Israel and Palestine and what it says about what assholes we are

I've not been inspired by any story for this post. The situation between Israel and Palestine actually looks pretty bleak, right now, like every other fuckin' situation the world faces as long we rationalize what hateful pricks we are. The most recent poll I saw in the International Herald Tribune says that a plurality of Palestinians currently support violence over negotiations to resolve the situation between these two countries.

I do want Palestinians to know that though I think war is a futile way to resolve that conflict, that, if I really believed that it was the only viable way out of that situation and Palestinians would take no other route, I would not cry as Israelis fuckin' wiped out as many motherfuckers as they would need to to finally end that goddamn conflict. You make me choose, I choose Israel and you give me no other choice, I will choose your death over the death of innocent Israelis. I don't pretend like there is moral equivalency in that conflict. Israelis don't intentionally kill civilians. I just read a poll that says that Palestinians do support the assholes who intentionally target civilians. So, if that is is the only choice you leave me, sorry but you're going to fuckin' die.

Having said that, I don't think that is either a viable or a better way to resolve things. Nor do I want to see one Palestinian die, is the truth. Nor any Israelis. A peace process is the only way out to anyone rationale.

And there is only one thing that blocks up that process: all the fuckin' fear and hate between these people.

That is what has inspired this post.

You know what is responsible for the world going to fuckin' hell in a handbasket, lately? It's not the sin. It's not the greed. It's not even the power, necessarily. Power, like money, and like most things, can be used for good.

None of those are really the problem. The problem is all the fuckin' hate and fear. Power definitely accelerates all that bullshit. But it's the hate and the fear that is the root of most of our problems. Power is often both a function of that and the way that some people try to spread it, sadly, hoping to eliminate, futily, its source.

The reason why the Israelis and the Palestinians can't make a deal is because all of the bloodshed that they keep engaging in, a fresh round each day, it seems, means for an awful lot of hate and fear between these people. Palestinians aren't holding out for a better land deal because they really want more land. They're holding out because they don't trust this country that occupies them and they're not ready to stop killing Israelis in revenge for the death and hardship they've suffered. And Israelis who won't pony up to the peace table are not holding out for control over these little strips off their borders. They are holding out because they don't trust that Palestinians will stop killing innocent Israelis and because they want to kill as many Palestinians that they can in the name of that mistrust until the end of time.

That conflict and never has been about land. It's always been about the fear and hate.

And as I watch a political period where I have to listen to yet one more excuse for why people won't give up the fear and the hate and the ugliness that animates political life and their own lives, I am reminded of what has always bothered me about that conflict and why it has always symbolized for me the stupidity of humanity.

The truth is that if Palestinians and Israelis really wanted a peace deal, they could have one tomorrow, or be well on their way. They could sit down, commit themselves to the process, find a workable solution, find ways to negotiate all negotiable concerns, and go home with a peace deal.

They don't have one today for one reason, fundamentally, and one reason only.

Too many people among both peoples would rather hold onto and be bound up in their fear and hate than a solution. They would rather more innocents and not-so-innocents die than face themselves honestly and their responsibility in all of those deaths. They would rather hold on to and rationalize their fear and hate than find a way through that leads to less fear, hate, ugliness, and, most importantly, less killing and dying over this cause that killing and dying will not, or ever, resolve.

People all over the world feel this way. Liberals and conservatives. Sunnis and Shias. Black and white. Muslims and the West. All over the world people hate one another. And then they proceed to rationalize why it's the right thing to do. The moral thing to do. The smart thing to do. The decent thing to do. The good thing to do. The Christian thing to do. The Jewish thing to do. The Muslim thing to do. The liberal thing to do. The conservative thing to do. The whatever-the-fuck-you-want-to-insert-here-to-rationalize-your-hatefulness-and-shittiness thing to do.

It actually always has been that way. It's the human thing to do, is the truth. It's been responsible for such monuments to humanity as the Holocaust, Communism, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the crucifixion of Jesus, much of Imperialism and various hegemonies in the world, and just about every major tragedy that has ever befallen humanity that occurred at the hands of people.

And, right now, at this very moment, we all get to watch as the entire fucking world rationalizes the very impulses that animate that godforsaken bloodbath between Israel and Palestine and every ugly impulse that has befallen the world.

All in the name of fear and hate.

Don't you love it? It makes you want to spring out of bed, in the morning.

