The Virginia Tech killings and moving forward

The Washington Post has several excellent articles, this morning, about the Virginia Tech shootings. One, in particular, caught my attention.

Campus Shutdown Never Considered

What I'm becoming impressed about in the Post's reporting is the same quality that has me drawn to their opinion page: they engage the debate. The Post definitely has a liberal bias, but it also has an enormous array of columnists with a diverse array of ideological orientations and opinions.

And, these days, many of its journalist, in my experience, are doing the same thing with its reporting of fact: they are engaging the debate. There are far too many one-sided attempts to portray reporting from a particular viewpoint as objective fact. That much Fox News has right. Pretending that your reporting is fact when it clearly represents a particular viewpoint is dishonest. Much better to just acknowledge that you have a particular point of view and engage the debate. And the Post articles I've been reading have been doing one better than that. They have been engaging the debate inside their articles, openly considering different points of view. It is refreshing and important to see that kind of open debate, thought, and engagement animate our public discussion.

It is sad to watch the campus police for Virginia Tech get grilled about their decisions when they, clearly would have done anything to stop these murders had they known what was going to happen, as we all would have done in their shoes. They are right that a campus lockdown could have very well trapped an angry Seung Hui Cho in a dorm or on campus (though they are also right that a lockdown would have been very difficult to impose on an entire campus, and Seung Hui Cho might have still roamed the campus, as well) and caused more carnage.

Campus lockdowns, metal dectectors, security cameras. These are all legitimate options to consider for future school security measures, for Virginia Tech and every school, none of which seem immune to this kind of mayhem. What is not constructive is hurt and angry and pained family members, school officials or self-righteous journalists, and activists always playing with hindsight and trying to find someone to blame. As Lionel Shriver, a novelist writing about school murders, puts it in his Post column, What the Killers Want:

"Even more than these gruesomely gratuitous incidents themselves, I have come to dread the campus shooting's ritual media aftermath -- a secondary wave of atrocity, all conducted under the guise of grief, soul-searching concern and an ostensible determination to ensure that no demented loner ever opens fire on his classmates again."

As Shriver and the Virginia Tech campus police both argue, it is fruitless and counterproductive and unfair to point fingers at people who are in good faith because we are saddened and in pain about what happened here. Looking forward and considering what we might do next is helpful and an important and legitimate discussion and debate to engage. But as with the endless 9/11 commissions and investigations and the myriad of efforts to look into how officials could have prevented a terrible tragedy that had already happened and could not be taken back, no matter how painful or horrific, recrimination serves as a hopelessly ineffective and counterproductive means of preventing tragedy.

When I think about it, it is likely the reason why humanity operated for bulk of its history in unreason and brutishness and repression. Because all we could see in front of us was our need to inflict pain on those who inflicted pain on us, or who we believed we could or should point fingers at for letting that pain happen. And if entire populations were repressed or kept mired in the self-fulfilling prophecy that such repression and violence and force created, then so be it. It was not until important religious figures like Martin Luther would argue for the fundamental rights of conscience and secular political thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Alexis DeToqueville, and John Stuart Mill would argue for thinking about government in terms of reason and what it could accomplish and not according to the mystical, self-perpetuating and illiberal terms that governments had operated previous to their conceptions that people began to imagine and embrace liberal futures which would prove to provide for their security and their needs far more substantially.

While Hobbes' Britain languished in sectarian civil war and thoughts of revenge and recrimination and regaining power, Hobbes was thinking about a world where reason rather than religion would justify and animate our thinking about governance.

And during moments like this one in Blackburg, Virginia there are those who languish in pain and recrimination and finger-pointing, and there are those who look forward to a constructive debate and discussion about what can be done to prevent this sort of thing and to substantially improve our capacity to avoid such tragedies.

Many things have occured to me as I've read so much of the coverage about Seung Hui Cho. It's not just that's he was a loner and harboring all sorts of repressed anger and grudges and hurt feelings and that his interest in violent video games may give us a clue into his mentality (I am definitely of the opinion that such features of our vast array of media are a reflection of internal mental states and cultural attitudes much more than causing them, if they have any causal influence at all; they do, however, give us insight into the mentality of individuals and a culture that is obsessed with violence or sex or whatever appetites people might have).

Lionel Shriver, the novelist in today's post, has some important observations. Such killers and their copy-cats often crave the fame and the media attention that they must receive from the media after such a tragedy if we are going to have any shot at preventing such tragedies in the future. They crave the attention. My experience with kids and personally is that such attention-seeking - which is endemic in our culure; kids like Seung Hui Cho just go to horrific ends to get it - is that it is both common and borne of our desire to be valued by others. As Shriver argues, it is also solipsistic, self-pitying, and self-centered. But it also may be reinforced by so many efforts that I believe we foolishly make to try to isolate and pressure and take down those who we want to let know that we do not value, or at least we don't value their actions.

Isolation and exclusion is a means of telling people, "You are not welcome." Pressure is a means of telling people, "You're behavior is not welcome." Often it is deserved. Often enough it is underserved. We certainly don't welcome into our homes someone who has just killed a member of our family. But neither should be exclude or pressure members of our family who are gay or who think differently than we do. But adopting attitudes and policies that are centered around how we use isolation, pressure, exclusion, and other forms of manipulation to enforce societal norms often overwhelms the already limited mental and emotional capacities of those we seek to control. It also often leads, much more tragically, in some ways, to treating people in good faith with suspicion and fear, out of our own fears of being hurt or burned.

Had we known that Seung Hui Cho would strike out like he did, I am sure that any of us would have advocated the need to isolate him and shut him down by any decent means necessary (I would hope that none of us would literally argue for Malcolm X's call for accomplishing our ends "by any means necessary," since doing so rationalizes a long litany of ugly and barbaric means of dealing with this kind of situation - who would advocate bombing Seung Hui Cho's dormitory, for instance? - as well as many less dramatic but still ugly and wrong-headed options). There is an important discussion that needs to take place in schools and universities about how metal dectectors, security cameras, lockdowns and the like can be used to keep people safe in such situations, and not cripple the freedom that make educations and schools such critical and necessary institutions in a liberal democracy.

But there is an equally important discussion about how people like Cho or Kleibold or Harris or any number of such people are treated leading up to their murderous rampages that can much more substantially impact their ugly and deadly ambitions.

The larger question than even the very important and practical question of security on school and university campuses and in the community at large - the Economist surprised me with this lead editorial lamenting what they call, "America's Tragedy," which they describe as American politicians' unwillingness to engage the gun debate and to enact stricter gun control (despite the fact that since 1996, 1 year previous to Britain's ban on handguns, Britain's violent crime rate has risen 69%, according to this 2005 article I read from the Lake County Record-Bee, during a similar period when America's violent crime rate was reaching record lows until 2005 and 2006, when America's crime rate spiked during a period of "get-tough" criminal justice) - is how do we treat people like Cho or Kleibold or Harris or whomever that leads them to act even in this self-pitying, self-centered, solipsistic, and clearly wrong and ugly way?

My experience with working with such kids is that they, like too many of us, really, often harbor a lot of pain and many petty grudges against peers and authority figures. And every time we give them more pain and petty opportunities for nursing grudges, it just accumulates in their hearts without the safety valve that forgiveness and letting go provides. They, like their cultural counterparts in more repressive parts of the world - Palestine, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba - are weak, emotionally and as a matter of deeper perspective and thought, in a world they often don't understand and make enough effort to try to understand, largely as a function of and as a self-fulfilling prophecy of pain and heartache, disrespect and insensitivity, emotional defenses and limited understanding, and made weaker still by their failure to forgive and let go of petty grudges and even more serious and real pain and tragedy that they have experienced in their lives.

It is no mistake that liberal democratic cultures are more forgiving and stronger in so many important ways that more repressive cultures take for weakness because of a failure of understanding and perspective on why their cultures suffer so many hardships. The liberal democratic world and those infused with its values more solidly are stronger because they forgive so easily. It is their relatively stronger ability to look forward, to stay engaged in a dynamic and forever evolving world, rather than get mired in grudges and hardships and pain from the past, that makes their cultures stronger in their capacity to deal, more effectively, with the many different challenges and problems that life offers us, strong or weak. And our democracy offers us more choices and checks on the capacity for any one group or ideology or individual political leader to dominate those most important questions for too long a period (although, it does often seem like groups or people or ideas dominate for too long, despite our best efforts, largely because too many of us still romanticize a time when one group or individual or idea will finally dominate and make all of our troubles go away).

And individuals like Seung Hui Cho, very much like violent or recriminatory cultures like Palestine, are weaker for their harbored pain and grudges and disgruntlement.

The last thing that we want to do in such situations, then, is give them more excuse to harbor pain and lash out at others. That doesn't mean we should appease them. We shouldn't. What it means is that we should make more effort to make such people and all people feel valued for what constructive, healthy, and sustaining contributions that they have to offer.

Right now, we are going through a period where even the most self-sacraficing and contributing members of our society - like those campus police - are being treated consistently and without wavering, with suspicion, force, and aggression. It is overwhelming even for the strongest among us. It is more especially so for the weakest and most pained and grudging among us.

The efforts to force society to shape up have, in great part, been well-meaning, I believe. I don't think they've been carried out by bad people, to say the least. To the contrary, those who believe in their capacity to force people to shape up (and I have, sadly, counted myself among them, at times) are some of the best people I know or have familiarity with.

