that it does not function, in order that privatization advocates may point to how the government does not function... This is only the beginning, and the president inevitably lives in a bubble of advisors and influence-brokers who might very well undermine his ability to remain grounded in his grassroots activism.

Was it over-ambitious post-political idealism or simple naivety that caused President Obama to concede on tax cuts and less spending far too early in the negotiations over the stimulus package, to continue to exercise belligerent military power abroad, and to side with the insurance industry on health care reform, as he has decided to forgo trying to institute the single-payer system that this country disparately needs? Perhaps I am the one who is being naive now; or I am committing the same crime of not being able to face reality, clinging to my hopes and personal biases, that I have always accused the supporters of the Iraq occupation of; or my friend was right who refused to vote in the 2008 elections at all, citing The Matrix, convinced that free choice and democracy are only illusions created by the master who built this computer program we call life...

I am just not ready to give up on the belief that Barack Obama deeply understands the concept that regular people, coming together, with the power of respect for all members of society, can change the world. My belief is that President Obama sees the world as immensely complex, to be negotiated carefully and steadily, and he sees himself as an agent of gentle change, progressive change, gradual change, through example and compromise and respect for others as well as for the colossal powers that he faces, that he is carefully addressing from the inside of his presidential bubble. But the trick is that while he acts as the most powerful man on the face of the planet, acting as everyone's president, listening to all the voices that are out there, there is a coded understanding that we will also do our part to put the pressure on from below, so that he will have a body of citizen support to point to when he moves to change the system that is in place. I see President Obama as a practical visionary, a patient man, an agent of nebulous “change” that the government that he is the leader of is highly resistant to, which is why it is so important for We, the People to keep the pressure on. We must prove to our representatives in Congress that we really and truly elected him to change the way government works, and that they should follow his wise leadership. President Obama needs us to demand our agenda, to prove that we are tired of being taken advantage of, in terms of pollution and degradation of our environment, being the victims of a corrupted food supply, not having fair access to health care or educations, forced into being captive consumers of inferior and often harmful products, all because of deregulation and powerful corporate lobbies.

And so, it is not President Barack Obama that I have lost faith in, it is the power of the people of this country to put pressure on him, pressure that he wants, that he needs, that he asked us for, to counteract the other pressures that he faces as president. He knows better than anyone else that he cannot change the system without that countervailing pressure, because he simply cannot institute progressive changes on his own while at the same time being the president of the entire country. He is negotiating complexities beyond the scope of any other, truly taking responsibility for the government he is in charge of, and attempting to lead this country in a way that no previous president has. He is showing leadership qualities that, frankly, the people of this country do not recognize because we do not even know what it is that we are seeing. This post-political leadership IS the change that he promised, it's just that no-one else seems to get it. The point is for the citizens to stay involved in our government, to prove to the corporate interests and the entrenched politicians that the hype and excitement during the election of this president wasn't just a fad or the latest fleeting teen idol phenomenon. If we allow the movement that elected Barack Obama as president to be redefined as such, then all is lost to the powers of corporate greed...

Obama's Real Challenge

2009-02-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

Our nation is facing a crisis that threatens the wellbeing of our citizens and our standing as the most powerful actor on the world stage as much if not more than the crisis that was brought to our shores on September 11, 2001. This financial meltdown doesn't have the dramatic symbolism that the terrorists were able to inflict, not the kind of sudden run on the banks panic that marked the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929. But this only makes the crisis more insidious, not less disastrous, because its pain seeps into our lives so much more slowly, and its causes are so much more hidden that the debate over how to deal with this situation causes the unsettling uncertainty to augment, adding to the creeping malaise that is permeating every pore of our nation.

But each month, record numbers of people enter the unemployment system, more homes go into foreclosure, and more and more individuals and businesses cannot pay their creditors. Our entire social structure threatens to cave in, as circulation of money seizes up, more businesses go bankrupt, more people loose their incomes and their pensions, bills go unpaid, service companies cut back, hospitals become inoperable, food banks become overwhelmed, etc etc. No one is safe from its effects, as property values decline in neighborhoods, financial institutions that are invested directly and indirectly in these properties become insolvent, the stock market fluctuates wildly, hoping and praying for its bottom, and monetary values become virtually meaningless.

In the face of such foreseeable dangers, it would seem that our leaders would come together, listen to a variety of experts who have no special interests to advance or protect, and come up with a philosophy that would be agreeable to everyone involved in working to do everything possible to help mitigate this crisis. But, alas, that hasn't happened, yet. It appears that the idealogical divide between the right and the left is simply too vast, and despite the new president's sincere attempts to change the political tone set by the previous administration and the Republican leaders in Congress (who among us can forget Tom Delay's smiling mug shot), his reaching out to conservatives, meeting with them, discussing the issues with them, and including them, even offering up their precious tax cuts from the get go, without haggling or playing the usual political games with our nation's future, all in the name of bipartisanship.

And what does he get in return? He gets accused of far-left idealogical partisanship. As he alluded to in his first press conference, President Obama is being accused of increasing the size of government simply because Democrats supposedly just love Big Government, a viewpoint that completely ignores the advice of all serious economists for government action in times of a recession. To be sure, if some real social benefit to further depriving the government of revenues by cutting taxes during a recession could actually be proved to be an effective way to deal with the problem at hand, which already entails less tax dollars because of less sales taxes, lower property values, and less income taxes, then let us truly consider that option. However, the idea that cutting taxes at this time will help to stimulate the economy is nothing more than a fantasy of Reaganomics. When the problem consists of a lack of circulation, one does not go and cut the blood flow to the head. We must inject capital into the system and work to keep it fluid through government spending, the only entity capable of doing so on a large scale, at whatever the cost, just as a heart attack patient does not squabble with the cost of his emergency treatment. The conservative narrative that less government is always good simply doesn't hold up under such an emergency situation as this, especially after they allowed so much of our nation's wealth to be squandered on the war in Iraq and the Big Government Patriot Act, which were supposed to have made our nation stronger and safer, but have failed miserably.

Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America precisely because the people of this nation are tired of politics as usual, of incompetent partisan hacks being put into important positions of power by the Bush administration, of the Congress not getting anything done due to partisan haggling, of the utter lack of oversight that has tainted our food supply, brought lead-filled toys from China into the hands of our children, allowed convicted felons to become mortgage brokers, cheered the financial institutions on as they created profit schemes that were so complicated that they lost all connection with reality, and always favored Wall Street over Main Street, lobbyists over constituents. And the fallout of deregulation continues to rain down on us as we find out that the SEC looked the other way as common thugs stole millions of dollars the good old fashioned way - through the "trust me" scheme - and who knows what the future holds. Rachel Maddow has it right with the title of her segment about cleaning up the mess left by the Bush administration, "Scrub, Rinse, Repeat - because this is going to take a while." Could there be any stronger indictment of small-government, deregulation policies than what we see in the news every day? Could ideologues of the party that lost power because of its incompetence and political divisiveness be any less clueless that the whole point of the electorate choosing Barack Obama was because, no really, we actually do want change, as in a government that actually works for us?

President Obama has many challenges before him, indeed. But perhaps the most daunting of them all is his promise of "change." He is up against powers that will resist him, no matter what he does, no matter how carefully and sensitively he goes about instituting that change, and no matter what concessions he makes in the name of bipartisanship. Some may see the passage of the stimulus bill, his first attempt at this change, as a failure on his part, because of the resistance of the Republicans. Some might see his concessions to their demands as politics as usual. But I believe in his mission of gentle and subtle change, of reaching out, even if his hand was not received as he was hoping. I see a bigger picture than what he has to do at the beginning of his term, because he is attempting to gain the trust of a large segment of the population that does not trust him for merely ideological or racist reasons. His actions have to stand above the conservative noise machine of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, who mistake his intentions through their lack of imagination.

Conservatives and traditionalists inherently tend to see others through their own framework of understanding, and therefore to project their own thinking patterns onto everyone else. In their minds, the "opposition party" only wants to exact revenge for how badly they were treated - excluded, bullied, belittled, accused of all kinds of ways of trying to destroy the nation with their liberal-ness - during the eight long years of the Bush administration, because that is what they would do if they had been treated that way. What they fail to understand is that Barack Obama represents a segment of our society that have been cast as less capable, less deserving of power, or freedom, less patriotic, and a people to be feared because they might well be angry that they were once held as slave property, and as such, African Americans have been completely misunderstood as wanting to exact revenge or rejection or total domination, when the reality is that all they want, and all Progressives want, and all women want, despite Hollywood depictions and the conservatives' own secret masochistic fantasies, is to be treated fairly and equally, to have our place at the table, to be included in the power structures, so that our society will be more fair and just.

President Obama has just today proven my point about moving decisively and carefully to initiate his changes while assuring the nation that the changes are not just a swing toward the opposite political ideology. He has announced that he will be spending the week showing his intentions toward fiscal responsibility, a key element in balancing the big spending that he has rolled out as emergency measures in the face of the current financial crisis. This sends the message that this is not all about creating Big Government for the sake of Big Government, which is what liberals supposedly believe in. For some reason, we are not supposed to believe in personal responsibility, just government handouts, despite Clinton's creation of a surplus and his dismantling of the welfare system. He says he is going to go through the books, line by line, and look at what we are spending money on, see if it is useful spending, and cut out whatever is not. He specifically mentioned no-bid contracts and wasteful war spending that goes unaccounted for. In the end, he is going to prove that he was not just making pretty speeches to get elected, but rather, that he actually intends to try to carry through his campaign promises - what a concept! And this action will allow him to find ways to fund his more controversial projects, like health care reform, because his ideology is not just about ideas, but action, responsibility, and building a government that really does function the way that one can under real, highly-engaged leadership. Barack Hussein Obama is going to put all other recent presidents to shame with his abilities to multi-task and to lead the charge with vigor and strength of character. He will get things done.

"Security?" Really?

2009-02-17T18:25:00.000-08:00

The following article is from www.freegaza.com

Gazan coast becoming a 'no-go' zone
16th February, 2009

On Saturday 14th February, 23 year-old Rafiq abu Reala was shot by Israeli naval forces whilst fishing in Gazan territorial waters, approximately two nautical miles out from the port of Gaza city. He was in a simple fishing vessel, not much larger than a rowing boat, with a small outboard engine, known locally as a 'hassaka'. Rafiq, his brother Rajab and another friend were following the course of a shoal of fish. A group of five more hassakas were out at the time, about a kilometre to the west of Rafiq's boat, further out to sea. An Israeli naval gunboat approached the area and began shooting at the other hassakas, which quickly changed course and headed east, back towards shore.

Suddenly Rafiq realised the gunboat was bearing down on their hassaka. As he recounted the events of that day, Rafiq likened the predatory nature of the naval vessel to that of a wolf. It circled their fishing boat and began shooting heavy ammunition in their direction. The three terrified fishermen threw themselves down flat in the bottom of their boat. The Israeli captain ordered them via megaphone to raise their nets and leave the area. At this point the gunboat was less then 20 metres from Rafiq's hassaka. The second time the gunboat came around no attempt was made to communicate with the fishermen. Rafiq was desperately pulling in the nets with his back facing the gunboat. An M-16 assault rifle was fired hitting him twice with explosive 'dum-dum' bullets, which peppered his back with shrapnel from the bullets themselves.

The force of the shots threw him in the water, plunging him down about six or seven metres below the surface. Rajab asked their friend to control the boat while he rescued Rafiq. Being a strong swimmer, he dived in after Rafiq and pulled him out of the water into the hassaka. However, Rafiq was unconscious by this time. The outboard was being slowed down by the weight of the nets so they headed towards another hassaka 300 metres away where they dumped the nets. The fishermen in this vessel had a mobile phone and made an emergency call. The stricken hassaka reached port at the same time as the ambulance arrived and Rafiq was taken to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza city in a serious condition.

A couple of days later it was possible to visit Rafiq in hospital. He was weak and in a lot of pain, with some difficulty breathing, but was beginning to improve. His x-ray clearly indicated the presence of the bullet shrapnel between his shoulder and his spine. An enquiry regarding the possibility of surgery to remove the fragments was met with a solemn "no" from Rafiq's uncle, present at his bedside, who explained, "The pieces are too many, too small and too widespread. His whole back would have to be opened up." It is not only Rafiq's back which has the metal shards still embedded in it; the shrapnel also penetrated his lungs. They sustained pulmonary contusions, resulting in a haemothorax. The only treatment Rafiq can benefit from at this time is to have blood drained which is collecting in the pleural cavity in the upper left side of his chest. 1.5 litres of blood was initially drained off when he was first admitted but this amount later decreased and stabilised. Medication is limited to painkillers and antibiotics.

It could take Rafiq months to fully recover yet he has a family to support. He married just six months ago and his wife is now expecting their first baby. After five years of working as a fisherman, he has experienced Israeli naval forces firing warning shots on many occasions but this was the first time he has been directly targeted. However, Rajab survived being shot in the chest by the Israeli navy two and a half years ago. It is sobering to note that 14 Gazan fishermen have been killed by the Israeli navy since 2000. Rafiq described the level shooting on Saturday like an open war. Fishermen were attacked from Wadi Gaza, south of Gaza city, all the way to the north of Gaza. A number of hassakas were targeted that day, some vessels sustaining serious damage from the shooting.