And, fundamentally, this period is not at all about choosing between conservative or liberal, Israel or Palestine, or between any groups that have sworn vengeance on one another.

Fundamentally, this period is about choosing between courage or fear. Love or hate.

Same as it ever was.

I've watched people rationalize the hate and fear side of this argument (as if there really is a legitimate argument between these two). I've watched us rationalize our ugliness. I've watched people make every excuse in the book for why their fear and hate was more important than what was good for everyone.

I've watched them do it. Our politics has taken a tailspin with it. Even Obama sounds off for American workers hateful about some Indian getting their jobs, these days, while he talks about the new politics.

And the truth is that all of this bullshit is about getting something for me because I could give two shits about anyone else and the truth is that I fear and hate a lot of those other motherfuckers, even if that attitude is stupid and self-destructive and means that everyone gets fucked in the process.

The truth is they don't care. Because it involves more courage than they have offer to look inside their hearts and say, "Maybe all of this bullshit in the world is because of me. Maybe it's not all the people I hate. Maybe it's me. Maybe I have responsibility in this mess we've created in the world. And maybe all of my excuses for why I do it to make the world better has not actually resulted in making the world better because I'm too much of an asshole to really care if its doing any goddamn good for anyone, including myself, or not. Because if you make me choose between having that kind of courage and holding onto my fear and hate and bile and ugliness, I'd rather have the fear and hate and bile and ugliness. Because it's easier. And I'm too much of a puss and a coward to choose different."

This political period is not about the good versus the bad people. This political period is about all of us fucking ourselves with all this hateful bullshit swilling around like it doesn't matter.

This is why the Nazis and the Communists were able to do what they did. Because they calculated, correctly, that people would often rather do that, short term, than have the courage to choose a more honest route.

And they were right. Short term. Tragically.

Because the truth is that we are a cowardly and hateful lot, often. And if people have to die so that we can hold onto our fear and hate, then so be it, we reason. It's just too goddamn hard to imagine different.

And so it goes. On and on and on and on and on.

The trick is, and our only fuckin' saving grace, is that there is no gold at the end of that rainbow. It doesn't exist. There is no end to it. There is no progress, that's for goddamn sure. There's nothing. Just a lot more fear and hate and lot more tragedy, and nobody better for it. Nobody.

Apparently, we are all OK with that. That's why we all just keep nodding along with the chorus, on this one.

Sometimes I can hardly imagine what a ugly bunch of sheep I have to inhabit this world with. They force me to, you might say. I certainly can't go anywhere else.

But for some inconceivable reason, I don't hate them. OK, sometimes. But, generally, I love this stupid, hateful lot. Why? Because what the fuck good would it be for me to add my fear and hate and stupidity and ugliness to that mix? What, so more people can die in its name? So more people can hurt their neighbors in the name of their ugly bullshit? So I can suffer with that shit in my heart like all of the assholes who make all of that available for you and me?

No thank you. I can't imagine a bigger waste of my time and my life than all of that nonsense.

And so it goes.

Palestinians kill Israelis. Israelis kill Palestinians. A fresh round. Then a fresh round. Then a fresh round. And then another fresh round.

And it never fuckin' ends until enough people say, "Enough of the goddamn fear and hate. Enough."

A little over 2000 years ago, this really decent guy, who perhaps thought too well of himself, who said the exact same thing to the people of his time. The authorities, the rule-makers who he had been criticizing that whole time, they killed him in terribly gruesome way. It took a hundred years for the Romans who had killed him to figure out that he was largely right.

And that was the essence of his message.

Love they neighbor as thyself.

Pluck the beam from your own eye before you pluck the splinter from your neighbor's eye.

Give relief to those who need it, especially those who are easily neglected or excluded.

And forgive.

And over 2000 years later, we still kill one another, imprison one another, fear one another, hate one another, and hurt one another all in the name of not having to face up to this fundamental truth of life which leaves us facing too much pain and bitterness and a more honest self-assessment to practice that kind of courage and decency in our lives.

Until enough people are killed and hurt, that is. And then we always begin to figure out that maybe all of that ugliness was not what it was cracked up to be. Maybe it doesn't do any good for us, after all.

Which it doesn't, of course. We're all just too goddamned stubborn and stupid to face up on this one.

Until things get so bad, that - though we always have a choice; just ask Hitler - most people stop being foolish shitheads and choose better.

