I am so tired of this bullshit clogging up the political dialogue

Richard Perle writes this bitter, recriminatory piece for the Washington Post today that epitomizes everything that is fucking up American politics today.

How the CIA failed America

I have to say that I am beyond tired of this shit. Perle spends an entire column pillorying George Tenet for a comment he made about a comment he argues Richard Perle made about what rationale was responsible for the run-up to the Iraq War.

I am beyond tired of this shit. And, more importantly, I am beyond tired acting like it accomplishes a goddamn thing.

Perle and Tenet, both, are doing exactly what you would expect from a recriminatory, aggressively investigative, and whether they want to admit it or not, a bitter and cynical Washington culture that is a fucking cancer on the body of American culture.

Why do we continue to mindlessly engage in this kind of bullshit like its actually accomplishing something?

Does constantly going over what wasn't done leading up to 9/11, what stupid arguments got made or lies were told leading up the Iraq War, what mindless strong-arming and brow-beating that took place 40 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and even today...

Does any of this really accomplish a goddamn thing?

No, is the short answer. The long answer is that it is all meant to cover up and pretend that such behavior is less bitter, recriminatory, vengeful, thoughtless and otherwise ignoble than it really is.

It's not just thoughtless and ignoble. It's this massive, insane, persistently denying and deflecting waste of time. It is all this aggressive posturing and these aggressive take-downs, threats, and otherwise ugly, nasty behavior that leads to all of the lying, the blame-shifting, the avoidance of responsibility, the denial, the pretending like things are going better than they are, the cover-your-ass mentality, the everyone-keeping-their-mouths-shut-for-fear-that-they-are-next mentality, the cowardice, and this long-running hope that if everyone just sticks to script on this one then all those problems will go away or that everything will just go back to way things were in the past which is always imagined and dreamed up as somehow more hunky-dorry than it really was or is.

I am so fucking tired of all of this bullshit. I am most tired of all of the really fucked up consequences following this bullshit and everyone saying, "Yep, things are going good" or "Things can't get better than this" or "This is what progress looks like" or "Nothing we can do about things today, because they just aren't the way they used to be" or every other fucking excuse that people have for why their bad behavior has so fucked shit up, in Washington and in everyday life.

There are consequences for bad behavior, including and especially pretending like recrimination and bitterness and cynicism and rash and petty "action" really are the noble means of dealing with life and that forgiveness, decency, constructive vision and engagement, room for conscience and discussion and disagreement, thought and making mistakes and learning really are just the bane of civilization that has held us back all these years because people who allow for it just keep undermining the otherwise brilliant methods of the more recriminatory among us.

Fucking drives me crazy.

Recrimination is bad behavior. I don't care how you cut this one. People who maintain recrimination and bitterness as virtues are rationalizing, creepy people who need to face up to their bitterness and ugliness and stop pretending like it is better than it is.

This is not just Richard Perle or George Tenet or Elliot Spitzer or Robert Byrd. It is the whole goddamn bunch of political folks in Washington and around the country, save for some much more decent and good-hearted folks like Bill Bradley and Dick Lugar. I don't agree with Bill and Dick on everything. But, down-deep, they are more decent people than so many of the cynics and the vengeful, recriminatory pricks who are constantly fucking up Washington and politics, generally, in this country.

I am tired of this shit. I am tired of it masquerading as something better than it really is. I am tired of people treating it like it is better than it really is. I am tired of it constantly fucking up relationships between folks and trust in government. I am tired of it constantly holding sway.

And most of all, I am tired of it pretending to be progress for the last fucking 7 years.

It is bullshit, is what it is. It is ugliness pretending to be pretty. It is pettiness and bitterness pretending to be better than it really is.

It is all of us rationalizing our small, petty, ugly, indecent instincts and pretending like they are better than they really are.

9/11 and the War in Iraq are done deals. This whole godforesaken political period is a done deal (that really is the most cynical part about it, since many of these people, right and left, I read and watched rationalize this fact as a part of their lead up to this period. They knew that more forgiving folks would have to forgive them for their bullshit. And they did it anyway, to take advantage of and manipulate their more decent, forgiving, good-hearted ways. Because they're manipulative fucking pricks is why. But manipulation isn't leadership. So eventually people will see through this bullshit. Until they do, I will call bullshit on it every fucking chance I get).

