RIP Hatemonger

Jerry Falwell is dead.

This does not give me any satisfaction. But anyone who could seriously say "...blow them away in the name of the Lord" is a total dufus. Good riddance.

I Hate Heroes

Yes, this "hero" crap is gettin' pretty stale for me.

It's getting kinda watered down, don't ya think? Just about everyone is a hero these days. Every poor schlub that joined the military hoping to escape their soul-crushing middle American existence and subsidize a community college education is a hero. Morons who ride their motorcycles without helmets and then kiss pavement at 90 mph get to be heroes just because their no-longer-needed left kidney ends up in some little girl. The worst are those heroes that qualify by keeping their head down and going to work at the tool and die shop every day for 40 years so they can put lunchables in their trashy kids' backpacks.

I have news. Their misery does not make them heroes. It just makes them miserable. And guess what? They're bringing the rest of us down as well.

Whatever happened to crawling through fifty yards of barbed wire under withering machine gun fire to rescue wounded comrades? THAT qualifies.

I want my hero status served with the following, though not necessarily in this order: glory, fame, money, free food and drinks, and the adoration of very attractive women. In fact, if I can have the last three, I'm willing to be well known as the world's most cowardly asshole.

But what's really bugging me now is the anointing of presidential contenders as heroes. Specifically, we hear about Rudy Giuliani and George Bush as heroes for the way they responded on and after 9-11. It's a storyline that even their enemies grudgingly acknowledge.

But give me a break. Everyone knows that it is never easier to know what to say and do than at a moment of crisis like 9-11. You can pull the script for that "never-say-surrender-all-pull-together" hokum off any shelf in Hollywood. A ten-year-old would have the sense to behave just as they did. It should be the greatest relief to any public figure to be able to operate in a world of black and white like that just for a few minutes before returning to struggle with shades of gray, competing priorities and factions. What else might Giuliani and Bush have said as they stood atop the piles of rubble?

"You people are fucked. If you need me, call me at my beach house."

Yes, We are Doomed. But Look! I Baked Cookies!

In politics, there's always a gap between what you must say, and what you must do. Nowhere is that gap more pronounced than in Iraq, where even the smartest plays are imperfect at best, and too complex for sound bites.

Those who say that no one knows how to solve the Iraq crisis are being partially disingenuous. The world has had plenty of experience with similar situations. We can predict the possible future plot lines, and there are road-tested tactics available to manage them all. The problem is that no one, on the right or the left, can articulate, much less successfully sell, the appropriate policies to the public.

The difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that we don't know, and in fact shouldn't be overly rigid, about the final outcome we want to achieve. The goal is stability, which could come in a variety of forms, and depending on which form becomes attainable in the dynamic unfolding of events, we should be flexible enough to reach for it in the moment of opportunity. It's like we're baking. We know the ingredients: security, pacification, diplomacy, economic aid, and so forth, we just can't predict what will happen when it's in the oven. Will it be popovers or pound cake? I would argue that if it's anything other than an inedible leaden brick, we've got a potential winner.

This puts right-thinking policy makers at a huge disadvantage; even if they could articulate the details of the correct approach, the situation is so fluid that abrupt changes of tactics will be necessary. And that means that our leaders for years to come will be managing not only a mess in Iraq, but a separate mess of public opinion. Progress will come even more slowly than it might otherwise, we will bleed treasure, and the Iraqis will bleed the thing that everyone most hates to bleed: actual blood.

P.S. The last thing we should be doing at a time like this is pointing fingers and playing the blame game. But I would be remiss not to mention that this is ALL George Bush's fault. On the way to Baghdad he destroyed all the political and diplomatic infrastructure needed for escape. He abused the public trust, disdained international consensus, and ignored Iraq's internal political realities. And now the next president will have to knit a parachute while in free fall.

I'm not trying to be a downer--I'm only sayin'.

George Bush is Roasting Babies Alive!

Well, let's just say for a minute that he is roasting babies alive. Cute, cuddly, innocent little babies!

Would that be bad enough to actually stand out among the many crimes, legal and moral, that he and his forces commit every day? What does it take to make a splash in an already roiling typhoon sea?

If you consider the kinds of trespasses that have brought indictment in past white houses, that have toppled governments, you can only conclude that our present crew have taken the game to a whole new level. They are the Bob Beamon of administrations, shattering all previous records for corruption, both quantitatively and qualitatively. They are the new yardstick of sleaze.

Yet to date, the reaction in terms of public condemnation and legal redress has not been in any way proportional, because we have become acclimated to the volume of badness. Just as a single scream is lost in the roar of a crowd, so, inevitably, no crime or abjuring of the public faith is shocking when such violations occur with the regularity of respiration.

It is because it is human nature to become inured to that which is routine that it is critical that every trespass of this administration be queued up and processed by the legal system. Congressional committees, courts, the GAO, special prosecutors--the overwhelming backlog of misbehavin' must be digested by a system that is immune to becoming acclimated to anything, that knows no way to approach the garbage heap of evidence but to laboriously examine and catalog every rotting item on the pile and then hang each reeking piece of filth around the neck of the Dick Cheney who is responsible for it.

The public may be exhausted by scandal, but let the mindless wheels of justice grind.

