Holy shit (reflections on international policy in 21st century)

Stephen Colbert is the fuckin' man.



C is for Clinton, that's good enough for me. Classic.

Samantha Power's vision of international policy in the 21st century does not impress me, by the way. I do understand to be realistic about what goals are attainable. But I'd rather have a cowboy with big vision than an intellectual who has given up on big changes any day of the fuckin' week.

The Founding Fathers did not risk their lives so that we can intellectualize our resignation. The question is not are we willing to use force to intervene in places like Iraq, Sudan, Bosnia, and the like. The question is what strategy is likely to be most successful. If I thought invading North Korea would yield a democratic society that North Koreans could live with, I'd be all for it. I just don't think that is feasible. I think we would likely face a very similar situation that we are facing with Iraq, with fewer recognizable public opponents to Kim Jong Il's reign. That doesn't mean I wouldn't consider an invasion. It means that my judgment, at this point, is that an invasion would be a mistake.

Samantha is emphasizing a side of democratic change that I very much agree with: a focus on diplomacy for damage control and a focus on slow, nurturing of liberal democratic values, norms, and institutions, often with diplomacy, but with many more tools for that purpose, really, including schools, newspapers, non-profits and non-governmental organizations, Peace Corps-like efforts, churches, businesses, social enterprise efforts like the Grameen Bank, and any other opportunities for nurturing that kind of change.

I very much agree with Samantha that, as much as possible, we should use diplomacy and less aggressive means of encouraging and nurturing change, since it encourages grassroots, indigenous, and, hence, more real and sustainable liberal democratic commitments, over time. Paul Wolfowitz actually articulated this view on Afghanistan and the Middle East shortly after it became clear that Iraq was not going to be a "slam dunk." To his credit and the credit of Condoleeza Rice, the thinkers in that cabinet were some of the first to figure out that military force was not as clean or as bloodless a way of creating such change as they had imagined, and Paul talked about the need to support schools in places like Afghanistan with more of a liberal education focus rather than the often fundamentalist Islamic madrassas that educate many, if not most, of the kids in the Islamic World. I very much agree with both Samantha and Paul on this point and that this should be our primary focus and the most likely to create sustainable liberal democratic commitments, and, more importantly, commitments that the people in those countries are prepared to take up that determine their own destinies, as long as such self-determination does not mean threats to the lives of Americans or other peoples around the world.

Having said that, I am more than willing to consider military force when people are either in position of self-defense or oppressed in a way that they cannot sufficiently fight of their own accord and U.S. or other military help might be necessary.

My issue in Iraq was not that a war might not likely have needed to take place. I'm actually pretty convinced of the argument, at this point, that Saddam Hussein would have been very difficult to remove in another other way, if at all, had he not been removed by warfare.

My issues were:

1) Not enough substantial and engaged public discussion and debate on the war had taken place before we invaded that accounted for the concerns, that eventually played out, that much of the international policy community, and myself and many others as well, in the U.S. and around the world had about such an adventure would lead to much unnecessary tragedy. Much unnecessary tragedy occurred, indeed, I believe, because not enough thought was given to how to avoid such tragedy had the invasion been given more consideration. I do believe, and agree with Peter Tatchell, that an invasion that covertly worked with our contacts among the Iraqi opposition groups, and their alligned militias, ahead of the invasion, that had allowed those groups to lead the effort and that the American military backed up with military force - the essential ingredient to an indigenous Iraqi democratic revolution that was not present absent a U.S. invasion; those groups would have been slaughtered without U.S. help and that is why we invaded - would have undercut the political oxygen for an insurgency and made it much more difficult to claim U.S. occupation when that was never really our intention, I believe. Leaders listen to their critics and account for their concerns. Cowards avoid the debate.

2) Not enough consideration was given before the war, during the war, or in working with the Iraqi parliament to respect the right of Iraqis to determine their own destinies and affairs - when that was the whole point of the invasion; if it was not, we had no business being there, and I don't care what fuckin' excuse or rationalization for power anyone might give for that invasion if we are/were not genuinely concerned with the Iraqis determining their own fates - to work with them as genuine partners who give support when needed but who allow the Iraqis to make the important decisions without our direction, pressure, leverage, oversight, or otherwise power-mongering in affairs that are primarily the affairs of the Iraqis and not our own. If Americans can't learn this lesson, they really should stay home and never take their toys outside their own borders except in self-defense, because we aren't grown-ups enough to play democratic games if we can't respect democratic principles like self-determination (George Will be damned on that, by the way; I just read Will mocking Woodrow Wilson's commitment to self-determination in a column, today, which is ironic because it was American self-determination that led Republicans to vote down the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles, and if Will doesn't like self-determination as a democratic principle, he might find another governing philosophy to commit himself to because self-determination comes with the liberal democratic package, unfortunately).

3) Anytime we adopt a policy, it should be after an honest, thoughtful, and far-reaching debate and discussion. When peoples' lives are on the line, that goes double. That didn't happen here. A lot of lying took place before this war, generally on the principle that is pretty popular in political circles that any lie that one believes had good intentions is a noble lie. It's bullshit, of course, and has created a booming economy in political lies that animate serious political debates and discussions. We should always have an honest debate and discussion. But that is especially true when we are asking people to put their lives on the line. That did not happen here. And the sense of betrayal that soldiers and Iraqi civilians should and can feel about such a situation is legitimate and understandable. It's also in the past. The question is: what will we expect from our political leaders and ourselves in the future. I know my answer. Do you know yours?

Military force is sometimes the risky but best option. We should keep it open. What we must be careful of doing is not rationalizing it for any purpose, as the President and many Republicans have done with Iran. Doing so, and seriously and arrogantly manipulating the democratic discussion in such a way can only spell ruin for trust in American efforts and power in the future. And perhaps we will deserve it. And perhaps that will be good for us. Until we can learn to play honestly with others.

Samantha is wrong to rule out big fixes when the job is feasible. She is playing her cards too conservatively, ironically, when the circumstances warrant another option. That is the reason, by the way, for my theoretical work. The design of the principles of least possible necessary aggression is to give us as much flexibility as we might need but to create a presumption against the use of aggression and abuse of power by governments like the American goverment and any authority or power figure, really, by limiting our idea of what the legitimate use of power for liberal democratic purposes might look like. Least possible necessary aggression creates a liberal democratic presumption into the use of military force and all forms of power, soft and hard variety, so that liberal values are not circumscribed in the name of the use of power, as has occurred during this period, by both liberal and conservative ideologues.

Lord Acton was right. It doesn't matter who has power. They will abuse it. It's a guarantee. Me, too, unfortunately. There are many places where I think liberal values should be taken more seriously than I am able to offer as a teacher at my school, and, often, I have very little choice. In other situations, I just screw up and try to take responsibility for my screwing up as quickly as possible. It's a function of a democratic power structure, like a public school. Which is much of the reason that I am so committed to a more genuinely liberal democratic system of education built on a more genuine and equitable democratic market of education which more genuinely respects liberal values. But that's a whole other democratic question.

The point is that power is always subject to abuse. That is the reason why liberal democratic values and commitments and ideas were developed in the first place. And a presumption against the use of power - soft, hard, and all varieties meant to manipulate for one's own purposes - is the only one that takes liberal values seriously, meaning takes liberty seriously, since liberty can only be present when power is not, or rather when it is limited to its most serious extent. Liberal democracies are welcome to take power more seriously than liberty. They are not, however, welcome to call such a governing philosophy "liberal" or "progressive," by any honest use of those terms. And the principles of least possible necessary aggression account for that tendency by all people who have power to rationalize its use for whatever purposes they see fit, liberal democratic or not.

Samantha Power's vision of what is possible in international affairs is not wholly unrealistic. It is just unnecessarily limiting. And the last thing any liberal democracy should do is not explore all its options. It just shouldn't rationalize options for self-interest at the expense of others, especially the use of power, and pretend like such a move is liberal or democratic. It is neither. And it will be called out as such, take that to the bank. And the real power of such a liberal democracy will diminish, guaranteed, as America's power is diminishing today, until it commits itself to more honest liberal democratic principles. And those who doubt that always face the music, eventually, whether they like it or not. Not sure about that? Go talk with Hitler's ghost. Or Stalin's. Both of them and the regimes they created collapsed just as surely as the weak, frail, foolish governing philosophies of force that animated them.

Liberal democracies really are stronger. We just need to get some balls and acknowledge just how strong we are when we take liberal values seriously and how weak we and everyone is when we do not.

Stephen Colbert is a motherfucker who takes liberal values seriously.

Thanks, Stephen, for humbling the political class. They need it.

That's what courage looks like

China warns of 'life and death struggle' over Tibet

You realize what they're saying, right?