Palestinian fishermen have come under daily assaults from Israeli gunboats since Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire which supposedly came into force on 18th January. Reports of heavy gunfire and even missile fire are now becoming the 'norm'. Rafiq is the third Gazan fisherman to be shot by the Israeli navy during this non-existant ceasefire. On 26th January, Alaa al-Habil was shot in the lower leg whilst trawling less than one nautical mile off the coast of Gaza. On 6th February, Mahmoud al-Nadar was shot in both legs whilst 1.5 nautical miles off the coast of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip. Nowadays it is unthinkable for fishermen to venture beyond three nautical miles from the Gazan coast, with many vessels staying just metres from the beach. However, Gazan territorial waters reach 12 nautical miles offshore – indeed, the Oslo Accords grant a fishing zone extending as far as 20 nautical miles.

Israel is attempting to create arbitrary 'no-go' zones in the sea – enforced solely by the gun. They might succeed if it weren't for the resilience of the fishermen. All this is akin to what is happening on land. The Israeli Occupation Force has declared an area of Palestinian land a kilometre in from the Green Line a 'closed military zone', affecting an audacious land grab which threatens to swallow a vast swathe of rich agricultural land all the way along the eastern length of the Gaza strip.

International human rights observers are currently accompanying farmers determined to harvest their crops in one such area. In the months prior to Israel's war on Gaza, members of ISM Gaza Strip were accompanying Palestinian fishermen on a regular basis and witnessed countless acts of Israeli military aggression against them whilst in Gazan territorial waters, despite a six-month ceasefire agreement holding at the time.
The international community remains silent about these daily violations of international human rights law. One cannot help wondering what an outcry there would inevitably be if the tables were turned and an Israeli civilian received similar injuries. Such an incident would scupper current negotiations attempting to broker a more genuine long-term ceasefire. Yet whilst it is Palestinian civilians who suffer such atrocities, the world gazes on, indifferent.

Wir Sind Alle Deutschlander

2009-02-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

We here in the United States have our new president, and the days of "No Drama Obama" are long gone, as he deals with all the Drama Queens in the congress to get a kid to stick his finger in the dike that is just barely holding back the economic mayhem to come. Meanwhile, not too many people are paying attention to the storm that is brewing in the Middle East over Israel's recent unconscionable actions in Gaza, and yet more Trouble with a capital "T" to come.

These upcoming elections have married the worst of militaristic nationalism with politics, and the combination is none other than explosive on a massive scale. The worst aspect of it all is the colossal cynicism. The horrendous attack on the citizens and basic infrastructure of Gaza just before the new U.S. president was to be sworn in, with his very swearing-in day as a deadline for withdrawal, in conjunction with the initiation of hostilities having occurred on the historic event that was election day in the United States, when Israeli troops went into Gaza and riled things up while the rest of the world had their eyes on our Big Day... it is an insult to the Humanity of every peace-loving person on the planet.

Chemical weapons; attacks on known U.N. safe havens, hospitals, and schools; ongoing attacks on farmers; illegal confiscations and detentions of humanitarian aid workers trying to come in by ship through open international waters - the list of atrocities committed in respect to Gaza goes on. And now, it appears that the whole exercise was simply the precursor for an Israeli attack on Iran, a laying down of groundwork, a psychological preparation for the citizens of Israel, a systems test run. For if the enraged Gazans do not stop lobbing what sad little rockets they still have over their imprisonment wall, their only weapons, sad in comparison to Israel's massive military might (only 13 Israelis were killed in the recent violence, compared to 1300 Gazans), well, then, Israel must attack their sad-little-rocket supplier.

Who will stop Israel from continuing down this path? No one has any weight to throw at them, except for the United States of America. Does our special peace envoy, or the State Department, or the Vice President, or even the President have the cojones to stand up to their militaristic momentum? Will any of them do what is necessary to convince Israel that it is they who must take the lead to end this cycle of violence, not any of their perceived or real adversaries? Will the newly elected leaders of Israel, after playing on the emotions of their citizens in the worst way humanly possible, for political gain, find any reason not to escalate the violence?

I am deeply deeply saddened that my paranoia that violence toward Iran would be used as a political play for power seems to be coming true, even as my amazement that the neocons in my own nation's government did not activate this kind of evil ploy before our elections, has been making me wonder if I have been too cynical, after all. But no, I had it right all along, except that it was Israel, the proxy of the United States in the Middle East, who took action, in the form of the horrible attack on Gaza as stepping stone toward Iran, instead of us.

In the name of all of the innocent people of Gaza, who have suffered long and hard under Israel's policies of treating them as other than human beings, I call on all citizens of the United States to at the very least pay attention to Israel in the days that follow, and if the rumblings of war with Iran or more violence toward Gaza prove to amplify instead of diminish, in a world where waves from this kind of mayham come around the globe and affect us in the form of military aid that will be sent to Israel removing funding from our government coffers for availability to help us through our own financial crisis, and the price of gas going up, and any number of other degrees of separation that link us to such world issues, but above all, as caring citizens of the world we live in, we must stand up and stop the madness! There is no excuse for allowing Israel to commit atrocities, or to get away with those that they have committed already in Gaza, and no excuse for remaining silent, like so many Germans did while the Nazi hate machine built itself up and became the monster that it did. Wir sind alle deutschlander.

For reports from inside Gaza and more information on Israel's prevention of aid to Gaza, go to http://www.freegaza.com/

Three essays from No Stranger to Strange Lands in which the topic ineluctably turns into an Ayn Rant

2009-02-06T08:29:00.000-08:00

The following are three distinct essays excerpted from my book,

No Stranger to Strange Lands: A Journey Through Strange Coincidences, Connective Thoughts, and Far Flung Places,

which describe the reasons that Ayn Randian, Milton Friedmian, Free Market Fascist Capitalism should be discarded.

Our government should get involved in stimulating the economy by spending large amounts of money, being open and accountable, and balancing that by not lowering taxes and cutting back on military spending, and we citizens sould be telling them that that is exactly what we want them to do - to serve us instead of themselves and their doners, for once!

Tragedy And Irony

The sadness of bigotry and hardheadedness blanket this entire nation in layers of tragedy and irony. The tragedy of the enslavement of African people – the irony of the original Thanksgiving event, where the native people helped out the struggling Pilgrims, showing them how to survive in this new land, sharing their food and their knowledge, only to later be deemed inferior beings, not worthy of their lands or their cultures – the tragedy of the Civil War, that the righteous on each side were driven to such extreme violence – the irony that many of the romanticized episodes of the Wild West, involving “heroes” like Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody, were the results of so many armed and restless warriors from that horrible Civil War – tragedy that, as time went on, racism continued against the Black people in the South and a new wave of racism arose against the Chinese in the West – irony that the Industrial Revolution threw “modernization” into overdrive, creating a consumer society so completely dependent on corporations for food, clothing, medicine, transportation, communication, time-saving and life-enhancing gadgets, and energy to run those gadgets, all driven by massive media conglomerations that inform us what we need to buy next. The biggest irony here is that we are constantly reminded of how “free” we are, yet we have become slaves to our own existence. We have the right to free speech, religion, assembly, the press, and to petition our government, as Article I of the Bill of Rights declares, but these rights only exist in spirit, and are in practice minimized to apply only to those supporting this [the Bush] administration. And so, irony of ironies, tragedy of tragedies, this country – despite all the technology and information available, despite all of the lessons of history, despite the awareness of millions of people that our leaders have been lying to us and have manipulated the corporate media so insidiously that Orwell's dystopian world of doublethink has come to pass – this country has fallen from the towering heights into the snake pit of Fascism, lead there by fanatics, Capitalist fanatics, who are the snakes themselves, the embodiment of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, who seduced Eve with its shiny perfect-looking waxed pesticide-laden genetically engineered apple – she didn't seem to notice that it was devoid of most of its apple taste... How easy it is to conjure up our symbolic archetypes! How powerful that imagery is, and the image of the Snake goes a long way: the slimy snake oil salesman; the sneaky snake in the grass; the Great World Snake that lives in a pit at the center of the world; the seething snake pit that even that icon of manly fearlessness, Indiana Jones, can't handle. The Snake is the ultimate in creepiness and deception. A massive, nation-wide pit of creepiness and deception has emerged, created by the Serpents of Free Market Fascism, who lead their followers over its edge and into its depths with promises of glorious Freedom and Happiness while curtailing freedom and offering only false choices. And just like in the Bible, from which that Serpent with its apple emerged, they have their own creation myths and lofty ideals that, when examined closely, can be found to be based on tortured logic, questionable constructs of reality, and pure arrogance - the same kind of inflexible self-righteousness that has always led to violence and abuses, always based on some kind of entitlement claims and moral value systems that are devoid of humanistic ethics or empathy for the suffering of others. Their bible is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Herein lies a major source of the sadness behind my anger: that so many have been swayed by the dangerously seductive ideology of this and other “free market” writings, this twisting of what constitutes “good and evil,” “morality,” and the motivations of caring people, without thinking through the inferences or consequences of what these ideas entail. They are meant to inspire and uphold the rights of the individual and connect Democracy with Capitalism, yet they end up vilifying the working and management classes – the very engines of their precious prosperity - and abhorring populism. In fact, it seems to me that the only thing Democracy has to do with their ideology is that it is not Communism or Socialism. They have one-upped the original Fascists in deceptiveness by utilizing that system while claiming to be Democratic. They particularly like to paint the wealthy as the victims of guilt-trips, do-gooders, and those who hate them for their greatness, thus painting taxes as the coercive looting of their wealth by the state. They are paranoid that everyone is after a piece of them. Do people realize that the basis for this ideology is that the wealthy (who are assumed to be so because they have made great achievements and are the productive element of society) should not be pressured by the lower classes (who are assumed to be so because they are lazy and jealous) into parting with any little bit of their wealth because Self-Reliance is the ultimate good and helping out the less fortunate only encourages them to not try hard enough? In their minds, they are wealthy because they are better, and they are the ones who are put upon to hold up all of society, the “atlases” of the world. This is the thinking, and it is sadly arrogant and self-righteous, yet it seems to sucker people in with the empty promise that all they really need to do is to seek Happiness through Self-Reliance, Achievement, and “Rational Self-Interest,” and above all, do not give in to evil Selflessness, and then they, too, can become one of society's moral leaders. Saddest of all is their dangerous determination not to be sad – to deny Sadness – to forget, and thus lose sight of the truth of the past – that this mighty nation has been built on the tears of many, many diverse and underprivileged peoples - enslaved, indentured, in debt – and has not always lived up to the promises that the Founding Fathers made. It all leads to a false sense of entitlement by those who are most entitled, a sentiment that things are the way they are supposed to be, that those who are most trod upon deserve their fate because they are weak and unworthy, and that this system should be supported even by them because it is the best that Humanity has to offer.

Chief Ouray

It [the mining town of Ouray, high up in the San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado] was named after Chief Ouray, leader of the Uncompahgre band of Utes that once roamed this area. Before the discovery of gold and silver up here, these mountains were of little use to the pioneers of this nation. The Utes came here hunting deer, elk, antelope, and other animals, to revel in the beauty and grandeur, to bathe in the sacred hot springs. These wandering people probably used peyote, which would have certainly enhanced their appreciation of their incredible landscape. That also explains the inspiration for their imaginative, colorful, intricately beaded artwork. By being mobile, they had the best of all worlds, joining into larger bands in sheltered, warmer places in the winter, enjoying family and celebrations, and then splitting up and going up to higher ground to hunt and gather, and maybe throw some seeds in a high meadow somewhere, or farm in the rich river valley a bit during warmer weather. Chief Ouray did what he thought was in his peoples' best interest, sadly underestimating the extent to which the dark skinned people were despised and dehumanized by the light skinned invaders. He was a man who knew four languages, who met with presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant, who was known as “The White Man's Friend” because he negotiated with the United States and even formed alliances with them in battles against his enemies to the south, the Apache and Navajo tribes. These Utes were known to be great warriors, and it seems that their leader understood the extent to which they were out-gunned and outnumbered by the Great White Wave, and thus sought to be diplomatic instead of confrontational. He was right about the unstoppable nature of Capitalism, and although he represented his people with great honor and diplomatic aplomb, in the end they still suffered the same fate as all of their other fellow natives. In the end, all they got was a state named after their tribe, a town named after their chief, a river named after their band, and banishment to a reservation in northeastern Utah. But Chief Ouray was a true Leader, a man with excellent leadership qualities, a man depended upon by his band to make sound decisions that directly affected everyone. It stands to reason that nomadic cultures depend upon their leaders heavily, because they lived on more of an edge, very intricately involved with nature's patterns, and so they had no tolerance for bad leadership. The Leader must have been a good leader, or he didn't get to lead. Thus, there was genuine trust amongst the members, which also allowed them to be more open to the sharing of their resources and division of their labor, all for the common good. They shared the products of their labor, and they moved about the land, utilizing and respecting it, but not owning it. In fact, the “Enlightenment” era ideas about “natural law” having anything to do with Labor and Property Rights does not apply to the nomadic, non-property owning societies that existed successfully all over North America for at least a thousand years, further proof that these “laws” are human created ideas, not something that comes from Nature. And so, the regal Chief Ouray could not have been the inspiration for Rand Land.

