The political class

I just happened to check out this discussion on Youtube, this morning. I hardly watch television, at all, anymore, it seems so mindless to me, much of the time.

And I have to say that this conversation, and many others I watched this morning, illustrates well that most, if not all people in the Beltway, are good, decent, often thoughtful, flawed people who have very strong opinions about matters that, often, they really do not know answers to.

Watching and reading about the war in Iraq, the most serious and consequential issue we face, right now, and listening to these very ambitious, opinionated people who have far fewer answers to such issues than they pretend to have has very much humbled my view of wisdom in these circles.

Power distorts so many policy discussions, since it is so frequently employed - either formally, in the form of government authority, or informally, in the form of pressure, leverage, or otherwise bullying rather than persuading others of differences - in ways that undermine an honest and practical discussion of how to solve problems.

The Iraq war is one of those problems.

When you take the propensity to leverage and rationalize power out of the equation, this situation becomes not nearly as complicated.

The Iraqis need security amidst a situation that America started, with large majorities of our people supporting this invasion.

American soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, and the Iraqi government say that the Iraqi troops are not ready to take over that responsibility.

American liberals, many of whom opposed this war, up front, want validation that they are right and conservatives are wrong that this war should not have taken place in the first place. They also want fewer American soldiers to die, as everyone does, obviously.

American conservatives, many of whom supported this war, up front - although, the truth is that many, many American, liberal, conservative, and otherwise, supported this war, up front; I know, because I opposed it - want validation that they were right and liberals were wrong that removing Saddam Hussein and other rationales employed for this war were worthy of the sacrifices made. They also want fewer American and Iraqis to die, as everyone does, obviously.

It is not that truth is found somewhere in between. The truth is that power distorts our ability to look at this situation more squarely, as various parties seek to rationalize their own claims on power and their notions that their use of it are more effective than they clearly are to any objective observer not trying to defend its use.

Leveraging the Iraqi government has clearly been ineffective and counterproductive, as has the leveraging of the Iranian government, and leveraging of domestic parties in the U.S.

Not only has it been ineffective and counterproductive, it has sent the message to Iraqis that when Americans say that we have come to liberate you to determine the fate of your own country, that we only mean that insofar as you do what we say - a clear contradiction in terms, if we could ever have the courage and honesty to face that contradiction, and a clear violation of our presumed commitment to Iraqi self-determination, if we could ever let go of the rationalization for power that has overtaken every other policy concern during this political period.

American political leaders and others need to talk with the Iraqi government and not at them. They need to ask them, and their security forces, in particular, and American security forces that are charged with that security detail, currently, and with preparing Iraqi forces for taking over those operations, what they need to take responsibility for these security operations. And they need to provide for that security, first, before any talk about leaving.

We need to cut out the bullshit, is the truth. We need stop pretending like we are having a more honest conversation than we are having. And we need to stop pretending that the bullshit leveraging is not distorting the conversation more than it clearly is, if and when we decide that we are going to face up to the failure of this strategy.

The truth is that none of the people at this roundtable know exactly what to do in Iraq. They talk confidently. They talk eloquently. They talk intelligently. Which is all well and good. But the truth is that they do not know. Nobody knows exactly.

But the terrain does become clearer the less the politics, the power strategies, obstruct the policy, the concern with solutions for serious problems.

In the meantime, this whole war and all of the politics we engage in, right now, becomes one long exercise in theater of the absurd.

It becomes a stage where everyone looks like a fool for acting like they have more answers than they do. Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us. Hubris. The arrogance of pretending that we have more final answers than we really have found. It afflicts every generation. And the hubris is found in the notion that somehow our generation has escaped it. When the truth is that no generation escapes it. Ever. We just, sometimes, hopefully, get closer to answers, the more we try. Sometimes. And if Paul Krugman is any indication, sometimes not, even when we try very hard.

I'm gonna go take a walk. And then do some lesson planning.

It is amusing thinking that at one point at my life all I ever wanted to do was be accepted by such people. Today, I am more aware of their shortcomings. And just kind of amused by them, frankly.

Let's hope such perspective might offer us better opportunities to end this war with honor, dignity, and a concern for the Iraqi people and not just our own self-righteous notions of How Things Are.

I think we owe the Iraqi people that.

Frederick Douglass and freedom

As I reflect, today, on the challenges to freedom, the waste laid by the stubborn unwillingness of those desperately rationalizing power, and the burdens that has created for my own life, as a teacher, I thought about the American slave turned civil rights leader, Frederick Douglass.

I thought about Douglass because he was a man who also passionately sought his own freedom and failed escape from slavery twice for seeking it (once from a brutal slavemaster, Edward Covey, whom Douglas was rented to for a year to break his spirit as a young teenager and undoubtedly offered up brutal abuse when Douglass was returned to him).

Douglass had this to say about the question of what whites in America should do with African Americans, that I think applies just as well to what any person should treat any other person:

"Everybody has asked the question. . .'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!"

There are exceptions to that principle, obviously. We can and should protect one another when we are facing imminent violence and look after one another when we face harm. There is much common sense on such questions.

But controlling one another is hardly noble. And doing so and claiming to celebrate freedom is a lie. And it is not a noble lie. It is the oldest and most pernicious ignoble lie, in fact.