"If we have to kill some motherfuckers, including the Dalai Lama, to make sure Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong remain under out thumb, then so be it, biatches. We got force on our side, baby. Haven't you heard? That's what makes for legitimate governance these days."

It's so nice to know that you are the Chinese government and you have the approval of Harvard University, the Democratic and Republican parties, the U.S. Government, the U.N. Security Council, and most of the Washington press corps for your philosophy of governance, isn't it?

Oh, they don't like Communism. But they sure do like force as a governing philosophy. And what the fuck else do you think Communism is, dumbass?

China's got friends in high places, they reason. So if the Dalai Lama's gotta take it for the team, then so fuckin' be it. What you gonna do? You gonna force us to stop, Dalai Lama? Good luck, Ghandi.

Most of the world, right now, is rationalizing this line of reasoning.

Me. I can hardly believe that there is someone with the courage like the Dalai Lama still around, these days. I thought courage went out of fashion with Martin Luther King. You certainly don't see much on American soil, except among those men and women willing to sacrafice their lives for the security of the Iraqi people. But apparently, there's still some of that scarce resource in these parts.

I'm sure Hillary Clinton is trying to calculate, right now, whether letting the Dalai Lama die improves or worsens her Presidential prospects.

You gotta love the Democratic party's version of courage, don't ya?

Andrew Sullivan on Barack Obama

The Testing of Obama

It's so funny and ironic.

I am a long-time liberal who has finally grown weary of the meaningless divisiveness of liberal democratic politcs, who is concerned about the security of Iraqis and American soldiers, and who is voting for John McCain, at this point, to better guarantee that security.

Andrew Sullivan is a very like-minded life-long conservative, who very much shares much of my outlook on the world, who is more skeptical of the efforts of Americans to secure Iraq, would like to see a speedier withdrawal, and who seems, at this point, to be voting for Barack Obama.

It's a crazy, crazy world.

And Andrew has an excellent argument about Barack's affiliation with Jeremiah Wright, today, that I think sums up many of my own thoughts on the matter, as a bridge builder from so many different perspectives, though not with Andrew's background as a gay man, obviously (I am straight as fuckin' arrow, ladies. If you doubt that, I will be happy to demonstrate it for you. I also happen to care very much about gay rights and my gay and lesbian friends and have for a very long time).

In it's entirety:

"Today will be a crucial day. It will be a day when we will discover if America's racial environment - and the emotions and feelings and anger and fears that it entails - can allow for a black man - with all that entails - to become president. Can a man like Obama both relate and belong to a congregation like Trinity UCC and be inspired by a man like Jeremiah Wright and still reach beyond race to white and Latino and Jewish and Muslim and other Americans who may find the specific racial context as impossible to understand as it is absurd to excuse? This is the argument that will come flying back at him:

If John McCain had spent twenty years hanging with Pat Robertson, describing him as his mentor, attending Robertson's church, having his kids baptized by Robertson, having Robertson officiate at his wedding, giving him the inspiration for the title of his career-making autobiography, collaborating with him in political organizing, and then tried to dismiss criticism by calling Robertson his lovable uncle who sometimes goes too far, there is no way on God's green earth Yglesias or his crowd would call this "trumped up."

Much of Wright's worldview I find repugnant. But some of it I also find inspiring. And in trying to understand it in its totality, I do try to think about the racial context and history of America. And so there is a difference, pace Jonah, between a white charlatan like Robertson who chooses to demonize minorities in the name of Jesus and a pastor like Wright who vents rage against a majority that has, in the not-so-distant past, given African-Americans every reason to be angry. And there is a difference between a white politician (like Bush) who seeks to enjoy the support of a Robertson without ever challenging his ugly dimensions and a black politician who, while remaining in a congregation like Wright's, nonetheless has written and spoken as movingly as anyone in my lifetime about the need for racial reconciliation and understanding.

Maybe this is a bridge too far. But in thinking about Obama for this past year, and reading the subtle critique of, say, Shelby Steele, as well as the palpable racial discomfort of some white conservatives, I have to say that it is precisely the wide span of Obama's bridge that makes me admire him. He has refused to disown Wright, while also refusing to endorse all of his message. You can call that opportunistic or expedient or cynical. You can also call it intelligent and brave and principled. Obama could have chosen the Shelby Steele route or even the Alan Keyes or Condi Rice path. He could equally have chosen the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton path. But what is unique about Obama is that he tried and is trying to do much more than any of them have - to express all of these racial strategies and to transcend them. While being human. He isn't a saint or a savior. But he is trying.

I think this is part of his appeal to the next generation. And maybe it's appropriate for me at this point to express how he has inspired me as a gay man to keep trying to maintain the bridge over the gulfs of my own various identities rather than to burn it. It is possible in American public life to be defined as a gay person and to embrace every aspect of gay culture - the good, the bad and the ugly. It is also possible to be closeted or semi-closeted so that these questions do not easily arise. And it is possible to be a gay man completely divorced from gay culture, and to buy access to power and influence by simply adopting a relationship to the gay world that is indistinguishable from many straight people. I don't think there's any perfect solution to this terrible dilemma of identity - of belonging and transcending, of empathizing and maintaining a proper distance. I don't blame any gay man or woman for failing to make all this work. We live in many worlds and not all of them fit. And there have been times in my life when the roughest edges of a gay subculture I do not want to disown and have been a full part of reach out and target me again. Whether it be an embarrassing online personal ad or sexual mishaps or a long night at the Black Party, I know that part of the straight world stands poised to attack and condemn, pigeon-hole and dismiss. So be it. I have no desire to disown much of gay culture that the straight world finds abhorrent. At the same time, I also know that not all of this subculture is healthy or good and I have an obligation to address and engage and reform those parts of it. That I have also tried to do - with uneven success. And I know, as I watch Obama, that these strains are not easy and those who have never had to walk this path do not fully know how hard it can be.

The ease of pure victimology is as phony as the release of complete assimilation. For an intelligent and principled person, the struggle lies in the interstices. What I have come to despise about much of the Republican party is its refusal even to empathize with this difficulty - or, worse, to choose to exploit these struggles for easy, cheap and callow political gain. And as I have grown older and felt the tug of all these identities more strongly, and understood more deeply the immense difficulty of resolving all of them, I can see few role models older than I am - and more, mercifully more, younger than I am.

But I see Obama as a pioneer on this path - a brave and principled pioneer. I would think much, much less of him if he disowned a spiritual guide because of that man's explicable if inexcusable resort to paranoia and racial separatism and anger. And I would think much, much less of Obama if he had never opened himself to this subculture and its fears, hopes and resentments. That he has done all this - while still attempting to reform and explain it - is a remarkable achievement. Did he overlook too much? Did his white guilt prevent him from protesting black extremism? It's hard for me to know, because this kind of judgment is very personal. I don't think I would have been as passive as Obama confronted with some of this stuff. But he did not merely sit back; he also dedicated his career to racial integration and understanding. It was a wide bridge, perhaps too wide for the weight it is bearing. And maybe America is not ready for this bridge, for these contradictions, for this complexity. But the promise of Obama is that his campaign appears poised to show that America is ready for this - and the immense healing it would bring.

And so we are suspended between the old politics and the new, between a Clinton who believes in her heart that America is not ready and may never be ready for this leap and should therefore adopt a politics that assumes the ineradicability of this gulf and the need to disguise it and play cynical defense - and an Obama who offers all of us a chance to see that sometimes authentic identity requires an element of contradiction, a bridging of the resentful, angry past and a more complex, integrated future.

He may fail; and the Clintons may be proven right. But he may also succeed - and what a mighty success that would be. These things are never easy; and we were lulled perhaps into an illusion that they could be. So now the real struggle starts. And it will not end with an Obama presidency; it ends with a shift from below that makes an Obama presidency possible.

Or to put it in a phrase that is as true as it is wilfully misunderstood: We are the change we have been waiting for. And the waiting is now over."

People of decent hearts and everyone else

Conservatives are feeding on red meat, today, as they pretend like their ugly narrow interpretations of this episode with Jeremiah Wright are really at all the same thing as the more open-hearted and genuine reflections that Barack Obama offered today.

Shelby Steele has a really ugly, bullshit "interpretation" of the Obama phenomena in the Wall Street Journal which reflects more about Shelby Steele than it does about Barack Obama.

The Obama Bargain

"The novelty of Barack Obama is more his cross-racial appeal than his talent. Jesse Jackson displayed considerable political talent in his presidential runs back in the 1980s. But there was a distinct limit to his white support. Mr. Obama's broad appeal to whites makes him the first plausible black presidential candidate in American history. And it was Mr. Obama's genius to understand this. Though he likes to claim that his race was a liability to be overcome, he also surely knew that his race could give him just the edge he needed -- an edge that would never be available to a white, not even a white woman.

How to turn one's blackness to advantage?