No, it was not the communistical, wandering ways of the original inhabitants of this place, but the newcomers, the railroad and the mining companies, with their “Captains of Industry” at the helm, the wonderful way that Capitalism brought all of these cute little buildings and the job opportunities for whores and construction workers and clerks and miners, and the rail lines and roads, and all those other signs of “progress” to this far corner of the world. Ayn Rand came to one of the most beautiful places on the planet, visited one of the hokier little hot spring resort towns, and became inspired by the Human Endeavor that built all the buildings and schools and roads and mines and such amidst this amazing natural wonder. She heard whisperings while she was in the vapor caves for a little too long, slightly ill from eating too much saltwater taffy, and feeling the effects of too little oxygen getting to her brain. Certainly, she stayed at the fanciest establishment in town, where the railroad executives stayed, and heard their whispers above those of the others. She heard how the mining interests had the indigenous people forcibly removed, how several thousand people had all come for the money, built these cute Victorian houses, and left when the mining business fell into decline. And she heard from the next wave of Tourism Capitalists. Somehow, she was motivated to crystallize her whole Rand-world, of “rational self-interest,” the seeking of individual happiness and fulfillment as society's highest calling, the entitlement to private property as reward for achievement, the need to repel the guilt trips that the non-productive members of society use to get the government to take away one's property, where the wealthy are hated for their greatness, and so they must not tolerate parasite, impotent, evil mediocrity, but must carry on in their moral calling as the put-upon, unappreciated, self-sufficient, creative, competents of society, seeking only the highest of ideals, the profound right to be happy, and to enjoy the fruits of their labors in the form of property.

How did she miss the call of Nature in this amazing place? How have humans for so long now ignored those voices of Nature? How have we “rationalized” our destruction of Nature, trying to claim that Nature itself causes us to act the way we do? We have misunderstood our place in nature in several respects. We have come to believe that we are above Nature, able to rule over it, conquer it, exploit it, that we are smarter than it. But we are only deceiving ourselves in this respect, unwilling to admit that our real understanding of Nature is much less than we like to think it is. At the same time, Western philosophy has gone down the path of claiming that things in human-created society follow certain “laws of nature,” so that Social Darwinism became a convenient rationale for the destruction of the indigenous societies around the globe by the mad rush of European peoples to stamp out their claims on the new lands being discovered. Even while many are insulted by the Darwinian idea that humans developed, through the process of Natural Selection, from the apes, these same people are perfectly willing to apply that same reasoning to human society, claiming that because the indigenous people the European explorers encountered were less “civilized,” less technologically advanced, pagan, often wandering, and much less well armed, they were “naturally” less Human, unworthy, and in need of being “saved” from their “evil” and “backward” ways. The conquerers felt sanctified by their own superiority. They were morally obligated by their religious beliefs as well as their social beliefs to spread the Great White Way, the way of separation from Nature, and faith in God and technological advancement. The Mormons actually tried to turn the relocated Utes into good, civilized, Christian farmers at the Res. in Utah, with Indian Schools and all that. They might as well have water-boarded them. They achieved the same end, which was near annihilation of their identities.

Not that the nomads of North America were angels compared to white people. They weren't. They were warriors, sometimes bandits and raiders, they traded in and used slaves. There were certainly messed up parts about their cultures, just like there are messed up parts about ours. What happened to them was that they were treated as if they were of no value at all, had no lessons to teach, no knowledge to offer. Yet, they did have a kind of knowledge about the rhythm and flow of life in their regions of travel, the arability of the land, the sustainability of areas and the need to move around to allow regeneration, the pathways connecting places, the animal and plant life, natural medicines, locations of springs... And they knew that they were part of nature, not lords over it. They respected the earth, and spent much of their energy making ceremonies to celebrate nature and its gifts. Their gods did not separate them from nature, but were representations of different aspects of the natural world. Their gods did not tell them to reject this life and prepare for the afterlife. They were concerned with the here and now and the future of the world, as the people were charged with caring for the land and acting to bring forth balance, to actively participate in the cycles of nature.

So despite nature's grandeur, despite Chief Ouray's wise ways, the voices of Capitalism and Western philosophy rang through to Ayn Rand when she was here. She built a world in which being “rational” meant being disciplined and following what is only “human nature,” even though humans are not really that good at being rational and “human nature” is not really as it has been defined by philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. She built an ideology that distrusts and despises the government as well as the very workers that run the grand enterprises of the elite business leaders, while at the same time starting out on the premise that every individual has the means to accomplish great things if only they would apply themselves. But every individual does not have those means – only the wealthy and already connected people have those means. The vast majority of those people are not at the top of the social structure because they are in any way better than everyone else. Rather, they were just luckier, wealthier, better positioned to start with. And by distrusting and despising the lower classes, the elites have entirely misinterpreted the motivations of all of the people that work for them. People, for the most part, except for the always present criminal elements in society, don't want to mooch and leech off of the wealthy, nor off of the government. They simply want to be respected and valued for what they contribute to society. In Rand World, the free market system is the ultimate moral system, because, by the laws of Natural Selection and the pressures of the marketplace, unfettered free-flowing ideas will always rise to the top – only the best will be tolerated by the marketplace, only the most efficient businesses, only the best value items, only the most sound investments will survive the struggle. Only...only...the marketplace doesn't work like that. It never can. Money, property, value, these are all inanimate, human-created ideas. They do not exist in nature. They follow a different set of rules that are based on a more realistic characterization of the human creature, a better understanding of our own selves.

Accountability

Family is family, and it will always be so. Many times, traditional family structures work great for everyone in the family, but many times it does not. Many times, people take advantage of their positions and their relatives, and since the Abrahamic religions are all structured on that same framework, George Lakoff's Father Figure Framework, a system now exists where the Father Figure is absolute, unquestionable, unaccountable. If he is irresponsible, abusive, undependable, his underlings have no recourse but to put up with his abuse or inability. The authority figures in our society are supposed to be honored regardless of their actual performance. There is an unspoken assumption that somehow, “natural laws” have brought the worthy into positions of power and authority, and further, by virtue of their being in those positions, they are believed to be favored by God, even chosen by God. But the whole structure is corrupted by true human nature, the side of us that is greedy , egotistical, opportunistic, and inappropriately loyal to entities other than those that are supposed to be attended to. The emphasis in the current system is on the authority aspect instead of on the ability aspect. Society would be much better served to respect leadership and ability over mere authority. And this idea applies throughout all levels of society, from the highest levels of government down to the individual family units.

Accountability – it just doesn't seem to matter in that Father Figure Framework. I can imagine something better, something more just, more accountable, more flexible, a framework that does allow the best and the brightest to achieve those positions of power. It is a matter of breaking through the status quo to allow women and people of color to join in the leadership ranks while the good ol' boys conspire to hold on to all of their status. It is a matter of building communities and connecting people instead of dividing us. It is about respecting alternative ways of achieving goals, such as creating alternative family units, working up different frameworks, engaging in creative problem solving. It is about education and encouragement and sharing of responsibilities, then finding leaders who understand and respect the position of authority they have been granted and use their power wisely. Why have we resigned ourselves to settle for so much less?

This is where we need to Speak Truth To Power. The concept here is that people in any system give their tacit consent to be ruled. The authority of anyone is granted to them by the people who they hold authority over. When the ruler is ruling badly, the people have the duty to withdraw their consent, and to let those in power know that they have lost their authority over them by engaging in non-violent acts of civil disobedience, willfully disregarding the rule of the powerful, and by speaking up and communicating their positions clearly. Accountability through consent. This is a powerful idea, one that seems fully democratic, yet, it remains obscure and unknown to a society that does not pay much attention to what their leaders are doing. In fact, the concept has been completely twisted around by Ayn Rand with her “sanction of the victim” line of thought. Her concern is that the business leaders are the victims of “looters and moochers” and the government that aids them in trying to take away the leaders' well-deserved profits through taxation. The solution, according to Ms. Rand, is to refuse to be victimized, refuse to tolerate this stealing of their money, refuse to make any sacrifices at all towards a greater good in order to expel the parasite evil. It just makes me so sad. The idea that we consent to be ruled and thus cede power to the rulers has been hijacked by the powerful themselves and turned around to mean that it is they, the supposedly strong and good and productive, who must not allow themselves to be victimized by the weak and evil and lazy, that they are the ones whose consent matters, that they consent to lead society with their greatness, and they cede their consent to be taxed because they already help society enough by creating jobs for all the losers. So much for accountability. So much for social justice. And so much for reality, because the wealthy are victims only of their own paranoia and greed, while the not so wealthy are truly victimized by lack of resources, education, information, and opportunity. But, as always, the working classes are many while the wealthy are few, so the few do whatever they can to exclude the many, to keep their club small and exclusive, and to persuade the many that the status quo is how things were meant to be and that the leaders are doing a heck of a job. It is up to the many who do not hold traditional power to come together and understand that they really do hold a kind of power, that power to refuse to play by the same old rules that have kept them from achieving what they could in a more just system, the power to hold the leaders accountable.

A Censored Prayer?!

2009-01-19T08:20:00.000-08:00

I am not a Christian, but I can appreciate beauty and wisdom, whatever its source.

President Elect Barack Hussein Obama selected Gene Robinson as the man who would commence his Opening Inagural Event at the Lincoln Memorial.

However, HBO selectively failed to broadcast this important and historic part of the event.

Shame on you, HBO!

Nice start to our "new era of inclusiveness!"

Contact HBO here

Here is the text, in all of its censored glory:

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama

By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire

Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

PEOPLE OF ISRAEL – STOP THIS MADNESS!

2009-01-15T13:27:00.000-08:00

STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN
Understand - You have become your own worst enemy.
STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN

STOP the killing and destruction of families.
LOOK at the people of Gaza - in the eyes,
see their pain and their suffering.
LISTEN to their stories, their needs, their desires -
actually listen to the words that come out of their own mouths,
about how they feel about having their lives destroyed
by your military,
by your nation's immoral blockade,
by the unacknowledged and unconscionable occupation,
by your government's propaganda against them,
and do not be surprised if they express anger.

STOP! Do not answer their anger with your own.
LOOK at Gaza,
look at the abject poverty there.
LISTEN some more
for what is behind their anger and frustration -
the deprivation,
the lack of basic human necessities,
the sadness.

STOP and take some deep breaths.
LOOK at your own nation,
your own government,
the propaganda of your own government,
the playing upon your historic victimization

by your own government,
the politics of the current situation

for the sake of government power,
the colonialism for the sake of politics.
LISTEN to your neighbors,
and the voices coming from different perspectives,

from others in the region,

from the international community.

STOP supporting state aggression.
LOOK at the reasons behind that aggression.
LISTEN to the voices coming from within the Jewish community,
voices that refuse to deal with the pain of aggression against Jews

by turning it on others.

STOP allowing your emotions of sadness and anger and fear

to consume you.
LOOK for ways to move beyond those emotions,
to express them in ways that are constructive,
that help you to grow,
to become better persons,
to move forward with your lives in peace.
LISTEN to your heart and its call for compassion and empathy.

STOP the violence.
STOP the siege.
STOP the misery and death in Gaza.

ISRAEL must stop, not Hamas.
ISRAEL must accept the responsibilities

of being the strong and powerful state that it is.
ISRAEL must stop playing the victim when it is not,

and stop exaggerating its victimhood when it is.

ISRAEL wants to be perceived as strong,
so be strong, from the inside out.
ISRAEL wants to be safe,
so make yourself safe

by working with your neighbors to achieve peace.
ISRAEL wants to impose its own narrative

on the history of the region,
but Israel is only a small country in that region,
a young country in a region with a long, long history,
a modern nation, with a modern military,

and strong alliances with the modern world powers.

ISRAEL must consider the historical narratives

of all of its neighbors in the region.
ISRAEL must accept the reality

that they have wronged the people of Palestine.
ISRAEL must apologize

for what has happened to the Palestinian people

because of their actions.
ISRAEL must find a way to live in the Middle East

that respects the other governments of the region

as legitimate governments,

as entities not to be ignored,

or punished,

at the cost of innocent people's lives,

but with which to negotiate peace.

Only then will Israel in turn gain the respect, the legitimacy,

and the security that it desires

The people of Israel cannot blame anyone but themselves,
cannot change anyone but themselves,
cannot expect anyone to react to them

in any way other than how they have,
until they prove themselves worthy of trust and respect.

PEOPLE OF ISRAEL -
Take the lead.
Do the right thing.
Show your strength and your leadership.
Begin with compassion.
Create the peace that everyone longs for.
Be the change.
Love thy neighbor as thyself.
Love thy neighbor.
Love thyself.

other posts on the Israeli-Gaza conflict:

http://julierbutler.blogspot.com/2008/09/letter-from-gaza-friends.html

http://julierbutler.blogspot.com/2008/12/blog-post.html

The Timely Death of Free Market Ideology

2009-01-09T15:24:00.000-08:00

Republican's "no regulation" ideology is dead - dead, dead, dead. As someone knowledgeable recently put it, trying to have an economy that has no rules is like playing a game of pick-up basketball with no referees: things are bound to get out of hand. The idea that economic forces will somehow magically regulate themselves is akin to believing in unicorns and fairy dust. Laissez-faire ideology is a myth, based on a fantasy, built upon a misunderstanding, all of which have been proven ever so wrong by the financial events of the recent past. And anyone who tries to claim that this is not all an apparition is delusional and not willing to look critically at their own belief system.