Fundamentally, that is the choice we face today. And everything else is more bullshit. And bullshit can only take us so far.

And dat's all she wrote, folks.

Here's to less bullshit and more honesty and decency. Because the bullshit is getting really fucking deep, these days. And I don't think I have money in the budget for new shoes.

What the fuck is wrong with us?

Who will blink first in Obama-Clinton war of nerves?

This is the same goddamned party that went into a hissy fit, rightly, about their candidate winning the popular vote, but losing the electoral vote?

These two are ridiculous. They act like what really matters, here, is what happens to either of them and that whether Florida and Michigan voters get a say in this election counts for shit.

If Floridians don't want to take part, so be it. If Michigan doesn't think it can do it in time and isn't interested in trying, so be it.

But Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton acting like what really matters is what happens to them and not what happens to the people they serve really is the most serious problem in politics.

I don't mean that in a populist, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore," "Who will take care of the people?", what's wrong with politics is that they don't listen to the will of the people kind of way. That critique is amorphous and bullshit.

I just mean, each citizen deserves a vote. If they don't want to exercise that freedom, so be it. But it's not up to Obama and Clinton to decide if and when these voters get enfranchised. It should be up to them.

This is the same party that went into hysterics when George Bush won the 2000 election without the popular vote.

Goes to show. Any rationalization for power will do. I can't trust any of this lot, goddamnit. At least not as long as they think that politics as usual - meaning power at all costs - is a winning formula.

Surely there is more to democracy than all of this.

If not, who really gives a shit?

This is going to be a long election

Obama Ties Economic Woes to Iraq War

Is this really what Barack Obama learned at Harvard?

I have a feeling he may have paid too much for his education.

What Reverend Wright says about us

Surprisingly, Ann Coulter actually has a decent criticism of the Obama speech that gives me insight into why conservatives are so pissed off.

Throw Grandma Under the Train

From that column:

"As an authentic post-racial American, I will not patronize blacks by pretending Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is anything other than a raving racist loon. If a white pastor had said what Rev. Wright said -- not about black people, but literally, the exact same things -- I think we'd notice that he's crazier than Ward Churchill and David Duke's love child. (Indeed, both Churchill and the Rev. Wright referred to the attacks of 9/11 as the chickens coming 'home to roost.')

Imagine a white pastor saying: 'Racism is the American way. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run. ... We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God.'

Imagine a white pastor calling Condoleezza Rice, 'Condoskeezza Rice.'

Imagine a white pastor saying: 'No, no, no, God damn America -- that's in the Bible for killing innocent people! God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human! God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme!'

We treat blacks like children, constantly talking about their temper tantrums right in front of them with airy phrases about black anger. I will not pat blacks on the head and say, 'Isn't that cute?' As a post-racial American, I do not believe 'the legacy of slavery' gives black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered.

Obama tried to justify Wright's deranged rants by explaining that 'legalized discrimination' is the 'reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up.' He said that a 'lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families.'

That may accurately describe the libretto of 'Porgy and Bess,' but it has no connection to reality. By Rev. Wright's own account, he was 12 years old and was attending an integrated school in Philadelphia when Brown v. Board of Education was announced, ending 'separate but equal' schooling.

Meanwhile, at least since the Supreme Court's decision in University of California v. Bakke in 1978 -- and obviously long before that, or there wouldn't have been a case or controversy for the court to consider -- it has been legal for the government to discriminate against whites on the basis of their race.

Consequently, any white person 30 years old or younger has lived, since the day he was born, in an America where it is legal to discriminate against white people. In many cases it's not just legal, but mandatory, for example, in education, in hiring and in Academy Award nominations.

So for half of Rev. Wright's 66 years, discrimination against blacks was legal -- though he never experienced it personally because it existed in a part of the country where he did not live. For the second half of Wright's life, discrimination against whites was legal throughout the land.

Discrimination has become so openly accepted that -- in a speech meant to tamp down his association with a black racist -- Obama felt perfectly comfortable throwing his white grandmother under the bus. He used her as the white racist counterpart to his black racist 'old uncle,' Rev. Wright.

First of all, Wright is not Obama's uncle. The only reason we indulge crazy uncles is that everyone understands that people don't choose their relatives the way they choose, for example, their pastors and mentors. No one quarrels with idea that you can't be expected to publicly denounce your blood relatives.