The answer is that one "bargains." Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America's history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer's race against him. And whites love this bargain -- and feel affection for the bargainer -- because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence.

This is how Mr. Obama has turned his blackness into his great political advantage, and also into a kind of personal charisma. Bargainers are conduits of white innocence, and they are as popular as the need for white innocence is strong. Mr. Obama's extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence."

How to keep up with the bullshit? Let me count the ways.

First of all, Obama is more genuinely talented and transcendent of racial divisions than is Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, both of whom Steele obtusely compares him to. Obama just accepts, better, the fact that lots of people carry ugliness about race with them, white and black. And that's what drives people like Shelby Steele crazy.

Steele conjures up this idea of "bargaining" because he just can't imagine that perhaps Barack Obama or anyone might have a genuine concern to transcend the ugliness of racism and all of the bitterness and hatefulness that surrounds race issues by people all over the political map. Steele assumes that Barack must be lying or manipulating or disingenuous because Shelby Steele seems convinced that anyone who is black and successful but doesn't carry with them a sense of outrage and obsession about racial issues - and issue that Shelby Steele writes almost exclusively about, remember - and who doesn't agree with him on other issues - Shelby is a conservative working at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; Obama is a liberal running for the Democratic Presidential candidacy - must be up to something. They couldn't possibly be genuinely wanting us to get past our legacy of bitterness and division about race. That would just be too naive for us all to believe. It takes a man of incredible and unchallengeable insight like Shelby Steele to see through the deceit. Thank goodness we have scholars to sort all such questions and not a broader marketplace of ideas, huh? Because we would all just miss all the bargaining going on all over the place and where would we all be then, huh?

The fact is that he just wrote this hit job on Barak Obama - A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win - that he's now on record with. That's his story, now, as the saying goes, and he's got to stick to it. Makes me almost want to vote for Barack just to humble this asshole.

But the fact is that I am voting for John McCain, at this point, until I hear some assurances from Democrats that they are not going to pull out or pressure to pull out from Iraq before the Iraqi government is ready to handle security on its own (we did start the goddamn thing, after all; our consciences just conveniently forget this when we're feeling a bit more self-interested).

So I don't defend Barack Obama because he's my man. He's not, at this point. I defend Barack Obama on this because it's pretty fuckin' clear to me listening to Obama and reading Steele's work that Obama is the more honest of the two. And Shelby Steele is desperately trying to rationalize why he is such a cynical, mean-spirited prick. And Shelby Steele can fuck off, as far as I am concerned.

Obama makes arguments about race that make sense to me and Steele does not. Obama's more open hearted recognition that race is complicated in America as much by the ugliness in the hearts of white and black people as much, if not more, than our bigoted past. Obama understands that ugliness better because he is not blinded by it like his counterparts.

I very much identify with the efforts of more decent-hearted people to deal with the cynical interpretations of their motives by cynical assholes. It is very much my life, much of the time, these days. Because what cynics lack that more open-hearted people like Obama have is the courage to face and forgive such failings, openly, rather than to search out all sorts of ways to avoid demonstrating that kind of forgiveness and open-heartedness. It's a conspiracy of lessers against their betters. I don't agree with Obama on everything. But on this question and the question of forgiveness, generally, Obama is a better man than his critics, like Shelby Steele, and it drives them crazy that such a better man would be getting so much support from America, these days.

Victor Davis Hanson has a similarly hateful column today in the National Review.

An Elegant Farce

And James Taranto shovels out this hateful screed on the Wall Street Journal today.

Obama and his "white grandmother"

Here's the bottom line on this thing that neither Shelby Steele, Victor Davis Hanson, and James Taranto can get their hateful little heads around:

Barack Obama is being loyal to his friend. He has made clear he does not agree with him and thinks he's been hateful and outrageous in his comments. But he's not foreswearing him, as Victor Davis Hanson suggests, because he takes seriously a virtue that Steele, Hanson, and Taranto are unfamiliar with: he is loyal.

Jeremiah Wright is not a terrorist. He is not a not a murderer. He is not someone that needs to be turned into the authorities. He is a guy with some views and an experience that Barack appreciates, some that he abhors, but who is, more fundamental than all that, his friend, who he is not selling out because conservatives see an opportunity to pounce.

As someone who is not voting for Barack Obama, at this point, it is a quality about Obama that is admirable, not a reason for concern for me. It is, however, a reason for me to be skeptical of his detractors on this issue, at this point. If you don't understand loyalty, do not feign to give me any fucking lectures on what virtue means in political life. Because you have no fucking clue, you opportunistic shithead. So fuck off.

I'm still voting for John McCain. It's not personal. I actually like Barack Obama a lot. I also like the Iraqis and the American soldiers sworn to defend them. Barack has chosen a policy course that it is perfectly clear to me is mistaken, at this point, and which puts them all in danger. And I am voting, at this point, for the guy who puts them in the least amount of danger and who guarantees their security better. If Barack Obama could offer that, then he might compete for my vote. Until them, he is a guy who I admire for his loyalty and so many decent thoughts about issues like race and poverty and insights into people, generally, and whose outlook on foreign policy is actually his strongest card, politically, I think, but who does not have the better policy commitment on the most serious question the country faces.

In the meantime, the more decent guy doesn't have anything to answer to from assholes who wouldn't know a decent heart if it swooped down and switched out their narrow little minds and shriveled little hearts.

This is why politics is a mess. Because when people like Barack Obama and Mark McGwire demonstrate clear loyalty, assholes like these can't see anything but wickedness abounding.

And, for whatever stupid reasons, we let assholes like this guide our national conversation.

Love, pain, and courage

"What I'm trying to say is that the pain then is part of the happiness now. That's the deal."
Joy Gresham, Shadowlands

As I watched Shadowlands, again, tonight, for the 2000th time, I was struck by how true that statement was. All the pain of love and loss we feel in our life. All that pain is a part of the happiness we experience with the love. It's just part of the deal.

It's ironic. People spend so much of their life trying to avoid the pain. To dull it. To escape it.

But the truth is that it just comes with the deal. The pain is a part of the love. It's just part of the package. And trying to hold off one just limits our access to the other.

We should limit unnecessary pain. Pain that serves no purpose. That is the essence of the current political debates. But it also the essence of so many of the choices we face. Trying to tell the difference.

It is all the more difficult to tell when we impose pain that serves to alienate those that we say that we love. Pain should be a function of genuine love. And genuine love for people does not seek to control them. It sets them free.

Control is suspicious of love, because love involves pain. And some people would prefer the fragility that comes with control to the courage of love because love involves pain. And, for some people, perhaps most people, at some level, avoiding pain is their singular, fragile, and ignoble aim in life.

And that kind of life is its own punishment. Because it is a life bereft of real love.

Power is bad for your reasoning

Obama tells vets no lower drinking age

"Army veteran Ernest Johnson, 23, of Connecticut, said one of the things that peeved him before he turned 21 was that he couldn't come home and drink a beer — even though he was old enough to serve in the armed services and die for his country.

Obama told Johnson he sympathized, but that setting the legal drinking age at 21 had helped reduce drunken driving incidents and should remain."

Just like those drug laws prevented Obama's underage drug use. Yada, yada, yada. Whatever the fuck.

A President Obama would tell 18-year-olds, "You're old enough to die at my command. But beer is just a little too much."

Those young vets have every reason to be skeptical of such bullshit reasoning.

And adults wonder why the prevailing wisdom among young people is that adults are morons and fuck the rules.

I can only wonder why.

Hypocrisy, our common heritage

Leave it to a conservative magazine in the midst of a liberal political period to call out the hypocrisy squarely and honestly.

The hypocrites' club

"American history is littered with examples of puritanism deranging the law, from the Salem witch trials onwards. Anthony Comstock, a 19th-century anti-porn campaigner, used his position as a postal inspector to seize 50 tons of books and 4m pictures. He boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests during his career and 15 suicides. Under Prohibition people could be imprisoned for life for consuming alcohol.

Puritanism continues to stalk the country in new guises. The most dramatic example is America's new version of Prohibition—a “war on drugs” that helps explain why one in 100 American adults are in prison. But there are plenty of humbler examples. Schools impose zero-tolerance rules that result in expulsion for minor offences. The citizens of Texas may not buy dildos. Americans are banned from drinking until they are 21.

The combination of legalism and puritanism invariably produces the same dismal results. It creates expensive government bureaucracies that seize on any excuse—rules relating to inter-state commerce are a particular favourite—to extend their powers to boss people about or spy on them. It throws up swivel-eyed zealots who pursue their manias with little sense of proportion or decency (remember Kenneth Starr). And it ends by devouring its children. Mr Spitzer is only the latest in an endless line of self-righteous crusaders impaled on their own swords.