The idea that less regulation is better is actually a cover for allowing business owners to cheat, lie and steal their way to fortune. The less regulation there is, the more that cheating, lying, and stealing will occur. "But no," you say, "why would the business owners do that? They want to make money the legitimate way." Why they would do that is because nothing is stopping them, when there are no regulations. There are no laws to break, and no accountability to speak to, so why not cheat lie, and steal? "Well," your answer might be, "the government should not make rules and regulations, because the free market regulates itself." How does that occur, I would like to know? "You see," this is you again, "the invisible hand of the market place always sets things straight. Lying, cheating, and stealing is bad business. A business like that will lose its customers, through its bad reputation, and so it is in its interest to stay on the up and up, to develop a sound reputation, and to built its clientèle through honest business practices."

But there you go with your fairy dust, again. For that is precisely how crooks set up their scams. They pose as legitimate business people, gain everyone's trust, and then, when enough people have invested in their scheme or lent them enough money based on their sterling reputation, they run off with all the dough. Or, they can trim personal profits off of the books all along, having convinced everyone to trust them, so that no one looks into their financial dealings. Everything seems to be hunky dory, that is, up until someone wants the money that they had put in back, and it is discovered that the money has evaporated. Or, the product that is being sold is inferior or defective in a way that does not become apparent for some time, such as when someone ends up dying, and it turns out that the company knew all along that their product will eventually cause someone's death, but chose to continue to make a profit off of it, anyway.

These cases are not the exception, they are the norm, and the only things that prevent more of this from happening are the regulations that are in place. Tragically, our United States government has been under the influence of "no regulation" ideology for nearly three decades now, ever since President Ronald Reagan said, "Government is not a solution to our problem. Government is the problem." With that, a movement swept the nation, and those who are supposed to make government work have been systematically sabotaging government programs so that they are underfunded, understaffed, overruled, stacked with allies of the businesses they are supposed to be regulating, and weakened, all so that the claim can be made that those institutions don't work and should be eliminated. The truth of the matter is that the regulating bodies have not been allowed to work properly, because the businesses that lobby the government officials have bought them off, and convinced them that the business world will regulate its own self.

Now, part of the reason for the prominence of this ideology has been because of lobbyist corruption of the system that is supposed to protect consumers and citizens. Another part of the reason has been because of Ayn Rand, Horatio Alger, and Milton Friedman. Ayn Rand was a fiction writer who perpetrated the myth that business leaders have the purest intentions, the strongest work ethics, and unquestioned moral authority over the rest of society, because they have risen to power through the system of Social Darwinism, which makes them intrinsically the best that humanity has to offer. This is why I have stated that this ideology is a myth based on a misunderstanding. The problem with this scenario is that Social Darwinism does not really exist. It is a misappropriation of a natural phenomenon, the survival of the fittest, to the arena of human endeavor. The difference between the realm of nature and the realm of social behavior is that the laws of nature are universal, existing through the same physical and biological forces throughout the planet. Living beings adapt themselves to these forces, the weakest fail to survive, while the strongest live to perpetuate their genes. Whole ecosystems develop, where all of the living beings find their niche, and all are interconnected within the systems.

Within human societies, however, the universal laws of nature no longer apply. The human race long ago fought its battles among the other living creatures, and having risen to the top of the food chain, we began to build societies, based on the exchange of money for goods and services. Within the larger realm of nature, we created an entirely different, man-made realm, with different laws and forces. This system is based on power and resources, with sprinklings of the force of human perception interspersed for good measure. The notion that those at the top of the human pyramid are indeed the fittest has been perpetrated throughout human history by those same people as a matter of perception, so that they may hold on to their power and resources, so that the masses that they rule over will not join forces and overthrow them.

Our founding fathers attempted to reject those very perceptions, stating that “all men are created equal” in order to deny the claim by monarchs that they are more special than everyone else. Unfortunately, family dynasties and the tyranny of Big Business were not also rejected with the founding of this nation, as the land-owners and business leaders set themselves up to retain as much power as possible within the new democratic system. Slavery, indentured servitude, child labor, disenfranchisement, and other abuses and denials of democratic rights continued, in direct opposition to those enlightened words. And the new power structure was maintained through manipulations of perceptions, such as the popular fictions of Horatio Alger that caused the poor and abused to believe that they had a chance at joining the rich and powerful with his rags to riches stories, and later, the popular fictions that champion the business leaders over the workers as a kind of natural order as dreamed up by Ayn Rand.

Then there is Milton Friedman. Although he and his followers wouldn't have and still won't admit it, he was also a fiction writer. His economic theories are the source of much of the fairy dust that the “no regulations” gang champion, as he connected capitalism with freedom, and used phrases like “free to choose” to promote his radical ideology. The crux of this free market ideology is indeed Friedman's belief that the freedom of a people cannot exist without free and unfettered capitalism, that it is free markets, which, according to the (now debunked) natural forces of the marketplace, will naturally regulate themselves, that are the deepest expression of free people, and that freedom of choice underlies all other freedoms that uphold the human spirit.

Sounds nice, but what are the real consequences of such a viewpoint? What underlies the belief that free markets are equal to free people, and that freedom of choice automatically results in a system where only the cream rises to the top, only the best ideas survive, and only the most capable people become business leaders, worthy of their huge salaries and compensation packages? Well, we have seen the consequences of allowing the financial institutions run amok, and even Alan Greenspan, a true believer in Friedmanian free market capitalism, expressed surprise that the system did not regulate itself the way he thought it was supposed to. The supposed financial wizards at the top of that pyramid simply allowed their institutions to practice riskier, more and more complex, and absolutely unsound bundling and trading of financial instruments that no one understood, that were not kept track of, and that were generating wealth out of thin air, so that when investors did start to look into things, the whole stack of cards came tumbling down, dragging our whole economy as well as the rest of the planet down with it.

Could it be that greed overtook reason? Everything was fine and everyone was happy, as long as more and more fake wealth showed up on the books. Does it make sense that the CEO's of these companies, who allowed this all to happen, are not being held to account for their failures? Does it make sense that these CEO's all sit on the board of directors of each other's companies, so that their salaries and benefits are all decided amongst themselves, and are thus divorced from any actual accountability to the performance of their companies? The shareholders are supposed to hold them accountable, but they have been hoodwinked by the perception that the CEO's must be paid “competitively,” which somehow magically attracts only the best and brightest to those positions. No one seems able or willing to point out that their emperors are wearing no clothes, that they have been royally scammed, and that the free market system has failed them miserably. All those people who cleared off their desks when they were fired from their jobs at those financial firms simply went home to lick their wounds, too embarrassed to admit to themselves and their families that they are victims of this elaborate illusion.

As for what underlies this free market belief system, part of it I have already covered, the false notion that survival of the fittest applies to human society. But because many people are shut out of the system, because of bigotry, economic disadvantages, and other lack of fair access to the halls of power, this is a myth (see my article on competition for more on this). Another problem that I see with this belief system is that the connection that Friedman made between capitalism and freedom is tenuous, at best. Capitalism, in and of itself, does not guarantee freedom. An interesting example of this is the current situation in China, a communist state, but which has been adapting capitalist elements in order to raise itself to a higher status in the world power structure. This may have been raising the living standards of the Chinese people somewhat, but it hasn't stopped the government from maintaining its totalitarian grip on freedoms, such as its one-child policy, its total control of the media, or its involvement with the very industries that it is allowing to benefit to some degree from capitalist practices. While it seems to be striking an intriguing balance between capitalism and socialism, it has not let up on its totalitarian governmental structure. Furthermore, while in our society, more wealth generally engenders more “freedom” because it gives an individual more power, in a closed society like China's, this relationship might not hold true. More wealth might beget a higher standard of living, but not more freedom.

This example highlights an important distinction that must be made regarding the term, “capitalism,” and that is that it is a purely economic term, which stands wholly separate from political terminology such as “democracy,” “monarchy,” or “totalitarianism.” “Capitalism” belongs in the category of terms that describe economic systems, such as “communism,” “socialism,” and “fascism.” These terms are actually quite complicated and not very well understood by our culture, as they are also used to describe the political systems that utilize them, and close examination reveals that these economic methods can actually overlap each other. Just as capitalism has been seeping into Chinese communism, I believe that fascism has been creeping into our capitalism.

In fact, those who are worried that socialism is seeping into our capitalist system because of the recent government bailout of the financial industries have misunderstood these terms. This is not an example of socialism at all. Socialism is the redistribution of wealth throughout society, something that the holders of wealth are not in favor of. Transferring public wealth upward, on the other hand, is fascism, where the business leaders join forces with the government, of whatever type that might be, to use their wealth and power in the name of the “national interest.” Fascism embraces capitalism wholeheartedly, but is very sneaky and disingenuous about the relationship between the government, the business leaders, and the workers. Fascism also traditionally twists the terms “freedom” and “equality” all around, claiming that its citizens will be free and equal in a strong state, as expressed through the strength, cohesiveness, and purity of the state itself, and that this justifies the elimination of all dissent within the state.

Here is a quote from the Mussolini's Doctrine of Fascism to this point: “Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual. And if liberty is to he the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.”

My point is that it behooves us all to study history for ourselves, and to pay attention to how terms are used, especially emotionally charged terms such as “freedom” and “liberty” and “equality.” The Doctrine of Fascism is full of such misuses of terminology, and it strikes me as very similar to the unsubstantiated equation of “freedom to choose” in the context of economic theory with democracy. Democracy is defined as government by the will of the people, with the freedom to choose their leaders instead of having their leaders imposed upon them. But to then carry that concept to the grocery store shelves takes the whole idea out of context. Having one hundred and four different kinds of cereal on the shelf, all produced by just a few of huge consumer product conglomerates, namely, General Mills, Kellogg's, Nabisco, Post, Quaker, and Purina, is not really freedom. It is just an illusion of freedom.

In fact, it is just an illusion of choice, since they are all full of the same, basic, mass-produced ingredients, especially that high-fructose corn syrup. And that particular ingredient is ubiquitous throughout the grocery store shelves, as anyone who shops for a diabetic will know, as are those same corporate labels. We seem to have become enslaved to high-fructose corn syrup. We are even pouring a similar corn product, ethanol, into our gas tanks. Yes, we have a choice, to drive away from the pump and find another oil company to throw our money at. But a real choice would be to have available more battery-operated cars, or electric hybrids, or some other kind of viable transportation option. These choices should be available by now, as ideas about new energy options have been floating around for decades, yet the oil companies and the car companies, with the help of our government, chose to literally hold us over the barrel by not investing in these options, instead, choosing to spend millions of dollars on their campaigns to deny that global warming even exists, to lobby the government to have gas mileage standards weakened, and to continue to push their highly-profitable, all-American, gas-guzzling trucks and SUV's.

Real choice would, by the way, include more political parties to chose from, a socialist party, and a conservative party, and a green party, and a libertarian party, and these parties would hold seats in Congress and represent citizens and their varied political and economic interests. Of course, that would mean that we would need a real democracy, where citizens would hold the same rights and privileges that corporations hold, to free speech, equal access to our elected leaders, and the right to declare bankruptcy... but that is a topic for a whole other essay. Suffice it to say that the “no regulations” ideology has been outed as the fiction that it is, and let us move what democracy we have forward to help us all get through these difficult economic times to come, first and foremost by putting the government back to its job of governing, and putting an end to this nonsense about the private sector magically regulating itself according to what it decides that consumers want, as if human greed and underhandedness did not exist at all.

Bailout Disaster

2008-12-19T09:11:00.000-08:00

The US government's bailout plans are a huge mistake and, if not revised, will prove to be the undoing of this great nation. Here are ten reasons why.

1.Bait and Switch. The way that this emergency was handled was the most astoundingly brazen attack yet on the democratic process by the Bush Administration. Congress was held hostage. “Give us the money or die!” They fell for the big bait and switch, wherein, at the last moment, the Bush Administration inserted one little sentence about restrictions on executive compensations when the government bought troubled assets at auction. But then the Treasury Department injected the funds directly into the companies instead, creating a giant loophole through which the executives are now free to jump toward their bonuses and compensation packages, thank you very much.

2.No Trickling Down. Hardly any of the $335 billion handed out so far, money that was supposed to liquefy the frozen credit markets, has actually flowed as credit out of the coffers of the banks and institutions that received it. The myth of “trickle down:” busted.

3.Homeowners Still Screwed. People were cajoled into buying homes they could not afford by the Republican-led government, which promoted homeownership because the real estate, insurance, construction, and mortgage lending lobbies were their “BFF's.” Nothing has been done to help people work toward staying in their homes.

4.Credit Schmedit. Now, between the housing slump and much stricter lending practices, everyone has maxed out their credit limits, even if more money is available to lend.

5.Monopolies. The results of the government handouts of billions of dollars to institutions that they claimed were “too big to fail” are the consolidation of these institutions into monopolies that are even bigger. Bigger is not better.

6.No Accountability. No one is being held accountable, not the Treasury Department, which is full of industry insiders who are looking after their buddies; not the executives who allowed their big institutions to fail because of pure greed; not the investors who collected fees by gambling away everyone's pension funds on complicated financial instruments that no one understood; not the lawmakers who insisted on a free-market free-for-all.

7.Workers' Rights. In the mad scramble to find solutions to keep failing corporations afloat, unions are being painted as greedy, lazy, corrupt, and (gasp!) socialist. This broad vilification of all unions, based on the actions of a few, sets all workers back and lessens their ability to negotiate in good faith with the management. Worse, it glosses over the fact that the executives have been raking in disproportionately high incomes. The bailout does nothing to address this kind of corporate structure.

8.No Nation Treasury. By emptying the the coffers of the National Treasury, government can then be drowned in the proverbial bathtub, and the small-government ideologues can live out their dreams of no government services or oversight, nothing but the police and the military. Banana Republic, here we come.