And Frederick Douglass knew the fact of that lie in his life better than most of us alive today.

Big fuckin' joke

That pretty much sums up the stupidity of the political class, right now.

This process is a big fuckin' joke. And at least John Stewart is funny.

Getting honest

Andrew Sullivan points me in the direction of an excellent discussion of media and politics by James Fallows, of the Atlantic Monthly, from 1996.

Why Americans Hate the Media.

So many good highlights from this article:

"The discussion shows that are supposed to enhance public understanding may actually reduce it, by hammering home the message that issues don't matter except as items for politicians to fight over. Some politicians in Washington may indeed view all issues as mere tools to use against their opponents. But far from offsetting this view of public life, the national press often encourages it. As Washington-based talk shows have become more popular in the past decade, they have had a trickle-down effect in cities across the country. In Seattle, in Los Angeles, in Boston, in Atlanta, journalists gain notice and influence by appearing regularly on talk shows--and during those appearances they mainly talk about the game of politics.

...When ordinary citizens have a chance to pose questions to political leaders, they rarely ask about the game of politics. They want to know how the reality of politics will affect them--through taxes, programs, scholarship funds, wars. Journalists justify their intrusiveness and excesses by claiming that they are the public's representatives, asking the questions their fellow citizens would ask if they had the privilege of meeting with Presidents and senators. In fact they ask questions that only their fellow political professionals care about. And they often do so--as at the typical White House news conference--with a discourtesy and rancor that represent the public's views much less than they reflect the modern journalist's belief that being independent boils down to acting hostile.

The limited curiosity that elite reporters display in their questions is also evident in the stories they write once they have received answers. They are interested mainly in pure politics and can be coerced into examining the substance of an issue only as a last resort. The subtle but sure result is a stream of daily messages that the real meaning of public life is the struggle of Bob Dole against Newt Gingrich against Bill Clinton, rather than our collective efforts to solve collective problems.

The natural instinct of newspapers and TV is to present every public issue as if its 'real' meaning were political in the meanest and narrowest sense of that term--the attempt by parties and candidates to gain an advantage over their rivals. Reporters do, of course, write stories about political life in the broader sense and about the substance of issues--the pluses and minuses of diplomatic recognition for Vietnam, the difficulties of holding down the Medicare budget, whether immigrants help or hurt the nation's economic base. But when there is a chance to use these issues as props or raw material for a story about political tactics, most reporters leap at it. It is more fun--and easier--to write about Bill Clinton's 'positioning' on the Vietnam issue, or how Newt Gingrich is 'handling' the need to cut Medicare, than it is to look into the issues themselves."

Fallows' takes reporters to task for their pettiness and their focus on power at the expense of resolving critical public problems, which they deserve in a serious way, if that ABC News Democratic Debate illustrates anything at all.

But the truth is that Fallows lets citizens off the hook. The truth is that citizens not only consume politics like it is entertainment, they encourage this kind of behavior among journalist and among politicians, because it is easier for everyone, not just journalists, to play politics like a game than it is to engage the serious questions of what directions on serious issues will actually get us somewhere other than on-going power battles that go nowhere.

The same could be said of teachers. And students. And parents. Almost all of the citizens I have contact with, at some level. People are constantly trying to avoid the substance of life in favor of its cheaper alternatives. Schools have a million different ways that they undermine the substance of education. Terry Moe and John Chubb fault, rightly, I think, district bureaucracies for this tendency. But the truth is that it isn't just the district bureaucracy. It's everyone. Teachers and students, both, often avoid sustantive learning in favor of less substantive alternatives, at the university level as much as at the K-12 level. It's the single biggest fact of school life and political life that drives me up a fuckin' wall. And exactly why I'm seriously considering doing something else for a living.

Obviously we can do better than all of this.

What has really floored me and what I was not, in the least, prepared for before I left grad school, was how little people are willing or interested in engaging serious discussions about issues, engagement that takes differences seriously and considers them honestly as well as their alternatives, and thoughtfully reflecting on pathes that transcend our endless political and culture wars.

Most people are not terribly interested in such discussions, I am concerned and in my experience, often, because the discussions seem too difficult, the honesty is too much for them to handle, the thought too complex, and the obsession with power is too tempting an alternative to such engagement, no matter how much and how long throughout humanity's history it has always failed to resolve much of anything at all.

Humanity obviously has it in us. The truth is that most people don't really want to be better and engage more honestly much of the time, sadly, because they feel like its too hard, it's too much for them to handle, it's just not the expectation they want to have for themselves or for one another.

It could be. It needs to be. Because the alternatives are so fuckin' shitty and clearly counterproductive, if we'd just get honest about that fact.

But getting honest is what everyone is avoiding.

And yet that is the only way that any genuine progress lies.

We can do it. The question is will we do it, not can we do it.

And the verdict on that question is still out.

I sure as hell hope we make the right choice.

I think I see the problem

I'd like to see a world where we don't treat each other like such shit.

That's what Maslow and most psychologists mean when they talk about reducing aggression, dealing with control issues, stronger communication, deeper connection, etc.

The goal, obviously, everywhere, should be that we're treating each other better. And talking more honestly. And being more decent to one another.