But Wright is not a relative of Obama's at all. Yet Obama cravenly compared Wright's racist invective to his actual grandmother, who 'once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.'

Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama's grandmother -- who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school -- has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has.

Unlike his 'old uncle' -- who is not his uncle -- Obama had no excuses for his grandmother. Obama's grandmother never felt the lash of discrimination! Crazy grandma doesn't get the same pass as the crazy uncle; she's white. Denounce the racist!

Fine. Can we move on now?

No, of course, not. It never ends. To be fair, Obama hinted that we might have one way out: If we elect him president, then maybe, just maybe, we can stop talking about race."

The irony, of course, is that Ann Coulter has been written off many times by the left as a raving loon. And the truth is that Ann Coulter's anger and Jeremiah Wright's anger and all of the anger that has boiled over during this speech has derived from the same source: a lot of angry, hateful people trying to rationalize why they are all so angry and hateful. It has been the calling card of the last 8 years of politics and too much of daily life. How do I know this? Because I'm a nice guy whose not all angry and hateful, most of the time. And I've had to put up with the same shit that Obama is having to put up with now as all these shitheads try to rationalize why they are all such angry, hateful assholes.

The bottom line is that there is no excuse for why people are such angry, hateful assholes. They just are.

Everyone has pain in their lives. Everyone has a million reasons to hate and be angry at the world. Everyone. No goddamn exception on that.

People with more courage face up to that, let it go, and move on with their lives. Everyone else dwells in it, marinates in it, and looks for a million fuckin' excuses for why they have every right to be a shithead.

It's dysfunctional and foolish. We just keep doing it because it's easier than being honest with ourselves about our behavior.

And that rationalization has animated much of this political period.

I learned this lesson the hard way after my last major break-up. I was in a lot of pain. I was missing Brandi in a serious way. We had both been in a lot of pain, together, after a 4 1/2 year relationship where we fought like cats and dogs and passionately as we loved one another and brought the whole thing to a crashing halt one month before September 11th. I was in a lot of pain, I was hurting and angry, and on a trip to Disneyworld with my family, I took it out on my brothers and sisters and family, something I've regretted ever since. Truth be told, we were all shitheads to one another that weekend. My parents were trying to behave. But all of my brothers and sisters and me were fighting with one another, that weekend, like we did when we were kids. It was pathetic is what it was.

And I learned an important lesson, that weekend, about pain and anger. I went to 3 therapists after that trip. I studied Zen Buddhism (which is a really helpful practice for dealing with emotional pain, by the way, if you ever consider giving it a try). I read every psychology and relationship book I could get my hands on, because I was still trying to win Brandi back and trying to be the best person I could be to do that.

The point is that we all can take a turn for being a shithead. But some people refuse to face up to the anger and the fear and the bitterness that dwells inside of them. Because it is painful. And it takes courage to deal with it and face up to it.

That's my experience and consistent with my studies. Anger and hatred and all of our worst impulses that have all of the most serious damage in the world are all a function of pain that people just have a hard time facing, both because they don't understand it, and also because it is painful and our emotional defenses are a temporary measure to give us breathing room from dealing with that pain in a world where our evolved instincts are designed to give us protection but not make choices for our learning, growing, thriving experiences in the world.

That's the point of forgiveness, and love, and compassion. It gives us respite from all of that pain and helps us see more clearly a world that is full of pain and the aggression that often, though not always, engenders it. That was the point for people like Abraham Maslow. The goal of human psychological learning curve is to deal with this pain more effectively so that we are not constantly taking out the aggression found in those emotional defenses on our friends, family, colleagues, and everyone around us. The reason why we need the courage to deal with our pain is because our emotional defenses are constantly hurting others and undermining our capacity for genuine connection with others.

All of the aggression that we have dealt in during this political period accelerates that problem and brings up those defenses in fiercer, more aggressive ways. Which both makes learning the lessons more difficult and which accelerates the aggression. Which leads to resistance and reprisals. Which accelerates the aggression. Which leads to resistance and reprisals. And on and on and on.

It's been an ugly spectacle to watch.

And the sad part is that all of this tough pretense is all in the name of cowardice to face up to that pain, anger, and bitterness, rather than accelerate all of that aggression and the emotional defenses that come with it.

We are such a foolish, cowardly lot, sometimes. Humanity.