9.State Versus State. With a severe lack of federal funds, states will compete with each other to attract businesses by offering the lowest taxes and the least oversight. This will free the businesses to put downward pressure on wages and benefits, and the working classes will fall farther and farther behind the executive classes.

10.A Nation Divided. The final results of all of this will be a nation split by economic factors, where the wealthy will be the only ones able to afford educations and other means to keep themselves floating high above the lower classes. The great free market system will prevail, where private companies replace government entities, and these companies will be free to continue to hoard all the wealth by not paying taxes or living wages, polluting at will, and making profits any which way they can.

This is the picture that might very well unfold if We, The People do not stand up for Democracy and Accountability. What do you call a fallen Democracy, where The People no longer have a voice and the corporate leaders gain total control of the wealth and the government? It's called Fascism, and yes, it could happen here, if we are not careful during these difficult economic times to come.

Obama Mania

2008-12-17T14:54:00.000-08:00

Barack Hussein Obama's popularity has been described as "cult-like," as if he were "the second coming," or a "spiritual leader." He came out of near oblivion to sweep aside the heir apparent of the Democratic party, to the great distress of her supporters. He held rock-star-quality rallies of tens of thousands of people. He wooed huge crowds overseas. His rhetoric moved the young and apathetic, the cynical, the disenfranchised, to come to the polls on November 4th and vote for the first time in their lives, driven by a slogan that came right out of the populist movement play book: “Yes, we can!” What does all this mean for his presidency?

It means that the expectations for him to succeed are higher than for any president before him. People have hung their hopes for a better future on him, in a time that looks to become more economically troubled than any other in our lifetimes. Those who lived through the Great Depression, like my father, who is presently 82 years old, were mere children then. He and his brother and their carefree friends did not know that an economic catastrophe was responsible for their sustained poverty. What they found out as they grew older, though, was that they lived in a nation that cared to improve people's lives. And now, although it is unclear what exactly the President Elect has planned to do about the economy, what is clear is that he cares about the little guy, the everyman, the plumbers and the bakers and the nurses and the factory workers and the people of color, to a much more genuine degree than the people who stood on stage with clothing and accouterments that were equal to the worth many people's homes, who didn't even know how many homes they owned, or who did not know the meaning of the words that were coming out of their mouths in endless, circular, winking and nodding streams of message-managed shrill-sounding snarkiness.

The choice was clear for those who ached for real change, change that looked different and talked differently than the usual politicians did, change that came from somewhere other than the regular places, without having to constantly insist upon his differentness. This change came from exotic lands, with foreign tinges, and against huge odds. This change was articulated eloquently, calmly, reassuringly, and was in touch with the capabilities of new technology. This change attached himself to the reassuring familiar without compromising his own strengths and eloquence. This change was full of clear intelligence, good ideas and sound judgment. This change offered something that had not been offered to the American public in many, many years: Strong Leadership.

I must admit that I am one of the starry-eyed enthusiasts for the phenomenon that is Barack Obama. I came to this position as a cynical member of the “angry left,” disheartened by a nation that refused to look critically inward, that was too proud to admit her wrongs, let alone deem to right them. I decried that vacuum that was sucking the lifeblood and the vitality out of our nation, that was allowing our elected officials to become corrupted by lobbyists and campaign financing, causing politics to bring out the worst in us, driving us to mind-numbing degrees of mediocrity, the vacuum being one of Leadership. I was depressed and disgusted and longing for a real leader to come forward and show us the way out of our national morass. So when I first read an excerpt from a speech back in June of 2006 by a young Senator from Illinois titled, "The End of Small Politics," I began to believe that maybe there was some hope for the future of this nation, after all.

“Whether it's the war or Katrina or health care or outsourcing, you'll hear people say that, now, surely we've come to a moment where things have to change. And there are Americans who still believe in an America where anything's possible; they're just not sure that their leaders still do. They still believe in dreaming big dreams but they suspect maybe that their leaders have forgotten how.”

That became his stump speech, so the ideas have become familiar to us all. But looking back now, I am reminded how moving it was to witness for the first time. It is the basis of his forward-looking message of hope. It is the magic formula behind his magnetism, and it explains everything there is to explain about why he has been elected to be the next President of the United States of America. Everyone who heard Obama speak can attest to its power. Looking back now is something like listening to a Beatles song and understanding why they are so beloved all around the world. There is something almost mythical there, that was not molded by star-makers or handlers, something organic that hits the right note in the human heart, an honesty that cannot be faked or conjured up by a committee of seasoned writers and “experts.” Such authenticity cannot be manufactured.

This is why “Obama mania” is not just a passing fancy or misguided spiritual movement. What observers need to recognize in Barack Obama are those qualities that have gained him so many supporters, his strong leadership abilities and vision for this nation. The guy gets “it,” in that he understands what is wrong with our politics and the way government is functioning now, and he wants to return it to a government that is “for the people, by the people.” He is not just the voice of a generation, nor of a race, nor of a specific religion, nor even of the political left, even though he embraces ideas that have emerged out of younger generations and people of color and Christianity and the progressive movement. If everyone were to put their guard down and actually listen to the premise of what he is saying about how to change the government, so that it can become an agent of the people that it is supposed to serve, then they might just also see the legitimacy of his argument for what it is, as a reasoned challenge to the status quo that has not offered an inspiring and positive vision of what our Democracy should be able to achieve.
We all know the rest. We also know that the Beatles were right when they said, “We're more popular than Jesus.” They were just ahead of themselves a by few decades. Try turning on the radio and listening how long it takes for a new cover of an old Beatles song to come on, if not the Fab Four themselves. Or look for the DVD of "Paul McCartney in Red Square" and learn how the Beatles brought down Soviet Communism, not Ronald Reagan. What I am saying is that there is something to rock star popularity like theirs, or like Elvis'. These things are not just fads. Real, genuine, artistic genius, which introduces something extraordinary to the world, is enduring. Some movements really are revolutionary, and really do carry the exceptional power to change the world.

Yes, We Can! - Video for Free Gaza Movement

2008-12-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

Here is a short video that I put together to honor the brave and inspiring participants of the Free Gaza Movement. December 10, 2008 will mark the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and what better way to celebrate than to congratulate the latest voyage of the SS Dignity in her breaking of the Siege of Gaza by Israel, bringing badly needed medical supplies, human rights activists, journalists who have been blocked from entering Gaza, and experts in education who have chosen to risk their lives in order to highlight the human rights abuses that are occurring in Gaza because of this siege. The Israeli government is preventing Palestinian students from being able to leave Gaza to get to the schools at which they have been accepted, many with honors and scholarships. This is an outrage! What better way to assure peace, security, and success for all than through education, so that doctors and teachers and engineers and many other skilled citizens can create positive changes in their communities. The cycle of violence must be broken, and peace can only begin when all human rights are respected - when we recognize that we are all one human family.
To learn more, go to freegaza.org
See also: http://julierbutler.blogspot.com/2008/09/letter-from-gaza-friends.html

Markets Are Not The Boss Of Me!

2008-11-21T09:34:00.000-08:00

Naomi Klein was on Democracy Now! recently talking about how the markets throw fits when they do not get their way.

But before I watched the day's evening broadcast of the show, I had a similar idea. It occurred to me that there is a perception that everything that society needs will materialize through the magic of the marketplace, as if it were some kind of force of nature, like gravity, or natural selection, that pushes progress ever forward. What society wants, society gets. Adam Smith described it in Biblical terms, as the “invisible hand” that leads individuals, in their pursuit of personal gain, toward their highest potential, and therefore, at the same time, leads society as a whole towards the greatest good. And this is the basis for free market ideology that says that the more businessmen can do their business free and unfettered by rules and regulations, the better for everyone in society. Any government intervention, according to these ideologues, would upset this natural order and cause society to become stifled. What government should do is to free the businesspeople, the entrepreneurs, the CEO's, and the bankers who lend them money, by releasing them from any burdens of paying taxes or chains of following regulations, and all will be well for everybody.

I have been very critical of this view for a while now, ever since I began to examine all this a few years ago, but it wasn't until the other day that any kind of alternative model to this B.S. presented itself. Well, it came to me while I was pulling weeds from a flower bed in my South Georgia back yard, that the marketplace might be better represented as a child that wants everything that it sees and doesn't want to be disciplined or bathed or to eat dinner before dessert or to go to bed at a reasonable hour. This child is very impressionable and easily influenced by marketing and shiny new things. The child's appetite is insatiable and his temper tantrums, epic. And the free marketeers, as parents of this golden boy who they want desperately to love them, have been coddling him, giving him everything he has ever wanted, and refusing to discipline him or lay down any boundaries that would begin to teach him to think of anything other than his own urges and desires. I think that this model is more apt than the “invisible hand” model because it puts us human beings in charge and accountable, as opposed to depicting the market as a force of nature or a gift of God that we should not try to fight against or contain. It takes the marketplace out of the realm of nature or teleology, and puts it where it belongs, as a human construct that we must take responsibility for.

We can nurture the child as well as discipline and educate him. We can teach him values, to be kind, to share, to respect others as well as to be vibrant and innovative. This puts the marketplace into proper perspective, as one part of what human individuals and societies do, along with building communities, exploring the world, connecting with each other through art and music. By putting this human face on this ever so human entity, we demystify it, claim it as our own, and guide it toward helping us better ourselves spiritually as well as monetarily. We can embrace our child as a connective force rather than a divisive one. By depicting the marketplace as the child of humanity, we free ourselves from the tyranny of righteous inequality that has been imposed upon us all in the name of capitalism and patriotism and so-called "progress." Naomi Klein often cites this quote by Milton Freedman:

“Only a crisis produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

Well, here is an idea that I am throwing out there to lie around, as we certainly have a crisis on our hands, and the time for change from the conventional thinking about the supposed “free markets” has come.

In my book, No Stranger to Strange Lands: A Journey Through Strange Coincidences, Connective Thoughts, and Far Flung Places, I talk about property ownership and Ayn Rand as well as some ideas that nomadic cultures have to offer, about sharing of resources as opposed to hording, being flexible, holding leadership accountable, negotiating diversity, but I do not offer a new framework to replace the one that I criticize so harshly. I also explore how ideas spread around in the book, and now, picking up on all of that, the idea had come to me as Ms. Klein was expressing them to Amy Goodman, but before I had any knowledge of the interview. That's what I mean by those "strange coincidences."

And so I am encouraged to continue to build on my ideas, especially this idea for a new model to replace the old one that I believe has been leading us so astray, ever since the Enlightenment, when they thought that they had everything all figured out (yeah - right!).

I am no economist, yet I am deeply interested in economic ideas because our lives are so very enmeshed it that realm, particularly now that our whole economic system is falling into disarray. What I am really interested in is how we think about it all, perhaps it could be called “meta-economics,” the over-arching principles by which we understand how monetary systems function, because how we look at the world around us encompasses everything, from monetary to spiritual to social to physical to mental to emotional to environmental and other realms.

I have come across two items in collecting my thoughts for this piece that help to illustrate my points. The first appeared in my monthly newsletter from Dr. Susan Love, M.D. I keep updated on the latest cancer research news because I lost my mother to breast cancer back in 1989, and now my younger sister is a two-time cancer survivor, of the rare and very aggressive type called Inflammatory Breast Cancer. I like to stay informed of any new information that would be helpful to my sister as well as to myself and my other sister about understanding the disease and preventing it. Here is a quote that piqued my interest:

"Many women find that once they hit menopause their libido isn't quite what it used to be. The pharmaceutical companies are well aware of this, too. That's why they've been trying to identify a treatment that could essentially be the female equivalent to Viagra. To date, they have had virtually no success. Which is why they keep studying—and trying to find a place on the market for—a testosterone patch or cream for women."

This goes to my point about meta-economics by highlighting the difference between how the market is perceived to function versus how it really functions. It directly contradicts the notion that the market is consumer-driven. The fact is that the pharmaceutical companies believe that they will be able to make a lot of money by developing a female version of Viagra, even though all the research from the past eight years has shown that women's bodies are very complex and tend to respond badly to all kinds of hormone treatments, and that the women in the study were not really as interested in their product as the companies would like.

I will add that in the mean time, there still is no cure for cancer, while those horrible chemotherapy drugs continue to be widely used and highly profitable. I can hardly believe that in the twenty years since my mother died, they haven't developed a better way to treat cancer than to poison the patient and hope that the tumors and cancerous cells will be killed instead of the whole person. It seems barbaric to me. It also boggles my mind that the cause of cancer is still such a mystery. Of course, the chemotherapy industry would go under if a proper cause were found, which makes me wonder just how hard they are really trying to find the cause, let alone the cure.

The Progressive idea of health care is that it is a human right and should not be driven entirely by perceived market forces – so would that change the emphasis from treatment to prevention? Take the profit motive out, and the pharmaceutical companies might end their search for the female Viagra, and instead concentrate on keeping women more healthy, which would probably increase their libido. As it stands, they continue to push for this product that no-one wants and that actually causes cancer. So much for the greater good of society!

The other item I came across was this quote about Mikhail Gorbachev, when he was named Time magazine's “Man of the Decade” of the 1980's:

"The metaphysics of global power has changed. Markets are now more valuable than territory, information more powerful than military hardware."