They are not bad. They are mistaken, I believe. And failing to look more honestly at their failures. I count myself among that category as well, I believe. I am getting much better. I think many people are, these days.

Clearly, if any of us had known what Seung Hui Cho was going to do that day, we would or should have all been prepared to force Cho, if possible, to give up his weapon and his crusade. Those officers were clearly prepared to do so. They just had no idea what Cho was planning. None of us did.

But the saddest thing about this period of human history is that the world entire has been rationalizing its worst impulses - its weaker, more recriminatory, more cynical, more pained, more grudging, more self-sabatoging, more self and otherwise destructive impulses - which are the exact impulses that animate the weaker, more destructive, more violent, more repressed and repressive members of humanity. Our fear of such people - of school shooters and terrorists, of opposing political parties and their operatives and ideological counterparts, of despots and the repressive cultures that too often support them - has led us down a dark and tempting path of hoping to control and punish and force them to leave us unthreatened by their weaker, more destructive impulses. And contrary to all of our hopes for such a strategy, such efforts have, generally, led to greater ambitions on the part of those we fear to cause us destruction and suffering and pain.

Western religious culture refers to this tendency as living by the sword and dying by the sword. Do unto others as they would do unto you has a dark corollary, as it turns out. If we treat others with fear and suspicion and with ambitions to overpower them, they will often do the same. Even, and often especially, if they are too weak to do so for any sustained period of time.

And our weakness inspires the weaknesses of others. Mine too, as it turns out. All of us, as it turns out.

But the brilliance of the promise of liberal democratic values and society is that our growth comes not from the illusion that fighting weakness will make it go away (though clearly we must stop Al Queda's and Seung Hui Cho's of the world from committing their evil deeds). Our brilliance is in recognizing, better, that embracing our weakness, our weakest members, and especially our weakness and our pride in our belief in power and aggression to make our fears and our problems go away, forgiving ourselves that weakness, and learning from it, is where real strength lies.

Strength and progress does not lie in pretending that a weaker approach is a stronger one, despite consequences to the contrary. Progress lies in embracing our weakness, especially our pride, and taking more genuine responsibility for it as a matter of conscience rather than as a matter of fear. That was the point of more genuinely liberal and progressive authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter or Herman Melville and Billy Budd, or more genuine liberal leaders like Jesus, the Buddha, Mohatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, or Desmond Tutu.

Their point was not that we would not sin, nor that we should sin, including and especially the sin of pride, violence and destructiveness, and the abuse of power.Their point was that individuals and communities would and do sin and cause harm and destruction to one another. Ghandi was fully aware and saddened by the destruction promised by Hindus and Muslims on one another following independence. King was aware and concerned about the destruction that blacks were threatening and would rain down upon their own communities, sadly, more than on whites, after his death. Desmond Tutu was anticipating such a reaction when he developed a truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa to ward off exactly that temptation by South Africa's majority black population, which has now become the template for truth and reconciliation efforts in war-torn areas of the world like Bosnia, East Timor, Iraq and elsewhere.

Their point was not that the sins of humanity, including its more destructive and violent impulses, would go away forever through forgiveness. And to the extent that they believed that forgiveness alone would stop such ugliness or any of the ugliness that we face in the world, today, they were wrong. Force is clearly necessary in as limited of circumstances as possible to prevent violence and destruction towards others.

Their point is that forgiveness is the essence of the only decent path forward. That vengance and destructiveness are our basest, weakest impulses betraying us. And that betrayal has unintended consequences. Seung Hui Cho may or may not have learned of those consequences as he shot himself dead after taking the lives of so many others. Al Queda is likely not learning that lesson as they exact their revenge on the American infidel.

Most people, though, do learn that lesson, I'm confident, given our largely progressive historical record.

Amidst all of the mess that humanity makes of this central fact of life, the only path forward, for individuals and for humanity, generally, is one of forgiveness and reflection and thought and conscience learning the lessons from our failures as much as celebrating our successes.

In Blacksburg, it means having a discussion about the future of school and campus security that both tries to deal with the practical ramifications of preventing this kind of rampage and learning to treat one another more compassionately and decently and teaching, as much as they will learn the lesson, people like Seung Hui Cho, to do the same. With others, but especially, with himself.

The most serious problem for people like Cho or Kleibold or Harris is not how they are treated by others, though this is certainly a place where we can and must improve our capacity to prevent these kinds of tragedies. The most serious problem they face is how they treat themselves, perpetually nursing, and holding on, and not giving adequate voice to their grudges and hurt and self-pity. And the most important place that we could start to effect change in this respect is to be better examples and to do a better job, ourselves, of treating ourselves better rather than perpetually nursing, holding onto, and not giving adequate voice to our own grudges and hurt and self-pity. And the most important way that we could make this more available to people is to stop making people afraid to do so, for fear of punishments that do more to repress problems and make them go unspoken rather than be given voice and an opporunity for resolution.

That is the central failure of repression. It causes more pain to people who need to have healthy and open avenues for expressing their present pain, and to more openly discuss even their most awful and ridiculous thoughts if they are to better and more consistently let the pain go, to engage discussions about how to deal with their problems better, and to take responsibility for their lives. And, sadly, repression undermines the ability of even the most constructive and thoughtful among us to engage such discussions to get at better solutions.

That is the failure of repression in the life of Seung Hui Cho. And it is the failure of repression in the land and culture of Palestine. They are one and the same. One at the individual level. One at that cultural level.

And the sad and tragic irony of the beginning of the 21st century is that we have begun this new century by rationalizing all of the worst, most destructive, most repressive impulses and ideas and governing philosophies of the 20th century and earlier human history out of our failure to come to terms with the failure of such destructiveness and repression to resolve so many of our problems, and our own illiberal logic from which they spring, and to, instead, very much keep those problems in place.

Our hope lies in embracing that weakness, and all of the weaknesses that we are subject to. Our hope and our future lies in accepting and forgiving our humanity so that we can be responsible for it and take more authentic steps forward.

I am very much susceptible to this weakness of fear and aggression and the temptations of power. And I and noone will move forward in this regard by rationalizing that weakness, or any of our weaknesses. I and everyone can only move forward by embracing it, forgiving it and more genuinely moving forward.

I've already seen that work far too thoroughly in my own life to easily dismiss it. Our challenge, now, is when, more than if, we will embrace that as a culture, and not just as individuals, and certainly not as passive observers waiting for prophets or martyrs to sacrafice themselves for us.

We need to decide if we are going to continue to take the path of Stalin and Hitler, Mao and Mussolini, Al Queda and Seung Hui Cho - the path of repression and vengeance and power - or the path of Hawthorne and Melville, Jesus and Buddha, Ghandi and King - the path of patient reason and forgiveness and genuine liberal progress. We need to decide if we are going to give into the pressures and temptations that terrorism and school violence and so many of our worst ills create to follow a reactive like path of repression and destructiveness. Or if we are going to embrace the risk and uncertainty and possibility and opportunity that freedom affords us to deal with problems more openly, honestly and thoughtfully and without a false pride that we have arrived at final answers that we have not.

Right now, we are taking the road of more aggression and force and repression. And perhaps that is best, if only to face its clear failure to resolve our problems.

But in its place we will need an understanding of the use of force and aggression that does not play to this false choice that we have created in these most recent debates about force or not. We will need a conception of force that creates a presumption about its use that assumes that we should use it as constructively as possible, which means as little as possible and only as much as necessary. We have been deferring to an idea of force and power without limits, in the most recent years. We are and will continue to discover that such limits are present whether we acknowledge them or not.

I do grow discouraged every day that I have to face another colleague or another administrator angrily or aggressively push or pressure me around this or that issue, and fail to listen to me when I make perfectly clear for them how counterproductive such efforts are and have been. My most profound hope is that such ugliness cannot possibly be sustained since they cannot sustain us. What they do is undermine and take for granted my trust in their good intentions despite their miserable results and, more important to me, their miserable treatment of me. It makes life less worth living, except in the knowledge that I can soon be out of their presence and engaged in more worthy or constructive efforts.

And this weekend very much reinforced for me that it is a calm reflection and discussion and exchange and civility and human decency that are now and forever the future of humanity, including how we thoughtfully engage matters of safety and security. I am quite tired of our more aggressive and forceful ways. It was nice to have a couple days off from people being nasty and mean and aggressive with me and to get more done by being nicer and more relaxed in my efforts to complete work.

I've decided that this is what I want most of all. In my relationships and friendships. In my work. In my off-time. I just want to spend as much time as possible with people who treat me decent even as we rigorously consider important questions or don't so rigorously consider less important questions. I'm tired of having people be dicks to me, all the time, not ever take responsibility for it. I'm tired of people being too weak, personally, intellectually, or otherwise, to acknowledge that their being a dick undermines mine and their goals, rather than facilitating either, since it leaves me dreading to communicate or discuss anything at all with them, important or not. And I am tired, in general, with everyone pretending like being dicks doesn't have anything to so many of the problems we face today, even though many of our problems seem to get worse the bigger dicks we are.

Maybe if it all isn't so repressed, we can see, better, why it doesn't work. I can only hope. Because all I want is to spend time with people, more, who understand this. Or at least understand to treat me better. I'm tired of being the subject of peoples' aggression and force rather than just having grown-up conversations with people. And what I am sure of is that more conversations like this one are not grown-up in ways that get us to solutions of our problems. And they drain all the energy out of me to tackle such problems in the meantime.