And our one saving grace is that all of our foolishness has consequence. And noone wants to keep dealing with the ugly consequences forever. That was why liberal values took hold during the Enlightenment. And it is why there is only one logical way forward during this period. And it is not the foolish and cowardly route of force that we have been taking. In fact, to anyone not engaged in emotional and otherwise defenses for that behavior, it is pretty obvious regress. And all of the consequences from that behavior are pretty obvious regress, too, for anyone not trying to defend this course.

It is undoubtedly clear to me how the Nazis did their damage, now, after much disbelief, as a kid growing up and studying that period, that an entire nation of people would follow such ugliness. But now I understand why. Fear, anger, hate, and bitterness animate much of many peoples' lives. Power is a seductive fantasy for resolving all of that ugliness for those who have lacked the courage to face up to it in their hearts.

And it would will out if it were not for the fact that it goes nowhere. But the fact that it leaves peoples' lives in shambles is why it cannot continue. Eventually, the pain becomes less scary than who we have become.

And what we have become is not progress, that's for sure. It's nothing to be proud of, really. It just is.

And, if we want to be better, we will have to give this up, at some point.

There is no "or else," really. We would continue to get worse, of course, if we didn't choose differently. But the truth is that most people want to be better, even as they slide in bad directions. And the truth is that, very much like today, the world does kind of go to shit when we don't.

And noone wants that.

Maybe courage isn't so tough, after all.

Sometimes the progress is a little stupefying

Scooter Libby loses law license

I just watched Age of Innocence, again, last night. There's so much in that movie, that I had to watch it again to get it all.

It's a story of high class aristocrats in New York at the beginning of the 20th century.

And that's what Washington looks like to me, these days.

People with too much power and too much money constantly obsessing about whose got more and who they are going to exclude from the club.

It's a club I'd never want to belong to and would never felt like I really belonged if I did.

And that's the kind of government that we've settled for.

The progress is a little stupefying, isn't it?

Why are we so obsessed with how tough we are when it accomplishes so little?

For the same reason that Mouhmad Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro, Wen Jiabao, the Myanmar military junta, and the same reason that Saddam Hussein believed in the same.

Because we're scared. And our fear, as it always has, fucks with our vision and distorts our outlook on the world.

I guess one thing that I can be thankful for in this world is that I don't live afraid like that.

Ironic, huh? And completely predictable.

Progress hardly comes with power. Go ask Adolph Hitler.

You better fuckin' believe it, baby

Nice guys actually do finish first, Harvard study suggests

And for the cynics, I've got two words for you: Warren Buffet.

Which reminds me. Have you ever seen Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence? It is brilliant. And gorgeous. Not one sex scene in that movie. And, yet, it is scorching hot. The passion in that movie. Holy shit. Powerful. That's the kind of love I want. Wow.

Check it out when you get a chance. Make it a date movie. And then go spend some quality time afterwards.

What to do with Iraq

The Economist has an excellent review of the situation in Iraq and what the prospective Presidential candidates might do about it.

Iraq five years on

They subtly point to an important matter for Democrats to attend to. Whether they know it or not, they are vulnerable on this issue, right now.

Americans do want to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible. Of course. Who doesn't. But what Americans are loathe to do more than seeing their friends and family dying is seeing their friends and family die in vain because we did not offer them an opportunity to make this situation right.

The greatest tragedy of this war is not that we engaged in it. The greatest tragedy of this war is that we did it in the name of liberal democracy, all the while ignoring our strongest liberal values. It must look like absurdity to the Iraqis and many people watching this effort around the world. The greatest tragedy of this war is that we have engaged such a high-stakes, life and death effort and we cannot have an honest debate and discussion about it and what we should do about it, the self-righteous posturing, pressuring, leveraging, and otherwise illiberal practices have so overwhelmed our more liberal commitments.

And, as a consequence, everyone gets wrapped up in their own bullshit. It's really the only alternative to the absence of an honest and open liberal democratic discussion and debate. Instead, what you have is partisans that swim in their own waters, reinforce their own prejudices and shortsighted notions of the war and world, and distort the more honest debate and discussion, leveraging and bullying their way through the discussion in lieu of honest, humble thought and discussion.

As a consequence, partisans and all of us lose track of peoples' more honest feelings and thoughts on the matter.