Nuance? HELL YEAH!

File as part 4 of a larger series entitled: "Yes, We are Doomed. But look! I baked cookies!"

The lines between our political and commercial life have become blurred. Selling and buying is the game, whether the product is disposable razors or positions on abortion rights. The techniques taught at business schools are consciously and rigorously applied by politicians and their handlers on a daily basis.

And that's not good for the quality of our governing.

Why? Because the secret of effective governance is mastery of the nuance and complexity of all relevant issues. The key to selling lots of stuff, on the other hand, is to create a mass market with unvarying tastes, and get them all to buy one unvarying product by promoting it with a short, simple message that requires no effort on the consumer's part to understand.

In other words, you can make good public policy or hit your quarterly sales forecast. But you can't do both.

Nuance and complexity are the stuff of reality. They are also completely unmarketable. An effective car commercial will be focused and simple. Is it a sexy vehicle? Is it sensible? Safe? At the most, an ad might suggest that the car is both sexy AND sensible. "Dear God!" exclaim viewers, their minds reeling, "that car is TWO THINGS AT ONCE! I need Xanax NOW!"

Can the health care debate be boiled down to two monolithic ideas? ("Private health care. The highest quality care that you can't afford.")

Another thing that product marketers try to do in their ads is induce an emotional rather than intellectual response. It's well understood that it's much easier to reach someone's heart and/or gut in 15-30 seconds than their head. It's also a much more effective and reliable way to generate a buying response.

The result of this in the political realm is that complicated matters of public policy that require the utmost intellectual engagement are stripped of all meaningful substance and wrapped in some tangential or irrelevant emotionally-charged packaging before they are "put on the market." Remember the ads (on both sides of the issue) when the quixotic push for privatizing social security was on? Whether the ad was pro or con, there was sure to be a sad old lady who didn't know what she was going to do.

But for the most part, nobody bothers to try to sell issues as complex as health care or social security reform. Sure, you can dress them up in a lacy thong and put lipstick on them, but the public won't be fooled. They know these issues are BORING. And boring is the worst thing there is.

Which brings us to another big problem with policies as consumer goods: not only are the issues repackaged beyond recognition, certain issues never get put on the shelves at all for reasons totally unrelated to how important those issues might be to our well-being or ability to thrive. Instead we get only hot-button issues like abortion or gay marriage. These issues that evoke a visceral response are the only ways for politicians to get noticed and stay noticed. And being noticed is the air that politicians need to survive.

Were things always this way? Clearly, election campaigns and lowest-common-denominator salesmanship have always gone hand-in-hand. But the drive for politicians to sell, sell, sell every minute of every day is largely a phenomenon of the last 30 or 40 years. For one thing, the intensely competitive television news cycle delivers information instantaneously to people that don't read, which in itself leads to increased pandering. Also, today's constant polling is like a perpetual stream of sales figures that compel politicians to adjust their marketing plans on an ongoing basis.

And let's not forget that this idea of selling public policy is more than an analogy. Newspapers and TV networks are literally selling advertising against the dramatic quality of political rhetoric.

It's difficult to see how this story can have a happy ending without profound changes in the way politicians conduct their dialogue with the public. That will require tough legislation that constrains the media and the way money flows into and can be spent by campaigns, and a re-evaluation of our national unqualified worship of the Market As Good For All Things. Wake me up when that happens.

Democrats Gone Wild

Now that the Democrats have got a bully pulpit, subpoena power, and the purse strings by the short hairs, Republicans are redoubling their efforts to distract the public from their own compulsively scandalous behavior by feigning shock at Democratic overreaching. From the administration we hear cries of dismay that Democrats are trampling upon the noble institutions and traditions of our government, disregarding precedents of Executive privilege and confidentiality, rashly issuing subpoenas and interfering with the President's right to use the military as cavalierly as he would wield a flyswatter.

How could Nancy Pelosi sabotage our foreign policy by taking matters into her own hands in Syria? How could the Democrats put a timeline on the withdrawal from Iraq? What shame that the Pat Leahy would push Karl Rove and Harriet Myers to the dishonor of revealing confidential deliberations on the firing of US attorneys.

Poor, delicate creatures of the Right, their constitutions are simply too fragile to be exposed to such incivilities. As Scarlett O'Hara once said, "Rhett, don't. I shall faint."

The profound hypocrisy of such protestations is self-evident. The Lords of Scandal are genetically incapable of feeling scandalized.

But they do make a good point (though as usual, not the one they think they're making) which is that much of what makes our government effective, when it is effective, is not codified in law; rather, it is institutional and traditional. For instance, the bi-partisan civility the typically exists in the Senate allows for legislative productivity even in times of acute political conflict. Or consider the freedom of action in legal gray areas that we allow elected officials, who get the benefit of the doubt because they implicitly represent the will of the people, and traditionally we accept that the remedy for their trespasses should come from the voting booth, not the courtroom.

These extra-legal aspects of our system of government are more than niceties. They are the products of a Darwinian churning that helps insure the survival of our political compact. It is not through any sense of compassion or squeamishness that those with the balance of power have historically refrained from using that power to administer a total coup de grace to the weak in past administrations, but rather the result of fear. Fear of political backlash, fear of making too many enemies, fear of permanently altering the political playing field in ways that lead to unpredictable, and hence risky, outcomes.