The fall of the Soviet Union was supposed to be the big triumph of capitalism over communism, although the same article admits that it didn't take effect just off the bat:

“Estee Lauder and Christian Dior opened exclusive shops on Gorky Street. Meanwhile, soap, sugar, tea, school notebooks, cigarettes, sausage and other meats, butter, fruits and vegetables, and even matches are scarce.”

In fact, free market capitalism blossomed in its purist form as the Russian Mafia soon took advantage of the lack of infrastructure and the chaos of change. But the capitalists of this nation were quite smug about the whole affair. Ronald Reagan even took the credit for the change of heart of the Russians, although I personally think that the credit properly belongs to the Beatles. The supposed end of the cold war was going to open up all of vast Russia as a market for goods from the U.S.A., and military hardware was to go the way of the dodo bird. And yet, the military was able to survive just fine, and communism did not exactly go away, a la China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam, and our neighbor, Cuba. In addition, Western Europe, Canada, and lately, a wave of nations in South America have been moving toward more socialist structures as a way to better serve all members of society and to uphold basic human rights, such as the right to health care, for example.

And now, the reign of the unfettered free market ideology is coming unraveled in a catastrophic downfall. The fitful child is already screaming and kicking as our society denies him his usual toys and finally says “No!” to his excesses. No, we cannot continue borrowing and borrowing, just to keep him happy. No, all is not well in our metaphorical family situation, as our government has been insisting, hoping to avoid the reality of the economic abyss from coming forward until after the elections, so that the Republican Party that has clung so fervently to the “free market” delusion would not appear to the electorate to be so incompetent, so responsible for our pain.

No, child, you do not any longer have the privilege of spending all our money as you like, for your purchases have been frivolous and selfish and have done nothing to further anything but your own hedonistic greed. It is time, child, that we gave you some direction, some boundaries, some rules to follow, so that our family can get through this crisis, for we all need to make sacrifices, to come together and join forces to survive.

And let this be a lesson to you, dear child, that acting in pure self interest does not result in the best society after all, as we had believed, so long as we were able to keep the blessed cycle of consumption churning. It is finally time to educate you in how to be a better human being through learning to limit yourself, to be empathetic to the needs of others around you, to help out around the house, and to respect those who care for you. It is finally time, Market, to grow up.

see:
Democracy Now! November 25 2008, Naomi Klein, Robert Kuttner and Michael Hudson Dissect Obama’s New Economic Team & Stimulus Plan

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

2008-11-13T10:27:00.000-08:00

Q:Who is the most admired, honored, and respected human being that ever lived?

A:Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, is the most admired, honored, and respected human being that ever lived. Not only can his visage be found on all rupee currency notes circulating in India since 1996, but his birthday is celebrated every October 2 as an Indian national holiday. India is home to about 1.13 billion people, which is a whopping one sixth of the entire world's population. That's a lot of admirers! But wait, there's more. For Gandhi achieved his status as “The Father of the Nation” of India in such a remarkable way, that he has been an inspiration to all subsequent non-violent civil rights activists and advocates throughout the world. Martin Luther King Jr. was a student of his ideas, using them to bring about dignified change here in the United States, as was Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Anyone who advocates changing social wrongs through non-violent actions is greatly indebted to Mahatma Gandhi for showing the world how humble and gentle action can overcome violence, prejudice, and power, and all who admire, honor, and respect them also indirectly admire, honor, and respect Mahatma Gandhi. From artists such as John Lennon to advocates of environmentalism such as Al Gore, Gandhi's message is spoken of and passed around. The Dalai Lama, Lech Walesa of Poland, Cesar Chavez, the migrant workers advocate, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma,, Benigno Aquino Jr. of the Philippines, Desmond Tutu of South Africa, and many many lesser known heroes have honored Mahatma Gandhi with their peaceful protests and by speaking truth to power.

The people of this nation have just elected the first black man to become the president of the United States of America. This man, Barack Hussein Obama, has inspired the entire world with his strength of character and his gentle dignity. In fact, he may qualify as the most admired, honored, and respected human being that is alive right now. But even he is only mirroring what Mahatma Gandhi did, and surely, Mr. Obama was inspired by him when he went to work as a community organizer, for that was exactly what Gandhi did. He was a lawyer and a community organizer, and he changed not only the way that India functioned, but the way that people go about initiating change, without resorting to armed insurrections or hatred, but instead by showing that humans can learn to respect each other, despite our differences. That is Obama's message, but it is not a new one. It is a message whose time has finally come. Everyone in the world today who admires, honors, and respects Barack Obama is also doing so toward Mahatma Gandhi. To highlight this connection, I include this moving quote by Ramzi Kysia of the Free Gaza Movement, which begins with a reference to Gandhi and ends with Obama's call to action:

GAZA CITY, FREE PALESTINE (29 October 2008) - This morning I walked to the Indian Ocean and made salt in defiance of the British Occupation of India. This morning I marched in Selma, I stood down tanks in Tiannamen Square, and I helped tear down the Berlin Wall. This morning I became a Freedom Rider.

The Freedom Riders of the 21st Century are sailing small boats into the Gaza Strip in open defiance of the Israeli Occupation and blockade. This morning I arrived in Gaza aboard the SS Dignity, part of a Free Gaza Movement delegation of twenty seven doctors, lawyers, teachers, and human rights activists from across the world, including Mairead Maguire - the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

When I close my eyes, I still hear the crash of ocean waves, I still feel the warm sun on my face, and I still taste salt from the sea spray. When I close my eyes, I can still see the Israeli warship that tried to intimidate us when we reached the twenty-mile line outside Gaza, and I can still see a thousand cheering people crowding around our ship when we refused to be intimidated and finally reached port in Gaza City. Today, the proudest boast in the free world is truly, "Nam, Nehnu Nastatyeh!" - "Yes, We Can!"

In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adapted a resolution declaring October 2 to be “the International Day of Non-Violence.” I believe that this is an expression of the global yearning for violence and divisiveness to come to an end. The election of Barack Obama also signals this, because the symbol that this election sends is more than that our society is ready to accept a person of color as our leader. Obama's rise to the top of the Democratic ticket was in fact fueled by peace activists, because he was wise enough and strong enough to oppose the Iraq invasion from the very beginning. The world is ready for peace, and we can look to Mahatma Gandhi for inspiration again and again in our quest to bring about a more just and peaceful world. And by educating the younger generations, his influence can continue to grow in the world. In his words:

The science of war leads one to dictatorship, pure and simple. The science of non-violence alone can lead one to pure democracy...Power based on love is thousand times more effective and permanent than power derived from fear of punishment....It is a blasphemy to say non-violence can be practiced only by individuals and never by nations which are composed of individuals...

Power Requires Wisdom

2008-11-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

We don't need no stinking politician to right our ship of state, we need a Leader who understands that Power requires Wisdom.

Power Requires Wisdom
Nuclear power, the power of authority, the power of medicines, knowledge, religion, and basically all tools and skills and toys that we utilize to live our lives, even the power that food provides, require us to be judicious in their use. Einstein's quote, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our Humanity,” is so prescient because the development of the nuclear bomb that occurred at Los Alamos National Laboratory brought a new level of power, but not the wisdom to truly understand what we were unleashing onto the world. Will our Humanity be able to catch up to our technology? It will only when we learn that without Wisdom, we cannot Control Power. Power and energy are irrational. Fire is irrational. The weather is irrational. We can somewhat understand how they work and utilize their energies, but we cannot always control them. Wisdom tells us that Control is also a tool to be used judiciously, responsibly, thoughtfully, patiently, respectfully – Wisely. It can be used to Rationalize the Irrational, but only to an extent. Wisdom tells us to Know Our Limits. We are Limited in our ability to Control Nature's Powers. We are also Limited in our ability to Control other forms of Power, like Social, Economic, Political Power, Sexual Power, Psychological Power, Personal Powers that we wield ourselves, Powers that can easily become Irrational. We must recognize our Limits in Controlling these Powers. And in doing this, we must be wary of any ideology or theory that depends on the already economically Powerful to lift the less powerful up with their Power and Leadership, because these theories always assume that the Leaders will act Rationally, or according to certain “natural laws” that connect Labor with Property Rights and Currency with Nature's delicate balance. Wisdom tells us that the Laws of Nature have nothing to do with the systems of humans, such as monetary, social, political, religious systems, which are all based on inanimate ideas about Value and Ownership and God, that do not exist in Nature. Wisdom also tells us that humans are not particularly good at knowing our Limits, and we tend to lose Control much more readily than we like to admit. And Wisdom reminds us that there are Limits to our Knowledge as well, and that it is good to understand those Limits and to recognize that sometimes Knowledge does not bring us any closer to the Truth.

I believe that Barack Obama is much more than just a slick politician.
I believe that he is a wise man and a true Leader, someone who will respect the limits of his office, and will encourage the changes in our political system that we desperately need if this nation is to recover from the damage that has occurred during the past eight years. I believe that the "change" that he talks about is much more than a just political shift, a port tack, to continue the nautical metaphor. Obama's change is to maneuver the ship in a completely different direction, to take a different course toward our national goals that depends more on currents and having the wind behind our backs than in wearing down the crew at the oars.
He has proven that he is able to overcome all the nastiness that our politics generate. He is able to communicate clearly, to unite, to inspire.
Barack Obama understands the Constitution. He understands how the legislature works. He understands how politics work. He understands how communities work. He understands how technology works. He understands how the English language works. He understands how bigotry and ignorance work. He understands how Leadership works.
And I think he understands that if power is not controlled wisely, then the ship will loose its rudder and become a directionless hull in a dangerous sea.

Studs Terkel excerpt from No Stranger

2008-11-01T18:58:00.000-07:00

excerpt from No Stranger to Strange Lands: A Journey Through Strange Coincidences, Connective Thoughts, and Far Flung Places

Studs Terkel
...I seem to be existing in separate realities. One reality is my daily life and the regular people I encounter, who don't seem to be concerned at all about the downfall of this nation due to the stealing of the elections – twice – and the lying us into an unnecessary war and the depletion of the federal coffers so that the only thing government can spend money on is the “war on terror” - goodbye education system, goodbye affordable health care, goodbye social security, goodbye infrastructure, goodbye government regulators of industry... Then there is the reality that I seek out on the internet, the “left-wing” blogs and information sources, and LINK TV. It is truly a bubble unto its own. One that is full of the most creative, intelligent, talented, aware, caring people, one that could and should be a more widespread non-bubble phenomenon, if only its message could get past the corporate right-wing propaganda machine that passes for “news” in this country.

Today, Amy Goodman was in Chicago to interview Studs Terkel for two hours – an amazing man and another national treasure – why had I not heard of him before? Why isn't he more commonly known outside of Chicago? His radio show played for an hour, five days a week, from 1952 to 1997. He interviewed really interesting people like British philosopher Bertrand Russell, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, author James Baldwin, Pete Seeger, who played with Woody Guthrie in the group, The Almanac Singers, and many, many more famous and not so famous people. He was very active in supporting the workers rights movement, the civil rights movement, and was blacklisted as a Communist during the McCarthy era. He, like Howard Zinn, was most interested in the telling of history by regular folks and through diverse viewpoints, in order to counter the prevailing narratives that the powerful would like us to believe. In this interview, he starts out by stating that the “greatest generation” came out of the 60's, not WWII. He talks about the perversion of our language and our thoughts concerning key words like “Commie” and “Liberal” and “Terrorist.” He, like me, wants to know why the so-called “center” is actually so far to the right, thus painting so many as being on the far left fringes that should really be considered mainstream. Much of this is because we do not understand our own history and background. Studs digs right into Alan Greenspan, lamenting that he is a big Ayn Rand fan and throwing in that she believed that the rich deserve to be on top and the poor deserve to be “down there.” He calls the free market ideologues “members of the new religion we have,” and points out the irony that the children and grandchildren of the people that were saved by the actions of the New Deal government during the Great Depression are now ignorantly calling out “too much government.” His rapid-fire 95 year old mind then moves right into how the response to the attacks of 9/11 have been an insult to our common sense of decency and to our intelligence... and that just begins the interview. Later, he comes around to finish out his overall thinking on all of this:

“How could it be at the end of World War II, we were the most honored powerful nation in the world? 'Honored' is the key word. Today we’re the most despised and feared. How come? Because the American public itself has no memory of past. You know, Gore Vidal used a phrase, 'the United States of Amnesia.' I say the United States of Alzheimer's. We forgot what happened yesterday. We know all about Paris Hilton. We know about that. But what do we know about -- why are we there in Iraq? And they say, when you attack our policy, you’re attacking the boys. On the contrary, we’re defending those boys. We want them back home with their families, doing their work and not a war that we know is built upon an obscene lie. We know that now. And so, it’s this lack of history that’s been denied us, just as the case of this guy who was told the government saved them during the Great Depression.”

I was particularly struck by the quote that Studs Terkel pulls out of his jacket pocket during the interview when the subject of James Baldwin comes up. Here is Terkel quoting Baldwin:

“History does not refer merely […] to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it, the past, with us. And we’re 'unconsciously controlled' in so many ways, that history, the past, is present now in all we do.”