Most people want the ability to treat others however the fuck they want to. Especially people they don't like or don't identify with or have demonized. And most people are always bottoming out their expectations for their lives, for how they get treated, and for how they treat others.

And every time I want to raise those expectations, I've got to deal with someone, somewhere, trying to find the problem with me having too high of expectations rather than being honest about those low expectations of themselves and of others.

And I have no interest in making people or trying to manipulate people into expecting more for themselves and from others. If we don't want to do that, if we want to settle for the shitty ways that we treat one another, today, and how we get treated, today, I say so be it. Leave me out of it. But so be it. You go on being treated like shit and treating others like shit, as long as you don't fuck with me.

I want better than that. My vision is of a world where people don't treat each other like such shit. And where they honestly clean it up when they do.

But I'm just not convinced, anymore, that that is the life that people want.

And so maybe I need to move on to a life where I just look out for myself, more, and stop concerning myself so much with other people and their needs. I'm a good guy, so it's not like I'm going to start treating people like shit. It's just that I can take all these good guy qualities and translate them into some effort that makes me more money or gets me more things that I want and not have to spend my entire fucking life trying to convince other people that they have more in them than they want to believe that they do or that we can expect more of ourselves and of one another than most people seem interested in or willing to do.

If people want to have a world where most people are kind of dumb, where they treat each other like shit and pretend like that is the best we can do, and where we keep pretending that none of this matters anyway, then there's not much I can do about that unless people want to change that. If people want to settle for being treated like shit - like so many of the teachers at my school seem willing to settle for - then far be it from me to convince them different, I suppose. It's a pain in my fuckin' ass, is what it is. And it certainly doesn't pay the way many more lucrative fields might pay.

And I'm fuckin' tired, is the truth, of trying to convince people, all the time, that they can and that it's worth their time being thoughtful, being more decent, being more honest, being better than they are today.

If people don't want to be those things, which they generally don't really seem to want to be, then so fuckin' be it, I say. We could develop more constructive, more rational, more decent, and more intelligent policies for how to handle such situations. But why the fuck would I waste my life trying to convince people of such things if the truth is they really just don't want to be better people? I have no clue.

So I'm thinking, I teach out my scholarship, I write my book, I put it all out there, and then I go do something, like Warren Buffet, where I just be the example of how virtue pays and if you don't want a piece of that action, then so fuckin' be it.

I'm tired of being the world's bitch. I wanted to contribute. I made my effort. My efforts in that domain, I am completely convinced, will never be good enough. Because the truth is that everyone is just rationalizing why they don't want to be better. That's why you had all those discussions about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Everyone knows that King was the better man. People just didn't want to be held to that standard. Malcolm looked like lower hanging fruit. He was easier for people to identify with because he was about as shitty as they were. His tactics were shitty, and counterproductive. He was always in King's fuckin' way. So many radicals long after King's death still trying to take credit for King's work and use Malcolm as a foil in that effort.

All because they just don't have the courage to admit to themselves that King was the better man. He wasn't perfect. He was wrong about a lot. Everyone is. But he was the better man. Better than all of them. And he did the really heavy lifting on that movement. And Malcolm X was an angry black man who figured out late in life that maybe King was right.

Why do I still engage in these debates? I don't know why.

I need to do something in my life that is not dependent on the validation of others. Something that rewards me because I do the right things and not because someone else says so.

I'm tired of people being so stupid and shitty. But just about as tired of trying to persuade people to stop being both, as well.

I need a shower. I got a lot of work to do. And thinking to do about my life.

Zimbabwe and political and economic freedom

If this case does not convince you of the evils of repressive political, economic, and other policies, I have no clue what will.

Mugabe blames Zimbabwe's troubles on Britain, whites, foes

"HARARE, Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe devoted his first major speech since the unresolved election three weeks ago to denouncing whites and former colonial ruler Britain, an attempt to convince Zimbabweans their political and economic troubles stem from abroad.

The scene at the official 28th Independence Day celebration Friday had all the pomp of old, with air force jets sweeping overhead and Mugabe, bedecked in sash and medals, striding past soldiers at attention.

But any private observances by ordinary Zimbabweans were likely muted — prices for food, gasoline and drinks have more than doubled just in the past week amid an economic meltdown that has emptied store shelves and idled four of every five workers.

"There are black people who are putting prices up, but they are being used by the whites," Mugabe said, promising to tighten laws that set prices and to crack down on — and possibly take over — businesses that break the rules."

This is not only a country with serious and deadly shortages of food and other basic needs, it is a country that, as of yesterday, had an inflation rate of 165,000%, the highest recorded rate since Weimar Germany, by many credible estimates I have seen.

Zimbabwe's unemployment rate is at 85%. And food and basic need shortages are at intolerable levels.

There is a reason why the most recognized poverty and famine economist in the world, Amartya Sen, favors free trade and free economies.

And this situation in Zimbabwe reflects that reason better than any other case in the world, perhaps, right now.

May we find the wisdom and the courage to listen to reason.

Quality people

I have to say that the best part of this job - for all of its frustrations - is the people I work with.

It is kind of a lesson in cream rising to the top, within any particular situation. Because my administration, I think, are really some of the most quality people in the building and some of the most quality people I've met in my life.

This work is really hard. And anyone who sticks with it for that long has a lot of respect from me.