And--if I can refrain from cynicism for just a moment (Look mom! Icebergs in hell!)--sometimes politicians are motivated by fear's positive flipside, respect. Respect for tradition and for the value of stability and civility as foundations of good government.

But whatever leads people in government to behave--beyond terror of prison gang rapes--it's a fact that not many rise to the highest echelons by being a bull in a china shop. Success in politics, particularly given the amount of money required, calls for a lot more grace than that.

Or so it used to be.

House lights down please. Slide one. Exhibit A: our current administration.

Composed of (1) provincial nobodies who, had not blind fate bestowed money or connections, would have aspired to no loftier position than a seat on their town zoning council; (2) longtime government operatives with pasts that could most generously be described as "checkered," and a history of holding positions that are extreme even by the standards of extremists, and (3) a collection of Dr. Strangelove's from the fringes of academia. Of the latter two classes it is difficult to say which provides the more fitting candidates to be cast as the villain in James Bond films.

These people mistake loyalty for respect and aren't wise enough to feel fear. They think rules are for suckers, that they can make there own reality. They would have us believe that mindless thrashing is in fact their brilliant master plan.

Beware those who conduct their affairs as if big problems have simple and easy solutions. Such beliefs are the refuge of the lazy, for whom the honest and necessary work of building robust constituencies based on interest to advance specific policies is too mentally taxing, frustrating, tiresome and slow. Yes, it is tempting to believe that they have found some kind of secret shortcut to a better, safer world. But recognize a medicine show when you see one. The administration is operating somewhere on a continuum between out-and-out deception at one extreme and intellectual weakness, delusion, and foolishness at the other. We can debate where on the spectrum they truly sit--but it doesn't really matter. You don't want to be strolling in any part of that neighborhood after dark.

They haven't shown any reluctance to breaking actual laws, so they certainly aren't going to think twice about smashing institutional traditions that they (accurately) see as constraining of the executive scope of action. In fact, they are purposely flouting all precedent in an attempt to permanently redefine the relationship between the branches of government and to blur the lines between partisan activity and government business. But such tactics won't lead to a stable altered government anymore than you can breed children with wings by sewing feathers to your ass.

This administration is that one drunk dumbass that always insists on standing up in the canoe.

So what are the democrats to do? When one power is intent on setting fire to every useful constraint and institution, inaction is not an option. Extremism in one part of the political arena must engender extreme reactions as surely as nature abhors a vacuum. What is truly remarkable about the way the new congress has conducted its business so far is not the aggressiveness with which it pursues oversight, with which it seeks to stabilize the ship, but the restraint with which it conducts that oversight. They know that even as they seek to call the administration to account for countless faults, they must simultaneously salvage our beleaguered institutions and traditions in hopes that one day, before too long, a saner executive will be able to use them to govern effectively.

I know George Bush

I know George Bush.

I encountered him a couple of time when I was in high school, and repeatedly in my college days. Even in my adulthood, I have run into him at social events and in my business life, though lately we're not going to the same parties.

Well, maybe it wasn't actually George Bush, but it might as well have been. Rich. Confident. Lacking any fear of the future or the self-doubts that prompt introspection. In college, while I lived in a windowless basement room where, at night, viscous brown foam gurgled mysteriously from a drain in the floor, he inhabited a different plane. Sure, I'd see him at parties sometimes. He'd was usually the loudest, happiest drunkard in the room. But at best, he saw the rest of us as a supporting cast. More likely, we were his playground equipment. The only people in my crowd that he ever acknowledged as flesh and blood were the good looking girls, and for these he had less respect than prostitutes. A blowjob that costs money is accorded at least the significance due a business transaction.

But when the party waned, when the coke was gone and we couldn't scrape together the money for more, George would be gone, beamed back to a different world populated only by his own kind. A world with few limitations on luxury and excess, with few pressures or worries, where performance was inconsequential.

George did carry one insecurity though: life without adversity had made him weak in mind and spirit. This awareness, inchoate, drove him to acts of petty dominance and callousness. Dirty play in sports. Rudeness to commoners. He was a mean drunk.

As long as I have known him, I have hated George Bush.

I don't hate him out of jealousy of his material wealth. Nor am I burning with frustration over some crushing repartee he made to me when last our paths crossed. Rather I hate him because his entire life is an insult to plain, regular folks less privledged than himself. Frankly, I don't feel the insult personally. I'm blessed with a good job, a healthy family, and a safety net likely to keep me and mine from starving except in the event of the most extreme catastrophe. I may not be a true "elite," but on a global and historical scale, I'm blessed and rich beyond imagining. I hope I am always mindful of it.

But most Americans have bigger worries than I. Dead-end jobs. Schools that don't serve their children. Debt. Poor health care. Pressures to perform every day with consequences like failure, poverty, and the destruction of their family always hanging over their head

George Bush's life and being is a wad of phlegm hocked into the face of these Americans.

And yet, somehow, his handlers have manufactured an image based on anti-intellectualism and a weak Texas twang that has convinced most of blue collar America that George is one of them.