That is obviously a very important idea to Studs Terkel, and it is exactly what I am driving at about history not only being so important to inform our actions, but that it actually exists in a substantial way in the present as well as in the past. The denial and rewriting of history has been purposefully perpetrated on this nation in order to distract us from caring about anything but what our next purchases will be. At the same time that we are amnesiacs, we are “unconsciously controlled” by a past that we do not know. No wonder we are so confused and easily distracted. Perhaps it is not me who is schizophrenic, but the rest of society, the ones who do not realize that they are so easily manipulated by the corporate interests that run this country, who do not know the historical facts upon which the present stands, who do not recognize the hypocrisy of so much that comes out of the mouths of our illustrious leaders. Isn't it strange that it is Progressives who want to remember the past accurately, in order to be able to understand ourselves better, while Conservatives want to conserve not the past, but the status quo, and are perfectly happy rewriting the past to follow the narrative they want to disseminate in order to hold on to their status and power? They tend to gloss over the bad and the ugly and glorify the “good” parts of history's story. They get mad when someone brings up the painful particulars. They attempt to bury those not so happy memories. This is not healthy for individuals nor for societies. As James Baldwin points out, the past does not go away. It stays with us, and we need to have the strength of character to work through the hard parts as well as the happy, to own up to them and heal them, not just ignore them and let them unconsciously control us until they burst out in some uncontrollable rage. History and Memories – they are both, if not themselves irrational, very closely connected with the irrational universe of the Emotions.

Drugs, Music, and Necessary Obscenities

2008-09-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

I cried when I heard that George Carlin had died. I hadn't cried about the death of anyone that I didn't know personally since George Harrison died. I had been too young to know about John Lennon when he was assassinated, or I surely would have cried then, too. I didn't know much about anything back in those days, at the beginning of the nineteen eighties. I was busy dealing with my torturous teenage years. I didn't wear the right clothes or join the right clubs or say the right things, shamelessly sucking up to all my teachers and defiantly refusing to bow to peer pressure or play silly reindeer games. But I was at once a nerd and a fraud, as I lied to myself that I consciously chose not to fit in. In reality, I wanted desperately to fit in, but was unwilling to submit to the hazing that was apparently necessary for that to happen, and so I remained aloof.

College was a chance to start afresh, to build a new identity for myself. Naturally, I indulged in binge drinking, along with everyone else in the dorms who was trying to be hip. It didn't take long for me to realize, however, that that was not my path, that the most interesting people were managing to balance their schoolwork with a regular regimen of pot smoking. They were kind and intelligent, talked about interesting things, and listened to music that was mind-blowingly better than what was being played on the radio. They were unlike the losers with stringy hair who had hung out behind the dumpsters and disengaged with life back at high school. To the contrary, these people were highly engaged, pun intended, as life was revealed to be immeasurably funny in that way. Indeed, the more I investigated the strangeness of reality, through even more hallucinogenic agents, the more engaged I became in trying to unravel its hidden layers. It became clear that the media was portraying only one narrative, full of messages telling us that our futures were so bright we had to wear shades, that Reaganomics equaled Freedom, and that pot smoking somehow lead to fried eggs. So we, me and these new friends, fried our own eggs, and found that the result was not the greasy mess that our government was portraying, but rather, that it was possible to produce something beautiful, well-formed, delicious and nutritious, along with all the joys of being toasted, with a little OJ on the side.

Once we understood that our government was lying to us about marijuana and its effects, we began to see through all the other lies they were perpetrating – that government services were bad and military technology was good; that using the CIA to keep poor workers for our fruit companies in line in Central America was a necessary projection of our nation's power; that Ollie North was a patriot for secretly trading arms for hostages with the Iranians by having the Israelis send them weapons, and then selling replacement weapons to Israel and funneling much of those profits to the Contras in Nicaragua, who the CIA was aiding to fight against the anti-imperialist Sandinista government with cocaine-smuggling profits gained through their connections with Manuel Noriega in Panama... We concluded, through thick hazes of sweet-smelling smoke, that if it were really true that pot only addled the brain, then they would have dispersed it to us all to keep us from untangling their complex webs of deception. Was it all that coke that people were getting hooked on that caused nearly everyone in society to become so self-absorbed, to not care about anything else, and to not doubt the lies, or was it the success of the marketing campaigns that so effectively silenced any other narratives?

The eighties eventually ended, the nineties came along, and people's attitudes changed remarkably little. Technology advanced by leaps and bounds, but humanity lagged behind, bogged down by consumerism and the conservative stranglehold on progress. Any real social criticism was relegated to the realm of entertainment, to the musicians, writers, actors, and comedians, not to be taken seriously, while the caustic voices of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk corroded the heart of the nation's soul. Still smoking pot and bent on searching out alternative truths, I traveled throughout Mexico and Central America, relying on the progressive rock music that I brought along to help me keep my bearings amid such cultural differences. Despite those differences, I found that the Beatles above all others were universally loved by people of all walks of life. Amazed by this, I, too, learned to love the Beatles, and to appreciate the other members besides John Lennon, whose widow had aggressively and unrepentantly marketed his legend. Meanwhile, Paul McCartney rocked on, George Harrison's guitar gently wept, and Ringo – well, Ringo was always lovable ol' Ringo.

As the new millennium was beginning its turn, I was deeply saddened when I heard that George had died. The whole world morned the loss of such a gentle and caring soul. Then, as history unfolded itself and we all settled into our roles amidst the latest manifestation of a powerful government out of control and horribly in the wrong, our government, the sudden death of George Carlin came as a real punch in the stomach. I cried not only in sadness, but in pain. For while the Beatles had pushed forward a phenomenon of freedom and universal love through music and joy all those decades ago, the forces of human progress now necessitated a very different approach. George Carlin always understood that complacency is a complicity that entails an awakening from its stagnant slumbers, so he passionately offended us all, pointing out absurdities wherever he found them and making us examine the foundations of our own delicate sensibilities. He was brilliant and hilarious and pissed a lot of people off. Well, as he would have said and probably did, fuck 'em!

King Marketing and His Queen, Pursuit of Happiness

2008-09-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

excerpts from

No Stranger to Strange Lands:

A Journey tthrough Strange Coincidences, Connective Thoughts, and Far Flung Places

...
To be clear, I had only come across Milton Friedman previously because I was curious as to why the CEO of Whole Foods Market was writing that corporations should never be prosecuted for crimes – WHAT?!? What I learned was that his friends over at the Cato Institute are just insane. Their ideology is radical and dangerous. I know it is impolite to throw around mean labels like “Fascist,” but how do they explain that that is not what they really are? The collusion of business leaders, the media, the state, and military factions (i.e. military contractors – Blackwater, Halliburton, etc.) to create a single-party rule through the marketing of the deceit that the fate of all people will be raised up by the unfettered conduct of the elite leaders – that is Fascism in a nutshell, and it sounds all too familiar. Oh, and a little war is always good for the economy, while institutions like unions and government services that help ordinary people to have some control over their own lives are not. It is the “unfettered” part that is scariest. Of course, these people would deny that the government is involved in the “invisible hand of the marketplace,” that Big Business uses its resources to unduly influence the Law in their favor.

I also learned that Milton Friedman was the patron saint of this idea of laissez-faire economic policy, which is based on the notion that the role of government in guidance of the economy should be severely restricted, because the “free markets” regulate themselves. He connected Capitalism with Freedom, and used phrases like “free to choose” and “tyranny of control” to promote this radical ideology. Supposedly, no regulation or rule of law is necessary, because in the Free Market system, the cream rises to the top; only the best and brightest will prevail; business contracts will be faithfully upheld; and lying, cheating, and stealing will not be tolerated because bad reputations are bad business. Gosh, that all sounds peachy. Trouble is, it isn't really about whose product is best anymore, it's about whose PR is best – branding and name recognition, image, regardless of quality or supply and demand mechanisms. It has come to pass that Marketing has become the driver of the economy. That all involves big bucks, but you advertise like crazy, and once you acquire investment money because of your excellent PR, you just keep it flowing through the proper channels – lobbyists and campaign contributions (because the government is deeply involved in the economy, despite the rhetoric, through government contracts, tax law, immigration policy, etc. etc.), lawyers, more PR – keep that profit margin up by downsizing a little and off-shoring, use your connections to get yourself a juicy government contract, be sure to invite so and so to your next cocktail party... All of the capital ends up in the hands of the elite few, while the rest of society is left free to choose between getting expensive health insurance in case of a medical emergency or trying to pay down their phenomenal debt. Edward Abbey was more correct when he said: “Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top."

...

The sadness of bigotry and hardheadedness blanket this entire nation in layers of tragedy and irony. The tragedy of the enslavement of African people – the irony of the original Thanksgiving event, where the native people helped out the struggling Pilgrims, showing them how to survive in this new land, sharing their food and their knowledge, only to later be deemed inferior beings, not worthy of their lands or their cultures – the tragedy of the Civil War, that the righteous on each side were driven to such extreme violence – the irony that many of the romanticized episodes of the Wild West, involving “heroes” like Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody, were the results of so many armed and restless warriors from that horrible Civil War – tragedy that, as time went on, racism continued against the Black people in the South and a new wave of racism arose against the Chinese in the West – irony that the Industrial Revolution threw “modernization” into overdrive, creating a consumer society so completely dependent on corporations for food, clothing, medicine, transportation, communication, time-saving and life-enhancing gadgets, and energy to run those gadgets, all driven by massive media conglomerations that inform us what we need to buy next. The biggest irony here is that we are constantly reminded of how “free” we are, yet we have become slaves to our own existence. We have the right to free speech, religion, assembly, the press, and to petition our government, as Article I of the Bill of Rights declares, but these rights only exist in spirit, and are in practice minimized to apply only to those supporting this administration. And so, irony of ironies, tragedy of tragedies, this country – despite all the technology and information available, despite all of the lessons of history, despite the awareness of millions of people that our leaders have been lying to us and have manipulated the corporate media so insidiously that Orwell's dystopian world of doublethink has come to pass – this country has fallen from the towering heights into the snake pit of Fascism, lead there by fanatics, Capitalist fanatics, who are the snakes themselves, the embodiment of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, who seduced Eve with its shiny perfect-looking waxed pesticide-laden genetically engineered apple – she didn't seem to notice that it was devoid of most of its apple taste... How easy it is to conjure up our symbolic archetypes! How powerful that imagery is, and the image of the Snake goes a long way: the slimy snake oil salesman; the sneaky snake in the grass; the Great World Snake that lives in a pit at the center of the world; the seething snake pit that even that icon of manly fearlessness, Indiana Jones, can't handle. The Snake is the ultimate in creepiness and deception. A massive, nation-wide pit of creepiness and deception has emerged, created by the Serpents of Free Market Fascism, who lead their followers over its edge and into its depths with promises of glorious Freedom and Happiness while curtailing freedom and offering only false choices. And just like in the Bible, from which that Serpent with its apple emerged, they have their own creation myths and lofty ideals that, when examined closely, can be found to be based on tortured logic, questionable constructs of reality, and pure arrogance - the same kind of inflexible self-righteousness that has always led to violence and abuses, always based on some kind of entitlement claims and moral value systems that are devoid of humanistic ethics or empathy for the suffering of others. Their bible is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

...

While dwelling on sadness is not comfortable in many respects – it is not fun, it can be downright depressing, or make you frustrated and angry - it's a downer, a buzz kill, a drag – it is vitally important to face sadness, to look at it and accept it, because it is a part of the whole of reality. And when you ignore parts of reality, you miss those parts of the Big Picture. Avoiding this segment of reality skews your entire world view toward the belief that Happiness is much easier to achieve than it actually is, especially for oppressed and abused people everywhere.

The lure, the legend, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the Holy Grail, the Promised Land, Paradise, Heaven, where everyone will be eternally happy, is the best marketing tool there is! Self-help books, dieting programs, pills of all kinds, surgeries, injections, gadgets that will improve your life, accoutrement that will make you appear more attractive, that latest “get rich quick” scheme... Businesses know that promises of Happiness sell their products. They need only to look toward religion as its ultimate mass marketer. The business leaders have taken that message and run, creating a new kind of monarchy where Marketing is King, the Pursuit of Happiness is his Queen, and together they reign over the land by controlling the corporations, the news media, and the politicians. Who knew that sweet and noble Pursuit of Happiness would reach the very top of the power structure? She was raised as the crux of Democratic ideals, to empower each individual to be responsible for themselves and their own fate, the sibling of Justice, Liberty, Freedom, and Rights to the Fruits of One's Labors. But she became corrupted by her seductive power, joined forces with her King, and now only uses the names of her siblings to further her quest for more power. She is willingly granted that power, adored by her subjects, beloved by her peeps. She and the King are honored every year, on Superbowl Sunday, their Big Day, complete with all the grandeur of the Colosseum, the beefy competitors, and the pageantry. So, in honoring this Queen, this has become a nation that prefers to turn a blind eye to sadness and suffering. Sure, she dispatches her top athletes to the United Way, and if we donate some money, we can all feel good that the needy are being helped. All the King's Men create the perfect poster child for the campaign. We give money, and then forget. The monarchs know that too much sadness is not good for the bottom line. Just a dab here and there, for dramatic effect, as a contrast to that Happiness that we can all achieve if we just think positive, happy thoughts, buy all the right stuff, stay strong, and follow the script. If our team looses the game, then we will them to try even harder the next time. And if our team wins, then we glory in our collective superiority, knowing that this means that we deserve more than anyone else, that we are better than all others.