But it really nice to have people in positions of authority and even colleagues who I can talk with, openly, who listen and have constructive advice to offer, generally, and who are not so stuck on themselves and self-preservation that they become more of a burden than they do a help, as my administration, and too many teachers were, last year, for me. I've made my own mistakes as a teacher to be responsible for. But working with people who are always dragging you down and making life hell is really the worst thing for a person to experience on a job.

And the strongest quality about this school is the quality of the people I work with. It's one if not the least threatening environment I've ever work in, so I can talk with colleagues and administrators and they are generally people who care more about kids and the work than most teachers and administrators I've work with, up to this point.

I'm frustrated. Because I feel like I'm offering help to kids that don't want the help much of the time. They need it. But they don't want it, often. And it gets tiring dealing with the defenses of teachers as well as kids for why kids are behaving so poorly rather than just saying, "Who knows all the reasons these kids act so badly. We care about them. And we are sticking by them despite all of that because we care. And someone has to teach them to behave better, or else there really is very little hope for these kids. And if they were my kid, I would want them to have teachers who cared that much, no matter what explanation we could come up with for their behavior."

But there is a part of me who also misses, badly, the experience of succeeding and achieving on my own merits and not having it dependent on the efforts of those who are least prepared to achieve, who have contempt for that kind of achievement, often, as much as resisting it, who often have few intentions of really turning that around because life doesn't seem so bad as a badass or because school or growing up just isn't that important to them, and whom everyone around them seems more committed to defending their behavior than correcting it or working to improve their behavior.

There is a part of me who misses working for excellence and having it recognized. Where caring is seen as a strength (although, the truth is that caring seems to always be taken as weakness, no matter where you are, when everyone is rationalizing what shitheads they are). I miss achieving excellence on my own merits, or even failing on my own merits, but having any recognition, awards, or other reinforcements being based on my own abilities and not on the vagaries of the behavior of others that I have very little if any control over.

Special education feels, often, like one long catch-22, where everything I do, because it never gets us to a goal that is always elusive is never, ever good enough. And that wears on my heart, after awhile. If I didn't care about the kids so much, I wouldn't put up with any of it, is the truth. The behavior from the kids, the behavior of parents, the half-ass reasoning and commitment of too many teachers, the abuse from administrators that I dealt with last year, and all of the bullshit I have experienced in this career.

That's why I'm always thinking about other options.

I want to love this job like my last relationship where I never thought about anything else because I loved that relationship that much. I want to either love my job, that much, to be rewarded, in lieu of loving a job that much, or know that I am doing something that really matters that much.

Right now, I'm not getting enough indication that this work really matters that much to anyone, really. Certainly not to the kids, most of whom would love to see me quit, at this point, I'm sure, since I guess I have something of a reputation as the tough teacher in the cluster. And many of the teachers would write me off as yet one more reason that there isn't much hope with these kids anyway. I know that all of the teachers and administrators at this job care more than most teachers or administrators I've encountered, because they treat me and everyone more decent than any crew of teachers or administrators I have ever worked with.

But it is discouraging that so many of these same people seem to act like they really don't think this work matters.

Because, after awhile, when most people you are working with think that your work doesn't really matter, maybe it really doesn't. If it doesn't matter to the people who are doing the work - either kids or adults - maybe it really doesn't. Maybe I need to let people live their lives day-to-day and stop getting in the way of that and go live a life that has integrity but which is less frustrating, with more rewards, and less dependent on the vagaries of the behavior of others.

Investment has a calling for me, for that reason. Once you get your head around it, Warren Buffet's $62 billion is not too much of a mystery. It's just investing with intelligence and integrity. That's why Benjamin Graham called his book the Intelligent Investor. And Buffet can live his life working with one partner, his best friend, who he trusts, make a shitload of money, and be dependent on only those businesses and partners he trusts. He can give his money to good causes. But he is not dependent on his charity work to achieve important things in the world.

And if this work really doesn't matter that much, maybe that would be a better route for me.

That and some writing.

I don't know. I'll keep chewing on it.

Famine, food shortages, and economic freedom

Hand to mouth

"THE rising cost of food is being felt around the world, by the poor especially and, in turn, by politicians. Greater demand from China and India as more people switch to rich diets is lifting prices, which had been low for some 30 years. Last week the prime minister of Haiti resigned in the face of a mob angry at the cost of food, while the Philippines made hoarding rice a crime punishable by life imprisonment. The price of wheat rose 77% in 2007. Since January the price of rice has jumped by 141%. But growing more food takes time, and as the land available for production has decreased, governments and farmers must look to improve crop yields."

That kind of fairly typical reaction is exactly why Amartya Sen argues, I think wisely, that though governments can be helpful in crises to provide emergency relief and in providing basic needs, freer markets, not less free, are the best way to address hunger and famine.

Governments can and probably should help in emergencies, when no other actor is helping or can provide enough help quickly enough.

But repression, limiting freedom, in the face of crises is the $64 million fuck-up of humanity throughout it's long history.

We've just somehow distorted that long established fact of history into some kind of rationalization for power and a solution that has never really been a solution.

Why? Because that is the fairly typical reaction for people to have when they get scared. To get aggressive. To use force. To strike out. At something. Someone. Somewhere. Someone has got to pay.