But think back to your high school days, America. Think back to that one party that summer, to that time when you went to the beach. You've met George Bush. You know George Bush.

You hate that guy.

The Enemy is Us

Have you heard? The administration has been doing a little Iraq Study of their own, and--O! Bitter conclusion!--they've discovered who's responsible for our humiliating failure. Turns out, it's... us! The fickle, cowardly, inconstant American public.

The shame.

It not like we weren't warned. The Dear Leader and his Vice-Prince of Darkness have been telling us and telling us that anything less than full commitment to their program was tantamount to offering Osama Bin Laden an erotic massage. But we wouldn't listen. And look at us now.

The possibility that my own ambivalence about our actions in the middle east may be to blame for the deaths of so many soldiers and so many more innocent Iraqis has come as an embarrassing shock. I'm trying to get on board. I've written down the "Report suspicious persons" phone number from the highway sign, and I'm calling twice a day. To lighten the load for NSA operatives, I've been startin' all my phone calls with a brief, keyword-laden summary of what the ensuing conversation will be about. If necessary, I will grab the next dark-skinned mother with a middle-eastern accent and personally waterboard his sorry ass.

But yet I know that I am guilty of the very weakness that has so disappointed my President. For I cannot squelch a faint and blasphemous doubt--a tiny voice that tells me it's not my job to go along with their program.

In a democracy, says the Tokyo Rose in my head, the electorate is trusty horse to the executive cowboy. The cowboy relies absolutely upon the horse for comfort, productivity and even survival. The horse meanwhile relies upon the cowboy for his care. The horse is the cowboy's most important tool. If well-cared for, it will carry him through his seasons of work and make him a success. If it fails him, it is no more to blame than a hammer that misses a nail and strikes your finger.


But dumb brute the electorate may be, often the horse knows better what is good for the cowboy than the cowboy does himself. The horse knows its own limits and can sense dangers imperceptible to the cowboy. And in the end, it's pointless to argue whether the horse is right or wrong when it digs in its heels and will go no farther. If the horse won't go, it's the cowboy that's failed.

It's not like horses are that complicated. Politicians understand how public support is built and maintained. It's not a secret recipe.

First, make sure your goals are desirable and realistic. Horses don't mind work as long as it's manageable. Second, articulate your goals persuasively to the public. Give your horse a reassuring pat, feed it a sugar cube, let it know that you know what your doing. Third, KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE DOING! Nothing undermines a horse's loyalty like an ineffectual cowboy.

You can see how these strategies reinforce each other. It's easier to be competent when you've chosen a realistic goal, and it's easier to articulate your mission persuasively when the mission is worthwhile.

Sometimes politicians don't have the luxury of having all these strategies working for them in concert, but can be successful anyway. G. Bush Sr. wasn't the world's most persuasive speaker--it was a little like being led in to battle by an actuary--but he kept the trip short and direct, and easily held the public together through the end of Gulf War #1. Churchill on the other hand was driving a bus on fire, but could muster such words of power that he had the public convinced the flames were there for a marshmallow roast.

So it can be done. It has been done. Many times. In imperfect circumstances.

But this current crop of poseurs in the white house--they may look like real cowboys, what with their steely eyes and credentials from the Nixon administration. But can they rope? Can they ride? Jesus, they can't even light a campfire with self-starting charcoal briquettes!

Did they pick a realistic and desirable goal? Let's see, we want to remake geopolitical foundations of the middle east and permanently defang Islamic fundamentalist extremism. Nice ideas, but as they said in "Jaws," I think you're going to need a bigger boat.

And what of the noble clarion calls that will rouse our hearts to deeds of greatness? Where the eloquence of Lincoln or Roosevelt? "With malice toward none, with charity for all," and "we have nothing to fear but fear itself?" On those counts they got the letter but not the spirit. Sickeningly, they have appealed over and over to our basest instincts of hatred and fear.

And let's not forget the lyin'. The prolific, unharnessed, balls-out, in-your-face, what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it? LYING. Lying isn't persuasion. It's a bad check. And bad checks get harder and harder to cash as time goes on.

So that leaves competence as the only remaining pillar upon which the administration could possibly hope to carry public acquiescence through to the closure of the Iraq adventure. And when we look at the nuts and bolts of the effort, the planning, the thinking, we find...

Nothing. A vacuum. Tumbleweeds scatter by and a lone cricket chirps between the pages of the vaunted "Plan for Victory." And so events careen in all directions without rudder or tiller or a hand to steer.

Now the public is rioting, the Republicans are out, and Bush's political capital is gone. And that's supposed to be our fault? Because we don't have the stomach for a fight? Because we want to coddle terrarists? Please.

The bigger tragedy of all this is that the compact between horse and rider once broken cannot easily be remade. Our democracy functions best when the executive can call on the power of the masses to help it effect broad change, to overcome the squeals of special interests and to give our policies the unique force and respect that comes from the sense that they are the policies of a whole people, not a few powerful men. In return, the electorate is ballast against the rash, singular ideas that any one President will have. The electorate will resist an unexpected pull towards the cliff's edge.

