What our damned fool elections say about us

I've been reading coverage of the American Presidential candidates, of the Heather Mills/Paul McCartney divorce (randomly), and just news, generally.

And I'm beginning to wonder if we are even capable of growing up.

We're such children. We snark and taunt and bully and call names endlessly. We avoid substantive discussion, disagreement, and anything that would challenge our self-righteous notions of the world like they are, collectively, a modern-day plague. Even the smartest among us pretend like they have all the answers to our problems, which is not literally possible if Jesus Christ himself came back to earth and promised the same. We pretend like all our fighting is the same as having some greater or more insightful understanding of our challenges and their solutions.

We need a nap. Or a bottle. Or some time reviewing Sesame Street to remember what is involved with being a decent human being.

The maturity level of even the most thoughtful and compassionate among us is just kind of sad really.

We're all so invested in our self-righteous notions of the world that we cannot even conceive what might be involved in having a sober, serious, and open-minded, open-hearted discussion about the various issues we face to get to solutions quicker than our own egos might otherwise allow.

It's pathetic, is what it is. It's a sad spectacle. And how we could ever engage in it and pretend like "this is the way that the world must be forced to conform to" is way beyond my obviously shortsighted and uncomprehending thought process.

This election is already so fuckin' pathetic. It's one long regurgitation of the same old, tired melodrama, "Liberals right. Conservatives wrong," or, if you're looking for something particularly novel, "Conservatives right, liberals wrong."

If my own children were behaving like this, I would want to sit them in a corner. Or send them to their rooms. And think about how foolish and self-centered they were behaving.

But, instead, I have to pretend, for one more election cycle, like I respect this bullshit. I have to pretend like it's more worthy of a democratic debate and election than it really is. I have to pretend like these are the people worthy of leading me and the free and not-so-free world.

And then I have to pretend that I can't expect more not because most people are so fuckin' self-centered and unwilling to take responsibility for what sad, immature, self-centered dumbasses we are, but because this is the pinacle of human progress.

No offense, but if this is the pinnacle of human progress, we are in some deep, deep shit.

Mark Twain says everything I'm saying tonight much better, much funnier, and in a way that more people can take in easier. That's my shortcoming and Twain's brilliance at work there.

But, for tonight, I don't feel like making light of our persistent foolishness. I'm just dissappointed and kind of fed up.

It doesn't help that I've got an ex-girlfriend on the heart, tonight, who just never seems to get off no matter how hard I try.

But after an evening of giving it my best effort, I thought I'd say the obvious.

We are a world of juveniles. And a nation of children. And I am concerned, at this point, that it is medically impossible for us to be responsible for ourselves in a democratic society without acting like feuding kindergarteners without grown-ups to referee us.

The problem, I realize now after 17 years as an adult participant in this process, is not that there are certain participants in democratic society who are immature and ones who are grown-up and figured out how to tend to the rest of us.

The problem is that we are all children. And we just can't seem to grow up, for fear that to do so means to face our own limitations in a way that is too embarrassing for us to admit, lest we learn something and grow a little wiser and more humble in the process.

I cannot, for the life of me, name one exception to this notion. Not even myself, since I am reminded daily of what a short-sighted and unenlightened fool I am. I mean it was me who just spent the last hour of his life reading about the old news of that ex-Beattle's divorce proceedings.

Elections and politics in America and in the democratic and not-so-democratic world do not say great things about us, at this point. We have potential, that's for sure. But greatness eludes us while we decide if we're going to report on Barack Obama's hatred for the American troops and ambivalence toward the fate of Israel or the Iraqis or on John McCain's failure to master geography or economics.

We are obsessed with the petty and the trivial. With whether Barack Hussein Obama is code for "dirty Muslim" or whether John McCain's time as a prisoner-of-war qualifies him as President.

We're one big high school class, is what we are, all wondering who is going to be Prom King.

It's fuckin' pathetic. And unbecoming an election of a serious head of state of the most powerful 21st century liberal democracy. We want all that power. And we all want to gossip like schoolgirls while we wield it.

Like I said. Twain said it all better. He said everything better, didn't he?

I'm just in a lousy mood, tonight, and I've lost patience, for the moment, with this maddening and stupefying process. I think I have lost I.Q. points watching this election. And I'm pretty sure that I have acquired a learning disability of some kind reading and watching and following the press at large.

If this is all we have to offer, we are in serious trouble. Because we're not just kind of stupid and mean. We are farcically and unbelievably juvenile in how we conduct ourselves and campaigns for the most serious position of leadership in the world (though perhaps not for long, at this rate).

Surely there is more to democratic politics than this sophomoric exercise every 4 years.

And if not, why would anyone care?

Millions of Americans and liberal democratic citizens ask themselves that very question every voting cycle. And the irony is that millions of Iraqis are losing and risking their lives alongside thousands of Americans, British, Australian, Polish, Kuwaiti, and numerous other forces for the right to ask themselves that very question.

How foolish that we would be fighting a war so that Iraqis, like Americans, can take for granted that very right of having a serious and sober, open-minded and open-hearted debate and discussion of important matters of governance during elections like this one and not take seriously the election and democratic debate and discussion right in front of us.

How foolish that we would send our neighbors and family members to die for the right of citizens to participate in and take seriously important and reasonable matters of governance when we cannot even bring ourselves to take advantage of our own democratic opportunity to conduct such an earnest and honest discussion.

We are debating whether to send fellow Americans to die for the right to debate matters that we barely debate seriously, ourselves, in our own country.

And, all the while, we trumpet what unchallengeable wisdom we have to govern and make decisions for one another.

It is a fool's paradise, is what it is.

And we would rather have our friends and neighbors die than open our hearts and minds to an honest discussion.

I cannot think of anything more tragic and foolish. Which is appropriate. Since this is the most persistently tragic and foolish tendency that human history has repeatedly and inexplicably witnessed.

It is days like today that I remember why H.L. Mencken figures so highly in my mind in observation of human nature, even as Mark Twain had a truer understanding of people, I think.

Because what Twain anticipated that Mencken did not is the question, "Given the ridiculous and unimaginably absurd state of human affairs. What next?"

It's a good question. And what Twain anticipated was, "Somehow, we've got to get over this nonsense. Someone's got to help folks understand and recognize their own foolish pride, if at all possible. Might as well be me."

I'm working on it, Mark. My heart's just a little clogged, right now, with my own foolish attachments and blind romantic notions.

I'm working on it, I swear. My heart's just a little overwhelmed with it all tonight.

Pause

Ya'know. It's so funny. It's not the death that ever threatens to dissuade me from military service. It's the little shit, like this.

Silent Posting: With His Blog Kaboom, a Young Soldier Told of His War. Last Month the Army Made Him Shut It Down

"There was a boy who went to war, like many other boys before him. Maybe it made him a man, maybe it didn't. Maybe he already was a man, maybe he wasn't. Maybe it doesn't matter, maybe none of it does, maybe it all does. Maybe.

-- Lt. G, March 4

He was an unlikely warrior, this scrawny boy from Reno, Nev., the son of two lawyers, raised in the suburbs.

He had a way with words, this boy. When his Stryker unit deployed to Iraq last winter, he was a rookie platoon leader who had never seen combat. And like many other soldiers before him, he decided he'd chronicle the war on a blog. Intending to keep family and friends abreast of the follies and pitfalls of soldiering in a five-year-old war that now relies less on gunfire and more on diplomacy, this boy, under the pen name Lt. G, launched 'Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal.'

An indictment of the war it was not. Lt. G's dispatches -- at turns hilarious, maddening and terrifying -- provided raw and insightful snapshots of a conflict many Americans have lost interest in.

Word got around, and more and more readers closely followed the postings of 25-year-old Lt. Matthew Gallagher, with the site drawing tens of thousands of page views. By the time Kaboom went kaput last month -- Lt. G was ordered to take down his blog -- it had a following that would be the envy of many a small-town paper.