It's fruitless. And counterproductive. But we fuck it up over and over and over again and again and again. Each time we have a new name for it. Each time its the same old fuck up.

People and societies that take the principle of freedom seriously, even in the face of emergencies - which happen fairly frequently, you may notice, and will happen frequently enough for the length of humanity's stay here on earth - tend to be stronger, safer, more successful and deal with such crises less.

If the dire situation in places like Zimbabwe do not convince us of this fact, I do not know what will.

What I know is that free trade is not a slogan, an accident, or a conspiracy.

Political and economic freedom are the foundations of a strong, decent and prosperous society.

If we only have the courage to take them as seriously as they deserve.

Doing something with my life

Much of the problem with the world, I'm convinced, is that most people are so lost in their own bullshit - their rationalizations for why they want whatever they want whenever they want it, right now - that they have a really hard time understanding the consequences that follow. I've been guilty of that plenty in my life. But I also tend to take responsibility better than most people, is the truth. And I get tired of dealing with people who won't or don't, much of the time, because it's just too challenging for them to face up and face themselves.

I need a life where I deal with more people who take responsibility more often.

And for some strange reason, I chose two fields - education and politics - where taking responsibility is the exception much more than the rule.

And I think I'm insane if I do that for a lifetime when I have so many other choices that don't involve staying lost in the bullshit, so much. I'll still teach my two years of my scholarship. I'll still write my book, probably. But I'm preparing myself for something else, long term, I think.

Because I'm just not willing to live my life lost in someone else's bullshit into eternity because they are just too chickenshit to face themselves and the choices they make.

I am not willing to work, my entire life, in fields where victims are the rule and grown-ups are the exception.

But, for now, I can do some good, while I get started on something that at least does more good for me, if everyone else isn't really terribly interested in doing something better with their lives.

That used to be academia. But I have to say, that, for the first time in my life, I'm not so sold on the nobility of academia. Not because it's not noble. I think it is. But because it's completely clear to me that universities, like everywhere else in the world, are places where bullshit overwhelm honesty far too much. And if honesty is not something I can count on in academia - as much as I can count on it more, there, generally, than other places in the world - then there really is no fuckin' point to that route.

And so the door of life is completely wide open to whatever I think would make me happiest, for me, at this point.

Because I have done my part. I have done my duty to lift up humanity. I will write at least one book to add to that contribution.

But I need something for me, too, and not just a life trying to make everyone else feel good when everyone else are not necessarily committed to such a fate.

If people want to be unhappy, I say so be it. If people want to be bitter, cynical, self-righteous, or any of the rest, I say, so be it. If you want to be happy or achieve something with your life, go fuckin' do it and stop whining about it.

Me. I think I've done my bit for humanity. I think it's time for me to do something for myself and not just be thinking about everyone else, all the time. God knows a lot of people could give two shits about me, or anyone else besides themselves, for that matter.

I'm tired of thinking so much about everyone else when everyone else is not really thinking much about me, most of the time.

I'm tired of trying to help others find a route to happiness and success that they just don't really think they can bring themselves to get their minds or hearts around.

The one thing I have complete control over is me being happy and successful.

And that is something I plan on doing with my life, with or without anyone's help.

The courage of real progress

Here's the headline:

Analysis: Obama wants voters to remember Clinton's past

Here's what Obama said:

"'She has gone through this,' Obama said. 'I recall when, back in 1992, when she made a statement about how, what do you expect, should I be at home baking cookies? And people attacked her for being elitist and this and that. And I remember watching that on TV and saying, `Well, that's not who she is. That's not what she believes. That's not what she meant.'

'And I think Senator Clinton learned the wrong lesson from it because she's adopting the same tactics,' Obama said."

I guess it's always darkest before the dawn.

But it's fuckin' dark outside, right now. And I could use a little sunlight.

I don't know if I've ever seen so disappointed with my country as I am, right now. Everything about my country reeks of, "We do not deserve the power we seek," right now.

I guess I was naive, growing up, thinking that America was more worthy than this election is demonstrating. I think she's more worthy. I just think her ugliest instincts are overwhelming her most decent instincts, right now.

It doesn't have to be that way.

But it will take confidence in our strongest liberal democratic values to turn things around.

It's so strange watching a nation conceived in liberty angling so hard against its own founding values and the strongest values that America and the world has to offer, all so we don't have to face our cowardice to be better.

The kids and I have been studying the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence in U.S. History. It took so much courage for those Founding Fathers to take on the most powerful empire in the world, at the time, for liberty and independence.

You'd think we could dig deep and find some of that courage, right now.

I think we can.

Courage is not living without fear. Courage is doing the right thing in the face of fear.

I think we have that in us.

We ought to, given how America was conceived.

What this bitter discussion says about us

By winning back unhappy GOP voters, McCain makes it a race

Bitter GOP voters, you might say. As it turns out, there's quite a few of them. Including many rich Republicans who write for wealthy newspapers. And plenty of rich liberals in the same boat, for that matter. Plenty of bitter people in the world, rich and poor. How incredibly sad, I must say.