One indication of how bad things have gotten is that people are ready to put the horse in charge. It is not desirable that foreign policy or a war be run by the whim of public opinion. If you were waiting for me to joyously affirm the ascendancy of the people's will, I'm going to disappoint. The tragedy of Iraq will likely be magnified in the years ahead by the American public's reaction to being so profoundly mishandled and the resulting inability of this President, and possibly the next president, to obtain the political backing to do what needs to be done.

Nice going G-dubya. You rode the horse into walls and over cliffs. You whipped it til it bled. You fed it on lies and fear. You drove it til it foamed at the mouth and collapsed beneath you.

And now it won't let you up on its back again, and you say it's the horse's fault? Maybe you, faux-Texan that you are, should go back to the ranch and get some advice from a real Texan. They'll tell you that behind every recalcitrant horse, there's an incompetent cowboy.

Blood!? That should be on the inside!

From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old!

If We're Going to Create a Reality, Let's Create One that Doesn't Suck!

Much has been made of a quote from a senior Bush administration official, publicized in an article by Ron Suskind in October 0f 2004:

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while
you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again,
creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things
will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to
just study what we do.

No doubt--them's strong words.

One's first reaction is that of seeing someone at a party make a complete ass of themselves. Such words are of the common stock spoken by every tragic, doomed, soon-to-be-universally-excoriated power figure in history and literature since the dawn of time. The speaker in this instance is obviously an educated person, and ought to know this. If he had the sense god gave geese, he'd keep his perverse, megalomaniacal ideas secreted in the recesses of his diseased mind.

But this is not my point.

Rather, I'm interested to know: Hey, how's the old reality mill working? If I had MY own reality creatin' machine, I'd be sitting pretty right now, so the Bush folks must be living large, right? The answer depends on exactly what kind of reality you think the administration is trying to create--and that's not a simple matter because they only have one reality creating machine, and different elements within the administration are always arguing over who gets to drive it. On one hand, you've had the googoo-eyed idealists like Perle, Kristol, Feith et al, and the simplistic, spoiled, frat-boy bully wing--the Dear Leader himself. Those guys have tried to crank out such realities as democracy in Iraq, a watershed defeat of terrorism, and a permanently ascendant republican party.

We know how that's going. Nice job guys. Take the rest of your elected term off, why dontcha?

But there's another element in the administration--the evil geniuses. And they've been taking the keys to the reality machine out of the President's underwear drawer at night and turning out some scary product. Consider some of the realities they've been peddling:

• The terrorists want to destroy us
• Diplomacy doesn't work
• The UN is weak and irrelevant
• The executive has rightful powers that exceed those generally acknowledged in the last, oh, 200-odd years

You'll notice, these aren't goals, like "democracy in Iraq." They are assumptions about how the world works. And in each case, the evil geniuses have been very successful at converting these beliefs self-fulfilling prophesies. "The terrorists" have traditionally hated us indirectly for our policies, but administration rhetoric that casts the Muslim world as evil certainly encourages them to hate us just for us. (Who wouldn't? We're a dick!) And diplomacy DOES work, unless... unless you poison every relationship with belligerence and arrogance until diplomacy really does cease to be an option. The UN can be as weak or strong as the US wants it to be. Who has thoughts on which is in our interest... Anyone?... Anyone?... John Bolton?

And how about that accretion of dictatorial power to the executive? When all's said and done, public consensus about the legitimate authority of the executive will not be as extreme as the administration would like. But the administration's technique of low balling the value of the constitution and haggling relentlessly over every point of negotiation is likely to be very effective in practice. In the end, we'll probably feel like we didn't give it to them quite as cheap as they wanted, but we'll end up selling our rights far more cheaply than we ever intended.

Astonishingly, the people who create such realities actually believe they are true patriots. The arrogance that makes self-examination impossible, and the absence of any real compassion and humility in their shrunken, atrophied hearts, has left them with no foundation upon which to build beyond fear and cynicism (unconscious products of despair). And so they seek power and wealth alone as a bulwark against the rage and violence to come, rage and violence that they themselves have been instrumental in nurturing. Rage and violence that will legitimize their worldview and serve as a basis for them to build even more wealth and power.

Ironic? Undoubtedly. Pathetic? Yes. Sad? Well, it certainly would be if they weren't fucking everything up so royally for the 99.99999999% of us who won't be eating canapes with Dick Cheney in his bunker when the apocalypse comes.

You know, I may be a starry-eyed idealist myself, but I can't help wondering--if we can create our own reality, maybe we should try to create one that DOESN'T SUCK! Here is an off-the-cuff, unprioritized sampling of some of my ideas for this crazy, non-sucking reality. Maybe you have ideas too?

• Absent an immediate and acute threat to our persons and/or treasure, diplomacy is preferable to unilateral military action. It may not satisfy our thirst for vengeance and black-and-white outcomes that can be labeled "victory," but it tends to work out much better for our persons. And our treasure.
• Our children's children can't vote. It's our moral duty to defend their interests.
• Material problems demand rigorous, rational solutions. Wishing won't make it so. If you stand out in the rain, you can say it's not raining, but you will get wet and uncomfortable.
• If the market economy is to lead to a sustainable lifestyle, prices must reflect the actual costs of the products we use.
• Government is not good or bad--it is better or worse. Disdain for government does not produce good government. Let's be shrewd, detailed and calculating about how we structure our policies.
• Democracy is fragile and imperfect, but we're all stumped for a better idea. It only works if the electorate is composed of thoughtful, independent, and highly critical thinkers. Our schools and media must nurture these traits.