He certainly had no choice but to resign (as he did on March 12th) if, as it seems, he broke the law. But that still leaves the bigger question of whether the law is an ass. George Bernard Shaw once defined 'Comstockery' as 'the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States'; but it is hardly a joke for the people who are caught in its tentacles. There are enough real problems for America's law-enforcement officials to worry about."

I have to say that it is so incredibly refreshing to read any major, serious newsource, these days, talking so squarely and unequivocally on the issues this column tackles. The New York Times is talking about doubling up on our drug war efforts, and it is the fuckin' Economist that calls out our bullshit prostitution laws, even when the figure involved is a liberal politician, and a particularly arrogant, sanctimonious one, at that.

A little different than my stereotypes of conservatives as a young liberal growing up in Wichita, Kansas. And it is so refreshing to watch those stereotypes get challenged. Especially when the reasoning works in the more honest, less power-mongering direction.

I have never been so disappointed with the left in my entire lifetime as in this political moment. And it is the hypocrisy and the bullshit and the lying that really leave me incredulous.

Mark Twain is what America is all about. These assholes are just a arrogant blip on a much longer historical trendline. It's not progressive, that's for goddamn sure.

And Elliot Spitzer should be a clear-as-day illustration of the flaw in the logic of this political period, if we only had the courage to face up to it. But, then again, courage was never what this logic was all about.

You know what drives me crazy about this political era

All the goddamn lying.

We sit and marinate in all of our bullshit. And then we pretend like the bullshit has no consequence. Like all the lying doesn't matter. And then we take the cynicism that is the final product of all that lying and we hold it up like a hairball and we say, "Now this is wisdom."

It's fuckin' disgusting. And stupid. And wrong. And dishonest.

And we're fuckin' responsible for it whether we take responsibility for that or not.

We will. Or at least our kids will see through our lying - which they do, now, by the way, in case you haven't had an honest conversation with a kid lately - and they and their children will look back on all of our bullshit and say, "Mommy, Daddy, why did all those people in the past lie so much? Why couldn't they be more honest about the problems they faced and their failures?"

And none of us will have any good answers except, "They just got so used to the lying that they just couldn't imagine anything different."

We've got to stop getting used to the lying. We've got to get more honest, with ourselves and one another.

Cynicism just isn't an option. You know why? Because it offers no real progress.

Cynicism says, "The reason things didn't change for the better is because things and people can't change for the better."

And if you don't believe that people and life can change for the better, you got no progress. Meaning a cynic can't really be a progressive, when they're being honest with themselves. Only someone who really believes in progress can be progressive in their outlook on the world.

Everyone else is a faker. Why? Because they've gotten so goddamn used to lying to themselves and to everyone else.

That's the way through, here.

And let me give you a clue. More "rule of law" just makes the problem worse. It makes all the lying worse. Doubt that? Ask the Nazis. Or the Communists. Or any other regime that operated under a governing philosophy of force. Both of those regimes operated under the rule of law. Chinese communism, North Korean communism, Cuban communism, Baathism, Fascism, theocracies of all sorts. They all operate under the rule of law. I know. I've heard plenty of the bullshit claim that Chinese communism doesn't operate under the rule of law. It's bullshit. Of course the Chinese operate under the rule of law. They just have laws we don't like. All repressive governments operate under the rule of law. Where do you think all that repression comes from, dumbass? Of course they do. We just don't like their version of the rule of law, is the truth. How does China defend its treatment of protesters of its one-child policy? Rule of law. How does China defend its execution of its top food inspector (a serious human rights violation, I don't care how people spin it)? Rule of law. How does China defend its policy toward Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong? Rule of law. And what they're missing, which is completely fucking obvious when we are defending this bullshit logic, is freedom and liberal values. And like every other thing that's gotten said during this goddamn bullshit political period, we just bullshit our way through that question to not have to face the clear-as-fuckin'-day honest to God truth sitting right in front of our faces.

I've decided no more Mr. Nice Guy on this question. I'm calling out every motherfucker who lies on this question, for now on. I'm fuckin' tired of all the lying and the bullshit and the pretending and everything that makes the Chinese and the Cubans and the North Koreans and the Syrians and the Iraqis and the Iranians and every other group of people in the world and their governments look at the United States and the dumbass, bullshit debates and discussions we have here and wonder, "What the fuck are they smoking, they lie so goddamn much?"

It fuckin' drives me crazy. And I've decided that, in my presence, at least, we're gonna start getting more honest about things.

In case you missed this

Mad Props to Tracy Morgan.

Next week's host: Tina Fey.

It's not substantive, but at least it's not the mindless vitriol and grandstanding of Washington.

We're so damned ridiculous, much of the time. It's good that we have people to remind us.

Make America proud, you whiny, scared little bitches

Michael Kinsley is offering a little bit of sanity to Washington, given the insane hall of mirrors and freakshow for liberal values that it has become, these days.

Offense Taken

"First of all, I unequivocally dissociate myself from remarks by my second cousin to the effect that my worthy opponent is a "prize bitch." My cousin is a dog breeder and thought she was being complimentary. She did not appreciate that such phraseology could give offense to certain segments of the population who are unfamiliar with dogs. Nevertheless, there is no room for canine imagery in a national political campaign, and Cousin Maisie has dropped out of our family in order to avoid causing any distraction from the central issues that we ought to be debating, such as terrorism and health care...

...Let me be absolutely clear where I stand on all of this. There is no room for sexism in a modern political campaign. There is no room for racism either. There is no room for remarks that could reasonably be interpreted as sexist or racist. In fact, given the history of sexism and racism in this country, there is no room for remarks that could even be willfully misinterpreted as sexist or racist. There is no room for rudeness, or for the appearance of rudeness. There is no room for comments of any sort by anybody a candidate might have met under any circumstances in the course of his or her life, unless they have been vetted for sexism, racism, rudeness, or the appearance of these qualities by the campaign's senior staff. There is no room for unfair accusations that the opposition candidate has engaged in sexist, racist or rude remarks, or that anyone he or she has ever met has engaged in such remarks. And of course there is also no room for perfectly fair accusations of this sort, which can be misinterpreted, and usually are.

Basically, in the modern political campaign, there is no room for remarks of any sort on any subject which could be interpreted as giving offense to anyone, and that covers just about every subject there is. Therefore, my campaign will enter a cone of silence from now until I am sworn in as president next January. And I call upon my distinguished opponent and her campaign to do the same. The stakes in this election are much too high for anyone to say anything."

It's insane how detached politics becomes from everyday life with all of the bullshit posturing that it entails.

Iranians, North Koreans, Cubans, Burmese, Chinese, Syrians, and all the rest, who hopefully and likely are becoming more convinced of liberal values must look at our system and think, "What do they believe in?" Free speech, but don't say anything that might hurt someone's feelings. Free thinking, as long as you don't piss off your boss or your professor or definitely the head of the Democratic or Republican National Committees. Free trade, but don't do anything stupid or else we'll have to put an end to all of that.

Basically, don't do anything stupid or someone's gonna get their ass kicked.

They must be looking at us and thinking, "How is that so different from the way we do things?"

And they'd be right, sadly.

It's the most fuckin' fruitloop idea of democracy I've ever seen in my life. We're going to prove just how much we care about liberal values by kicking the shit out of everyone who doesn't believe in them the way we do (which is, of course, what illiberal cultures and governments do as a regular fact of their existence and is the single most important distinguishing quality between liberal and illiberal cultures and governments).

It's fuckin' insane, is what it is. It makes no goddamn sense. Unless we're trying to defend and rationalize our illiberal impulses. Which is exactly what we're doing, of course. We just don't have the courage to admit it.

The only thing that doesn't leave me feeling that humanity is fuckin' hopeless is that we do seem to have this history of fumbling forward, somehow, through all this bullshit.

I don't know how we do it, frankly, except that our children are perpetually scratching their heads at what fuckin' morons and losers and hypocrits we all are and say, "This cannot possible be the best life has to offer."

Surely, this is not. It's a fuckin' sad spectacle, if it is.

And what fuckin' losers would we be to just lay down and say, "Well, I guess human nature is just too lame to do better."

Fuck that bullshit. Buck up little soldiers. We've got a liberal democracy to tend to, here, and liberal democratic values to live up to. Illiberal impulses, like ignorance and self-pity and the propensity to bully our way through life, are embraced, here, but not wallowed in.

Go listen to some Dixie Chicks or Toby Keith or read some Mark Twain or H.L. Mencken or watch some Stephen Spielberg or some Mike Judge and remember what it means to be someone who takes liberal values seriously.

Stop being such whiny, scared little bitches. You're Americans. And Brits. And Canadians. And French...people. And Iranians. And North Koreans. And Cubans. And Syrians. Stop being such whiny, scared little bitches and start being grown-ups.