The blog's downfall was a May 28 posting that, in violation of military blogging rules, Gallagher failed to have vetted by a supervisor. (That the posting depicted an officer in the unit unflatteringly might have played a role. Gallagher declined a request to comment...)

'This is a disgusting decision on the part of the Army command,' one reader fumed, while another wrote: 'A free society would not shut down your blog.' Still another drafted a template letter and urged others to contact their lawmakers to demand that Lt. G's cyber gag order be lifted...

Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a military spokesman, said in an e-mail that Kaboom was 'deemed by the commander to be counter to good order and discipline of his unit.' He added that the blog had not been registered with the military, an assertion Dennis Gallagher disputes.

Lt. G wrote in his last dispatch that all postings, except for the one about the promotion talk, had been vetted by a supervisor. On June 27, he wrote one last entry, titled "A Tactical Pause":

I'm a soldier first, and orders are orders. So it is.

If you think, please think of us. If you pray, please pray for us. The second half of our deployment will be just as challenging and dangerous as the first half.

Thank you for caring. Agree or disagree with the war, if you're reading this, you are engaged and aware. As long as that is still occurring in a free society, there is something worth the fighting for."

Here's the link to the archived blog:

Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal at http://kaboomwarjournalarchive.blogspot.com/

And here's the post that got him in trouble, with the music that plays on the site.


The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage

That post in toto:

"I’d brushed aside the informal inquiries for months now. No, not me. Not interested. Keep me on the line. I want nothing to do with a lateral promotion to XO (Executive Officer) that involves becoming a logistical whipping boy and terminal scapegoat for all things NOTGOODENOUGH. I’ve been out here in the wilds too long, dealing with matters of life and death, to go back to Little America for PowerPoint pissing matches. Not me. I’m that too skinny, crazy-eyed mustang who drives a hippie van with a McGovern bumper sticker and keeps his hair long and actually read the counterinsurgency manual rather than pretending he did, even quoting it during meetings and out in sector in this era of recentralized warfare, remember? You aren't gonna break me, no matter how enticing the fires of the FOB are.

Semper Gumby.

I guess they forgot, and instead focused on matters of competency. Cue outright offer.

Cue LT G 'thanks but no thanks' response.

Cue illogical backlash from higher, acting like a spurned teenage blonde whose dreamboat crush tells her point-blank that he prefers brunettes.

Q finding myself on the literal and metaphorical carpet of multiple field-grades, sometimes explaining, sometimes listening.

Mostly listening.

Yes, Sir. I’m getting out. No, I’m sure. Definitely sure. Surer than sure. What am I going to do? Don’t tell him Option A, he’ll scoff at Option A. He believes dreams are only for children. Option B will suffice. Well Sir, I’m going to go back to school, somewhere on the East Coast. Haven’t decided if I’ll focus on the Spanish Civil War or Irish History yet, though. I think I’d be a pretty good wacky professor. I already like to ramble and I look good in banana yellow clip-on ties. Sir.

No, Sir. I’m not saying that at all. I would absolutely bust my ass as an XO, and perform the job to the best of my ability. I’m just saying I’d be screwing a peer of mine, who is staying in, and could use this professional development, benefiting both him and the big Army in the long run. Uncle Sam agrees with me.

No Sir, I don’t think I’m selling myself short. Recognizing one’s own weaknesses isn’t a weakness in and of itself. Crushing balls is only my thing with people who aren’t wearing an American uniform.

If I throw enough clutter in the way, something will stick.

This is the Army, son. Your opinion doesn't matter.

Roger. Acknowledged. I'd figure I'd proffer it, just in case.

You need to start thinking big picture, Lieutenant. That’s what officers do.

I roll out of the wire everyday to bask in a third-world cesspool craving my attention for nothing more than the most basic human need - hope. Is there a bigger picture than that, or just different vantage points from safer distances?

Yes Sir, I will remember to think things out more rationally next time. (Pause long enough to make the point that this was already a well-thought out decision.) Of course. Sir.

No Sir, this isn’t just because I want to stay with my platoon. (Maintain eye contact so he doesn’t think you’re lying, for the love of God, maintain eye contact!) I won’t lie though, Sir – it was a factor. Just not my motivation.

Nice work, liar.

Another reason? Well, Sir, two of my best friends in the world are LT Virginia Slim and LT Demolition. If I were to become their XO, I would be extremely uncomfortable with possibly having to order them and their men to their deaths. As their peer, I should be right there next to them. Hell, I probably would insist on it.

Yes, I know that was a good point. Don’t say that out loud. Don’t say that out loud. Phew. That was a close one. I almost out-louded rather than in-loaded.

Yes Sir, I have full confidence in my platoon to be able to succeed without me. SFC Big Country would be more than capable of performing the job of a platoon leader. But he’s an NCO. He shouldn’t have to deal with lieutenant bullshit. That’s my bullshit to deal with. I’m the soldier’s buffer. (Cough. From you. Cough.) If a butterbar were here, I’d understand. That’s the natural order of things. But since an opening occurred without a backlog, I really strongly really definitely really definitively believe that it should go to a LT who wants it. Hell, there are some of them out there who NEED it. Aren’t I being a team player here?

The ballad of a thin man walking a thin rope. Moonwalking a thinly-veiled rejection of his superiors’ life decisions. Wondering why they are taking it personally. People are different. They want different things out of existence. Let’s not act like I’m a ring of Saturn stating the case that Pluto’s planethood should be reconfirmed.

Don’t fall on your sword, Lieutenant. No one likes a martyr.

Can’t help it, I’m Irish. And. Yes. They do.

Fine, I’m not going to make you do it. (Even though I spent three days trying to do so.) But you are now on my shit-list, and I want to fuck you over for daring to defy and defying to dare. A bullshit tasking will eventually come down the pipeline, and I got a rubber stamp with your name on it. And yes, I know your performance has been outstanding, and we have consistently rated you above your peers, at the top echelon. Doesn’t matter now.

You’re right. It doesn’t. Doesn’t matter at all. Even if I’ve only haggled a few more months with the Gravediggers, it was worth it; I came here to fight a war, not to build a resume. My men need me. And. I need them. It would have been worth it for a few more days.

Victory.

Mustangs don’t blink.

You know where we learned how not to?

It wasn’t behind a desk.

Every day of free-roaming makes it worth it."

I don't know about you, but I like this guy more after reading this post, not less. Fuck 'em, Lt. G.

It's one of the more serious deterrents to me signing up. Not being able to speak and think freely and, as a function of those, to blog reasonably freely. Not being able to say what's on my mind. Not having a place to vent. Especially when your mental health as much as your physical safety is taking such a beating as it inevitably does in war.

Still. Job's gotta get done.

And I respect soldiers like Lt. G who fight because it's the right thing and not because it's a path to promotion. That's all I want out of the experience, at least. Do right. Let the rest of the chips fall where they may.

As Poppa G, Matthew's father, put it after he was ordered to take down the blog:

"I find it incredibly ironic that the day after the US Supreme Court issues a landmark decision concerning the second amendment of the Constitution, some midmanagement bureaucrat decides he can piss on the first amendment. Incredible!"

Apparently, Matthew's superior officer misses the irony, here, that while Lt. G is fighting for someone else's freedom and right to self-determination, in a war of self-sacrafice, rather than a war of self-defense, that he signed up for out of his own free will, his own freedoms get abrogated in the name of that fight.

I'm with Poppa G. I think this commanding officer got his feelings hurt, pussed out, and took the lame option of shutting the Lieutenant down rather than accepting his decision not to opt for promotion.

Pretty weak, if you ask me. Not sure I trust that kind of weak-ass shit to lead us in war. Maybe this C.O. ought to rethink his idea of good order and discipline.

Definitely has me rethinking it, that's for sure.