I'm not trying to suggest that we wake up and re-evaluate our short-sighted, self-centered appallingly materialistic ways... I'm only sayin'

Explorers and Pioneers

The American political landscape is becoming a lot more fluid than it's been in a long time, largely as a reaction to George Bush's graceless attempt to grab the country by the short hairs and drag it to the right. One of the interesting dynamics that is come out of the resulting tension is a debate about the relative merits of centrism--Save us Hilary!--and more radical agendas (national health care, global action on the environment) that have been permitted to re-enter the policy discussion, albeit still seated in a section marked "lunatic fringe."

I have no use for centrism. Pure centrism is what you want when you think the bus is headed in the right direction, but the ride is just too bumpy. I happen to think we need a significant change of travel plans. That means picking up the whole dang bucket--center, left and right--and repositioning it. So I've been thinking about the role of progressive elements within the mainstream, and outside it, in the effort to move the center.

We can think of the mainstream as consisting of those opinions and behaviors that are shared in common by a lot of people. If you plotted those on a graph, you'd end up with the famous bell curve produced by scientific studies. The bulk of data points fall in what self-validates itself as the moderate middle. The bell slopes to the sides where fewer and fewer people hold more extreme opinions. Just under the lip of the bell on the left shelters the fragile but undaunted Dennis Kucinich. And at the right lip of the bell--at the boundary where the bell ends and the void once populated by the likes of Hitler and Stalin begins--we find the aptly named Dick Cheney in his bunker stroking a cat with an eye patch and plotting the destruction of the universe.

But there are people out beyond the fringes of the bell curve with much of value to offer. In scientific terms, their beliefs are "out of range data points." In a lab experiment, these anomalous results are usually attributed to mistakes in methodology, contaminated equipment, or some indeterminate craziness. Ironically, radical opinions about public policy are often considered to stem from the same causes. Regardless, all scientists agree about what to do with out of range data points: throw them away. Thus people who express out of range opinions are called cranks or crackpots, and they and their thoughts are either dismissed or ridiculed.

But they have an indispensable role to play in the process that will change what it is acceptable for people in the mainstream to say and think. Along with less-radical but like minded folks who operate from inside the bell-curve, they can move the center.

Those who stake out extreme, out of range opinions--say, early advocates of alternative energy, or more extreme, someone like Noam Chomsky who argues (absurdly) that god may not actively desire US domination of the planet. These people are like explorers who go beyond existing frontiers. Only time will tell what they've found. Lands flowing with milk and honey? Nevada? But there is no question that the only way to get a mass of people to go to anyplace unknown is for a few brave/stupid souls to go there first and scout it out.

Consider the advantages of playing the explorer role in public debate. You get to say whatever you want, and (you think that) people think you're cool. You're a maverick, like James Dean (or more likely Fonzie). You don't have to waste your time trying to shepherd a big unruly group of people on the trail with you, cuz you're alone. You can sleep well at night because you're bringing people something valuable. And patchouli-scented sophomore college girls will make an offering of their bodies after the lecture. In support of the cause, or course.

On the con side, well, people think you're an idiot, a creep, a crackpot, unrealistic, impractical, and incapable of getting along with others. You're outside the bell curve and, frankly, the weather is frequently shitty out there. And let's not forget--you're off in the wilderness and your ability to influence events back in society, or even maintain your personal hygiene, is seriously impaired.

But let us leave our intrepid, rain soaked explorer for the time, and return to civilization. What's life like for those who would like to lead people in the same direction that the explorer has gone, but have no intention of going without bringing at least the fringe of the bell curve with them? These are the pioneers, the wagon train leaders, possessed of bravery of a different sort. In this group you will find the politicians--politics is after all the art of the possible--as well as the commentators and the most practical of bloggers. They have determined that influencing events is the greatest goal, and that the ends largely will justify the means.

The pros? People may still call you an idiot, but there will be plenty of others that will tell you you're brilliant. You will not be the only one that thinks you're cool. You might actually get to change something for the better and get to spend the rest of your life telling awed audiences how you did it. You will get invited to parties. You could get a paycheck! It will be hard work, but it will be worth it, and you can say that you fought the good fight.

But it's not all fresh young male pages, accolades and appearances on the Colbert Report for our pioneer leaders. All your bold and brilliant ideas will have to be well-larded and sweetened to have a rat's-ass-chance-in-hell of being palatable to the unwashed upon whose good graces (and votes) you rely. And that means--maybe you should sit down before I say this--that you will have to be... a hypocrite. The only other option is to partake of the Kool-Aid. Not so much as to result in complete zombification, but enough to create the gentle buzz of oblivion. But physician's warning: Kool-Aid dosage is notoriously hard to calibrate, and accidental overdoses are common. And finally--yes it is warm and dry under the bell curve, and there is an open bar--but there will be LOTS of irritating people in there with you. For instance Shawn Hannity and the aforementioned dick, Dick Cheney.