Five years ago, when this war was started, it was conventional wisdom that opposing a sitting President in this war was political suicide, since it meant opposing the large majorities of people who supported the President. It was such political suicide that very few members of the House or Senate who might have had private reservations about the matter were willing to voice them or slow or halt the drumbeat of war so that a fuller, more open, honest debate and discussion could occur about the war. Senator Hillary Clinton was one of those Senators who remained quiet for fear of rousing that electorate.

That was five years ago.

Within the last year or two, that tide has changed. Now the conventional wisdom is that the war was a mistake and that pullout should occur as soon as possible to avoid anymore unnecessary tragedy. The pendulum has swung. And will swing many more times before our lifetimes and, likely, the lifetimes of all people who have the opportunity to live on this earth, have ended. People have grown war-weary, liberal news outlets warn us. We need to end this ill-conceived war.

But, like the previous conventional wisdom and every conventional wisdom before and after that, it does not reveal deeper truths about peoples' aspirations and how they feel about this war.

Americans do not want to see more soldiers die, that is true. But neither do they want to see Iraqis slaughtered to wipe our consciences. Some will rationalize that way. But it will not be honest. We know that we have a choice in the matter. And we are responsible for that choice, no matter which way we turn with this decision, more or less tragic, which is all we can hope for, at this point.

And reality always has a way of bumping into our conventional wisdom and giving it a spin in another direction.

The reality in Iraq that the current round of distractions in our democratic conversation about this mess is avoiding is that the Iraqi government is not ready, yet, to handle it's own security. And it faces several formidable foes, all of whom could overwhelm its capacity, even if just for some time, and cause the deaths of many, many Shias and Sunnis, primarily, but also Kurds and others who stand in their way.

The Iraqi government, military, law enforcement and other brave people trying to bring some safety and security to the lives of average Iraqis, and the representatives in parliament and of the warring groups who are trying to negotiate a democratic peace and governing arrangement for the country, will tell the United States when they do not need the help from American troops.

The Iraqis are not children. They are a fledgling democracy of people trying to create a self-determining future for themselves. But the challenges they are facing are overwhelming. They are overwhelming for us, and we live thousands of miles away in relative safety. We can only imagine how challenging they are for Iraqis.

They need our help. If there are Americans or others who do not want to offer help, I think it would be wise policy to let them step down, honorably and with no guilt or pressure or other kinds of manipulation to make them stay. And, perhaps, it is time for people like me to take more seriously the idea of stepping up and pitching in. I'm trying to figure out how that might best fit into commitments I have already made in my life, at this point. I've made a commitment to this school and these kids I work with and I feel a sense of responsibility to them. To be honest, I'm a little nervous about committing myself to a war that so many people are treating like a lost cause, at this point, and I do not want to lose my life in vain, either. But maybe it is something I need to give more serious thought to, at this point, given that I believe in the cause.

Iraqis need the help of our military, right now. I wish they didn't. It would mean a lot fewer of our men and women dying in that effort. But they do. And when they don't, they will say so. Because the last thing that any Iraqis want, right now, is for Americans to determine their fates or to have boots on their soil unnecessarily. That really is the trick for everyone. How to get Americans home safely without unnecessarily sacrificing the lives of thousands of Iraqis, who have clearly borne the greatest sacrifices and greatest number of sacrifices in this effort.

If people don't want to help or do not see it as worthwhile, I understand that. But the Iraqis need our help, someone's help, right now. And those who want to pitch in need to be able to do it. And the American military, as an institution, along with diplomatic efforts where they will be useful, of course, is the best situated to offer the hand up they need.

Imposing democracy on Iraqis has not worked. Pressuring the Iraqis to come to an agreement has clearly not worked. Pressuring for a pullout has not and will not work. Pressuring their neighbor, Iran, to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons has not worked. The whole mess has been so clearly counterproductive to anyone not defending it that it is hard for me to believe that grown ups are responsible for that policy except that my experience is that those who engage in it, first and foremost, do not want to take responsibility for its failure or any failure that they think might jeopardize their power.

It is the logic of power. If power is the key to my goals, many people reason and have always reasoned, I must have that power above and beyond the responsibility that gives that power legitimacy because taking such responsibility means jeapordizing the power that I need to accomplish my goals, even if that power is unproductive or counterproductive in achieving those goals. And this war has been one long object lesson in why liberal democracy, as a form of governance, is so important to counter and check that logic.