Love,
Ben

Grading on a Friday night

Tonight I went jogging with a friend, took a shower, cleaned up my apartment some and I'm about to do some grading, all here on a Friday night. And I'm having a really nice night.

I'm sitting here listening to Dar Williams and having so many good memories of Friday or Saturday nights just like this one, listening to Dar Williams or the Red, Hot, and Blue album or Louis Armstrong or Frank Sinatra and just having a really nice romantic night with dinner or a movie or just staying in, or going out to theater or a film or some heady activity like a African American/Jewish seder or listening to a speaker, like Jonathan Kozol or Robert Putnam, or wherever we might have ended up.

That's why I love Dar Williams. I love these great romantic and nice memories they inspire from a younger time in my life, living with Brandi in D.C. or Lawrence or Shawnee or spring nights like this one at my Varsity apartment on 21st street or the apartment with Carson and Bond and Scotty-Joe in downtown Wichita, just enjoying a cool Kansas night like this one.

If you haven't just stayed in and listened to Dar Williams on a Friday or Saturday night and not do anything but just do some cleaning and some grading or just be with the person you love, I highly recommend it (especially her Out There Live greatest hits album). It's the closest thing to being in love while single.

I've got to go get some grading done. But I just wanted to enjoy some very nice memories for just a moment.

Love,Ben

The force of our convictions and our ignorance

I am just reflecting, tonight, after those Virginia Tech killings, which, in all likelihood, are made more likely by the high pressure ways that we deal with one another, including that kid who committed this terrible crime.

It's so insane. Our forceful, pressuring, strong-arming ways are so destructive so much of the time. They accomplish so little in real time (except, generally, to cover our rear ends), and they undermine so much, including and especially our real and developing capacity for reflecting on our behavior and choices, which is the only real basis for sustained behavior change, if we consulted just a smidgeon of the psychological research and if we thought it for about two seconds.

It is so destructive, for good people and in ways that increase the propensity of not-so-good people to turn to the most destructive means. Remember, pressure and forcing one's way through political negotiations IS the underlying purpose of terrorism. They just think we don't have any balls to go to the lengths they go to. And, in the meantime, it completely fucks a healthy life for good people, as we are all scrambling like mad to keep one step ahead of our fears that take more thought and engagement and communication to adequately mangage (that's why more educated and more thoughtful liberal democratic societies do such a better job managing such situations we would realize if we weren't such stubborn knuckleheads about this issue), which means lives of misery for no good goddamned reason. We're just too scared and foolish to wisen up.

The truth is that, as in Iran or Cuba or Syria or North Korea, our convictions aren't worth a cup of warm spit if they aren't guided by more enlightened thought about how to accomplish those things that our convictions seek to accomplish.

Have we rid the world of sin by legislating or moralizing or ostracizing or socially, legally, economically, or politically pressuring people to act better?

No is the most obvious goddamn answer to that simple observation about life. Does the legislating help? No. Has it helped for the millenia that we've been trying it? No. Is is going to help on other matters when there is no immediate danger and where reflection has not caught up with behavior yet?

No, is the simplest goddamn answer to that question.

Will people catch up if they are in good faith? Sure. Because they'll catch up if they're in good faith regardless. Will it catch up if they are not in good faith? No. And, unless there is immediate danger, it doesn't do any goddamn good and it makes it all the more attractive for both good and not-so-good people to taste forbidden fruit until they are in good faith.

Meaning, sin and lawbreaking and all sorts of disrespect for social codes is a monster that we create for ourselves, much of the time, because instead of faciliating reflection and communication and understanding about issues and more patiently allowing peoples' consciences to work out such problems, we make sinning and lawbreaking and disrespect for social codes all the more attractive for our efforts to dissuade people.

Hopefully, they get it figured out, and only because they give a shit.

But if they don't give a shit, we just make it more interesting for them to break the rules.

So nicer, softer, more reflection provoking methods get us closer to our goal because they cut through all the middlemen of temptation and forbidden fruit and blind rebellion that are the consequence, largely, of people rebelling against the rules and not understanding their own mistakes while they are making them.

Do I despair that we will never learn that lesson and forever be lost in this wilderness of self-righteousness around our various causes? Often and deeply:):)LOL:):)

But is that the only course available to us? Obviously not. We are not cursed to be dumbasses till the ends of humanity (although Mike Judge makes a convincing case that perhaps that is where we are heading if we keep embracing tough and sexy and immediately gratified over smart and strong and compassionate and decent).

The force of our convinctions will continue leading us down the path to hell, if we can't get our heads out of our sanctamonious asses for one moment to look around and ask ourselves, "Where's all that progress that we were promised?"

It's not in Iran. It's not in North Korea. It's not in Iraq. It's not in the environment (although I have to say that the environmental ethic that has developed in the free market is the most promising sign of real environmental progress that I have witnessed in the last 5 years or so). It's defintely not on race issues, which are at a dead stand-still, as far as I am concerned, as we all continue to keep quiet about how we really feel so the thought police are appeased. It's not on wealth equity issues, where we continue to fail to develop some kind of sustainable means of dealing with the problems of poverty. It's not gender equity issues, as women make 75 cents on the dollar and as a more genuinely open and equitable conversation about sexual equality is kept at bay by so much more repressive liberal and conservative moralisms about a woman's place and men's responsibilities.

I can't name a place in American or international life where real progress is taking place these days and unequivocally say, "Thank god that more repressive forces has shown us the way."

And the most serious place where we lack progress in 21st century political life is in our romanticism of force. Two hundred plus years of liberalization all treated like they were some kind of historical accident that interrupted thousands of years of force and aggression dominating humanity's fate, with liberal values leading us out of that dark and unfortunate and long period of human history.

What we need, reason the forces of repression, is to put that genie back in the bottle. We need to let go of our aspirations for freedom and learn to live with the compromise of a forced, miserable, exhausted, cynical, unhappy existence.

It's almost like we've reached the promised land with that kind of thinking, isn't it? How could I have missed all of the progress in that vision of the future?

The big lie of the Nazis and the Soviets was that they imposed a harsh, miserable, unproductive existence on their people, and then when things never seemed to turn out as well as they planned they would intone, "Just wait. The progress will materialize. Once we have finally imposed our will for good."

"Just wait," I can hear Democrats saying, right now, "Progress is on the way. Just wait." And when it comes, they will say, "See what we created?" And Republicans will say, "But no. You didn't create that progress. We are responsible for all that progress."

And noone will have the courage to acknowledge that perhaps that progress comes largely from the efforts of individuals and not from political parties, at all. And perhaps, just perhaps, it comes from our learning and a discussion that more openly facilitates it, not from force that presupposes right answers that it cannot possibly know.

And sadly, it is the force of the convictions of terrorists that kill innocent Israeli and American and British and Spanish and Lebanese citizens who say to Muslim populations, "See all the progress that we create in the name of Allah and Mohammed? See how we have confronted the Infidel and assured a stronger place for Islam in Islamic society and Muslim nations in the world of nations?"

And the Chinese will laugh and say, "Progress does not come from some god. Progress comes through the party. It comes because we make it so. Liberalization is a fancy Western word for the good things that the Chinese government has created for you."

And on and on and on. Everyone claiming the banner of progress, whether they have actually produced it or not.

And meanwhile, free peoples continue to look to their political authorities to provide them with progress that is only possible when they are more free and not when they are more regulated and fearful of their government.

And I just breathe a heavy sigh and think to myself:

"I live in this foolish, foolish time with these foolish, foolish people and all I want to do is be left alone if they cannot learn to live with one another more reasonably and with more respect for one another and their consciences. I just want these foolish people to leave me alone if they can't treat me decently and constantly make excuses for what shitheads they are to me and one another. If people are going to perpetually rationalize why they are so selfish and mean-spirited and hurtful, I just want to spend as much time away from them as possible. Because these are not people that I could ever aspire to be."

"Why would any child want to be like us when we are behaving this way?" we must ask ourselves. Why would anyone look on our culture and think, "That is the best that humanity has to offer?" we must think to ourselves at some point. Why would anyone look at out debates and discussions and boycotts and protests and pressure and strong-arming and forceful and aggressive ways and say, "That is what humanity has been aspiring to be for all its glorious history?"

We can't say any of those things. Because if we did, we'd be big fat fuckin' liars.

We are not the best that humanity has to offer. And the quicker we come to terms with that, the better we can move on to BECOME the kind of people that are the best that humanity has to offer rather than constantly making excuses for why we are such dicks all the time.

I am embarrassed by this little race of ours. I love them. A lot. I care about them. A lot. But I'm not going to lie to them and tell them that they are the best that humanity has to offer when they so clearly are not.

I love them more than that.

And I can only hope that people will, one day soon, I hope, learn to love themselves enough to be honest with themselves in that way. So that we can get about the business of becoming the kind of people that can proudly call itself the best that humanity has to offer rather than the piss-poor forced cynical compromise with that vision.

I can only hope that we will face up to ourselves. Because we are a shitty little species in the meantime.

Love,
Ben

The Life of Ben

I've often said that I want people to play the last 15 minutes of Monty Python's The Life of Brian at my funeral.

There is no movie or story, I've decided, that better matches the experience of my young adulthood than this clever little critique of fanatical and self-righteous left and right wing politics.