Good on ya for stickin' to your guns, Lt. G. Better officers know to respect the consciences and judgments of the men and women under their command.

If there's one lesson I've been trying to learn more than any other when it comes to my students, my friends, my family, everyone, this is the one. Just because I choose a path that serves others or which I think is a noble one or which I think is a better one, doesn't mean that everyone else should too. And, like Lieutenant Gallagher, here, just because they give you service doesn't mean they owe it to you into perpetuity.

If there is one lesson that Americans and the world needs to learn when it comes to how they relate to one another, this is it. We need to learn to respect the consciences and judgments of those around us.

It's a hard lesson to learn. And it's especially hard while the whole world rallies to disrespect that conscience and judgment in the name of forcing good intentions on the one another.

But we will never, ever, ever have peace with one another until we learn this lesson. Meaning we will fight and fight and fight and fight endlessly with one another, until we learn this lesson. And there is no assertion of authority or power or capacity to force each other otherwise which will resolve this fight in any other direction. The only real resolution we will ever really accept is one which respects the consciences and judgments of people involved.

And not having my conscience and judgment respected is the single biggest fact to give me pause for signing up. It's the single biggest fact to give most people pause to sign up for most public service, including military service, I think. And yet we keep barreling down that path like it doesn't mean a thing.

And folks like Lt. G take it on the chin for our hubris. A lot of people taking it on the chin for our hubris, these days.

Trying to decide if I'm willing or not. Whether the mission is more important than the bullshit.

I think it is. But that doesn't make the bullshit any less bullshit. FUBAR, as the boys in Saving Private Ryan refer to it. And fuck 'em for that.

If I thought we were too foolish and stubborn to ever get over it, I'd give it all up, today. The teaching. The writing. Considerations of the service. Even the theater and film work. I'd just go straight money. Nothing wrong with money. And it's awfully handy to have around.

But I know we're better than that. We don't always act like it. We fuck it up plenty along the way. Always have.

But I know we're better than that. And I'd rather keep working on behalf of me and others getting better than that than leaving it the mess that it is, today.

And I like the idea that there's other folks out there, like Matthew, who would too. Thanks for your service, Lieutenant. Truth is, we need more thoughtful, decent upstarts like you, Matthew. And we're not going to get more of them by bullying them. We will only get that kind of commitment in the ranks by treating them decent and respecting their conscience.

And, if not, I'm with you, Matthew. They can fuck off and try to win those wars on their own.

Something tells me that wiser heads will prevail on this one, eventually, Matthew. Thanks for your service, in the meantime.

Freedom and understanding

The Economist offers some insight into Unhappy America.

"There are certainly areas where change is needed. The credit crunch is in part the consequence of a flawed regulatory system. Lax monetary policy allowed Americans to build up debts and fuelled a housing bubble that had to burst eventually. Lessons need to be learnt from both of those mistakes; as they do from widespread concerns about the state of education and health care. Over-unionised and unaccountable, America’s school system needs the same sort of competition that makes its universities the envy of the world. American health care, which manages to be the most expensive on the planet even though it fails properly to care for the tens of millions of people, badly needs reform.

There have been plenty of mistakes abroad, too. Waging a war on terror was always going to be like pinning jelly to a wall. As for Guantánamo Bay, it is the most profoundly un-American place on the planet: rejoice when it is shut.

In such areas America is already showing its genius for reinvention. Both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates promise to close Guantánamo. As his second term ticks down, even Mr Bush has begun to see the limits of unilateralism. Instead of just denouncing and threatening the “axis of evil” he is working more closely with allies (and non-allies) in Asia to calm down North Korea. For the first time he has just let American officials join in the negotiations with Iran about its fishy nuclear programme (see article).

That America is beginning to correct its mistakes is good; and there’s plenty more of that to be done. But one source of angst demands a change in attitude rather than a drive to restore the status quo: America’s relative decline, especially compared with Asia in general and China in particular.

The economic gap between America and a rising Asia has certainly narrowed; but worrying about it is wrong for two reasons. First, even at its present growth rate, China’s GDP will take a quarter of a century to catch up with America’s; and the internal tensions that China’s rapidly changing economy has caused may well lead it to stumble before then. Second, even if Asia’s rise continues unabated, it is wrong—and profoundly unAmerican—to regard this as a problem. Economic growth, like trade, is not a zero-sum game. The faster China and India grow, the more American goods they buy. And they are booming largely because they have adopted America’s ideas. America should regard their success as a tribute, not a threat, and celebrate in it.

Many Americans, unfortunately, are unwilling to do so. Politicians seeking a scapegoat for America’s self-made problems too often point the finger at the growing power of once-poor countries, accusing them of stealing American jobs and objecting when they try to buy American companies. But if America reacts by turning in on itself—raising trade barriers and rejecting foreign investors—it risks exacerbating the economic troubles that lie behind its current funk.

Everybody goes through bad times. Some learn from the problems they have caused themselves, and come back stronger. Some blame others, lash out and damage themselves further. America has had the wisdom to take the first course many times before. Let’s hope it does so again."

The one most serious unspoken mistakes that America and the rest of the world has been making in the last 8 years or so is this profoundly undeserved suspicion and reversal of freedom as some kind of solution that it has, without much doubt in my mind, not proven itself to be, in the least. Americans, like everyone else, romanticize power and force to solve problems it cannot possibly solve. We do so largely out of frustration and fear. But neither compensate for understanding. And that is what freedom offers better. A stronger opportunity for understanding.

If America and the world could learn to trust freedom and understanding to do what cynicism does not understand and cannot achieve for us, the world would be in much better shape. It is our fears and what we do with those fears that perpetually causes so much death and destruction in the world. It is fear that is at the bottom of terrorism, repressive government, repressive religious, cultural, and ideological traditions, and most of the places in the world where we do damage to ourselves and one another in the name of self-centered self-preservation.

It is fear that drives our most needlessly destructive impulses. And the only andidote to that fact of human nature is more freedom and more understanding. With freedom and understanding comes the kind of self-awareness and self-determination that make the repression of others and our fears of them unnecessary and unthinkable. Or rather, we can think about them all we want. But it becomes clearer the more we reflect on our fears and their destructiveness and self-destructiveness that, perhaps, we are better off learning from the freedom than trying to control what we cannot control.

It's either that or live with the mess we've created for ourselves.

I'll take the freedom and the understanding.

Everything else just seems like an enormous waste.

"The single brightest light"

Baxter Black - cowboy, poet, humorist and former large animal veterninarian - features an essay and a poem on his webpage that I think captures the right mood for this point in the war in Iraq and America's and the world's efforts to offer help to the world's downtrodden and to fight for freedom.

He writes:

"With your permission I would like to indulge in a little naked patriotism. The United States, during my lifetime has become a nation like none other on earth. Not because it is the most powerful nation on earth, but because we, more times than I can count, have taken the side of the oppressed with no intention to conquer, rule or pillage.

In the act of offering our assistance, we have sacraficed blood, money and lives. We have beat ourselves up. We have questioned our motives. Our leaders have engaged in heated debate about the hows and whys, but we continue to be the single brightest light for the world's mistreated. We will take on the schoolyard bully.

In spite of all of our mistakes, missteps, misjudgments and misgivings, the world today would be a completely different place if our country; conservative, liberal, black, white, rich, poor, North, South, Manhattan NY or Manhattan KS, Americans all, had turned our back on the injustices and inhumanities that relentlessly stalk the globe.

Supporting the troops and their families on the front lines in the war on terror is not a partisan act. It is an act of pride, compassion, love, concern, anguish and hope. They carry our colors into harms way, and have since 1776."

Black includes a poem to the flag, that he originally wrote in 1999 and updated for the current historical moment, that captures well the spirit of the flag and the times.

It concludes:

"And they've signed it in blood from Bunker Hill
To Saigon, Kuwait, Bosnia
Kabul, Baghdad, and Toko Ri.
I give you the flag that says to the world
Each man has a right to be free."