9/11 and the invastion of Iraq are done. They are behind us. What is ahead of us is the opportunity to constructively avoid more of the same bullshit. What is ahead of us is the opportunity to think and discuss and debate and disagree and reasonably and realistically consider what we might do next to avoid these kind of tragedies and to make the best of the situation in Iraq so that we can make sure that as little tragedy as possible takes place and so that opportunity can be found even amidst danger, as John F. Kennedy used to say.

I am so fucking tired of this bullshit clogging up the political dialogue. I am tired of us pretending like it is better than it is. I am tired of us pretending like we are better than we are when we are engaged in it. And I am tired of people pretending like this is the only goddamn option when it is perfectly fucking clear to those same people that there clearly is a better, more decent, more good-hearted and noble way forward; they just keep refusing to take it because it's harder than being a prick and there is nothing they hate more than taking the harder, more thoughtful, more decent route.

I am tired of this shit clogging up efforts in schools like the one I teach in. I am tired of this shit getting so much political traction in Washington and around the country and around the world. I am tired of this shit being treated like it is moral and noble when it could not be farther from either of these things. The ways that this stuff is rationalized in the name of Islam, Communism, and all sorts of despotism really is the worst ways in which this ignobility and corruption of spirit are most clearly confused with real deal morality and nobility that it makes my stomach turn.

It makes my stomach turn that people would confuse it here at the beginning of the 21st century after we spent an entire century earlier turning back all this nonsense in Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere where people got so stuck in it they couldn't, and wouldn't, just face up to what a nasty, terribly, inhumane, indecent, and ultimately stupid, foolish, and destructive way it was to lead a country or humanity. It makes my stomach turn that people could pretend and pretend and pretend that they are more decent and good and thoughtful than they really are and that people will just keep eating that shit up and being taken in like fish on a line just because they can't face up to their own ugliness or their own gullibility.

I am tired of this shit festering and being nurtured among the cynical realities of a world too cowardly to face up to its cynicism or its cowardice.

I am tired of people looking at all of this bullshit and saying, "Well, there's nothing we can do."

I am tired of living with and being subject to all of this cowardice and lying and bitterness and nasty human behavior and everyone saying, "This is how it is supposed to be."

This is not how it is supposed to be. Where is all the fucking progress? Where is it? In Nancy Pelosi becoming the first female House Speaker? Give me a fucking break. In the firing of all those attorneys from the White House? Or the firing of Richard Clarke? Or the firing of all these conservatives? What the hell kind of progress is that? In the outcasting of Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds from Baseball's Hall of Fame? What kind of bullshit is that?

This is not progress. I don't care how much you lie about it. I don't care how much you try to manipulate it.

What is progress is people like me calling bullshit on it rather than cheerleading it and acting like it is somehow better than it is.

This is repression and regression, pure and simple. This is the repressive amongst us looking to make all the bad stuff go away by punishing it, hurting it, pushing it down and our own repressive instincts creating a regressive reality that we are responsible for whether anyone will take responsibility for that fact or not. This is humanity regressing to its lowest common impulses. This is not humanity embracing its base instincts. This is humanity pretending they don't have them and all the while resolving to beat the shit out of the ones they see and acting out on their basest impulses while calling them something more noble than they are.

This is human ugliness is what it is. And it is all the rage these days. And it is getting play in Washington, in the press (which is where the really corrupting power is at, these days) on television, on the radio, in the music industry, in the movie industry, in schools, in churches, in families (sadly).

This is human ugliness pretending to be something better than it really is.

And it is really, really, really old, at this point. It is really old to watch this bullshit constantly disrupt and fuck up more decent engagement with one another because people just can't let go of the bullshit.

If you can't let go of the bullshit, shut the fuck up, sit down and get out of the way of people who will be more decent than you. And work on being more decent. But stop pretending like your bitter, recriminatory impulses are something better than they really are. And stop stomping all over people around you who are trying to make things genuinely better.

I am tired of this bullshit clogging up the political dialogue. And I am tired of it clogging up my life. I am tired of this bullshit dominating dialogue rather than the real deal, thoughtful, decent, deeply considered, engaged, open-minded, open-ended, give-and-take, freedom-respecting, conscience-respecting, forgiving, loving, good-hearted discussion and thought and debate in the world.