Very much like Brian, I was a kindhearted young man just looking to do good and help others. And that ambition has now turned into one long self-righteous crusade against me and anything I say or think that doesn't fall in line with any of the various dogmas. My experiences in grad school, with the Kaw Valley Living Wage Campaign, at Community Living Opportunities, and now Eisenhower Middle School have all been broadly negative in the sense that I have perpetually been bullied and aggressively pressured by those who you would presume would be in common cause.

The greatest irony of this whole experience has been that I have spent the great majority of my life identifying with, ideologically, the very kind of folks that I have been repeatedly bullied by: liberals. It has shaken my faith in liberalism in very real ways. And none of them seem to give two shits about that fact, persistently rationalizing that I am worth sacraficing to their various causes.

My contract at Eisenhower wasn't renewed this year. I was recruited by the Olathe school district within the week, who I had interviewed with halfway through this year, when I was feeling most miserable at Eisenhower. I had turned down Olathe, indicating that I was committed to Eisenhower and the kids in the lower income community I was teaching in, even though the money would have likely been better in Olathe and the kids less challenging. I only got into teaching to work in inner city school reform, so it seemed to defeat the purpose to move to a higher paying district when I could just move to a much higher paying professional field.

I will, of course, find, likely, better paying work in a more educated suburban district. And long term, I will likely get my Ph.D. in policy and who knows what I will do with education. But I'm a little bitter with Dr. Ogburn and Ms. Cowan the two liberal administrators who bullied me all year and who decided that it was easier to get rid of me than to take responsibility for the consequences of their poor handling of and mentoring for me during my first full year of teaching.

They had good reasons to be frustrated with me. My special ed paperwork has been a mess, with me trying persistently to catch up with this and that way that paperwork must be handled. Many of my problems centered around trying to make the IEP process more personal and less bureaucratic and legalese, and then losing track of the bureaucracy and legalisms (I would persistently forget to get signatures for paperwork, for whatever reasons). They thought I was too unstructured and seriously pressured me to change that. I changed it as a matter of conscience and principle, finding nicer and softer ways to actually create stronger structure rather than enforcing a principle that students persistently broke or where I established a relationship of fear with students that traded off more important qualities of a teacher/student relationship including a willingness to challenge me, a fear of being themselves in my presence, breakdowns in communication for students who become to afraid to communicate openly, and learning to hate school rather than love education because of the million fear-mongering teachers that we have all encountered but which the lowest achieving students find the most frustrating, I would imagine.

The bottom line was that on every single issue that my administrators had with me - without exception, actually - I was finding smarter ways of dealing with age-old problems that have not been sufficiently resolved by most teachers, including my administrators, no matter how much they might pretend otherwise. And invariably, I found better strategies. With raising hands and classroom structure. With the IEP paperwork and all of the responsibilities that I have as a teacher, outside and inside the classroom. With enforcing rules. Not to mention communicating with and relating to students, inspiring critical and independent thinking, inspiring value for education and dreaming big with education in mind amongst many kids who might not otherwise take education seriously or dream with education in their horizon.

The truth is that I am well on my way to becoming a really outstanding teacher. I have much room for improvement. But I make up ground quickly. And one of the more base goals I have with such an endeavor (I admit it; I'm not always so noble) is making my administrators feel kind of stupid for firing me. Not just because I'm a brilliant motherfucker. But because I am such an outstanding teacher.

Ironically, since my field is teaching, I have repeatedly remarked to friends and colleagues that this is the least supported that I have ever felt in my life doing anything for the first time. My first year of forensics in high school and especially my first year in college were difficult, but I was supported by friends and family fairly decently. First being accountable to the standards of college was not the easiest thing in the world, but my professors were fairly supportive folks.

But this is the first time that I have ever had superiors bully me my entire first year of doing something that is very difficult to learn how to do well: to be a good teacher. Nevertheless special education, which involves an enormous amount of paperwork and extra work on top of the very rigorous experience of being a quality classroom teacher.

My experience, at this point, has been very similar to Brian's, discovering the self-righteous and yet cowardly motivations of dogmatists of all stripes. Being perpetually bullied by assholes of all ideological stripes.

This year has been an enormous learning curve for me. A learning curve largely obstructed by two people who have, in the past, held the title of teacher.

And a situation that has been largely fueled by a period of self-righteous liberal and radical political action that my administrators have been lost in, as much as anyone else, these days.

It's a period that Python lampoons well in Life of Brian.

If there is anything I've learned during this period it is that bullies teach no lessons that I take seriously, anymore. At all. Ever. And this whole experience has completely reinforced that for me.

The most important consequence of this whole affair and all of my experiences with similar work, at this point, is that after everything I have been through, my commitment to the needs of others has been seriously shaken, at least temporarily. Which is appropriate, because I'm pretty clear, at this point, that none of the people I've worked with have maintained as serious a commitment to others more than too serious a commitment for too many of the people in public service to covering their asses.

And knowing that this is the philosophy that really guides so much of public service work, and that those involved have very little interest in changing that situation, I just haven't been feeling the level of commitment to teaching or inner city schools or public service, generally, that I did going in. That will likely change. But, right now, I feel no special commitment to inner city schools absent a more supportive administration.

What so many of my liberal friends have been successful in doing, this political period, is to take someone whose idealism and commitment to public service was stronger than most, by far, and to seriously shake it, out of a self-righteous commitment to beliefs that they, themselves, have not typically thought about very seriously and which they perpetually refuse to reconcile with the hypocrisy that they are more typically guilty of on this question of adhering to the law and the use of force, both of which they, like everyone, advocate for others and abhor for themselves.

The truth is that I've been treated like serious shit by a lot of people who I used to think of as friends and of similar mind. And what it has taught me is that noone can be trusted to force themselves on anyone, except in the most rare and extreme of circumstances. Liberals can be and are just as ruthless and self-righteous and absolute in their certainty in their use of force and pressure as conservatives who I had always stereotyped my entire life as having the most mean-spirited instincts in politics, religion, and life.

But I was wrong. Liberals can be just as mean-spirited and ruthless, if not more so. And those who are typically pride themselves as such. It's wrong is what it is.

And then we all sit around and wonder why kids bully and who they learn it from.

My life has been a live-action version of the Life of Brian, a kindhearted young guy who has to deal with the contradictions, self-righteous bullying, and crazy adventure of life in political circles where having one's own mind means being an obstacle to ambitious plans of power and "progress."

It is not a story that is isolated to liberals, at all. And neither is the Life of Brian, which pokes fun of right wing and left wing ideologues alike, lost in their hypocrisy and their self-righteous bluster.

But Python gives so much attention to liberals for the same reason I do: because they're liberals, and this is the self-righteous bunch they spend time with. Though I don't identify as a liberal, anymore, so completely fed up am I with the propaganistic manipulation of these group identifications and with the thorough lack of independent, critical, and deepest thought in any dogma, no matter how benign it may pose as being.

When I was in grad school, the Life of Brian was a wise and humorous observation on the foolishness of self-righteous politics and religion from every quarter. Today, Python's masterpiece is a strange parallel to my own very difficult, strange, and remarkable adventures through the world of public service and politics.

The last 15 minutes of the Life of Brian. In case any of the many friends I have informed forget.

I want the last 15 minutes of the Life of Brian played at my funeral. So people can laugh and maybe even cry at a life of a guy who has done his damndest to serve others, but whose outlook was a bit too independent and far too compassionate and caring and not nearly dogmatic enough to really be of good to anyone.

It's too bad. I had such potential. But I'm just not tough or sanctimonious enough to be any good to anyone.

I just want a nice life with a sweet, thoughtful wife and some kids and a job where I can be hassled least by dogmatists and bosses and bullies of every stripe.

I just want to be left alone, is the truth. Because the more I get bullied, the less I give two shits about your cause. You'd think that intelligent folks would wisen up about this, at some point.

But until they do, I just want them out of my hair.

Love,
Ben

Virginia Tech and gun laws

Other teachers and I have been talking a lot about the ramifications of the Virginia Tech shootings for schools. One teacher was convinced that it was a sign of the end days. Others are concerned about what it says about the culture. There is still much more to be said about the psychological dynamics that are involved with why someone feels driven to kill in a situation like this. We talked a lot, today, about students and people feeling powerless and turning to guns to have power over a life that feels out of their control and about feeling pushed too far, I think, particularly during a time when there is no point that is "too far" when it comes to pressuring and pushing and forcing the hand of others.

The debate I was waiting for was, of course, the gun debate.

This A.P. article frames this debate on terms positive to gun control advocates very well.

U.S. gun laws draw heat after massacre

But Ravenwood cites the Virginia Tech gun policy which pretty explicitly makes illegal the possession of the firearm in this situation.

"2.2 Prohibition of Weapons The university's employees, students, and volunteers, or any visitor or other third party attending a sporting, entertainment, or educational event, or visiting an academic or administrative office building or residence hall, are further prohibited from carrying, maintaining, or storing a firearm or weapon on any university facility, even if the owner has a valid permit, when it is not required by the individual's job, or in accordance with the relevant University Student Life Policies. Any individual who is reported or discovered to possess a firearm or weapon on university property will be asked to remove it immediately. Failure to comply may result in a student judicial referral and/or arrest, an employee disciplinary action and/or arrest, or arrest for trespass and/or violation of the appropriate state criminal statute."

As Ravenwood points out, this is a stricter policy than Virginia state law since it indicates that such firearms are prohibited even if they are in accordance with local and state laws and the gun owner has a valid permit.