Baxter's sentiments are exactly the perspective that Americans need for our current round of similar challenges, I think.

For all of our disagreements about how it might occur, we all fight for freedom. For our own and for others. And that fight is bigger than any of the debates that we engage to do that better, not to abandon that cause.

And it is on that common ground that we need to stand as we debate, honestly and in good faith, how to win and secure that freedom best.

Time to stop takin' myself so goddamn seriously.

If there is one lesson I've needed to learn this summer, I'm beginning to figure out, for my teaching, for my writing, for my relationships with my family and friends, for my life, I think, this is the one.

For all of my worries that I haven't been getting enough done, this summer, learning not to take myself and my efforts so seriously is the most important thing I've needed to learn for a very long time, I think, now, with some retrospect on a life where I have taken myself and everything I do far too seriously.

All I know is that'd I feel more comfortable hanging out with Larry the Cable Guy than Joe Nye or Victor Davis Hanson, anyday. Though I'd be very curious about what Joe and Hanson might have to say about the state of the world.

But with Larry, I'd be right at home.

And that's how it should be. If there's a poster-boy for soft, beer-bellied power, Larry the Cable Guy is your G-string model.

Makes me hungry for wings. And to want to stop thinking about Larry the Cable Guy in a G-string.

You know what the problem with the world is?

Not enough people find both these guys funny as all shit.

Larry the cable guy's christmas carols

Or don't like 'em. I don't care. Don't like me, either, I suppose.

You realize I'm the one asshole who thought the two best albums during this war were Shock and Y'all and the Home Album (The Black Eyed Peas' Where Is the Love? was a nice effort, but country music just got the jump on everyone this war).

More Love's the reason I bought that Dixie Chicks' album (Fuck controversy is my general motto), but the Chicks' cover of Patty Griffin's Top of the World is one of the most beautiful songs I ever heard in my life.



And if you don't get teared up during American Soldier, you got a heart of fuckin' stone. I could listen to Toby Keith salute these boys and girls in uniform all fuckin' day long.



I don't know what's wrong with us, half the time, is the truth. Get so full of ourselves. Think we've finally got all the goddamn answers. It's goddamn foolish is what it is.

That's why I like takin' a moment with Dave Chappelle and Larry the Cable Guy and rememberin' that I don't. Nobody does. Just a bunch of goddamn fools, just like me, tryin' to get life figured out.

Be nice if we remembered that every once in awhile. Make more sense, at least. Make for nicer holidays. Be more decent.

I could handle that. For my kids, at least. Maybe their kids. Maybe all of us.

Get-R-Done, kids. And Fuck Yo Couch, while you're at it.

Time to stop takin' ourselves so goddamn seriously.

1043 reasons to be leary of government

The U.K.'s Daily Mail, via Hotair, offers this insight into the consequence of our romanticism of power.

Now there are 1000 laws that will let the state into your home

It has never made any sense to me why people think that power is something to authorized lightly, except that they haven't thought about it enough and are convinced that it can do and can be trusted to do more than it can.

But here are 1043 reasons to be leary of the nanny-state, invasions of home and privacy, and otherwise seriously skeptical of government power.

When all is said and done with this political period, given the incomparable level of freedom, voice and participation that citizens of liberal democracies have in their government, there is only one person or group that we need blame for this period of regressive and repressive encroachment on liberty:

Ourselves.

My g-g-generation

This is either a sign of the Apocalypse or a sure witness to progress.


Bitches Aint Shit A Capella - Watch more free videos

I do smell brimstone. But that could be the Mexican I ate earlier.

Either way, bitches betta recognize. Berkeley style.

Fat kid on a roller coaster

I'm a tender-hearted teacher. So this shouldn't be funny. I know, I'm going to Hell. But this shit's funnier than shit.


http://view.break.com/285075 - Watch more free videos

There's nothing that can quite make your weekend than to realize, "Thank God I'm not that big cryin' fat kid on the roller coaster."

All brawn, no brains

It is the fact that most people watch and engage in democratic grudge matches along these lines that has us so fucked up, and so stupid while we're at it, all the fucking time.


http://view.break.com/514445 - Watch more free videos

But you gotta admit. Mike Awesome's got style.

If political folks didn't pretend to take themselves so seriously while they behaved like this, I would take them with a more grave repose.

As it is, when you act like goons, you get treated like goons.

Because something more thoughtful just seems so boring by comparison.

In the meantime, it's fun having front row seats to the overmuscled freak show that is moderal liberal democratic politics.

Bad day

Sometimes, you just gotta let off a little steam.



May I suggest yoga.

Reppin for the homies

Hotair alerts me to this remarkably well-behaved gentleman from my hometown of Wichita, Kansas.

"Via Bill Amos, a symphonie du bleep for lazy Friday afternoon. Interesting case here, actually. The charge was battery stemming from the defendant having spit in the eye of a sheriff’s deputy. The sentence: 13 years in prison, three more than the prosecutor had asked for. Why so long? Because he’s HIV-positive, which makes that loogie a potentially (albeit unlikely) deadly weapon."



This is behavior I see on almost a daily basis at the school where I work. It is refreshingly shocking when I watch someone else withstand it. Cutting through the ego defenses of kids who do this to get to a place of greater responsibility is extremely difficult work. But if we don't do it early, this and worse is the consequence later.

A nice reminder of why I do the work I do, abuse and all.

Nothing in life is anything that I stubbornly refuse to acknowledge as such

The insanity of it all is so aggravating, you can only laugh.



Because shooting yourself in the head only works once.

The fate of al Queda and international terrorism

The Economist features an excellent report on the present fate and ultimate future of al Qaeda and the successes and failures of American and international efforts to challenge its global jihadist aims.

Winning or losing?

"Al-Qaeda has built on decades of Middle Eastern terrorism. Palestinian groups internationalised their violence in the 1970s; Hizbullah used suicide-bombers against the Americans in Lebanon back in 1983; Palestinian suicide-bombers sought to inflict maximum civilian casualties in Israel from 1994; and Algerians who hijacked a French airliner the same year tried to fly it into the Eiffel Tower but were foiled.

In those days, though, attacking Western targets was part of a local nationalist or sectarian fight. Al-Qaeda’s dark genius was to weave these strands together with the tools of globalisation to create a networked movement with a single worldwide cause: jihad against America. Conventional terrorist groups, such as the Basque ETA movement or even Lebanon’s Hizbullah, often keep their violence in bounds to avoid alienating their political supporters. But global jihadists, without a domestic constituency, seek to maximise civilian casualties for spectacular effect. Counting the victims is tricky. Attacks on Western civilians have dropped, but the routine use of suicide-bombings has raised the slaughter, mostly of Muslims, to appalling levels (see chart 1).

Al-Qaeda’s ideology was forged by one big victory and two decades of failures. Disparate Arab fighters who helped Afghan ones evict Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 were initially elated, but became dejected by the ensuing civil war and the failure of violent campaigns in Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere. Many extremists decided to end the bloodletting. But a cadre of wandering jihadists gathered in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban and decided to redirect their ire from the 'near' enemy to the 'far' one...

Al-Qaeda’s ideology was forged by one big victory and two decades of failures. Disparate Arab fighters who helped Afghan ones evict Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 were initially elated, but became dejected by the ensuing civil war and the failure of violent campaigns in Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere. Many extremists decided to end the bloodletting. But a cadre of wandering jihadists gathered in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban and decided to redirect their ire from the 'near' enemy to the 'far' one...

Seen in this light, one of the objectives of the September 11th attacks was to provoke the Americans into invading Muslim lands. But if al-Qaeda intended to trap America in Afghanistan, its plan went badly awry, at least initially. The Taliban fell quickly in 2001 and al-Qaeda’s followers were forced into hiding.