McCain and Clinton may both be calculating wins based on flattering the vanities of petty and bitter citizens that want to find some protection from a world that they always feel is victimizing them. It's so sad, isn't it. It's always the decent, thoughtful, and compassionate who are always victimizing all of the nasty, petty, and bitter. It is always the narrow-minded and hard-hearted who are being victimized by their too soft brethren. If we could only find a way to protect the mean-spirited amongst us from the decent and compassionate, only then could we have a better world.

But, alas, the decent, compassionate, and thoughtful never seem to learn from the error of their ways. And it, thus, on the shoulders of the assholes to save all of us from ourselves.

It almost makes you want to cry, doesn't it?

And I guess it is the only gamble left for those banking on cynical power gambles to animate their political careers rather than thoughtful and inspirational leadership that tackles the nation's and world's problems more effectively.

Right now, I'm voting for McCain, until I hear Obama say he's not pulling out and he's not pressuring for a pullout which artificially distorts the discussion about what to do in Iraq with "How do we get the fuck out of there?" instead of "How do we clean up this mess with some integrity?"

Those who can't find the integrity to leave behind their bitterness, pettiness, and cowardice should never be taken as seriously as those with more integrity to our strongest values, obviously, really, to anyone not trying to rationalize what a shithead they are. And those who are more honest should be taken more seriously.

It is telling about the American political process that a candidate who gets more honest with the electorate about itself is one that so many people want to punish, isn't it? It doesn't just tell us something about power. It tells us something about how honest we are and our political process really is, with ourselves and one another.

And how sad that we might get so lost in our own bullshit that we might actually choose pettiness over more genuine courage and honesty.

But we can't choose it for long.

Because pettiness and cowardice don't lead anywhere.

There really is a reason that courage and integrity are our most cherished values.

And it's not because they go good with barbeque.

A victim of perception

Quick: What's the quickest way to create the perception that you are dishonest?

Need any more time? How about lying your ass off to everyone?



And the biggest lie would be to lie to everyone about how you are not lying to them.

This article on the subject is hilarious. And encouraging.

Poll Shows Erosion of Trust in Clinton

"Advisers argue that her positive ratings have dipped as she has been defined by her opponents -- a normal campaign occurrence -- and that her honesty problem reflects the pounding she took from Republicans in the 1990s. But the Bosnia incident and the way the campaign handled it have left advisers divided over what a candidate can do after such a steep drop in trust.

Some of her aides believe that after Clinton told the Bosnia story -- of having run from her military aircraft into a hangar to avoid sniper fire -- when television images of the event showed otherwise, the campaign had no choice but to say she "misspoke." Communications director Howard Wolfson first did so on a conference call with reporters, and Clinton repeated the explanation over the course of several days.

Other Clinton advisers thought that response did not come quickly enough -- and that when it did, without further explanation or talking points for surrogates to use, it only worsened the perception that she had lied. Making the situation more difficult was a split within the campaign over whether Clinton had exaggerated, or simply confused the landing with another trip. One Clinton insider announced in a strategy meeting it was ridiculous to have imagined the first lady ever having been in danger, or for Clinton to have thought she was -- a slap at the senator from New York that other advisers described as disrespectful.

At the same time, die-hard Clinton loyalists thought her communications operation did not defend her heartily enough, which press aides said they thought was impossible. "Continuing to say it did happen when it didn't happen is not a strategy," one adviser said.

The problem was exacerbated when Bill Clinton, in defending her confused memory of the Bosnia event, got key details of the incident wrong, before later saying his wife had told him to stay out of it.

Two staffers from the Clinton White House years, Lissa Muscatine and Melanne Verveer, wrote a New York Times op-ed article recalling the perils of the trip, trying to justify why Clinton had gotten the story wrong. "As has been reported, Mrs. Clinton's trip to Bosnia included a U.S.O. component with the comedian Sinbad and the singer Sheryl Crow. The helicopters that carried them to performances at American base camps zigzagged just above the trees to avoid potential ground fire, according to Carey Cavanaugh, who was then a State Department official traveling with Sinbad, and helicopters flew alongside to deal with the threat of anti-aircraft fire or snipers. These facts explain why many of us, including the first lady, believed that the conditions on the ground were precarious. We were worried about sniper fire and were prepared to rush off the tarmac when we landed," they wrote.

Senior Clinton advisers argued that the Bosnia story would not have developed the way it did if it were not for a story line about Clinton that goes back to the 1990s, when scandals involving the first lady, including the firings in the White House travel office and her financial dealings, resulted in widespread doubts about her trustworthiness. That framework, they argue, made it easier for Clinton to be perceived as dishonest, a problem that first arose in her presidential campaign in a debate last fall when she gave conflicting answers on whether she supports allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses."

I think the Clinton campaign has a problem with perception/reality correspondence.

Hillary Clinton does not have a problem with being perceived as being dishonest.

Hillary Clinton has a problem with being dishonest.

I suppose when people get lost in the perception/manufacturing reality business, for too long, they get a little lost in the bullshit.

Hillary Clinton is way lost in the bullshit.

That's not my perception.

That is cold, hard fact.

And, encouragingly, most Americans seem to be recognizing that fact too.

The arrogance of power and the Clinton campaign

Douglas Schoen writes this brazenly arrogant piece of political consultant tripe for the Washington Post, today, that gets to the heart of why Hillary Clinton should not have power.