Which really goes to the heart of my pretty straightforward critique of both gun and drug laws which is that they, as a rule, don't work. They create an obstacle to a one of many legal paths to owning a firearm and leave open any number of illegal paths to both gun and drug access. Worse, they create a taboo and cultures of folks obsessed with owning and using both, largely because of the prohibition and they're generally immature relationship to such prohibitions.

This killer violated those state, local, and university laws and policies, nevertheless the moral law against murder. That does not daunt those who say that with a new law, we could have prevented it.

There is no law that gun control advocates would consider strict enough after one of these such incidents. And the fact that the gun ownership and the murders, themselves, were illegal never deters those who look for any excuse to legally wish away a problem.

I don't even trust peoples' good intentions on such questions, anymore, because I so rarely find people who will engage in an intellectually honest discussion of whether their means are effective or not. They generally advocate regardless of the consequences. Most people engage in policy discussion without much attention to consequences, I'm learning. It almost makes such discussions fruitless, frankly.

Why do we have any freedoms at all, I wonder, when people will clearly use whatever freedom we afford them to do bad things to one another. Better to remove all that temptation and the freedom that offers it.

That's what more repressive regimes reason, at least. And given the direction of democracies, these days, maybe they have a point.

Maybe we've been going about this whole freedom thing all wrong. Perhaps, given the direction of our international discussions, generally, on such questions, at this point, we have conflict with Iran and North Korea because we envy just how pliant and submissive they have made their society. Perhaps we have come to end of the line when it comes to the expansion of freedom because we just cannot afford, anymore, to believe in our liberal values and virtues. They don't leave us as safe as more repressive regimes like Cuba and Syria. We just can't find the courage to admit that we think they're direction should be our direction.

Because we are too weak to admit just how effective repression really is to solving a cultures problems.

What we need is more of it. And soon, someday, our problems will float away with our rules and impositions.

Someone should pass a law. Come to think of it, I'm sure someone's on it.

Love,
Ben

The greatest tragedy of the early 21st century

I have much to write on that shooting at Virginia Tech, when I get a chance. I've spent a lot of time studying school violence. I work with the most violence-prone and behaviorally difficult students in our school. I think I have some insight into at least the mindset of those who engage in this kind of violence. I'll write about it when I have more time.

In the meantime, after reading another brilliant article by Francis Fukuyama on Iran vs. Britain: Who Blinked, I am struck by what I think is the greatest tragedy of the early 21st century and the consensus that has developed in favor of force and pressure and might to accomplish what we think (and what everyone who has ever used that means believes) is right.

That this logic is exactly the logic that was used by the Soviets, the Nazis, the Fascists, the Baathists, despots world round, terrorist groups and their state sponsors, and revolutionaries of all kinds who impose their ugly regimes on unwilling, at, at times, willing populations.

The logic of governance and power that we are embracing today in the democratic world is exactly the logic that was embraced by the illiberal and anti-democratic world and all of the worst abusers of power and authority in the 20th century.

"We don't go to such extremes," we assure ourselves. "We are the good people," we remind ourselves. "Good people don't use force for bad purposes," we reassure our consciences. "Good people only use force for good purposes. And the road to hell is paved with bad people using force for bad purposes, not good people using force for good purposes."

Lord Acton's aphorism, we persistently assure ourselves, is for other people who really can be corrupted by power. We, on the other hand, could not possibly we corrupted by power. Because we are good people. And the only people corrupted by power are bad people.

And all the while we rationalize the logic of governance and action used by the old Soviet Union, the Nazi regime, the Fascists, the Baathists, Communists in China and North Korea and Cuba, repressive and illiberal regimes in Syria, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Iran and all the rest, left and right-wing terrorists and radical groups of every generation, including our own, and all of the rest of the most brutal, repressive, and force-centered regimes and groups in the history of humanity.

We look at the liberal advance of civilization along a trend of greater freedom and less brutality and force to resolve problems and we say, "Not too much. We might go too far."

When too far in the more forceful direction is the ugly and long-standing history of humanity and the most evil fact of 20th century history and life.

And this kind of logic is the very kind of logic that leads terrorists and despots and illiberal regimes and thugs around the world to look at decent people and say, "We believe the same things that you do about power. We just have the balls to really use it."

When the truth is that this direction is not a direction of courage.

The direction of courage it towards more liberal values. Jesus, Buddha, King, and Ghandi. None of these men were perfect. And neither were their visions of governance or power, for which none of them had responsibility. But these are the heroes that our civilizations rightly honor, and not men like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Mussolini and the figures of force that littered the 20th century with death and destruction.

The great irony and tragedy of the early 21st century is that we have decided to pay homage to the despots and mass murderers of the 20th century over the essential goodness of our truer heroes of that same century. We aspire to use the tools of Stalin and Hitler because we are afraid of looking too much like Ghandi and King. We play up the less savory stories and facts of Ghandi's and King's legacies to rationalize why we are so afraid of looking too soft, too decent, too genuine and good.

And it is our fears that pay tribute to the despots. That has always been the case. Even and especially when they ruled. It was peoples' fears that not only led them to submit beyond their control, but to secretly cheer these leaders' willingness to force the world to reckon with their leadership.

The tragedy of the early 21st century is that we say that we love King and Ghandi and Jesus and Buddha. But when push comes to shove, we prefer the cold-hearted force of Stalin and Hitler.

Only then, we reason, will we finally ward off all of our attackers. Only then, we rationalize, will we really be safe. Only then, we hope, will we finally end our vulnerability to the elements and to the world.

Even when the world becomes less safe and not more for our efforts. Even when our goals become harder to accomplish and not easier. Even when our aspirations are not met with results that favor them.

And that is our truest homage to the logic of despotism.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But not me, we all say. Not me. Not us.

Love,
Ben

Sound and fury signifying nothing

Speech, the lead singer for my favorite rap band and the most positive rap group that I am familiar with, Arrested Development, posted this article by black sports columnist Jason Whitlock on Myspace about Imus. It's some of the more thoughtful and decent things I've read written about the whole Imus affair.

Imus isn't the enemy

I have to say that some of the more thoughtful pieces I've read on Imus' behalf have been written by thoughtful black folks.

The best article I read was by Michael Meyers, the executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and former assistant national director of the NAACP.

Let the Idiocy Be Heard

The truth is that I don't care anymore about self-righteous outrage on anyone's behalf, anymore. It's useless. And accomplishes nothing. The only worthwhile thing that has happened over the course of this whole sordid affair is Imus' apology to the girls on the Rutgers team and their accepting his apology. Everything else is sound and fury signifying nothing.

I suppose enough people will have to be taken down by this period before we face up to that fact and our own ugly hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness and otherwise vice masquerading as virtue.

In the meantime, if I saw Imus, today, I'd offer to buy him a beer and wonder why people can't seem to reconcile themselves to what self-righteous hypocrits they so clearly are and how this whole episode makes that so much more crystal clear than anyone wants to take responsibility for.

You know what the bottom line is to all of this, I think?

It's not that most people are without sin. That's definitely not true. To the contrary, it is that they feel so bad about the sins in their lives, about what shitheads they have been at various points in their lives, about their own mistakes and foolishness and stupidity. And, probably more importantly, they still harbor all kinds of bitterness and pain and cynicism about all the ways they've been wronged by others in their lives. And instead of just forgiving themselves and others for the sins and the mistakes and the bad judgment and the learning involved with all of that, instead they hold onto that bitterness and cynicism like it is a security blanket that will somehow keep them safe from all of the pain. It won't. But they don't feel strong enough to encounter more. None of us do. But we will. And sadly, we will encounter more pain and bitterness the worse we treat ourselves and one another.

When really what we all need is to just be cut some slack and to forgive and to be forgiven more readily. Jesus and Buddha and Ghandi and King didn't say all that stuff just to hear themselves talk or just to prove how much better they were than anyone else and how noone could ever really live up to that example. We're all just too big of dumbasses to see that. They said all that stuff about love and compassion and empathy and forgiveness because it is the only way that we can function best in world where pain and power were all too present in our lives.

And the bottom-line is that we will all live lives of pain and subject to the bullying and aggression of others as long as we rationalize all that pain and aggression as our excuse for why we must bully and hurt others for our own purposes.

None of which touches conscience and thought, which is the basis for any real progress in a culture. In Jesus' time. In Buddha's time. In Ghandi's time. In King's time. In our time. At all times. At every moment in history. And the most serious sign of progress in every historical period has been how much we have left that more brutish, aggressive means of resolving our problems behind us and how much we have given space for genuine conscience and thought to have room to breathe and grow and learn and develop.

Until then, all this bluster is sound and fury signifying nothing.

It is more justification for everything that divides us and polarizes us and keeps us apart.

And we will never been fully reconciled as people until we can search deeper for what we have in common, including our propensity for the not-so-noble, if we ever aspire to strengthen and elaborate and reconcile ourselves with our highest values.

And we will never be able to lay claim to those highest values centered around anything but our most reconciled liberal values. Values that look after everyone. Period. No exception.

Those are the liberal values that really matter most. Imus, Speech, me, you. All of us. Terrorists may have to die as we protect those values, but we must do everything we can to prevent that and to bring them to justice, if we take those values seriously. And our freedom to be less than our most noble selves must not only be taken seriously. It is the only way that we will ever see more clearly that we are without a doubt not being our most noble selves, in this political period. We are not living up to those highest values. Not yet. And the only way forward in that direction is found in the very same forgiveness of Imus that we need ourselves for what shitheads we've been this entire period. Our progeny will have to forgive us to move forward. And we must forgive ourselves and others if we want to move forward as well.