Orwell Spins a Hole to China, or How Dorothy Didn't Get It

2008-09-25T16:28:00.000-07:00

an essay written September 1, 2008

Conservatives believe that Liberals are enemies of “America.” This is what politics are about in this country. Not issues, or policies, or credentials, or personalities, or freedom, not the economy or national security or government spending or foreign policy, or even religion, but the great Cultural Divide that causes conservatives to distrust liberals, to misunderstand and believe, in their paranoia and refusal to engage in self-reflection, that we are out to destroy them and this nation. All of the real issues get swept behind the curtain behind which the little men hide, the Manipulators. Some of us want to expose what is going on behind that curtain. The majority of people, however, prefer to watch the pageant that is being projected and to pay no attention to the little men at the controls, in the same way that they like their technology, but are not curious about how it works. Curiosity killed the cat. So, as does everything else in life, our politics all boil down to one of our greatest cultural treasures: The Wizard of Oz.

For me, the annual showings of this movie on TV when I was a kid was by far the most dramatic yearly event that permeates my childhood memories. Even more than the moon landings, with the astronauts' amazing returns to Planet Earth by parachute into the sea, and which I thought for a while were some kind of annual patriotic celebration, some sort of high-tech display of our national superiority, something akin to the Fourth of July; more than Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, played every Thanksgiving, which was far too creepy and vengeful for my tastes; more than Santa Clause flying gifts in from the North Pole, perhaps because I was just too confused about how he entered our house through our skinny chimney pipe, never satisfied with the answers that sounded as contrived as those I was hearing about how the dinosaurs could have walked the earth for over a hundred million years, yet the Bible was still somehow right about God having created the Earth in six days; more than anything else, I remember those vivid, scary, visually magnificent scenes, one compelling moment after another, complete with sing-along songs and quotable quotes and the unforgettable cast of characters, each one unequivocally representing either Good or Evil, with the single exception of the mysterious and powerful Wizard of Oz.

I have a childhood memory – I must have been about ten years old at the time – of laying in bed after seeing the movie one night, running the story line through my head, thus searing the magical imagery indelibly into my mind. The scene that stands out most to me now is the one in which Dorothy has been captured by the Wicked Witch of the West, and her hapless friends, peeking timidly down upon the heavily guarded fortress, decide that they must rescue her. The Tin Man feels strongly in his heart that they must do something, Scarecrow thinks up a plan, and Cowardly Lion bravely leads the the charge. It seems to me that as I was falling asleep, I looped through from the beginning several times up until this important scene, but never got past it. Perhaps my mind was busy processing the realization that that was where the three companions had proved to actually have the qualities that they thought they were lacking. I woke up the next morning with the impression that I had dreamed all night about it, inserting myself into the story line and acting especially heroically when it came to that deciding moment of facing the castle guards with their haunting chant and those big furry hats.

Several decades later, during the nineteen nineties, I remember taking note of how that iconic movie had saturated our cultural consciousness. Lines like “We're not in Kansas anymore” and “lions and tigers and bears, oh my!,” as well as any reference to flying monkeys or munchkins were immediately identifiable and prevalent in pop culture. I had begun to take an interest in how our culture was influenced by ideas that originated in the stories and images of previous popular culture, how our language was saturated with common phrases that could be traced back to movies and television, although most of us were completely unconscious of their roots. It fascinated me to think about how our entire national identity and understandings of ourselves were tied to these entities, to movies and programs that at once mirrored the attitudes and biases of the times from which they originated and also added new ideas and ways of looking at the world and ourselves, defining us as well as guiding us through the maze of our path from past to present to future.

One day, I was shocked to come upon a person who had never seen The Wizard of Oz. This information astounded me – what red blooded citizen of this great nation could have avoided seeing this movie at some point in their life? It was akin to never having heard the Pledge of Allegiance. The incident got me to thinking about how deeply embedded the movie really is in our national consciousness. What did this mean, exactly, and why did I find it so shocking? How might this lack of cultural indoctrination have caused this man to be free of the messages inherent in the movie? What were those messages? "Good conquers Evil." "David prevails over Goliath." "Follow the Path, and you will be led to the shining Emerald City." "God-like figures are really just projected images." "Strength – Intelligence, Compassion, Courage – comes from within each of us, not from without." And, of course, "There's No Place Like Home." Hmmm, this man was a traveler, a counter culture character, an incredibly intelligent person who never followed convention and had a vivid imagination. I thought about those messages, and about our cultural biases, and about this man and why it was that I was finding myself falling in love with him. I, too, wanted to be a traveler, and to throw away the chains of convention. It wasn't that he was trying consciously to repeal all of the cultural mores that the movie had set forth for us all, because he was immune from them, inoculated. He was simply independent of all of that. I, on the other hand, had been steeped in it. I was going through a process of examination of what it was, exactly, that I valued about my own culture, and what I thought might not be so valuable.

I went through the lessons of The Wizard of Oz again, and evaluated what I held to be the most important among them. Sorting through the list, I placed "Strength coming from within" at the top, with "God-like figures are really just projected images" coming in second place. These are the themes that resonated with me, but obviously, not with everyone in my culture. Why? What were others most influenced by, that I guess I wasn't? It seems almost ridiculous to think that, despite all that beautiful imagery and singing and dancing and brave encounters with evil witches and their obnoxious flying monkeys, despite that beautiful song at the beginning, a classic expression of the human spirit to dare to dream of a better world, Somewhere Over The Rainbow, despite all of that, the strongest message, which is reinforced by the use of Technicolor to highlight the difference between the dream and the real worlds, is to reject all that and get used to the dreary black and white world, because dreams are only dreams, while Auntie Em and the rest of the gang are at home, loving you, which is more important than dreaming, and because you belong at home in Kansas, on the farm, and leaving your loved ones behind and searching out a better world just wouldn't be nice. You can dream the dream, but don't go there, because your family will miss you and worry about you, and you wouldn't want to upset them, now would you.

I did exactly that, and my family was pretty upset with me for a time. Never mind that our nation was built by individuals and families who dared to leave their loved ones behind and set out into unchartered territory, risking their lives, not secure in their futures, but going anyway. Maybe it is just us women who are supposed to stay at home for the sake of the family, or alternatively, go away with the husbands since, after all, our fathers have traditionally paid their fathers to take us off their hands before we embarrass them by popping out a bastard child. It seems to me that only since the dawn of modern communications have mothers become so insistent on those regular phone calls, and only since the advent of modern transportation was it expected of people to gather from afar to celebrate those family holidays, in a mad flurry of activity in the skies and on the nation's roadways. The conceit is seen to be that one would deny their family their presence at such gatherings, not that we as a nation take for granted the resources used up by all that travel back and forth across the continent, for the sake of the family, and as a symbolic yet often contentious show of unity, as in their attempts to subvert deep divisions and painful memories, everyone pretends that their “family values” are intact.

So, in the movie, Dorothy didn't want to be Over The Rainbow from the moment she arrived there. And while the characters that she meets learn to look within themselves to find those strengths that they didn't know they had, Dorothy never looks inside her own self. She is not lacking anything but her family in Kansas, as she goes through all of her adventures with the single-minded determination to get back home. Her big epiphany at the end is, "The next time I go looking for my heart's desire, I won't look any further than my own backyard; if it's not there, then I never really lost it to begin with." Huh??? What was her “heart's desire” again? It was to go Over The Rainbow, which, according to the song, meant she wanted something different, leaving her troubles behind, to explore somewhere far away, to achieve her dreams. Well, apparently, her dreams were to get a little attention from her family and friends at home. She turns out to be the kid who couldn't wait to go off to summer camp, but then is homesick the whole time she is there. Turns out, this is an entire movie advocating the virtue of homesickness, not about daring to follow your dreams.

No wonder our society is so confused. Talk about mixed messages! This movie just adds to all of the other unexamined messages that mainstream society advocates today. Go ahead – dream the impossible dream, sing about rainbows and bluebirds and escaping the ordinary – but then forget about it. Your family has made so many sacrifices for you, you inconsiderate, insolent, home-wrecking, utopia-envisioning ingrate. And your ancestors paved a certain road for you to follow, brick by back-breaking brick, so you will be dishonoring them if you refuse to stay on the path laid out for you. And even if they did horrible things, like enslave people or kill a bunch of Indians who were in their way, they did it all for you, so that you could have a nice big house in the suburbs to raise their grandchildren in. Follow your dreams, but only if they are approved by the dream police, and only if they follow the script, the scripture. And don't even think of giving or taking away any of the special privileges that belong to the upper class. If you are from the lower classes, well, good luck. You must not be working hard enough if you are unable to break through all the barriers that are in front of you, or you are not smart enough, or not worthy enough, and if you are successful, you must have benefited from unfair affirmative action programs. Try cheating – that usually works, especially cheating the government. It's fun, and fruitful! Honesty is overrated and will get you nowhere. Exaggerate, bluff, use some botox, color your hair, improve your image, because Image is everything. But above all, play along with the rest of us. The real world is black and white, not multicolored, and “America” is the land of the free, the home of the brave, the liberators, the good guys, the morally correct – just don't look behind the curtain at how we really operate the ship of state.

Poor Dorothy. She goes, she sees, she returns, having learned nothing from her experience. She is like Charlie in Flowers for Algernon, whose intelligence is dramatically increased through an experimental surgery, and who experiences a much fuller life as a result, but then tragically reverts to his previous state of mental obtuseness. Or how about Jeffrey Beaumont, in the movie Blue Velvet, who innocently descends into the dark underbelly of society, a reality hidden from the white picket fenced, perfect, and pure world that he lives in, where he rescues a woman named Dorothy from unspeakable horrors, then emerges unscathed, unaffected, clueless, back to happy land and white picket fences and innocence and singing birdies, as indeed, the entire film goes in one ear and out the other. David Lynch made an entire movie based on the concept of “in one ear and out the other,” and nobody got it! The haunting theme of Flowers for Algernon, should also make people think about how we become more fulfilled humans by expanding our minds, keeping ourselves open to change, and experiencing other realities, but that gets obscured by the puritans who object to the guy experiencing the joys of sex once he becomes smart. The sad, sad truth is that our society does not want to expand its collective mind. It does not want to improve itself. It resists change, because it thinks that things are just fine the way they are, or even better, the way they used to be, before the hippies corrupted the youth with their mind-expanding drugs, weird music, anti-authoritarian attitudes, colorful clothes, and birth control.

Dorothy not only saw a Technicolored dreamworld, where she might have learned about strength coming from within, if she had paid any attention, but she also exposed the Wizard for the fraud that he really was. She saw that the Godhead was just a show, a projection on a screen, with colored lights and amplifiers and pyrotechnics for extra added effect. She questioned the authority of the Great and Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and found that the show was being run by a regular, if particularly clever, man. In her dreams, Dorothy was a hippie! Questioning authority figures, looking behind the curtains of power, befriending society's outcasts... but, then again, there are the mixed messages, as she also diligently follows the path and longs for the adventure to end and the normalcy of Kansas to return. I guess that most of Hollywood's biggest commercial successes are so successful precisely because they appeal to a large number of people on very different levels. After all, they are not out to change us, but to make money off of us all. It just seems that despite the popularity of heart-warming themes like "David versus Goliath," or "the Triumph of the Underdog" in movies, when it comes to real life, this culture accepts the Goliaths and the Behemoths to actually be the rightful leaders of society because of some kind of (rather Orwellian) Ayn Randian/religious conviction about Natural Order and Social Darwinism... but that is the subject of another essay, entirely.

Our cultural identities ultimately draw most heavily not on the "David versus Goliath" themes nor on the counterculture messages or the deeper meanings present in many of our movies and television shows, but rather, on the more heroic and simplistic themes – the "Good versus Evil" and the "Us versus Them" dichotomies, love stories (sexy as well as more innocent), any excuse for excitement (fights, chases, violence, near-misses) and pageantry, iconic road pictures, rags to riches stories, an obsession with mobsters, and family reunions. So despite how beloved the movie of The Wizard of Oz is by our society, when it comes to questioning authority or looking behind the curtains of power, that is considered insolent and, increasingly, un-patriotic. A patriot follows marching orders, keeps in line, respects authority, and doesn't ask questions, nor should a patriot question the moral authority that is supposed to be inherent in our nation's soul, or question its motives, or its honor, or suggest that we might be a better nation if we would do these things in the spirit of sincere self-reflection. No, that would be blame-America-first liberalism, which is the enemy of all that is unquestionably superior about this nation. Hollywood and the art of movie making is an “American” institution, and the entertainment industry has become an integral part of the military-industrial-corporate-congressional complex that projects only the images and the narrations that it wants us all to see, so that it may play its part in maintaining the status quo of wealth and power distribution, or rather lack of distribution. The entertainment industry must stick to the script, even as those alternative narratives sneak themselves in at times. For that counter culture, maverick image has been surreptitiously conscripted for the cynical purpose of supporting the overarching narrative by projecting independence and attitude as a cultural value, to sell people on the idea that they are bucking the system when the Orwellian reality is that they are falling right in step with the narrative that they are being sold.

I am speaking, of course, about the presidential campaign of John McCain and his newly-chosen vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin. George Orwell is spinning in his grave so fast, he is about to reach China. McCain and Palin: the Maverick Outsiders. The specter of these two and their surrogates, standing before the Republican Conventioneers, the Conservative Right doing their usual spinning of facts at unprecedented angular velocities, is just insane. Liberals hate America. Republicans are not partisan. Our candidates will change Washington, get rid of Big Government, step outside the Beltway. Pay no attention to the Cocktail Circuit Liberal media, except for the ones who support us. If we say something, it must be true. When they say anything or criticize or point out contradictions or falsehoods, they are lying. Never mind that we are the ones that have been in charge of the government for the last eight years. Infanticide. 9/11. Nukes. Vote for us.