Take freedom seriously, you cowards.

Make America proud. Make us all proud.

Let's go make something of this world.

Could it be any more fuckin' obvious?

Prosecutor moves on ruling Turkish party

"Turkey's chief prosecutor asked its highest court Friday to disband the ruling party for attacking the country's secular traditions, including a ban on women's head scarves in universities, a court official said.

The move escalated the conflict between the long-established secular elite and the Justice and Development Party, which was elected in July and has been working to ease limits on public religious expression with the support of Turkey's conservative, rural and working class.

In a 150-page petition to the Constitutional Court, prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya accused the party of "being (the) focal point of anti-secular activities."

Court head Hasim Kilic told reporters that the prosecutor had asked that 71 party leaders — including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul — be banned from political life for five years.

Gul, who is now considered neutral toward all political parties under the law, previously served as foreign minister in Erdogan's previous cabinet.

Erdogan and other party leaders held an emergency meeting minutes after the prosecutor's move to shut down the party was made public.

It will likely be months before the court holds a hearing on Yalcinkaya's petition.

The indictment cites Erdogan's efforts to lift the ban on head scarves in universities as evidence of a hidden Islamist agenda, a court official said. He asked not to be named because he was not allowed to release the information.

The indictment could not immediately be made public under Turkish law.

The pillars of Turkey's establishment, including the military, legal system and the civil service, have been staunchly secular since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — established the state from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire

Parliament, where the ruling party has 340 of the 550 seats, voted last month to rescind a decades-old ban on wearing the Islamic head scarf in universities. The legislation is being reviewed by the Constitutional Court."

Liberals are assholes, too. There's no way around this one.

Lord Acton was right. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It doesn't matter who holds the reigns.

You know who it will be obvious to?

Our children. It always is.

Eugene Robinson is such a fuckin' asshole

This is why I don't trust journalists just because they call themselves "progressive," these days.

It Wasn't Her Place

Is this what we've been reduced to? Is this what progressive ideology really means, Martin Luther King be damned?

Progressivism means saying that Bill Clinton's affairs are his own personal and family issue but it's not Silda Spitzer's place to be by her side when her husband fucks up.

That's what is fuckin' wrong in the world. It's not liberals or conservatives. It's the hateful scolds amongst all of us. It's spoiling my country. And I'm tired of pretending like somehow it's better for us than it really is.

Eugene Robinson is such a fuckin' asshole.

Am I the only goddamn person in the world who actually takes what Jesus said seriously?

What would Jesus do? I think he'd sit back and have a cold one and wonder what the fuck this goddamn world is thinking.

Signs of progress

Protests turn violent in Tibet

The Dalai Lama is trying to keep this thing peaceful, which is a strategic concern, not an absolute principle for how to free Tibet from China. If Tibet could stage a successful revolution against Chinese rule and there were no other more peaceful options, I would support it. As is, I think the Dalai Lama is right that a peaceful path is the wisest and the most likely to avoid unnecessary death and carnage, at this point.

But it is better for Tibetans to endure the risks associated with challenging Chinese rule than to just take Chinese dictatorship lying down.

Submitting to force as a governing philosophy is cowardice, it's not a virtue. And the bigger cowardice is espousing force as a philosophy to cover for your covetousness of power and your fear of freedom.

Freedom and making life better

It's starting to occur to me after a conversation with a colleague, today, that much of this conversation, today, is about different outlooks on freedom, entitlement and fucking up, and the choices people make in a lifetime.

I think a lot of people interpret the more libertarian and liberal ideas about life as their own sense of entitlement - to sin, to do bad, to destroy the earth, to fuck up whatever it is that we imagine that government will protect us from being fucked up.

At some level, there is truth to the idea that I think people should have the freedom to fuck up, completely independent of the consequential benefit of the learning that comes from the fucking up. It is the consequential debate where I think the more libertarian and more genuinely liberal argument is strongest. It is Maslow's argument, and I happen to think, from much personal experience and watching other peoples' experiences, that he is right about it. People tend to make better choices the more freedom they have. And one of the important reasons for this is that the more their freedom is obstructed, the less genuine credit and responsibility they tend to take for both good and bad choices. Freedom does tend to promote ownership, in all the various permutations of that argument. But especially around choices we make.

Some people look at Elliot Spitzer and they say, "That asshole thought he could prosecute prostitution rings and then get his willy wet at one, for himself, and then he thought that the world should give him a pass because he's a man and yada, yada, yada sense of entitlement that he thinks he has for cheating on his wife and fuckin' that whore. He's gets to have a good time, his wife gets left out in the cold, he gets forgiven, and she gets all the heartache while he gets all the fun and he doesn't have to face any music for the whole ordeal he's created."

I mean, at some level, that is the reason for laws around prostitution. To discourage cheating. To discourage lewd sexual behavior in public and within the sight of children. To remove temptation for men. To limit the competition, if we're being honest, for God-fearing women without the prostitute's bag of tricks (or often the inclination to have or feel like she has to have a bag of tricks) to entice a man.

We limit freedom because we figure that people want it to do all kinds of bad shit and we want to limit that bad shit, so the more we limit it the less bad shit we'll deal with. I mean, now, obviously, the whole prositution angle demonstrates that it's all bullshit. We all know that profession's been with us since the beginning of God knows when. We know it's not going away because it's illegal. It's actually the strongest demonstration, much bigger than this foolish drug war, of the failure of force and the law to make problems go away. But that's the reason why we made it illegal how many thousands of years ago and the reason why we keep that stupid fuckin' law on the fuckin' books. Because, at some stupid level, we figure, laws make bad things go away. Can't do any harm. Until it does, as in the case of Elliot Spitzer (Is there really any need to put this guy in jail? I mean c'mon. Can't we ever stop being such self-righteous pricks. And I mean all of it. The money. The prostitution. The being Governor. All of it).

We look at Elliot Spitzer and we say, "Look at that asshole. He thinks he can just do whatever the fuck he wants. He can prosecute prostitution rings zealously, in one moment, and then get his dick sucked by some 22-year-old in some other moment. And he thinks he can do all of that and be Governor and do whatever the fuck he wants and go home to his wife and have it all forgiven and that will be that. Fuck him. He's gonna fuckin' pay for that bullshit, that self-righteous, selfish piece shit. It's the law. And there is nothing more sacrosanct than the law, other than my sanctimonious anger at Spitzer and the world for being such a fucked up place. That fucker's going down."

Except it's all bullshit, of course. Noone thinks the law is sacrosanct when they break it. They only think it's sacrosanct when someone else is breaking it, if then. It's not the law that really says anything about the goodness and badness of anyone's actions. It's whether they fuckin' hurt other people in a way that is outside of a reasonable scope of freedom. And then assholes work to squeeze that down the smallest fuckin' sphere possible. And people like me work to keep it as broad as possible, so we can fuck up and learn the lesson. And everyone else just fuckin' shakes their head and says, "Well, it is the law," which perpetually strengthens the hand of the assholes, which they know, and which they take full advantage of. And, hence, the advent of the radical, the clever-by-half little shithead who has figured this all out and manipulates people to their advantage on behalf of this petty little principle. Left and right. Nazi and Communist. And the all the little radical assholes in between.

Look, I understand the concerns about all the ways people abuse freedom. I don't rationalize them. If they are legitimate abuses - which really is much of the crux and that only a liberal democratic conversation/debate can sort out - then they shouldn't be rationalized. Having said that, people fuck them up so regularly and they learn so much more effectively with the freedom to fuck it up than from having someone try to impose a lesson on them that the only direction that makes sense is more freedom. But we just can't ever seem to get that straight. And it fucks all of us. And it always will until we get clearer about it.

And, at this point, I am fuckin' tired of having this conversation like the advocates of repression have a stronger argument or somehow achieve more than they really do. I am tired of watching their failures, the failures of that argument and its corresponding consequences in reality, and pretending with people, "Hey, your good intentions have clearly manifested themselves in a better reality. Thank goodness for all that repression. What would we do without you assholes?"

And if you're in fuckin' Myanmar or Iran or Iraq or North Korea or Cuba or China or anywhere in the world where liberalization is still not taken nearly seriously enough, and you care about freedom and liberal values, you've got to be looking at America and the West and thinking, "Do they fuckin' care about freedom and liberal values or not? They're fuckin' schizophrenic. The whole fuckin' lot of them. Fuck the West. And fuck my repressive fuckin' government. Fuck the whole lot of them. Where can I get loaded?"

It's just so fuckin' stupid. The whole fuckin' thing.

I know that people are worried that freedom leads to entitlement. And entitlement to fuck up and betray peoples' trust and get away with it scot-free.