Love,
Ben

The dumbass in the mirror

Two stories illustrated the foolish, foolish hypocrisy and counterproductivity of this current period and its self-righteous effort to beat the bad - and the disagreement and differences of interpretation and perspective - out of us. And our perpetual failure to look at the dumbass in the mirror.

Howard Kurtz writes writes about the accuser of the Duke University Lacrosse players of rape.

The important paragraphs for me:

"New York Post columnist John Podhoretz makes the case:

'It is the policy of the news media not to publish the names of rape accusers on the grounds that they should not have to fear public shame for coming forward with word of a horrifying personal violation.

'That is a noble policy. But it needs a codicil. The codicil is that if a rape accuser is revealed as a liar, her name should be spoken loudly and often -- as loudly and often as the names of those whom she falsely accused have been over the past year . . .

'She must be denied anonymity because she makes a mockery of the very policy of granting anonymity to rape accusers. We do not publish their names so that they will not fear public exposure. But people who are tempted to do the monstrous thing [the Accuser] did should fear public exposure.

'They should be terrified of it.

'They should have nightmares about it.

'They should be given no encouragement whatsoever to believe they can launch a nuclear weapon at someone's reputation and escape unscathed."

Andrea Peyser, in the same paper, recounts a piece that was controversial at the time:

'This story so neatly fit the radical agenda of our 'newspaper of record,' The New York Times, that the paper disgustingly advanced the hoax on its front page, long after other media outlets had backed off.

'In a case of 'all the lies fit to print,' the paper on Aug. 25 affected an air of Timesian authority in a damning article, spoon-fed by DA Nifong. It tried to put to rest some of the alarming inconsistencies in the accuser's story about the night she was 'attacked.'

''While there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong's case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury,' quoth the Times. And, 'The full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense.'

'Will the Times make reparations now?"

The Times, as this Post article alludes to, relishes in taking down those who they think need just deserts, but who, now, will take down the Times? Or the New York Post, for that matter, when they inevitably screw up a high profile story or case?

And that really is the question. Given our now and inescapable tendency to screw up, who will take any and all of us down when we inevitably screw up? More importantly, to me, how can we all be so sure that we have arrived at final truthes on this case or any case or newsworthy situation, when everyone is clearly both following the various media feeding frenzies and trying to avoid the fates of so many public figures being taken down for various sins and alleged sins, these days? How in the world can we always assume that we have arrived at final truthes when we both take so little time to really consider all the available evidence and arguments and when we are all so clearly trying to stay one step ahead of those who would beat us into submission if they think we are wrong?

We can't, is the only honest answer to that. And those who say otherwise are buffering and defending their own arrogant, self-congratulatory views of themselves - psychologists call that being defensive - and their final renderings on important matters so that they don't have to face their own fallibility and likelihood of screwing up in their bullying and pressuring and take-downs.

When those Duke boys went up for trial, originally, the conventional wisdom was that wealthy white boys at a wealthy white school playing a wealthy white game had abused their privilege and raped a low-class black stripper, engaged in a no-respect profession if not from a lower class background, and that someone was going to have to pay for that. All based on the reportings of the prosecutor involved.

Now the conventional wisdom is that a no-class stripper accused a group of innocent college students of a horrific crime in a lie that necessitates a stiff public rebuke and exposure. All based on the reportings of the prosecutor involved.

Each time, members of the media and the chattering classes and the legal and political professionals and junkies who follow them are sure that they have finally gotten the story right, that goodness has been restored, and that the bad people will get their due.

Curiously, it sounds very much like how journalism, criminal justice, politics, and especially the democratic mob has operated for as long as democracy has been around, and worse when it has not been around.

Interesting how that works, isn't it? How often, frequently, and unabashedly we screw up, and yet how righteous we are all along the way, at each juncture. The war in Iraq was right up front. Now it is wrong, just as vociferously. Those boys were presumed guilty, up front, no matter what lip service everyone gives presumption of innoncence, and then, just as aggressively, innocent young men slandered by a low-life stripper, today.

This is an ugly, hypocritical, and foolish political period we are going through, right now. And here is exactly the consequence of all that ugliness that we should expect.

Conservatives are now talking about impeaching Nancy Pelosi.

Robert Turner writes in the Wall Street Journal about Nancy Pelosi's Illegal Diplomacy, accusing Pelosi of committing a felony with her trip to Syria and violating the Logan Act, which prohibits diplomacy by anyone other than those authorized by the White House. I was alerted to this development by a Newsmax email in my inbox about impeaching Nancy Pelosi.

The take down for liberals is coming. Revenge is the dish served most reliably in D.C. They will call it justice. Just as the TrueMajority email I received recently referenced the take down of Alberto Gonzalez as "Justice is a dish best served cold." But, just as that topic sentence implies, it will really be revenge. And it will come and come and come and keep coming until Americans decide that they have had enough of this nonsense.

And that is how America and the world will look, and on and on and on. Until we've had enough of this ugliness.

The absolute insanity of it all is that everyone is hypocrits to high heaven about this one. They relish the take down of those they disagree with. They defend their friends and those they agree with from similar take-downs. And when they consistently advocate for self-righteous efforts to take everyone down, friends and foes - efforts that, remeber, they are perpetually right about no matter how many times they are wrong about them - they seem all the creepier as far as I am concerned.

And all of this is responsible for the deep and dysfunctional cynicism that characterizes Washington and the adult world, once young people discover that adulthood means everyone always living in fear and suspicion of one another all the time and noone talking honestly about themselves or their weaknesses and mistakes in public, largely out of fear of what they think might happen to them. Meaning, all of this cynicism creates a world that so many people don't trust, and then the cynical reality that this cynicism creates is used to rationalize why that cynicism is right and why people really do just need the shit kicked out of them to get the world right.

You know what drives me craziest about this long line of rationalization? It is the rationalization that is the basis for all of the worst abuses committed in the world. All of the terrorism, the repression, the despotism, the genocide, the political violence of all sorts, all of the worst human rights abuses and crimes against humanity follow from this much more fundamentally cynical view of humanity and human affairs and the need to war, metaphorically or literally, on those about whom we harbor suspicions.

Until we've had enough, that is. I've had enough. I had enough 6 years ago when this ugly political period - where all parties rationalized it more fully - began.

Cynicism is not truth. It's not reality. It's the perpetual disappointment with a reality that fails to live up to our expectations. And it is self-fulfilling. It will continue to fail to live up to our expectations the more we act cynically and are perpetually beating the shit out of one another. That is why more liberalized worldviews lifted the world out of that darkness. And it is only more liberalized worldviews that will lift us out of that darkness still. There are many signs of hope. But none of them come from the more cyncical and brutish behavior that is dominating during this period. Hope comes from every indication that some people are looking to let go of this legacy and leave it behind.

Bill Clinton's impeachment trial was most assuredly revenge for Richard Nixon. Talk about impeaching George Bush was most assuredly revenge for Bill Clinton. Talk about Nancy Pelosi's impeachment are most assuredly revenge for talk about George Bush's impeachment. And on and on and on.

And what drives me craziest about all of this is not only how many people are hurt and killed in the name of these self-righteous crusades.

It is that none of these partisans are right. They are not right about the righteousness of taking down those they disagree with. And, more importantly, they are not right, with any final rendering, about even the more substantive disagreements that are really at the heart of so many of these efforts at political and professional take down. Liberals are not right about everything or even all of the most important things in public or social life. Conservatives are just as wrong about many, many important policy issues and often the most important ones. There is no person or group who is right about all of their positions - especially the propensity of their favored policy positions to accomplish the results they desire - which is exactly why we should presume more liberal values that respect peoples' freedom, self-governance, and self-determination and that humble themselves in the face of that fact.

And the thing that we are all most wrong about is both our ability to tell the difference unerringly, that others will not err and make mistakes if we just apply enough pressure, that our propensity to err is a sign of our need to be taken to task rather than a sign of our need to freely and openly explore our options for thinking and speaking and acting in the world and learn from our mistakes as much as we learn from our successes, and that beating up on one another contributes anything at all to our ability to avoid mistakes in the future. It doesn't. It never has. If it did, we would not be making mistakes at all, at this point in humanity's history, because we have used far more force and pressure in our more illiberal past than we have in today's more liberal present.

We do all of this out of stubborn habit. And our most stubborn habit is to believe that being tough with problems is more important or somehow a real solution to so many problems that needs us to be smarter and more deeply thoughtful, more open-minded and open-hearted, to communicate more openly without fear of reprisal, to be ourselves in the open and not have to hide our true selves for fear of punishment, and that tough actually solves more problems than it actually does, even though the evidence is fairly incontrovertable to me, at least, that tough solutions often make our problems worse, not better, no matter how much we try to pretend otherwise.

The Soviets would always take responsibility for any progress in Russia or its satellite countries, as will the controlling parties in China, Cuba, and North Korea. Saddam Hussein would always take credit for any positive developments in Iraq, as would Hitler in Nazi Germany and Mussolini in Fascist Italy. Every repressive leadership claims that it causes progress in any country. And sadly, no matter how self-righteously their cause was engaged, it takes engaged debate and discussion and historical perspective for people to more honestly evaluate their legacies. The French Revolution was not a righteous sacking of a despotic monarchy most reasonable historians would agree, today. But you couldn't have told that to the revolutionaries in France at the time. The Catholic Church's harrassment of Martin Luther was not the righteous disciplining of a heretic. But you literally could not have told the Church's leadership of this at the time since this capacity to speak honestly of the Church's mistakes was at the heart of Luther's Protestant Reformation.