A hubristic America, however, then walked into a trap of its own making by invading Iraq in 2003. It got rid of a dangerous dictator but gave the jihadists a popular cause against American occupiers in the Muslim heartland. For a while the jihadists thought they could carve out a base in Iraq from which to destabilise the region. That danger may now have been averted. Helped by al-Qaeda’s excesses, a bloodied America seems to be fighting its way out of the worst of the troubles it created for itself.

So terrorism experts are now debating whether al-Qaeda is starting to burn itself out. 'On balance, we are doing pretty well,' Michael Hayden, the director of America’s Central Intelligence Agency, told the Washington Post in May. 'Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally—and here I’m going to use the word ‘ideologically’—as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam.'

Many thought he was being overly optimistic. Had General Hayden himself not given warning two months earlier that the restoration of an al-Qaeda haven in Pakistan’s tribal belt constituted a 'clear and present danger' to the West?

A related argument has been provoked by 'Leaderless Jihad', a book by Marc Sageman, a counter-terrorism consultant. He argues that al-Qaeda’s core leadership has been 'neutralised operationally'. The bigger danger now comes from loose groups of Muslims in the West who radicalise each other and carry out autonomous, self-financed attacks.

This thesis has come in for strong criticism, particularly from Professor Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University. He notes that al-Qaeda’s imminent death has often been heralded in the past, only to be contradicted by the sound of new explosions. Many plots in Europe have direct connections back to Pakistan, he notes.

Part of the problem lies in al-Qaeda’s diffuse nature. Its core members may number only hundreds, but it has connections of all kinds to militant groups with thousands or even tens of thousands of fighters. Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation, a militant network and a subculture of rebellion all at the same time.

To explain the movement, many experts draw parallels with globalisation. Some describe it as a venture-capital firm that invests in promising terrorist projects. Others speak of it as a global 'brand' maintained by its leaders through their propaganda, with its growing number of 'franchises' carrying out attacks.

The rise of al-Qaeda’s stateless terrorism does not mean that the old state-sponsored variety has disappeared. Libya, which once supported the IRA and other violent causes, may now be co-operating with the West, but Iran, among others, supports both Palestinian militants and Lebanon’s Hizbullah movement. Should Iran redirect Hizbullah towards a global terrorist campaign against the West—for instance, if the country’s nuclear sites were bombed—the effect might be more devastating than any of al-Qaeda’s works.

For the moment, though, the most immediate global threat comes from the ungoverned, undergoverned and ungovernable areas of the Muslim world. These include the Afghan-Pakistani border, the parts of Iraq still in turmoil, the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and swathes of Yemen, Somalia, the western Sahara desert and the chain of islands between Indonesia and the Philippines (see map)...

This special report will attempt to answer the impossible question posed in 2003 in a leaked memo from Donald Rumsfeld, then America’s defence secretary: 'Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?'"

An interview with Economist defense and security correspondent, Anton LaGuardia, is a very interesting discussion worth your time if you are interested in this question.



If I have learned anything this summer, it is that there is no dearth of valuable expertise and insight on serious questions like international terrorism. That speaks well of what is possible when we have a robust enough marketplace of ideas to support such expertise and thought. The fact of that broad, robust, liberal democratic marketplace of ideas is the West's most important strength and weapon in this battle.

May we use it wisely.

Annie

For all kinds of special reasons, this is my favorite musical in the world. Partly, because the person who really taught me something about this piece of movie magic was also the person who taught me to love musical theater, again, after a long stint as a dreary drama snob. Partly, because she taught me the final number on a 22 hour road trip from Wichita to D.C., to keep us both awake.



Youtube really doesn't do Annie justice. You gotta rent it. Or be a cheeseball like me and buy it. Aileen Quinn, Albert Finney, and Carol Burnett are incomparable. You won't regret it.

Last scene.



Thanks, Annie. Thanks, Brandi.

Till tomorrow.

Bert and Ernie in the Hizz-ou!

Goddamn, I love the internet.

If only school was this fun

This is why history and wine do not mix.

Jesus. Everyone knows that the humanities only mix with beer.

Classic

Hotair:

Iraqis love Obama, think his withdrawal plan is stupid

True dat. Ich bin ein Iraqi. Or, something.

Wow

Yeah, uh. Senator McCain may want to look into some new handlers. You know, people with, uh, manners.



That's Brook Buchanan, McCain's national press secretary, and Nicole Wallace, former White House communications director, there. Yeah, apparently, these ladies' line of work is "communications." Check out the mad skillz.

"OK, you do seem really agitated." Perhaps that's because you're such an incurable bitch, Nicole. Apparently you aren't used to being told no, ladies. Welcome to the real world.

Washington is a testy place, right now, apparently. Not sure the whole, "Bitchy as I wanna be" approach is working for Brook and Nicole, there. Perhaps the McCain staffers are testing out leverage as a means of dealing with the media. If so, looks like a flop. And some really remarkably bad press to be coming from press people.

Do your thing, girls. As long as you keep jobs, that is.

Exactly

Hopefully, the New Yorker has learned their lesson with all that smarty-pants satire.



Thank goodness that sad moment in American political history is now history. Now I can get back to real news. And the kind of jokes that don't make my noggin' throb.



Ah, excrement. The food of the comedy gods.

So long, New Yorker. It's the one thing you didn't count on, weisenheimer.

We'll always have excrement.

The smartest thing I've read all week

Olivia Judson reminds me why I love the university.

Let's Get Rid of Darwinism

"Charles Darwin was a giant. He did not merely write 'On the Origin of Species' — one of the most important books ever written by anyone — in which he describes how evolution by natural selection works, and what some of its consequences and implications are. He also wrote — and this list is not exhaustive— a treatise on the formation of coral reefs that is still thought to be correct; a definitive monograph on barnacles, both extinct and extant; a book about how earthworms make soil; a now-classic text on carnivorous plants (the ones, like Venus fly-traps, that ensnare and digest insects); a book about the strange ways that orchids get themselves fertilized; and an account of the five years he spent aboard the ship HMS Beagle, which has become a classic of travel writing.

As if that wasn’t enough, he proposed sexual selection — the idea that decorations and ornaments, like peacocks’ tails, evolve because females in many species prefer to mate with the most beautiful males. Sexual selection has since become a major field of research in its own right.

In short, Darwin did more in one lifetime than most of us could hope to accomplish in two. But his giantism has had an odd and problematic consequence. It’s a tendency for everyone to refer back to him. 'Why Darwin was wrong about X'; 'Was Darwin wrong about Y?'; 'What Darwin didn’t know about Z' — these are common headlines in newspapers and magazines, in both the biological and the general literature. Then there are the words: Darwinism (sometimes used with the prefix 'neo'), Darwinist (ditto), Darwinian...

I’d like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact, discovered everything there was to say.) Obsessively focusing on Darwin, perpetually asking whether he was right about this or that, implies that the discovery of something he didn’t think of or know about somehow undermines or threatens the whole enterprise of evolutionary biology today...

Darwin was an amazing man, and the principal founder of evolutionary biology. But his was the first major statement on the subject, not the last. Calling evolutionary biology 'Darwinism,' and evolution by natural selection 'Darwinian' evolution, is like calling aeronautical engineering 'Wrightism,' and fixed-wing aircraft 'Wrightian' planes, after those pioneers of fixed-wing flight, the Wright brothers. The best tribute we could give Darwin is to call him the founder — and leave it at that. Plenty of people in history have had an -ism named after them. Only a handful can claim truly to have given birth to an entire field of modern science."

You gotta read the whole article. Brilliant stuff. Makes me miss university life. Except for the all of the pressures she cites. And all the people, there, as much as anywhere else, so completely convinced that they've got it all figured out.

What I like about universities is not having it all figured out. I genuinely like the journey as much as the destination. And I like best people who like to go on that journey with me. People who don't like to engage the important debates, or can't ever seem to learn anything from them, tend to be either arrogant or boring, or both.