It's just not true. Freedom offers the most effective route to learning the lesson and taking responsibility and internalizing the lesson and the understanding that produces it as a part of a person's conscience. You cannot force it any other way. There is no law that does or could ever compensate for that fact of life. At best, prison and the law contains a person for awhile. But it doesn't get the lesson learned. And the cynics among these assholes rationalize, "Well, they're never going to learn the lesson anyways," never pausing to wonder, "Could it have something to do with me and how I'm handling things? Nah. Couldn't be." And we are just too goddamn stubborn to admit this error and this most serious, persistent, and important error over the course of all the history of humanity.

I mean, over the course of history, this is the big fuck-up. This is the cause for most of our misery. And no matter how much liberal democracy, liberal values, freedom and democracy and all the good it produces makes life better, we just can't ever seem to let go of it. Because we're morons, that's why. And we're scared. And we just can't let go of this foolish, counterproductive, long-discredited logic.

Because we're all just kind of stupid. And scared.

And human.

Maybe we can learn to embrace the fact that we are human. And move on to be a little better.

Just maybe.

Here's the bottom-line, though:

There is no progress in any other direction. Every other direction is regress, by any objective standard. You not convinced of that, yet? Keep watching. If you're open to being persuaded, it will become crystal clear soon enough. And if you're not open to being wrong, your opinion was worthless the first time.

We are a nation of fuckin' dumbasses

Is corn to blame for American's obesity epidemic?

I don't know. Do you think it has to do with eating so fuckin' much?

Are we ever capable of growing up and stop being such fuckin' dumbasses?

I am tired of morons running the world and running my life

They never think that it fuckin' matters how fuckin' stupid they are. And it always does.

I'm leaving

I'm waiting out my 2 year scholarship obligation and then I'm going into investing. I'm tired of listening to the same people who constantly argue that we can't do anything for these kids arrogantly tell me who they're going to force changes that they don't really believe are going anywhere.

It is the most assine and cynical bullshit I have ever heard in my life. And I am tired of it. And I don't give a shit about any of it anymore.

This is the dumbest goddamn thing I've ever done in my life

I have no fuckin' clue why I chose education and policy as careers. It's the dumbest goddamn choices I've ever made in my life. I wanted to help people. But most people don't want help. They want someone to tell them that they're right and there's no reason to make any changes in their lives or outlooks that might threaten their outlooks or their egos.

Making money does not involve changing peoples' outlooks. It just involves making money. And everybody loves that.

I've got to get out of this bullshit work. Politics and education are two places where noone wants to make any changes that might seriously challenge them to do better. And I just don't give a shit about either of them, anymore.

Noone wants help unless it means no expended effort on their part.

And I just have no interest in that kind of work.

People are shitheads. And I just don't need the headache anymore.

Perhaps this work is a lost cause

The kids are bad. But the adults give them all the wrong messages, constantly letting them off the hook. And then pretend like it has no consequence. It's a fucked up cycle. And it is all that is available to these kids, right now.

Noone is going to make better choices when everyone is telling them that they have no choice but the mistakes they make today. You can't correct a mistake as long as everyone is trying to avoid calling it a mistake.

If people can't cut it out, maybe it is a lost cause. If we are bound and determined to avoid responsibility, maybe we'll never take it.

I don't know what then. I just know that maybe I need to find another job where I'm not constantly having people drag me two steps back for every one step forward because they just can't come to terms with their responsibility for the part they have in how things play out.

And if noone is taking responsibility, there really is no hope at all.

Mamet on politics

David Mamet has an excellent political essay at the Village Voice that I highly recommend.

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a "Brain-Dead Liberal"

From that essay:

"What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?

I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.

The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.

Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact. Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the new-formed community. And so they work it out."

It is an excellent attempt to synthesize the best of liberal and conservative thought and to recount a trek that I very much relate to. I cannot really concur that Thomas Sowell is "our greatest contemporary philosopher" (Sowell is a strong mind but far too partisan a conservative and far too cynical about human nature for me to regard him as more than a strong thinker).

But other than that, this is a really excellent attempt by a brilliant liberal mind come to terms with a world where liberalism has taken a bad turn, I completely agree, has started drinking too much of its own koolaid and come up drunk with power and me with a hangover on the other side.

I love Mamet's conclusions about human nature:

"I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it."

And that really is the bottom line. If we can learn to accept that we are normal human beings and not gods or the surrogates, we will do better and learn more thoroughly the value of being good, even as we are often tempted to do bad. Maybe being bad, at times, isn't the end of the world. And maybe doing good is served well by learning some of the lessons from our bad behavior.

It's a very interesting reflection by a thoroughly interesting and introspective thinker. Let's hope it is the brainfood for some strong theater.

Better ideas or more of the same?

I have to say that the Economist makes a convincing case for John McCain's candidacy.

Ready for round two

The question is if Democrats can put up a candidate who can answer the challenges posed by a McCain candidacy and offer better policies rather than politics more popular with the leftist base.

And, more important to me, is whether the two candidates can engage in a debate/discussion that generates better policy thinking and ideas rather than partisan showmanship. The country will be poorer for an election that fails to offer better ideas. And it will be better for the candidates who choose to offer them.

I think I just realized why I love Leslie Feist so

After an afternoon of Feist interview videos, I think I just realized why I love Leslie Feist so much.



It's not because she's drop dead gorgeous. Which she is. A million girls are drop dead gorgeous and they don't really turn my head in the same way. It's not that she's a brilliant and creative singer, which she most definitely is. And someone who I can respect both puts energies in her lyrics and makes them meaningful, while also just enjoying the music and creating it for its own sake, as well. It's not just that she's intelligent and clearly embraces that about herself and unpretensious about it. And it's not just that she's got this eerily and really touching and intimate sound about even her most catchy songs. It's not just that Leslie shares so much of herself in her music and her performances, and she does it all without any pretensions about her politics or her wisdom about life.

I love Dar Williams with a big old capital L. I love Dar's sounds and die for her lyrics. If you've not heard her, you're missing out.



And, in that respect, Dar is still perhaps my favorite singer, of note. Her lyrics are unstoppable. She's intelligent and touching and hits upon themes that thoughtful people can identify with.

But what's missing from Dar's music that, probably from Leslie's silence as much as anything she's shared that she really believes about the world, is present in Leslie's music is a quality that is much more fundamental than politics.

I love political music, contrary to the brainless trend among too many young people. I love music with the courage of its convictions. I love the Dixie Chicks' Home album, that got them in so much shit, and I love Toby Keith's American Soldier and most of his music, really. I love U2 in their headiest days - Rattle and Hum is their best album, as far as I'm concerned - and I love anyone who has something real to say and the courage to say it in a genre, pop music, and a generation that has become increasingly self-satisfied in its ignorance, its apathy, and its cowardice.

Dar is a liberal. Through and through. She's a soft-hearted radical. And I love her liberal politics even as I don't always share her views. I love her courage to share her thinking even when I don't always agree with her. And I love that it means that she brings an enormous amount of substance to her work that informs my life and warms my heart.

But what's missing from that mix and which U2 has tried to bring to their music in a way that has just lost some of the soul, I think, but I can appreciate as being more Leslie than Dar, at some level, is that more fundamental than being a liberal - I can only guess that if Leslie has strong political inclinations, which most thinking people do, that this is her orientation given what I've seen of her - Leslie's musical work and life is about having a little space in the world just for herself. Not for anyone else.



You get the feeling listening to Leslie's music and her interviews and seeing her live, in concert, that what gives her all that energy and capacity for intimacy in her music is that it is part of her life that, after the commercial contracts and the touring and the interviews and all of the business side of music, that there is very much alive and kicking in Leslie and something that she is intimately in touch much of the time, a relationship with her music where it is, fundamentally, not about anyone else. It's just about having something she loves for herself.



I work a job that I love, but which I signed up for when I was 17 years old. And for 17 years, I have not had much of a reasonable ability to do anything different until I complete my scholarship obligation (in about 2 years). I work in a field where I take both a commitment to kids who are easy to write off seriously, a sensitivity to people and their lives seriously, and a commitment to the liberal education that it is all centered around very seriously, especially the commitments around free development and freedom of conscience, thought, expression, and just making a life for yourself that isn't anyone else's to use for their purposes.

But, given the nature of my field, which is governed by both a special education law that frames and distorts and rules over the lives of so many children, and a No Child Left Behind Act that has, now, done the same for many other children not quite in the same boat, and all of the distortion and bullshit being centered around control and what amount of it parents and teachers and everyone feels like they have or don't have of it and to what lengths they will go to rationalize it even if it is not good for anyone - including themselves - and which contradicts the much more fundamental principle that every person's life is their own, that principle gets violated repeatedly.