But it takes both explorers and pioneers to make change happen. The explorers to shout from the distance "Hey! I'm here! The weather's great and the surf's up!" And the pioneers to cajole and convince and get them dogies movin'. I have the luxury of being out in the wilderness politically, calling for an end to advertising in media and socialized medecine (and a personal fairy too! I want a personal fairy!) I'd much rather risk derision and hippie girls than share a roof with Sean Hannity. But I don't blame the Feingolds and the Boxers of this world for playing along. In a professional situation, you don't really have much choice. Either you get results, with whatever compromises, or you're out on your ass. Meanwhile, the explorers have the luxury of talking like a nutjob, calling for an end to advertising in media and socialized medecine.

Everybody who wants to promote change would wish for some leverage to make it happen. A smart pioneer takes up a position far enough toward the periphery of the mainstream that when he jams a crowbar under AG Mengenzalez' fat ass and steps on the back of the bar, he'll impart sufficient force to flip the torturing toady clear through the ceiling. The one thing you DON'T want is to get into a polite negotiation with him--"Hey Alberto, I was thinking we could use golden retrievers instead of German Shepherds?" No, you want to give him the full Patrick Leahy: "You knew damn well he'd be tortured! And that goes against everything this country stands for!" (The cameras had stopped before we heard Leahy's final word: "Douchebag!")

But our explorer is way too far away to have any real leverage at all. What's the old quote, "Give me a lever long enough and I can move the world?" Well, that's fine in theory, but whoever said that obviously hadn't spent much time digging ditches. A lever isn't going to do jack for our explorer--except break.

Of course, everybody inside the bell curve knows this. They don't care much about the explorers. Mostly they avoid validating them by even acknowledging them. Corporate advertisers insure that the explorers aren't heard from in the media. But the forces of darkness are not so sanguine about their opponents under the bell curve, for they are a more immediate threat. There are two strategies employed against the pioneers. The first is to wait for them to accidentally get too close to the edge of the bell curve--"If you don't go to college, you go to Iraq"--and then give them a push and thrust them out into crackpot land. The other strategy--more common--is to pull them in closer to the center of the bell curve, entangle them in nuance and negotiation. This reduces the pioneer's leverage, while at the same time legitimizing the bad guys' position.

Case in point: the SOTU address. The evil leader extends a blood-soaked hand and speaks lying words of compromise. Energy independence! Health care for all! The Democrats smile and clap. Suddenly it's all so... so... collegial. And the tigers are rendered toothless.

Drawing their enemies closer--this is what Bush tried to do with freshman Senator Webb at a recent White House even when the President inquired after the Senator's son, a marine in Iraq. Webb was having none of it, and stiff-armed the Dear Leader, causing His Irrelevancy, commentator George Will to engage in a public display of apoplexy at the incivility of it all.

Cry me a river, George.

The monsters that run this country are (please, god?) overplaying their hand. And now--have you noticed?--some of those crackpots out in the wilderness don't seeming so crazy anymore. The wagon train leaders should be rounding up the wagons and calling for everyone to mount up. The bell curve hasn't been this pliable in a long time, and now's the time to push.

This isn't the time for conciliation. If the president extends a hand, we should all take a cue from Senator Webb:

"Mr. President, fuck off."

State of the Union? Umm, Not So Good.

The SOTU address is happening now. I'm not watching.

I can't bear to listen. Can't stand to see all those people selectively applauding each bit of politically calculated horseshit that comes out of our President's lying mouth. Clapping a little more for this statement. A little less for that one. Any reaction that can be measured in such nuanced degrees is, in the end, enabling, even validating. Democrats (and Republicans) ought to be turning their backs, shouting him down, walking out. Anything less sends a message: that reasonable people could have a reasonable debate about this administration's conduct, that there is room for negotiation and compromise.

That everything's fine.

That smiling man has trampled on the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. Anything less than saying so to his face is a lie on a par with his own.

I'm gonna barf. Again.

"Bush to Seek Cutback in Gas Consumption" is the headline of an AP article previewing tonight's SOTU address. Sweet Jesus. How is it that a man who has been the oil industry's biggest protector, who has worked to remove every incentive and pressure upon carmakers to build energy efficient vehicles, who has done nothing to move towards energy independence for this country, who has disembowel 30 years of environmental protection legislation faster than an underpaid illegal worker at an unregulated meat packing plant can gut a pig, who has installed corporate shills instead of public interest advocates in virtually every government post related to energy or the environment... How can THIS MAN have the BALLS to try to make political hay by positioning himself as an advocate of conservation!?

Black is white! Up is down! Waterboarding is not torture!

If the damage he's caused and continues to cause wasn't so real, so pervasive, so potentially apocalyptic, I might tip my hat to him. Damn, but he's got cojones!

How stupid does he think Americans are? Or better, how stupid are Americans? (And please don't answer that. I don't think I want to know...)

This man will say ANYTHING! I know I seem awfully obsessed with morality, 'specially for someone who can't bear the whiff of religion, but how can you deal with someone like this? Someone who cannot feel shame, who cannot be critical of themselves. Character is, in the end, the only real collateral we bring to our dealings with others. And if you put every ounce of character this man has into a paper bag, it would float away into the sky.