I like people with a passion for life and for people and for thinking about them both, and who challenge me to think about them both more and better, as a consequence. Brandi was the last person I knew who had that kind of passion about people and life that I spent a good amount of time with. I miss having that kind of love and passion for people around in my life.

That was more nostalgia for grad school and my time with Brandi than a reflection on Darwin or Olivia Judson's brilliant column, here, I realize. I just miss a time in my life when it was more fun to think about life because my best friend was there every step of the way. I suppose that's why I don't date, anymore. I finally came to terms with that fact that I will never be happy until I find that kind of connection again.

Deeply thoughtful insight turns me into a sap, anymore, these days. I guess that's my way of saying I think I have kind of a crush on Olivia Judson.

And some memories of some good times.

Dude, could this world get any more fucked up?

I thought Montgomery Blair Sibley, the kilt-wearing lawyer who represented Larry Sinclair, the gay former drug dealer who accused Barack Obama of murder, was bizarre.





This fuckin' takes the cake

"Sanaa, Yemen: US lawyer David Remes, who
represents 16 Yemeni prisoners heldat Guantánamo Bay,
takes his trousers offduring a press conference.
He was demonstrating the mistreatment suffered by his clients."

It's a big fuckin' circus, out there, and I am
getting plenty of popcorn and a front-row seat.

I wouldn't miss this for the world.

Cynthia McKinney made me wet myself

I laughed a deep, hearty laugh of contentment and bewilderment at the sheer insanity of it all when I read this story.

Cynthia McKinney to be 2008's Ralph Nader

"Beloved former congress-lady Cynthia McKinney is the Green Party’s presidential candidate! She’s in it to win! The Greens had a convention on Saturday, apparently, and McKinney was the big winner. Her running mate is 'Rosa Clemente, a hip-hop artist and activist.' Well, all right.

McKinney represented Georgia in the House for six terms, and then she slapped around a cop or something, and said Bush did 9/11, and the Jews ran her out of office, and she impeached Bush, in her mind. Experts say she will end up with about 47% of votes intended for McCain, because their names are pretty much the same."

This is why I love multiparty democracy. For the sheer entertainment value.

Bobb Barr (a candidacy I'm hoping does some real good for the country, actually). Ralph Nader. Cynthia McKinney. Chuck Baldwin from the Constitutional Party.

This election is going to be a blast.

I have an old political buddy from college coming up next week. And we are going to drink some quality, bargain beer, lament how fuckin' whiny and stupid the country has gotten, and laugh our asses off at what a fucked up election this is turning out to be.

I'm not sure this election could get any dumber, at this point.

But it's going to be fun testing the limits of retarded possibility.

Misery

I have decided, after long reflection, that some people just prefer miserable lives. They don't prefer them because they actually want them. They prefer them because they cannot even consider the fact that, perhaps, they have some responsibility in their own misery.

Being self-centered and defensive has consequences, as it turns out, and the consequences are more tragic than they might otherwise appear. And some peoples' self-imposed tragedies are not just sad, they are downright pathetic.

The fate of Turkey and liberal values

Is there any better example of the foolishness and dishonesty of secular democracy without a commitment to liberal values, a commitment to liberty, than the on-going developments in Turkey?

Turkey charges 86 for 'coup plot'

"On Monday prosecutor Mr Engin filed charges at an Istanbul court against 86 people, 48 of whom are already in custody.

'The indictment covers crimes such as forming an armed terror group...and attempting to overthrow the government by force,' Mr Engin said.

A court must decide within two weeks whether to open the case against the 86 suspects.

They are accused of plotting to create chaos in Turkey, provoking secularist anger and a military coup that would topple the government.

The indictment referred to the killing of a judge in a 2006 armed attack on a court, and the bombing of a secularist newspaper.

There have been several coups by the Turkish military, which sees itself as the ultimate guardian of the country's secular values.

Some secularists believe the AK Party, many of whose members are former Islamists, is intent on installing Islamism in Turkey. They say the AKP's moves to overturn a ban on the Islamic headscarf at universities is evidence of this."

Future of the Ruling AK Party

"Turkey's recent top court decision that rejected a parliament constitutional amendment, which would have allowed female students to attend universities with headscarves, has provoked thousands of Turkish women, AKP supporters, and human rights activists worldwide.

It has also triggered an intense debate over the future of both: The ruling AKP — facing a constitutional court closure case in a few months— and Turkey's unique secularism seen by many critics as anti-democratic and anti-liberal.

The ruling Justice and Development party, AKP, rejected the decision as unconstitutional, breaching individual freedoms, and politically motivated. The court's decision poses a real threat to the majority party that is awaiting another constitutional court case seeking to outlaw the party and its 71 leaders—including the president Abdullah Gul and charismatic Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan— on grounds they are working to undermine the country's entrenched secularism."


Free speech on trial in Turkey

"Like one of his own characters, trapped between liberal yearnings and the reality of an unforgiving state, Turkey's most celebrated novelist, Orhan Pamuk, is slated to appear in court Friday to face charges of 'insulting Turkish identity.'

The high-profile free speech trial pits the aims of European-driven reform in Turkey - which began EU membership talks last October - against a fiercely nationalistic tradition that permits little challenge. Mr. Pamuk's trial is one of more than 65 other free speech cases now under way in Turkey, which are being closely watched by European observers, as a test of the recent reforms.

'This is a tug of war in Turkey now, between those who favor democratic and EU values, [against] those who are afraid of such change - the hard-core nationalists who are willing to do anything to stop that trend,' says Haluk Sahin, a journalism professor at Bilgi University and columnist for Radikal newspaper, who is also facing trial in February under the same statute...

Pamuk is charged over remarks made to a Swiss newspaper last February, that '30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.'

Pamuk did not use the word 'genocide,' which is officially rejected here in favor of an 'internecine fighting' formulation to explain the Armenian deaths 90 years ago. Western historians, however, often consider the events in Anatolia during the last years of the Ottoman Empire to be the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey has also long had difficulty accepting that Kurds have a separate ethnic identity, with their own language and customs, beyond a designation as 'Mountain Turks.' Battle against separatist Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s left an estimated 30,000 Kurds dead.

Even discussing such issues has been taboo in Turkey, though freedom of speech protection is required to join the EU club. Extremists rallied against Pamuk; a provincial governor ordered his books burned.

'Various newspapers launched hate campaigns against me, with some right-wing (but not necessarily Islamist) columnists going as far as to say that I should be 'silenced' for good,' Pamuk writes in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine. 'What am I to make of a country that insists that the Turks, unlike their Western neighbors, are a compassionate people, incapable of genocide, while nationalist political groups are pelting me with death threats?' he asks...

Pamuk faces three years in prison if convicted, though often such cases end in payment of fines.

Still, the number of cases is mounting, bringing opprobrium from the US and Europe - which has expressed 'serious concern' and tasked an envoy with following the trial - as well as from human rights organizations.

'The trial of Orhan Pamuk will show the world which direction Turkish justice is heading,' Holly Cartner, the Europe and Central Asia director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement."

Turkish High Court Overturns Headscarf Rule
[notice how the left-wing, secular New York Times refers to the right to wear Muslim headscarves as a rule rather than as a freedom]

"ISTANBUL — Turkey’s highest court dealt a stinging slap to the governing party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, ruling that a legal change allowing women attending universities to wear head scarves was unconstitutional.

Turkish women wearing head scarves walked through the streets of Istanbul. Turkey's top court ruled today that Islamic head scarves violate secularism and cannot be allowed at universities.

The Constitutional Court said in a brief statement that the change, proposed by Mr. Erdogan’s party and passed by Parliament in February, violated principles of secularism set in Turkey’s Constitution.

The ruling sets the stage for a showdown between Turkey’s secular elite — its military, judiciary and secular political party — and Mr. Erdogan, an observant Muslim with an Islamist past.