We should thank Baron de Montesquiue for that. And Voltaire. And John Stuart Mill. And Lord Acton. And George Orwell. And James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. And John Locke and Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau and the whole lot, of course. But the greatest tragedy of the 21st century is that all of these people worked so hard to make liberal democracy available to us, only to watch us take its values and institutions for granted and rationalize our illiberal impulses in the name of that liberal democracy. And, all the while, fighting a war in the name of liberal and democratic values that we persistently denigrate as too soft and weak for us to take them seriously. It is the strangest, as well as ugliest and stupidest, spectacle for anyone in the world to bear witness to.

And the irony is that Democrats who are sure that they were right about this war, at the outset, many of whom were right that danger lurked ahead and that cooler heads should have debated, discussed, and planned out, better, how they were going to engage this war, if they were going to engage it at all, are watching that advantage slip away as they rally their troops for a pullout that most Americans are not convinced, as much as they would like to see the troops come home, can occur without serious consequences. And after such an event might occur, all of us will watch and have to live with the consequences that this war has to offer.

The truth is that doing the right thing really is the best option. That doesn't mean that we don't take the worse options, now and again. It just means that the best option is the one that generally brings the best consequences for our lives. We are all of us, with no exception, subject to taking the worse options, now and again. It's foolish, to be sure. And it has consequences we don't always like. But it just is. It's a function of being a human being with limited wisdom who doesn't always know what is best. And the best option is always the more honest one, within reason.

And the right thing, in this situation, is to honor our commitment to Iraqis and the newly democratic Iraqi government whom didn't ask for this war and need our help until they can handle the situation on their own.

I think we can handle that. And I need to figure out how to put my money where my mouth is on this one. My grandmother, a long-time Republican, and a father of a friend of mine, a Vietnam war vet, and many friends dissuaded me from signing up earlier in this war. Perhaps that was a mistake. All I know is that the Iraqis need our help.

And Democrats need to get figured out that this impulse, and not their more cynical political advantage and strategizing, is the real impulse that animates the American people. The beautiful thing about a liberal democracy is that when you have adopted a poor idea or policy or course of action, noone else has to follow you down that road if you're not going to listen to their concerns. We still behave more illiberal than our truer motivations betray. And we still have doubts about how good of people we really want to be, often, I think.

But, at the bottom of all of that, noone will feel good if American soldiers come home and Iraq erupts into a bloodbath because of that. We can try to rationalize it with all of the sanctimony that followed Vietnam. But it will be bullshit. And, this time, we will know better.

Because then there will be Sudan. And Lebanon. And Gaza. And Kenya. And Myanmar. And Tibet. And Taiwan. And Kosovo. And Mozambique. And a million other places in the world where we will be presented with the choice about how we might deal with a claim of freedom or self-determination or a totalitarian regime oppressing or killing or mass-murdering its civilians or some violent threat that we cannot sit idly by and watch terrorize a population without some kind of effective response.

What do we do with Iraq? That question is bigger than just this immediate war. It will offer us insight into what to do in a million future situations. Which is why it deserves an honest debate and discussion, and not just sanctimonious leveraging for advantage in the moment. This is not the last war we will fight. If there is any lesson to be learned from Vietnam, that is the one. And we need an honest debate and discussion to sort these questions out and to offer us some lessons and answers and some good faith to work with one another during this war and in all of our efforts after the fact.

It's not our military power or our political muscle or our economic largess that make America great. That's got it backwards. What makes America great is our capacity work together with one another, honestly, in common cause. And that is what makes our military power and our political muscle and our economic largess available when we need them.

And that is what America needs, right now. It needs for us to remember that working together with one another in common cause, and having the freedom to step away from that commitment, if we you so choose, is what makes us great. And what makes people great, when they so choose. That's what made America and the world great during World War II. It was the fact that we fought in common cause, and we did so for freedom, not for the right to impose our will on the world. Had we fought for that cause, we most assuredly would have lost. Because that was the cause that our enemy fought for, and he most assuredly lost that war.

What do we do with Iraq? I would suggest that the answer to that question is found a little deeper than we have been searching, thus far. A little deeper is where we find what is better in us, what is best in us. And that is where we will find the answer to this question.

And we will do it, better, with a little honest debate and discussion about the matter. Liberal values and liberal democracy really do offer us a better route. If only we will find the courage to take them seriously.

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.