New Strategy for Clinton

Money quote, as Andrew Sullivan would say:

"As the underdog, Clinton's positive message will not work unless she is able to undermine Obama's candidacy. The Illinois senator's success has been largely built upon his claims that he is a unifier who can work above partisan politics, that he will bring change to our government and that he will bring a new style of leadership to Washington. Without bringing a strong amount of skepticism to these claims, Clinton will not be able to make significant inroads in Obama's lead and cannot persuade the superdelegates to go against the will of the American people."

The layers of bullshit in this piece are quite breathtaking, I must say. But that last line really takes the cake.

In order for Hillary Clinton to win a democratic nomination, she must overturn the will of the American people.

I want to say that, again, slowly, to make sure you caught that.

In order for Hillary Clinton to win a democratic nomination, she must overturn the will of the American people.

For most of us, that would be illiberal and contrary to democracy. It would smack of the likes of Robert Mugabe or Fidel Castro, both likely role models for leadership for Mr. Schoen, undoubtedly.

For Douglas Schoen, this is what liberalism and democracy is all about. For Douglas Schoen, this is "progress."

Have you picked up on the theme, yet?

Progress for this Clinton campaign is Hillary Clinton getting power. And democracy be damned. You could dismiss such a strategy as the ravings of a mad and desperate political consultant likely to lose his number one client and most certainly to lose her access to the most powerful position in the world.

Except this is the Clinton strategy, at this point. And Mr. Schoen is right. She is likely making a turn for negative.

Which is all good with me, because it makes it clear as fuckin' day what this bunch is up to.

And, contrary to Mr. Schoen's concept of power, I have full confidence that the American people will see through it. And if Democrats were to somehow be weasled - which I see very little room for such a scenario to transpire; neither does Douglas Schoen, which is why he wrote this piece of kitty litter lining - the general electorate most assuredly would.

As will I. I'm already planning on voting for John McCain, at this point. Though I must that this most recent spate of bullshit from him and the Clinton campaign has me rethinking that.

Power doesn't just corrupt, as it turns out, as Lord Acton wisely observed. It makes one blind to the underlying reality.

If you doubt that, ask Robert Mugabe. Or better yet, ask Hillary Clinton.

A whiff of Waco

Does this situation seem a little concerning to anyone else?



There just seems to be a whiff of Waco to this whole thing.

Religious fundamentalists are easy to pick on, is the truth.

Four hundred simultaneous child abuse investigations? All of these kids are removed from their families until the investigations are over? All because of one abuse accusation?

Something doesn't seem right, here.

We're always just a little bit more careless with these things when it involves someone else's family, aren't we?

My family had a social worker visit us unannounced and uninvited when I was a kid. Nothing came of it. But it was scary as shit.

I can't imagine losing my child on the presumption that I had abused them because I happened to be one parent of 400 children in a compound where one accusation of abuse had been made.

It's all about the children isn't it?

Something has me doubting that more and more, these days.

Small Town

Having said all that, I have to say that John Cougar Mellencamp's (he'll always be Cougar to me) song always gets me up. Even when I might be feeling a little bitter.

In honor of John and small town life, and the big city record producers that restrict the ability to embed his video, enjoy.

One big small town

I have to say, watching not just this discussion about bitterness in small town America, but just watching the bitterness that animates much of the world, sadly, that I often feel, these days, like I live in one big giant small town.

I didn't grow up in a small town. I grew up in a mid-size city, Wichita, Kansas, but like many kids growing up everywhere, I wanted very desperately to grow up and get the hell out of dodge and get away from small-town attitudes.

I didn't do that. I actually went to college in my hometown. And had a fairly decent experience. In fact, one of my complaints about my university experience in a little university town like Lawrence, Kansas was that too many smart, liberal folks seemed to act like they knew more about the world than they did. Very similar to the complaint of Obama's critics, right now. I hated and still hate how intellectuals pretend like they have everything figured out, when there is no way on God's green earth that they or anyone could.

But what I definitely identified with, in my professors, was a desire to escape the narrowness and pettiness of not just small-town outlooks, but the outlooks of anyone and any community where fear of the big, bad world animated life more than understanding, thoughtfulness, and decency.

What most people, small-town or big-town, never seem to get figured out is that the big, bad world and all of its scary parts is a function not of the folks across the way, but of the fears and reactions of people just like you and me. Not small-town people. Not big-town people. Not religious people. Not areligious people. Not gun-owners. Not gun-control advocates. Not liberals. Not conservatives. Just people.

The "other" that everyone is so afraid of is their own goddamn shadow, much of the time. It's all of our own fears about ourselves and one another that suckers most of us, and it has only marginally to do with the stranger across the way.

And living in a world where everyone seems to be scared and pissed off and looking to fuck with one another, I sometimes get a little bitter having to put up with the irrational and stupid bullshit of everyone for whom fear and bitterness both shapes their outlook on the world and those who manipulate and exploit that fact for their own advantage and to validate their own fears and self-centered outlooks on the world.

And, like many kids growing up in small-town America and not-so-small-town America, I often dream of growing up and being able to leave this goddawful place for somewhere where the outlooks are a little broader, the people are a little friendlier, the conversation is a little more thoughtful, minds are a little more open, and things just work out a little bit better, as a consequence.