The court is one of Turkey’s most important secular institutions, and liberals see the ruling as largely political. It bodes ominously for Mr. Erdogan: The same court is considering a case that would ban him and 70 members of his party from politics. A decision is expected in the summer.

Turkey’s political system has been controlled for generations by a powerful secular elite that has stepped in with coups and judicial decisions against elected governments. Mr. Erdogan and his party, Justice and Development, or AKP, have come the closest of any political party in Turkey’s history to breaking its hold on power.

In the head-scarf case, the elite establishment contended that allowing veiled women onto campuses threatened Turkish secularism, one of the founding principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secular revolution in the 1920s. Head scarves were banned from campuses in the 1990s.

Kemal Anadol, a deputy chairman of the secular opposition Republican People’s Party, called the verdict a triumph of justice and said it showed that secularism and democracy were 'constitutional principles that can’t be separated from one another.'

Mr. Erdogan calls the case a matter of individual rights, contending that all Turks should be able to attend universities no matter what they wear or believe.

But the way his party proposed it — abruptly, with little public discussion — angered the secular old guard and disappointed liberals, who support the changes, but want them to be accompanied by changes that strengthen other rights, like free speech. Some said AKP seemed to be pursuing only those changes that would please its constituency, and not the broader range that was needed to join the European Union.

'AKP is lost in the spell of their own power,' said Mithat Sancar, a law professor in Ankara, Turkey’s capital. 'When they want to listen to liberals, they do, but when they don’t, they comfortably ignore them.'

Despite Mr. Erdogan’s broad popularity — his party won 47 percent of the vote in an election last July — the threat of a ban is serious. The authorities have closed more than 20 parties in the past, and Thursday’s ruling seemed as if it could be a sign of things to come.

The head-scarf amendment is considered to be the single most important irritant that set off the case to ban Mr. Erdogan and 70 other AKP members, and it is central to the prosecution’s argument that he and his allies are trying to dismantle secularism in Turkey, an accusation they strongly dispute."

Secular military coups. Banning religious parties. Censoring speech about Armenian genocide. Prohibiting religious headscarves.

How on earth could such leftism ever be characterized as liberal, in any honest sense?

The answer is that it cannot. And Turkey, today, reflects the sham of left-wing power grabs as liberal in any substantive sense.

Liberal means liberty. Power is the opposite of liberty. When people claim power on behalf of freedom without presumption against its use they do not bring a honest commitment to liberal values. They are rationalizing power for the causes they favor. Hence the most important aphorism in the political world by a more genuine liberal, John Dalberg-Acton:

"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power is not freedom. Freedom is not power. They are opposites, even when power is used legitimately. Which is why we need a presumption against its use if we are to maintain any honest notion of liberal democracy.

Laziness, comfort, and a bit of wisdom

Given my slothful nature this summer, I looked for quotations on the corrupting nature of comfort and laziness. I spent a good hour in idle reflection on the brief witicisms of dead men. It didn't cure my indolence. But it gave me plenty excuse to put off actual work.

"I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction"

"Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power."

"In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love."

"This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual."

"Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise,
I say ignore the bastard."

John Steinbeck (American Novelist and Writer, Nobel Prize for Literature for 1962, 1902-1968)


"The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish."

"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."

"Radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be, for the world, an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society."

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes."

"Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it."

"Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it."

Pope John Paul II (264th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, 1920-2005)


"It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?"

"The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

"Coersion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him."

"I know in my heart that man is good.
That what is right will always eventually triumph.
And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."

Ronald Reagan (40th President of the United States, 1911-2004)


As always, Twain steals the show.

"I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can't go beyond possibility."

"Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals."

"It is curious--curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare."

"The insincerity of man--all men are liars, partial or hiders of facts, half tellers of truths, shirks, moral sneaks. When a merely honest man appears he is a comet--his fame is eternal--needs no genius, no talent--mere honesty--Luther, Christ, etc."

"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."

"A man will do anything, no matter what it is, to secure his spiritual comfort; and he can neither be forced nor persuaded to any act which has not that goal for its object."

Mark Twain (American humorist and writer, 1835-1910)


I wish I could say that idleness produces wisdom. It probably does, but it also adds weight and a healthy skepticism of all things done in a hurry. But, mostly, it keeps me honest about my true ambitions. Never hurts to be too honest.

Stubborn certainty and more stubborn facts

It's so funny to me that those pressuring Iran to give up the bomb, right now, cannot even conceive that their approach might be the exact problem that has created the stalemate.

Jitters Over Iran

But here's the trick when it comes to a false sense of "certainty." Facts are more stubborn than our insecurities about the world. They are more stubborn than our need for certainty that we do not have. And the fact of the failure of this approach for handling the nuclear standoff with Iran will persist completely independent of our stubborn attachment to failed policy.

Facts of human nature don't give two shits what your opinion is of them. And the fact that backing Iran into a corner makes them more aggressive will persist until the Administration, the United Nations, and the Israeli leadership face up to their failure. Which may be a long time coming, at this point.

The fact that existentially threatening Israel has not resolved Ahmadinejad's hateful and irrational conflicts with her neighbor has clearly not occurred to the Iranian President either. But I take the irrational leadership of Iran as a given and work on the party who has a shot at being a bit more wise about their policies.

Perhaps none of these parties are capable of reasonable consideration of policy options, including considering options that leave them with lots of egg on their faces but has a better shot at getting the job done.

Facts don't give two shits how stubbornly you are attached to any particular way of doing things. And neither do I.

And a false sense of certainty does not replace more genuine understanding of the situation in front of you in a hundred years.

Some people can only learn such lessons the hard way, I am learning.

So be it.

But, this time, be a grown-up and take responsibility for your fuck up.

Or leave leadership to people who can.

The antidote to cynicism

Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields understands, even if Ron Wood does not.



As does Peter Gabriel, in this gorgeous and melodic cover.



How sad that anyone would settle for less.

Lifestyles of the rich and cynical

I've always said that the saddest consequence of cynicism, in life, is that, generally, it means that you miss out on real love in your life.

Ron Wood, 61, Runs Off With 18-Year-Old Cocktail Waitress

If there is any more proof needed of what a fool this guy is, I don't know what it would be.

I watched a video of Nora Jones and Keith Richards singing a duo of Love Hurts, recently. And all I kept thinking was how Nora Jones so completely outclassed her wealthier, more famous Stones compatriot.



I love the Rolling Stones, is the truth. I love rocking out and the dark and exciting themes in songs like Paint It Black, Sympathy with the Devil, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar, Wild Horses, Shattered, Get Off of My Cloud, Heart of Stone, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Jumpin' Jack Flash, and the poignant and wildly ironic - given the tragic and foolish lives of most of the members of the Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want.



I would feel more sorry for this guys, is the truth, if they didn't consistently make messes out of their lives and the lives of those around them, and taking very little responsibility in the process.

But the commercial success of the Rolling Stones has always stuck out in my head as one of the better bits of evidence for those making the cynical argument for their lives and for life, generally, that nice guys finish last, to the victor goes the spoils, and every other cynical notion that people, especially young people of my generation and younger generations, have about the world.

But then you see a story like this one and you remember that, as always, the fantasy never lives up to the reality.

Cynisism is a foolish way to live one's life on any count, is the truth.

But cynicism about matters of love is one of its most tragic forms, I think. People who live their lives carrying such cynicism around in their hearts, whether flitting about from parter to partner or secretly harboring cynicism in committed relationships, make what I regard as one of the most serious mistakes that any person can make in a lifetime.

Because such cynicism cheats you from real love. And if you have never experienced it, you really have no clue what it is that you are missing out on. And there is no other thing in life that nurtures the heart and soul in quite the same way.

It is so sad to me that there are people in this world some of whom may never know what real love feels like. Not from their parents. Not from their family. Not from their friends. Not even from their lovers or spouses.