That is the beauty of democracy, really. Even if it does not get us all of the right answers, it is the least worst government, as Winston Churchill said, because it provides us with more checks on the self-righteous power-mongering of all parties. That should not be confused with an affirmative stamp of approval for our final renderings. Because that stamp of approval could never exist.

That is why people fight so aggressively, today, to prove that they are right. Because they are afraid that such uncertainty means that no meaningful resolution of important matters can take place if a resolution is not imposed. The irony, of course, is that such final resolution cannot exist at all, except in the ever fallible minds of individuals in a free and democratic culture. That is a fact of life for us to accept, not to fight, futily hoping that our impositions will finally resolve such fears of uncertainty.

And sadly and paradoxically, our ability to more meaningfully resolve such issues and find more workable ideas and solutions is clearly and perpetually undermined by our more aggressive efforts which undermine the honesty and engagement and thought and respectful discussion and debate that is now and forever the only best way to find more meaningful resolution of our more serious questions and problems.

Our ability and propensity to solve our most difficult problems, to be better and more thoughtful people facing and wrestling with those problems, and to more meaningfully and intelligently consider all of the factors involved with our common problems and the consequences from our available courses of action are made available only by our more liberal democratic commitments to free thought and expression and engagement and conscience. They are the foundation for our contemporary society and social mores that we so perpetually take for granted. This is why intellect makes the most important contributions to culture. Because it lays the foundation for all of our most successful adaptations, changes, habits, thoughts, values, ideas, worldviews, institutions, and other choices we make that sustain and strengthen the culture.

But we have a stubborn and wrong-headed commitment in an opposite direction that values tough and quick action over patient and thoughtful engagement and reflection. Sometimes tough action is inescapable. And sometimes quick action is necessary. But both need and must follow from more thoughtful engagment and an appreciation for why that thoughtfulness is the foundation for everything meaningful that we do.

The perpetual hypocrisy and inanity of this get-tough period is that everyone knows this, but only selectively enough to consider their own situations rather than with empathy and insight into the situations of others. And everyone pretends that their own mistakes are innocent and needing of forgiveness and an appreciation for their humanity while the mistakes that others make are in need of a serious ass-kicking.

They demean and disrespect the kind of empathy and insight into the situation of others that compassion affords because they refuse to take it seriously, despite its central place among virtues among civilized people. And they refuse to take it seriously because they are afraid that it makes them and and those who harbor it weak. "Faggy," as citizens of the future Idiocracy think of Mike Judge's protagonist, Joe Bowers.

As the young doctor in Idiocracy describes their resident smart guy, "You talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded." And that is about the essence of the mentality of that line of logic. Much like Joe, I get very tired of taking this line of logic more seriously than it deserves. No matter how smart its proponents purport to be.

Especially when it is so clearly not working to rid the world of all of the harms that they seek to rid the world of, by any objective standard. They will take credit otherwise. But the remarkable thing is that kicking ass and taking credit, much like Mike Judge's dystopia, doesn't actually make the problems go away.

Everyone wants to kick ass. Noone wants their ass kicked. Schools rightly teach thought and engagement to solve problems. And every dumbass in the world looks upon thought and engagement with suspicion thinking, "But how will I convince people that I am right if they don't agree with me or if they just don't see just how wrong they are if I can't force them to do otherwise." And that is the dumbass logic the fuels this foolish little period.

Clearly missing the point that the dumbass who might be wrong just might be us.

Love,
Ben

I'm too nice

I'm finally giving in. I'm too nice.

And to rectify the situation, I am going to, over the course of my lifetime, find every person who has ever wronged me, and kick them in the balls. Or pull their hair. Whichever is most appropriate.

And if you've wronged and me and you've called me too nice, you get kicked in the balls twice. Just cause you probably deserve it.

I figure if I'm going give up being a nice guy, I should take advantage of the opportunity to really do some damage to those who have made being a nice guy so difficult all these years. And I figure you kick someone in the balls or pull their hair, they can hardly call you too nice anymore, can they?

So bullies of the world beware. And watch your testicles.

Love,
Ben

Why I can't even listen to political commentary anymore

I can't even listen to E.J. Dionne anymore. I certainly can't really take Bill O'Reilly seriously. The constant scandal-mongering, self-righteous pressuring and posturing, and all the bullshit efforts to take out people who disagree with one another.

I just can't handle the total and utter bullshit political correctness and political maneuvering anymore. It's bullshit. There's no substance to it. Not really. People of real substance don't need to use pressure and posturing and propaganda and manipulation. And stronger arguments, empirical outlooks, and deeper understandings get lost amidst it all. And all of it, all of it, is about getting people who disagree with you.

I don't want any part of it anymore. I don't care why you're offended by such and such bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, is the truth. I am way overexposed to and underwhelmed by scandal and take downs and political hardball. I don't listen to people who bully anymore. I may still try to listen to the substance of a position. But your credibility is seriously undermined in my mind if you feel like you have to bully me or anyone to take your position rather than persuade me. I may take your ideas seriously. But I can't take you seriously, as long as you think that your right to strong-arm me is more inviolate than my right to make up my own mind.

I'm fairly confident that in the very long term, this is the direction that people will take, generally. Young people, generally, are turned off by adults in their lives who bully them. We all are. But, in the short term, scandal is all the rage to take out people you disagree with. It's really ugly is what it is. And I want nothing to do with its proponents anymore.

I think E.J. Dionne is an asshole. I think Robert Novak was the same upon Ford's death (although, to be fair to Robert, for all his dickishness, E.J. has been the far bigger asshole, these days). I want nothing to do with these assholes or any of the shitheads who regularly pressure and strong-arm and otherwise fail to persuade others of their point of view, so they turn to force when their intellect fails them and to persuade others.

I can barely listen to NPR, these days. And only because I want something more serious than commerical rock radio. But I didn't support them, financially, this year. And probably won't be supporting them in the near future.

When liberals talk about dialogue, they're full of shit, is the truth. They don't really believe in dialogue. They believe in bullying. And I want nothing to do with those who engage in that kind of bullshit, anymore. Or conservatives who do the same. When liberals talk about diversity, they mean every kind of diversity except for intellectual diversity or a diversity of ideas. Because when there is diversity of ideas, liberals do everything they can to rid the world of that, is the truth. They'll pretend differently. And its just pretense. It's more lying. And hypocrisy. And bullshit. And the truth is, they don't even care, sadly enough. All they care about is proving that they're right. And they're not even that, sadly enough. So ugly and so sad all at once.

The truth is that the culture war is fully engaged aggression by both conservatives and liberals who both will die by the same sword that they live by. When conservatives come after liberals as they reenergize, I will think it's sad that we are engaging another cycle of political recrimination and attack. But I won't cry for liberals who gave as well as they took.

And I don't want anything to do with any of it or anyone who engages in it.

If you do it with me, expect me to take your ideas seriously. Because I take ideas seriously, no matter what. But don't expect me to take you seriously. Because I won't. And I never will as long as you take yourself and your own ideas so unseriously.

Love,
Ben

A life of peace and politics

It's so funny. After a lifetime of studying politics and difficult political issues, all I want, today, is to just have a nice little life away from it all.

People are incorrigibly self-righteous, I am convinced. They can change, need to change, and will change. But I just want them out of my hair until they do.

It's tedious to be constantly dealing with their ugliness and pettiness and self-righteousness and cynicism and especially their bullying, in the meantime. I want the more radicalized elements of society that are perpetually rationalizing strong-arming, violence, terrorism, genocide, repression and whatever the hell they can get their hands on, really, in the name of this or that cause neutralized. But to do so, moderate peoples will have summon up courage, to get stronger, and to become a better people who more genuinely embrace their highest liberal values more readily, and stop rationalizing radical action that just fuels that cycle.

I want depressed communities - whether they be in Palestine or Pyongyang or Damascas or Salt Lake City - to face up to the ugly and brutish ways that are constantly undermining their cultures, their neighborhoods, their economies, their governments, and their lives. But to do so, moderate peoples in those communities and in communities surrounding them will need to respect more freedoms that will allow those communities to take more responsibility for their plights, and all individuals and communities will need to take more responsibility for the impact of their own choices on all members of society, especially choices that involve strong-arming one another into submission without a more open, honest debate and discussion of issues and without making substantial progress on those same issues.

I want all kinds of problems in the world resolved. I've dedicated my life to their resolution.

But, mostly, right now, I just want to be left alone. I want just want a nice little life where I can live with some peace and without so much persistent fighting for no good goddamn reason and with no real resolution in sight.

I just want to leave politics to the bullies, and to let me be left out of it.

I don't know how realistic that is. But I sure could use a break.

Love,
Ben

Joe Biden's plan for Iraq

Joe Biden writes a piece today in the Washington Post - The Real Surge Story - that demonstrates both that he is a brilliant mind with many good ideas for Iraq - his commitment to a decentralized, federal political system in Iraq is a very good principle to operate from - and utterly clueless about how to separate a good idea from his own ego, which demands that such a plan somehow be divorced and, indeed, undermine a security effort which is the only one that would make any political resolution to the fighting in Iraq - his or anyone else's - possible.