Wow. Bill Moyers rocks.

America Pants'ed in Principle

America, it is said, is a nation of principles.

For most of our history, we've held up our high-faluttin' ideals, like a sagging pair of flannel boxer shorts, as evidence of our moral superiority. I'm talking about secular humanism, all men being created equal, rag-to-riches opportunity, patiently waiting your turn in line at the bakery. Do you think people wait their turn in those other countries?

But there's a new breeze blowin' my friends, and America is getting pants'ed. Big time.

Because we've also always had an extreme case of pragmatism, yang to our idealism's yin. And one could argue that we mostly (only?) adhere to those ideals that bring practical benefits. And if that's true, then troubles a-brewin', because the technology has dissolved so many of the tethers that connect our ideals to the practical.

But let's back up for a second. There has always been--and always will be--tension between altruism and selfishness. Do we wait our turn in line because it's the kind thing to do? Because we get off on the smug, superior feeling that results? Or because we don't want to get punched in the nose? Generally, it's not worth arguing about. Some people--usually self-described "artists"--act like dicks just to prove their motives are pure. But the rest of us are reasonably well behaved, and who cares if it's only because we want to avoid the censure of the other people in the store. There's only one baguette left, and I was next. Thank you very much, and have a nice day.

But what if all the material and societal checks were to disappear? What if we could misbehave and not get caught, arraigned, humiliated, fined, punched, and despised by our neighbors and attractive people of the opposite sex? Chew on that for a minute... Tough going, huh? Yes--unfettered personal desire is the beef jerky of cultural trends. And it's what's for dinner America, so you might as well pull up a chair and tuck in.

Because technology--Damn you, technology!--is changing everything. And not necessarily for the better.

I'll offer two examples to get things started. Then I bet everyone can put their thinking caps on and come up with plenty of others.

Let's take music publishing and print publishing, morality tales that start from the same place, but have different endings. Both fall under the auspices of intellectual property and copyright law. The laws primarily protect the abstract elements of such products--the ideas contained therein. That's why a recording artist can go to court and argue that someone else used a few measures of a tune they wrote.

But in practice, these laws are only as enforceable as the leverage provided by the physical medium of publishing will allow. That is why the stories of music and books have diverged. Back in the day, recorded music was wed to its physical avatar, a black disc called a "record." Only factories could make records, and that enabled music publishers to ensure that everybody had to pony up to get their hands on their product. Sure, you could tape your favorite records and give the tape to your friends, but the tape sounded like crap and it was a pain to do. So-- back to the debate about altruism vs. selfishness--what were we paying for when we bought the record? The abstract content or sound and the feeling it produced? Or to avoid the inconvenience unfulfilling results of getting a tape of that same music some other way?

Back then, it was a pointless question. There was no good practical way to circumvent the law, to ignore the principle. So we behaved.

But now, music has escaped its bonds, and it roams free and wild on the digital savannah. It is weightless, bodiless, and reproduces infinitely without degrading.

Books meanwhile, remain safely protected by the obstacles to digitizing their content and the value of their physical medium. Anyone with a computer and easily available software can rip a CD in five minutes, but scanning a book would take forever, and--the panting enthusiasms of goo-goo eyed technophiles aside--there are no affordable and satisfying devices around for reading that digitized text that can compete black text on white paper pages.

Another example: let's consider the wiretapping conducted by the kleptocratic dictatorship that presently afflicts this country. Why was the administration for so long adamant that the program operate outside of the purview of the courts? Most speculation in the media attributes the policy to sheer thirst for power. But those who grasp how such a program must function know there's another piece to the puzzle.

Undoubtedly, the national spook agencies, with the modestly coerced assistance of private carriers, are sweeping up vast, undifferentiated reams of voice and electronic communications and then using computers to crunch the data. They are looking for suspicious words, phrases, routings, or addressees. ("Terrorist"? "Bomb?" "Democrat?"). Of course they would be slow to request warrants for such activity, because judges might ask questions about the program's conduct, and that conduct clearly contravenes the constitutional constraints on unreasonable searches, at least as that has been interpreted to date by the courts. To date, it has always been understood that there must be a basis for suspicion regarding a specific individual before surveillance can be authorized. But now the government wiretaps everybody and just promises--scouts' honor!--to ignore all calls but those from terrorists.

Which brings me back to the central point. What exactly changed in the last few decades? Are we rethinking our attachment to the principle that reasonable suspicion must precede surveillance? Not really. What's going on is we're confronting (or refusing to confront) the fact that the policies of 50 years ago were driven more by the practical than by the principle. Fifty years ago, there was no email. Most correspondence was typed or handwritten. The phone system was analog. And even if there had been some way to collect all that data, there was no possible way to sort and filter it.

Those were simpler times.

But these thoughts are not intended as a paean to the good old days. What I'm trying to point out is that if we are going to preserve in this digital age what we have considered to be some of our unalienable liberties, we are going to have to start letting our principles drive our practice in ways they have not in the past. And I don't want to be a downer, but Americans don't even pay lip service to morality and "principle" unless they're guaranteed a good old fashioned rapturin' in return. And even then…

But I'm only sayin'.