I can't imagine living a life so empty and tragic.

Ron Wood can (the rest of the band, too, save for more grounded members like Stones drummer, Charlie Watts). And I can't imagine a better argument for what a sad and bankrupt life it is to live like that. To live without real love. For others or for yourself. No matter how much money or fame or whatever cynical compensation for what really matters in life might be rationalized.



I'll take something real any day of the week. And none of that bullshit makes up for a hollow life without real love.

Does anyone believe in free speech anymore?

Looks like it's not just Democrats who have a problem with free speech.



They could have been much harsher with her, you know. Just remember what happened to Ahmad Bhatebe, Carol Kreck, and count yourself lucky. You wanna inhale excrement? Then pay the fuckin' ticket and do what your told.

You gotta love that logic. Take that, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We're America, bitch. We do what we want.

"I know their sacrifice was not for nothing. It was not in vain."

Hotair alerts me to this BBC report that the bodies of two U.S. servicemen, who came up missing during an ambush immediately after the surge began, have been found.

"Spc Alex Jimenez and Pte Byron Fouty had been listed as missing since they were seized in an ambush in May 2007 in an area south of Baghdad.

The body of a third soldier, Pte Joseph Anzack Jr, was found in the Euphrates river a short time after the attack.

The Islamic State of Iraq, a group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, had released a video saying it killed all three men...

Pte Fouty's stepfather, Gordon Dibler, said the military told him the remains of both soldiers were found in the village of Jurf as Sakhr, south of Baghdad, Associated Press news agency reported.

Spc Jimenez's father, Ramon, told AP that the news had 'shattered all hope' the family had to 'see Alex walk home on his own'.

'Byron went to Iraq to help people who couldn't help themselves,' said Mr Dibler. 'I know their sacrifice was not for nothing. It was not in vain.'"

Rest in peace, boys. We honor your sacrafice.

Change we can believe in?

Hotair has the story about House and Senate Democrats trying to regulate speech by legislators' in forums like Youtube and blogs.

Thadeus McCotter (R-MI), to his credit, decided to answer with a video.



Is limiting free speech really change Democrats can believe in?

Maybe Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein need to embrace change we can all believe in and honestly debate and discuss with colleagues with whom they don't always see eye to eye.

Isn't that the whole point?

As the great Linda Richman might say:

"The branches of Congress are a deliber-a-tive chamba' fa the expression of often strawng disawgreement about impo-tant matta's of public paw-licy. Discuss amongst ya'selves."

What courage looks like

Ahmad Batebi, the 21-year-old student who was imprisoned and tortured by the Iranian government because this picture was featured on the cover of the Economist, has escaped to America.

Silent no more

For every thug, the world over, from America to North Korea to Zimbabwe to Iran, in every nation from every corner of the globe, who has rationalized their cowardice in the name of power, Ahmad Batebi is a living example and challenge to you of what courage really looks like.

Ahmad Batebi, now 30, was a student photographer attending a rare and brave student protest of the Iranian government in 1999 in Tehran. Amidst the protests and subsequent government crackdowns, Ahmad held up a bloody shirt presumably belonging to another student protestor who had been attacked, he claimed, by Basij paramilitary forces.

As a consequence of the international notoriety he experienced from that Economist cover photo, Batebi was sentenced to death by the Iranian government.

I want every thug who thinks that their machinations for power and brutality are novel or clever or otherwise respectable to take notice of the subsequent move by the Iranian government in response to the negative international publicity.

The government commuted his sentence for "creating street unrest" to 15 years.

Isn't that clever? You see, they weren't quite as tough or harsh as they might have been. They could have been so much tougher or harsher, you see. But, instead, they showed mercy on young Ahmad. And they only sentenced him to 15 years in prison for holding up that T-shirt.

As the Economist reports:

"During his interrogation he was blindfolded and beaten with cables until he passed out. His captors rubbed salt into his wounds to wake him up, so they could torture him more. They held his head in a drain full of sewage until he inhaled it. He recalls yearning for a swift death to end the pain. He was played recordings of what he was told was his mother being tortured. His captors wanted him to betray his fellow students, to implicate them in various crimes and to say on television that the blood on that T-shirt was only red paint. He says he refused.

He was sentenced to death for 'creating street unrest'. But after a global outcry, the sentence was commuted to 15 years in jail. He speculates that his high profile made it hard to kill him without attracting negative publicity. For two years, he was kept in solitary confinement, in a cell that was little more than a toilet hole with a wooden board on top. He was tortured constantly. Only when he was allowed to mingle with other prisoners again did he begin to overcome his despair.

He suffered a partial stroke that left the right side of his body without feeling. He needed medical attention. The regime did not want to be blamed for him dying behind bars, he says, so he was allowed out for treatment. Three months ago, on the day of the Persian new year, he escaped into Iraq. On June 24th he arrived in America."



I want every thug in America and across the globe to take stock of the ugly rationalization used by this government. Because it is the excuse used the world over to rationalize every power-hungry, vindictive, brutal, ugly impulse that has ever been callously indulged the world over, since the beginning of humanity. It is the source of humanity's ugliest rationalizations of its most ruthless, barbarous, vengeful inclinations since the beginning of its long recorded and unrecorded history. It is humanity's cruelest, most heartless, most sadistic and inhumane rationalization since its inception.

And those who rationalize such brutality, cruelty, and power-hunger in liberal societies are no better, in the largest picture, than these blood-thirsty mullahs, no matter what excuse they may offer.

Courage is not the impulse to impose such cruelty. Courage is the capacity to withstand such treatment, to come away alive undiscouraged, and perhaps emotionally stronger, for the experience, and for stronger values and ideas to prevail over their weaker, more cowardly, and more brutal brethren.

It does not take courage to inflict such treatment on people. It does not take courage to repress. It takes courage to stand up to such repression. And Ahmad Batebi's long, brutal journey is a testament to that kind of courage.

People have rationalized such ugliness since the beginning of humanity. It is the answer to the long-standing question of how humanity could have spent so much of its history in illiberal, undemocratic, and brutal and repressive conditions.

Because such illiberality, brutality, and repression was rationalized by societies, democratic and undemocratic, to cover for their cowardly, power-hungry, vindictive, and brutal ways. It is the same impulses that have rationalized every uncivilized, barbarous, cruel, mean-spirited, and cowardly policy that has ever made its presence on Earth. It is the same rationalization used by the Nazis. It is the same rationalization used by the Soviets. It is the same rationalization used by the Saddam Hussein. It is the same rationalization used by the Communists in Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, and China.

It is the same rationalization that has been used since the beginning of human history for force as a governing philosophy, for repression and brutality as the only means of containing those same impulses rationalized to govern them.

I want to say that again and be very clear.

The exact impulses that are rationalized to contain such brutality are the ones being used to rationalize force as a governing philosophy for such containment. Force, so the excuse goes, is the only impulse that can control such brutality. There is truth to the idea that force must be used to confront brutality when no other options exist. But its unending abuse is why liberal societies need a committed presumption against such ugliness when it comes to the use of force, the least necessary force or aggression possible. Because that fact of life is also, now and forever, the source of the corruption to which power tempts into perpetuity.

And it is that temptation that America and the liberal democratic world is giving into, during this political moment.

Courage is what it looks like for people like Ahmad Batebi to challenge such rationalizations and corruption from power, openly and despite punishments or rewards, not because of them. Cowardice is what it looks like to engage in such rationalizations and fail to take responsibility for them and our behavior in accordance with those rationalizations.

If Americans need someone to look to as an example of what courage looks like, it is not found, in its strongest form, at this moment, in any our candidates for President or in almost any of our elected leaders.

Courage is found in this one very brave Iranian young man who stood up for freedom when others were cowered by power.

For Ahmad and the thousands of brave young protesters like him, thank you for your courage. It is a light amidst the dark canvass of power and repression the world over. Thank you for being that light.