And it's bad enough that it happens to kids, especially adolescents, who are trying desperately to create a life and an identity for themselves that is not necessarily tied to what their parents or their teachers or any of the authorities in their lives want for them. What's really, fundamentally, been offensive to me, especially in the last few years, is that the paternalism has extended to everyone. And in my field, in teaching, in the U.S., it has gotten particularly bad.

Our most fundamental efforts, which, to anyone who takes education seriously, should, by rights, by the very nature of what it entails, be an independent, freely considered and engaged experience, are now governed, in some of the most central ways, by our Federal Government, as well as many layers of local and state governance, for what reason I have no clue except that even liberally educated people do not seem to be able to get over the notion that each person's life, no matter how much they may want different for them, is their own. It is a fact of life that I am quite grateful that I was naive of when I was a kid and especially when I was in college. Because only with that kind of naivete could I possibly have taken my liberal education and the free development of my own conscience and judgment as seriously as I did and not be angry, every day, that someone was always trying to circumvent it, including many of the professors, writers, and researchers I looked up to, even as I was trying to develop it.

It is is our own life to make choices with, good and bad, and not needing the permission or even the guidance and certainly not the oversight of Congress or the President or the Supreme Court or anyone, really. Fundamentally. When we harm the lives or interests of our neighbors, things have to get resolved. When we threaten or harm others physically, people may need to intervene. None of those things, fundamentally, always must or should involve the government. But there might be a place. It's something open for debate, though I'm pretty clear that, as much as possible, government and authority figures should stay out of the way unless their presence is needed and, often, welcomed. But, generally and fundamentally, our lives are our own. And our failure to get that figured out for others as much as for ourselves is what fucks up 90% of public policy questions and many of our lives.

That, I think, underneath it all, is what bugs the shit out of me in the current and regressive political moment and the Hillary Clinton candidacy that represents that moment.

It is this arrogant presumption that as long as I have a good cause that can coerce, manipulate, pressure, or otherwise fuck with your life for my purposes, then your life is fair game for me to fuck with.

And it's is an enormous load of bullshit.

And what I love about watching Leslie Feist play and perform and interact with people is that it is clear that when she does so, her life, fundamentally, is her own. And she is clear about that. And her music is an expression of that in her life. And I really appreciate someone sharing that with the world so that I can share it with her, at some level, and maybe find some of that for my life.



I work in a field that I love with kids that I love with subject matter, social studies, that I love. But I do it under a scholarship obligation that I cannot reasonably blow off, at this point, in a field governed by a law - the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act - that seriously distorts the way we look at children and the way that they look at themselves - and another law - the No Child Left Behind Act - that seriously distorts the way that we look at schools and the way that they do their work.

And what drives me crazy about the whole goddamn thing is that we are so arrogant that we just cannot get straight that it is the fact that we are trying to control these areas of peoples' lives that, at its root, is what distorts and fucks with peoples' lives and creates and multiplies many of the problems that we say we want to resolve.

Many of my kids just want some kind of life for themselves. And are constantly being told by adults that they are not allowed to have one. Even though it is a healthy instinct on their part and the instinct by adults to control them is an unhealthy one, fundamentally. Many of my kids - and fundamentally, they are their own people as much if not more than the children of their parents, so I use "my kids" as a teacher way of saying I care about these kids - express that need for some kind of self-direction poorly and can be real jerks about it and about the way they treat teachers and their parents and other adults in their lives. But, fundamentally, the healthy instinct they have that we keep trying to beat out of them out of our own unhealthy attitudes towards life, is to have some kind of life that is their own and not anyone else's or for anyone else's purposes. Not even school. Not even learning. Not for anything. Just for themselves.

And that is what I love about Leslie Feist. She is such a healthy reflection of what that kind of life might look life, if people took it more seriously.



It is something I want for my life, even given the layers of control and manipulation and the governance and the many layers of how my life serves someone else's purposes, even when those purposes, as is often the case, are questionable. And it is something that I need, want, and will have for my life no matter what anyone else has to say about the matter.

It is something that everyone wants for their lives. But that political people never seem to be able to get straight, because they are such arrogant goddamn pricks so much of the time and have figured out that power means never having to ask someone if they want your purposes imposed on them or not. And it is an ugly and arrogant instinct in political people and all people that I have learned to grow very skeptical and weary of.

And when I watch Leslie Feist perform or talk about her music, I see what it is that I want for myself and that I think most people want, down deep, when their not rationlizing what manipulative pricks their always being to one another.

A life that is my own. A life that touches others' lives, that is responsible to others and their needs and purposes, as well. But a life, fundamentally, that is my own. That is directed by me. For my purposes.

That is a life that we all want. And, down deep, it is a need that we all have, even as we indulge our more manipulative imaginations.

And that, fundamentally, is what this godforesaken political period is about. And we will not be straight until we get straight about that and what the better direction is. There is no, "You do what the fuck I say and be happy about it" bullshit fantasy world out there that will finally resolve such matters. Either we learn to respect one another's autonomy and independence of thought, conscience, expression, and experience or we are in for many, many more periods of dysfunctional and conflict-filled confrontations with one another. And it will not end until we cut it the fuck out.

And that is what is going down, right now. If you're going to fight to control my life, be ready for a fuckin' fight, you piece of shit. Because I and the whole goddamn world is going to fight your cowardly, lame fuckin' ass until you finally give up that bullshit exercise.

In the meantime, I will likely listen to you, lucky for you. And I may end up taking seriously your purposes. I might not, if I think you're wrong. I might do so anyway if you pass it into law and its a worse hassle to fight it than to comply.

But I'll never wholeheartedly embrace and pursue those purposes until I'm convinced of them. Noone will. Get used to that.

And if you compel my will, be ready for me to drag my feet in giving a shit about those purposes. And, if you're particularly wrong, I very well might ignore your purposes even if codified in law, if there are purposes and matters of conscience more serious than your law. I can guarantee you I will ignore many laws in that same way. And I don't trust anyone who tells me they would do differently. They are the cowards that turned in fugitive slaves and Jews in Nazi Germany and other such folks.

I have no clue why such fuckin' cowards would think that they would ever earn my respect for their judgment or example. And that is often why such cowards many times want to compel my will, because they lack faith and confidence in their ability to appeal to my conscience because they lack real faith and confidence in their own ideas and thinking and purposes and conscience that they have not ever really taken seriously in their own lives. And that is the essence of cowardice, which is why I so often and freely call it out as so.

And, in the meantime, many people will not listen to you. And they will fight your purposes, even if they are good, solely because you tried to impose it upon them. Most people are like this, at some level. Though mature adults will only fight the things that really matter to them and merely quietly resist or give very little real energy to the things that you try to compel them to do. Ambitious people may try to take your purposes seriously. But, often, even not them.

I don't know what to tell people. Either you have a good idea and more people will take it seriously or you do not. And if noone likes your idea, you might take seriously that perhaps it is a bad one.

In the meantime, fundamentally, my life is my own. It is not yours. It is not now, nor will it ever be.

That's what bothers me about that Clinton campaign. Hillary Clinton has just not gotten this straight yet. Barack Obama understands it better, I think. Though I do think that someone ought to help out those Iraqis given that we started that whole goddamn mess. If I had my druthers, within reason, everyone who wanted to stand down and not take up that mission would be allowed to, and the only people who would go do it would be those who volunteered for it. But I don't have my druthers. And, in the meantime, people are getting killed and we have something to do with it.

Even though I opposed this goddamned war, up front. I'm just not lame and cowardly enough to say, "I know my fellow Americans supported this war in droves and now they just want to bail after they started this whole goddamned mess when things are getting hot, like the little bitches they are, so I guess you guys can fuck off." I just can't bring myself to say that with a straight face and pretend like I'm going to wake up the next morning and feel good about myself or about my country.

If people don't want to pitch in, I say let them. I'm still trying to get straight, myself, about how and when I might be able/willing to sign up for military service in a world that I am already frustrated with for not respecting my own priorities enough, but where I feel genuine responsibility to its purposes, these days, including to that war. But goddamn it if I am not going to sign up for one more goddamn thing where people have the fuckin' gaul to pretend that my life is not my own and is something for them to manipulate for their own purposes. I'm fuckin' tired of it. And military service is a whole load of it. So I gotta get myself prepared for that, mentally. And I just have to figure out logistics for how that might happen, assuming I'm still up for it.

In the meantime, I want a life like Leslie's. I want a life that is my own. Noone else's. I want a life that I direct and that is not constantly looking to someone else to give me permission to live it as I see fit. And I am tired of having to defend the right to live that kind of life.



Thanks, Leslie. For sharing a little bit of your life with me and with the world. And thanks for living a life that could give two shits about what I or anyone else thinks about it and is just for you and for noone else. Thanks for living that kind of life to remind me what it is about my own life I value, even with so many restrictions on it. Thanks for being some kind of true north for what a better, more independent life might look like. And how much genuine fun and creativity and more honest happiness is found in a life like that.