I am tired of all of the ugliness dominating the good.

And I am tired of all of us looking at it and saying, "Yep. That's the way things are supposed to be."

I am going home. And finding some sanctuary from all this ugliness.

Love,
Ben

Needing something better

I've been feeling shitty all day, today. Feeling taken advantage of, used, and otherwise shit upon.

I've realized since visiting other schools that the school I work at is really shitty. I'd never let my own kids go here, is the truth. Not with how it is run, currently. This is a school of last resort. That's why I wanted to work here, because I have a genuine commitment to kids who are more often left behind that no law could ever mandate that teachers or anyone else have.

But I'd never let my kids go here, is the truth, as long as it was run the way that it is. Meaning, as long as kids and the job is treated like a neverending burden rather than a responsibility freely taken up.

Today, it feels like a burden. In a serious way. If I felt like this every day, I would hope that I would leave this job or any job, especially one where you are working with people or children, and go find something better.

But many people don't. And many, many teachers and administrators teach and work in my school feeling the way I do today most of their time in schools. That is a sad fact of life.

I have an assistant principal who epitomizes this fact more anyone else I know. She clearly doesn't like her job, most days. She clearly doesn't seem to like life much, most days, is the truth. And she doesn't say or do much that inspires much respect for her, except that she keeps slogging it away in a job that most people wouldn't want. Someone needs to want her job because someone probably needs to replace her. She just isn't that good an administrator, and I don't suspect that she was that good of a teacher. She just climbed the ladder with ambition that outweighs her abilities. It's the saddest thing to see happen anywhere, especially in positions of authority. But I imagine it happens all of the time. She was largely responsible for my dismissal, I suspect. And she has been a miserable administrator to work with most of the time.

And I cannot wait for my 6 additional days in this job to be up more than anything else because I do not want to feel like this in any job for any period of time and hopefully never (a guy can always wish). And one of the more important things I've learned in my life is that I would never want to grow up to live the miserable life that this assistant principal leads, who doesn't seem to like people, at all, much of the time, including herself.

I am making plans for how I can have a much happier life, largely. A job where I get hassled least and constructively challenged most and independent wealth are both routes that I will be working on developing. I just can't ever see myself, again, living a life that is subject to the whims and groupthink and popular impulses of a persistently feverish, inconsistent, and often intellectually dishonest mob of whatever folks I happen to settle down my career and life with.

I want a life of independence. I want to spend my life with people who have something constructive and decent and thoughtful to contribute to it. I want to never again or a little as I can possibly encounter be under the thumb of anyone, especially someone who doesn't think as much as I do. But I really don't want to be under the thumb of anyone, is the truth.

I don't want to ever deal with a situation like this, again, and wonder, "How did my life get turned upside down? And who are these people condescending me?"

But, most of all, I just don't want to feel like this all the time. How I'm feeling today. I don't want to feel like this, at all, is the truth. And I will do anything I can to make that a reality in my life as much as possible for the rest of my natural born life.

I used to love school and respect authority, generally. I respect people of all stripes. And I follow authority, generally. But I don't respect authority figures because of their authority, anymore. If you have something deep and significant to contribute to my life, then I respect you. If you don't, and especially if you think that authority is some kind of substitute for that, I pity you, is the truth. Because your life is so bankrupt that you don't even know the unique thrill of studying or learning or teaching or sharing insight into those deeper truths of life.

I got an email from my advisor/professor from grad school the other day. And I remembered why I loved professors so much. Not because they were perfect. They're not. But because they are, often, the least arbitrary and the most thoughtful of the people I have dealt with in life, generally.

But maybe it's just mostly because they live in community where ideas and deep thought is taken seriously, even if they don't always have their heads completely wrapped around those thoughts or ideas or even if some of them are boorish and rude and overbearing just like so many people outside of a university.

At least they care about something that matters.

And I need to get back to that life, as much as possible. And perhaps I need some level of independence even from that life.

But anything would be better than how shitty I feel right now, frankly.

Here's to hoping there is something out there that might fit the bill. I really need it.

Love,
Ben