Joe is at his best when he is arguing that America should "help Iraq make the transition to a decentralized, federal system, as called for in its constitution, where each major group has local control over the fabric of its daily life, including security, education, religion and marriage."

That part he is right about. It's a good plan. It respects important democratic principles like decentralization and federalism that are both liberal in their commitments and clearly necessary when you have groups looking to violently impose upon one another and likewise fear the same.

What Joe is clueless about, right now, is that waving around that Constitution and saying, "It says it right here. It's in the Constitution. It's the law. You got to do it" is no fuckin' plan for bringing security to Iraq. It's mindlessly telling people what they should do without creating a relatively secure space for them to do the real political negotiating that will be necessary to make a political resolution like Joe's - or whatever political resolution the Iraqi people and their representatives decide on, frankly, though Joe is right that they should respect this principle and work to bring it into being - possible.

Joe is fighting the very thing that would make such a plan a possibility. Largely because he wants to be President, and he thinks that such a plan will not see the light of day until he becomes President. But the funny thing is that Joe's Presidential ambitions will not see the light of day until he faces up to the real responsibility to provide security, here, that is an unavoidable prerequisite to his plan or any plan getting any real playtime on the political field. You don't have adequate security, you don't have a political resolution of any kind. Period. There is no way around this. And bringing the troops home is no fuckin' plan for creating that kind of security.

Whether Joe wants to face it or not, the truth is that conservatives like Frederick Kagan are right about this one. You cannot wish political negotiations into place. They either have real prerequisites for enactment in place - and adequate security to have a political negotiation is a pretty bare essentials basic prerequisite for a political settlement - or they do not. Joe apparently believes that the tooth fairy brings security to a war-torn region. What John McCain understands is that it is a substantial, credible, troop presence authorized by a governing authority. Iraqi troops could be authorized, but lack substantial enough credible numbers of people prepared to handle that job. So American military forces are the only other alternative, right now, until Iraqi troops can handle that job.

Hence, my response to Joe's editorial. Enjoy.

"As much as you would love to fantasize that appeals to the Iraqi Consitution will somehow end the fighting, how in the world, Joe, were you imagining that Iraqis would search out a political resolution - yours is good one, but something tells me that Iraqis will need to ultimately decide their own fate on this one, despite what I think is a lot of wisdom in your plan - without some kind of security on the ground for those negotitating a political settlement?

Were you proposing that they should stand on soap-boxes and yell at insurgents, "But the Constitution says we should have a decentralized, federal system."

Nonsense. Obviously security must be established for those parties to negotiate a political settlement that can line up with that Constitutonal principle or change that principle in whatever way their Constitution allows. There is no resolution to this war waving a piece of paper around.

There is either real security on the ground that allows for a real political negotiation or resolution or that Constitution remains paper with no power. Either people respect this Iraqi constititutional principal and so many other important democratic principles - enshrined in their constitution or not - or they don't. But a bare minimum requirement for respect for abstract political principles is a relatively secure space in which principles can be discussed, negotiated, applied, learned from, and otherwise become real in the lives of Iraqi people and their representatives and not just an abstraction voiced by an American Senator thousands of miles away.

The truth is that a military component is needed for a political resolution of this mess whether Democrats like that or not or whether it makes them look like they have all the answers or not.

John McCain understands that. And if you can't get that straight, Joe, you have no chance in hell of becoming President of this country or any other country for that matter."

Joe's website for his Presidential candidacy - planforiraq.com - is more specific in his proposals. On that website, he concludes his very well thought out proposals with this argument:

"That leaves federalism as Iraq's best possible future. But unless we help make it work for all Iraqis, it won't stop the violence. We should start with a major diplomatic offensive to convince the major powers and Iraq's neighbors that a federal Iraq is the best possible outcome for them, too. Then, together, we should convene a Dayton-like conference to move all the Iraqi parties from civil war to the negotiating table. Through a combination of pressure and reassurance, we would persuade the Sunnis to accept federalism and press the Shiites and Kurds to give the Sunnis a bigger piece of the pie.

The course we're on leads to a terrible civil war and possibly a regional war. This plan is designed to head that off. It offers the possibility - not the guarantee - of producing a soft landing for Iraq. I believe it is the best way to bring our troops home, protect our fundamental security interests, and preserve Iraq as a unified country.

The question I have for those who reject this plan is simple: what is your alternative?"

The alternative that Joe is clearly not taking seriously and is the reason why Democrats have so much less clue about how to handle Iraq than they perpetually give themselves too much credit for is to avoid the fundamental mistake that was made over the course of this war: to make decisions for Iraqis versus including them in decisions like revolting against their dictator and, at this particular political moment, letting them decide their own political fate.

Iraqis are not going to adopt a political resolution that Americans or even the Arab world imposes upon them or pressures them to adopt. And we are arrogant in the extreme to think that either they should or they will. Would Americans really have adopted a Constitution that the British pressured us to adopt? Of course not. We would think they were the most arrogant, power-hungry fools in the world to believe such nonsense. And we would be right. And Iraqis will, pretty soon, just stop listening altogether to Americans trying to impose such nonsense.

What is Joe thinking? That Iraqis will just hop up on the America-pressures-for-progress bandwagon just like Iran and North Korea? Is he fuckin' blind? Iran and North Korea are not bending to our will, you fuckin' nimrods. They're fighting us all the way. Whenever progress looks to be in sight, Americans go and fuck it up by applying some kind of military or economic or political pressure that undermines all that diplomacy.

What Iraqis need, right now, is our help and for us to sit the fuck down and stop trying to run the goddamn show all the fuckin' time. They've asked for our help to create a workable security for them to find a political resolution to their situation. And we need to respect that wish and sit our happy asses down and learn when your pressure or advice is not welcome, thank you very fuckin' much. Maybe they enact the principles of decentralization and federalism enshrined in their Constitution. I agree with Joe that this would be a very good idea. But I'm not the fuckin' Iraqis. And neither is Joe. And whether Joe or Democrats or Republicans or anyone fuckin' likes it or not, Iraqis will decide their own fate, thank you very fuckin' much, whether Americans insist on trying to call all the shots themselves or not.

Maliki has got to have the patience of a fuckin' saint to put up with this kind of bullshit. And he needs the Americans' help, is the truth. Thank god Joe Biden is just a fuckin' Senator and not the President making military decisions here. I hope Joe Biden gets his arrogant little ass beat in this election and maybe, just maybe, goes home to his wife with his little fuckin' tail between his legs and says, "Maybe I don't know it all, Jill. Maybe the Iraqis, like the American people, may just be able to live much of their own lives without my making all the decisions for them. Maybe they can and have to - whether I fuckin' like it or not - find a resolution to their own problems, regardless of my input. Maybe there are limits to my intellect and my power." Maybe, Joe. Just maybe.

When Joe Biden says that the security efforts in Iraq are "doomed," he is not someone to be taken seriously as Presidential material to lead such efforts. He is automatically disqualified from that, as far as I'm concerned, until he can more humbly think through how exactly he is going to provide for the very security that he is undermining, right now, with his comments.

Joe Biden gets zero support from me until he gets serious about the current security efforts. If he can't, then he is more than welcome to make another failed bid to win the Presidency and to be humbled in front of millions of Americans. Because that is exactly what he needs right now.

Love,
Ben

How the current period completely undermines my trust its tough proponents

I've given up trying to understand the persistent rationalization of the million heads rolling, these days. It's ugly. It's wrong. It's wasteful. It's self-righteous. And it needs to end.

That's why I don't like to concede to bullies. Because once they get a taste for the power that comes with bullying, they won't stop. Terrorists are bullies with heavy weapons. The current period is about bullies with the weapons of words and social and political pressure. And it it needs to end.

I have no trust in them or their causes anymore. None of them. If I have any trust in the issues they are concerned about, I have to completely separate it, to the degree I can, from their bullying. That is difficult. But it also is a sign of both just how ugly this period has gotten, how arrogant its proponents have become, and how little they can be trusted.

First Don Rumsfeld. Then Lewis Libby. Then Alberto Gonzalez. Then Don Imus. Then Paul Wolfowitz.

If everyone hasn't become clear now, like Hamas or Hezbollah or Al Queda, these political bullies will never be appeased. And shouldn't be appeased. That's why conservatives are gearing up for a fight. And so this sad, twisted, ugly, wrong, rationalized story will go forever and forever and forever until people face up to their ugliness.

I have zero trust in Democrats anymore. I have zero trust in Republicans anymore. The truth is that I have zero trust in anyone anymore.

Because they've all earned the distrust. Noone follows the rules. And everyone enforces them selectively for their own purposes.

It is the most fantastic mess that I have seen in my entire life. It is hypocrisy without limits. And it is thus hypocrisy without an ounce of credibility or trustworthiness, at this point.

As with my kids, if you push your limits too far, eventually I don't trust you at all. And that is where the proponents of the current political era are with me, at least, at this point, no matter how much they may pretend that they can get away with this nonsense into perpetuity.

Keep trying to get away with it, I say. But I don't trust you at all. And I won't for a very, very long time, until you change your ways.

If your bullying, and I know about it, I'm not listening to goddamn word you say anymore. And I don't give a shit whether you think that's fair or not. It's not fair. Life ain't fair. Too fuckin' bad. Change your ways. Or I don't trust you anymore until you do.

What was that argument you made? I have no fuckin' clue. Because I'm not listening to bullies anymore.

Love,
Ben