Did I mention...

...that I am thoroughly in love with Leslie Feist?

If you have not heard her cover of Ron Sexsmith's Secret Heart, I highly recommend it.

If you ever read this, Leslie, I would love to talk riffs and music and whatever the hell you want to talk about, sometime. But, mostly, I'd just love to know what those sexy little lips of yours feel like.

A little decency and wisdom from Bill Bradley

Andrew Sullivan offers us this wise observation by the last really decent man fucked over by the Clintons.

"The bigger the lie, the better the chance they think they’ve got. That’s been their whole approach. She’s going to lose a whole generation of people who got involved in politics believing it could be something different,"

- Bill Bradley on the Clintons.

What happens to people that they start to think about the world in this way? What happens to us to that we get so wrapped up in our own bullshit about ourselves that we'll sacrafice any honest principle in the name of that bullshit, and, in Hillary Clinton's case, in the name of power?

Who was the original guy, obsessed with power and with force as some kind of governing philosophy, who reasoned that the Big Lie was the one most likely to be believed and secure power? I bet you know. If you don't, you should.

Here's his psychological profile from the U.S. Office of Strategic Services:

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it. [3]"

What happens in the hearts of people who lose track of themselves like this?

How incredibly sad for us. Especially for folks like Ms. Clinton. But, really, for all of us.

War is not the answer

Unless everyone is as big an asshole as you are.



Been there. Done that.

That pretty much sums it up. A bunch of fuckin' assholes.

I'm pretty sure we could do better.

Getting a little more honest with ourselves might help.

Holy shit

NY Gov Spitzer admits links to prostitution ring

I think this is the first time in my life that I have had some level of sympathy for Elliot Spitzer, who has otherwise seemed like an A-one asshole to me.

I would say live by the sword, die by the sword. Except I don't believe in most of the swords Elliot has either lived or died by. And I actually feel kind of sorry for the guy. I've made my share of mistakes in my life. So I know what it's like to be an asshole.

And his case certainly reflects the bankruptcy of regarding the law as a more solid foundation for determining good and bad in the world than it really is.

You know what? There has got to be hope in this world full of assholes. Because we're the only ones we got. And its the whole lot of us. No matter how much we may bullshit otherwise on this one.

Let's hope people cut this guy some slack.

How low can we go?

The era of ugly campaigning must come to an end.

Righteous clamor

Samantha Powers and Morton Abramowitz, of the Century Foundation, seem to have a confidence in "righteous clamor" that I lack.

A Broken System

From their column:

"The international system is broken, at least when it comes to Africa. The Darfur death toll may as yet pale when compared with Rwanda's, but if 800,000 Darfurians were to be murdered next week, neither the states individually nor the Security Council as a whole would be prepared to muster a speedy and robust response. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a crisis in Africa -- no matter how heavy the prospective death toll -- that would generate the consensus needed not merely to feed civilians but to save them.

There is a moral and political void in the world when it comes to coping with catastrophes in Africa -- a void that will not be filled by reforming the Security Council. The problem is the states that make up the council. Darfur shows that dedicated advocacy can move democracies to denounce atrocities and provide generous humanitarian help. What the earnest advocacy rarely does is propel the powerful to stop the killing. For that to happen, righteous clamor must reach a high enough pitch that politicians in democratic states are persuaded to do a difficult thing: take domestic political risks in pursuit of polices that do not serve their immediate interests, that can be financially costly and that provide no clear - cut exit strategies."

Part of this problem is political will. But, largely, this is a problem of an American government and American people that have now been burned by humanitarian adventures in foreign lands and a world community more gun-shy for the whole experience. The whole adventure, as illustrated by the coordination of the U.N. intervention in Lebanon, was already going to be a logistical nightmare. When people have to put the lives of their countrymen and women on the line, they need some assurances that it's not a suicide mission, that others are going to shoulder the burden with them, and that the people being saved are going to be somewhat grateful and support their efforts rather than the protracted mess we face in Iraq, today.

The truth is that folks of the West always want their cake and eat it too. Iraq is a terrible war for oil, liberals argue, but trust us when we say that intervening in Sudan is all about the people.

Yeah, cynicism kind of cuts both ways. You spend 5 years tearing down the motivations of people intervening in Iraq, kind of puts you in a tough spot when you're looking for support on Sudan.

I guess that's what really fucks us up in the West.

We spend so much time taking for granted each other and our mutual efforts necessary to tackle important problems like Iraq and Sudan, that when we fuck it all up with all of our bullshitting and pressuring and manipulating and otherwise fucking each other over, we look up from all of that dust and say stupidly to ourselves:

"Why doesn't anyone want to help me?"

Maybe it's because we're such fuckin' assholes, you think?

Yeah, I think.

And being assholes is not something that righteous clamor is going to get us over.

Getting honest with ourselves is the only real option.

Either that or get used to genocide, assholes. In fact, look forward to one once you pull our troops out of Iraq, righteous clamoring ones.

Your choice.

Oh the nobility of it all. It just about breaks my heart.

I'm so sorry

I am so tired of the bullshit apologies meant to cover for the frail, bullshit feelings of some weak-hearted bully trying to be the fuckin' Commander-in-Chief, for goodness fuckin' sakes. If this is some kind of bullshit tactic by the Obama campaign to generate sympathy, I'm going to join a nunnery.

Hillary Clinton is both that tough and that frail, apparently.

Or that just that full of shit.

I vote for full of shit.

It's the only consisent explanation given the entirety of her campaign. Oh, and we're electing her because George Bush is such a big fuckin' liar, remember?

Can I ask something here?

Is there any way that I could elect someone who isn't full of shit to be President of the United States?

Oh, wait, there is. I could elect Barack Obama or John McCain. And even then, I have to deal with a whole other load of horse manure, just less of it.

As it turns out, if you take Hillary's campaign seriously, there really is only one other alternative to Mr. Obama. And it isn't Hillary Clinton.

You know why this process is so difficult? Because we're such fuckin' assholes. Who can't have an honest fuckin' conversation if it fuckin' hit us in our big fuckin' heads. And why can't we have an honest conversation? Because we're such fuckin' assholes to one another. And why won't we stop being such fuckin' assholes? Because we keep pretending like the world will fall apart if we start getting more honest and stop being such fuckin' assholes.

And Hillary Clinton is our queen.

The question is, will we be so fuckin' stupid to make her our President?

This is why this debate matters

Afghan president calls for end to forced marriage

It is the most beautiful of ironies that it takes an Afghan president, the leader of a newly liberalized nation, to teach the most mature democracy in the world the most important lesson that liberal democracy has to offer.

This lesson is only complicated to those of us who take it for granted.

To those like Hamid Karzai, this is what all that sacrifice was for.

Sorry Samantha

It's bullshit when idealistic people get fucked just because they have an honest moment.

It's bullshit when idealistic people get fucked at all. It sucks when anyone gets fucked, is the truth.

Maybe we should stop fucking people so much (except when they want to be fucked, that is).

Just a thought.

Why liberty matters

It is so clear to me, now, how abuses of power have taken place and why liberty has been taken so lightly.

Power can be rationalized to solve any problem. And as long as people become attached to the idea that it will solve that problem, any problem, they will defend its use, even if it is not responsible for solving the problem, even if it does not, in fact, solve the problem, and even when it often causes the problem or makes the problem far worse.

It is the ultimate version of post hoc ergo propter hoc. False cause.

And it has plagued humanity from its beginning.

Modern students of history must always wonder why it took so long for humanity to get this figured out well enough to finally create governments that took liberty seriously. Liberal democracies.

And it was because power could and was and is forever rationalized to solve every problem where well-meaning people rationalize its use, even if it causes innumerable cases of unnecessary tragedy in the process.

And it is because it can forever be rationalized to do so.

And as long as our fears rather than our self-confidence dominates, our cowardice instead of our courage, we will forever be lost in this ugly cycle.

Except that we don't stay stuck.

The one real saving grace for humanity is that we figure it out. We always get out of this ugly cycle, though usually only after much tragedy takes places.

We are a foolish and unfortunate lot. Humanity. And much of it is our own doing.

And our failure to take responsibility for our own undoing has been the bane of humanity since long before civilization.

And the one central value that has most moved us forward is our capacity to take that responsibility and any real progress on our parts is and always has been supported by our liberty to do so.

And it is perfectly clear, to anyone taking note of the our most recent history relative to our more distant past, that liberty is what has made the difference.

And liberty will be our saving grace today, as it has always been. Because it gives us the opportunity to learn, to make mistakes and move on, and to live lives where we are loved and belong and where we love others and help them belong.

It is our freedom that makes us great. And it is our freedom that allows us to learn the lessons that move humanity forward.

And that's why liberty matters.