I live in Lawrence, Kansas, a little university town here in the Midwest and a little oasis of liberal-mindedness in this God-fearing state - I use that term broadly to mean people with more open minds more than people who vote Democratic, though this city is the one pretty reliable Democratic district in an otherwise red state; I am a life long liberal, now independent, who is leaning toward John McCain, at this point, but, as always, my mind is open on the matter - so you would think that I would have been happy having found this little liberal utopia of broad-minded fellowtravelers.

But a funny thing happened on the way to utopia. I figured out that the one thing that I had always wanted as a kid - to be surrounded by like-minded liberals and to remake the world in our own image - turned out not to be such a little utopia, at all.

Plenty of pettiness, suspicion, cynicism, bitterness, conspiracy theory, dreams dashed, dreams abandoned, and, yes, quite a bit of condescension, snottiness, intellectual snobbery, and otherwise boorish liberal-minded behavior in this otherwise open-minded, big-hearted town.

It is a bit much for me, often. Especially when I was in grad school. Some professors can be some of the most decent and thoughtful people you ever met. Some are just assholes who are too clever by half. I had enough of my fill of the latter and enough experience with a world where assholes came in all ideological flavors to know that liberal didn't mean to me, as an adult, what it had meant to me, as a kid.

As a kid, liberal meant people who were more compassionate, understanding, decent, thoughtful, openminded, loving people with outlooks that seemed to reassure me that the world was actually, generally, a pretty good place for all of its warts.

But as an adult, liberal often also meant scared, bullying, cynical, snotty, condescending, mean-spirited, at times, sadly - since compassion and understanding were always what had been the center of what it meant to be liberal, for me, when I was growing up - self-righteous, and, generally, too often just as shitty and sometimes shittier than the world that such folks spent so much time, often rightly, being critical of.

Not only that, but my experience in Lawrence and in Wichita, for that matter, and my experiences in Washington D.C., where I lived for a summer with a girlfriend while I was in grad school, and in Cancun, Mexico, where I taught English for a month in undergrad, and everywhere I've lived or travelled or read about, have all taught me that it really isn't some ideological or religious or otherwise homogeneity that makes life an interesting, thought-provoking, or decent place to live.

Progress doesn't come because all your neighbors are Democrats.

Progress is when we learn to appreciate the fact that we come at life from different experiences, with different outlooks, often, with different ideas, with a diversity of opinions and thinking, and when we learn to appreciate people as people, first, and not some collection of opinions that either we do or do not identify with. And progress is when people can genuinely learn to appreciate one another for those differences and not condescend them because we disagree or because we have the power or inclination to do so. Progress is not when we impose ourselves on our neighbors because we can, obviously, when we're not rationalizing different. Progress occurs as we learn to genuinely respect our neighbors and their differences and accept that all of us have choices to make with our lives and deserve respect for the choices that each of us have to make and the freedom to make them.

So, when people criticize Obama as being condescending to small-town America, it is strange for me. Obama looks small town, by my lights. The whole world looks small town, by my lights. That's not because I feel any contempt or condescension for the world. To the contrary, it's because I see a world that keeps running away from the very kind of understanding, thoughtfulness, compassion, decency, and other values that they all so desperately need if they are going to think bigger than their circumstances and solve, more decently and effectively, the problems they face.

Like a small town that feels left behind by big city change and big city attitudes, the whole world just seems stuck to me, most of the time. Stuck in their bitterness. Stuck in their fear. Stuck in their ignorance. Stuck in their hatefulness. Stuck in their self-pity. Stuck in their anger. Stuck in all kinds of feelings of helplessness and powerlessness that leaves them screaming out for more power, only to have it leaving them still feeling helpless and powerless no matter how aggressively rather than thoughtfully they deal with their problems.

That is and always has been the problems not just in small towns, but everywhere in the world. Big cities are sometimes a little quicker to change direction when they take a bad turn. Sometimes not.

But everyone seems a little slow, to me, to making the changes in the directions that are needed when their hearts are stuck in slow motion from all of the pain and disappointment that life perpetually has to offer to every generation and to all of us, no matter where we live.

I don't know why we get stuck like this, except that facing all that pain, which is the only way to let it go and start fresh, just seems too difficult a challenge for some people. The bitterness feels comfortable. So much so, that they begin to forget or try to ignore that it sits on their hearts.

And when some big Harvard Law School graduate comes along and tries to remind people of all of those sore feelings, it just makes everyone a little grouchy. And, for awhile, it leaves a lot of people wanting to hold onto all of that bitterness for fear that letting it go might be too painful for them to bear. Some pain is just meant to sit on your heart your whole life, they rationalize. Some disappointments or heartaches you just never forget, they tell themselves. Some bitter feelings you just have to avoid dealing with honestly. Some pain just never goes away, they reason, since it's probably too hard to try to make it go away anyway, they justify.

And so we stay stuck.

And I feel like just lighting out of town and trying to find some illusive big city or small university town where the minds are more open and the hearts are not full of so much pain and bitterness.

But, alas, we have only this world. Only this big small town.

And I'm left realizing that it is not the bitterness on the hearts of everyone else that is bothering me. It's the bitterness on my own heart that pains me. And it is that bitterness that is the one that needs my attention.

Some upstart young guy 2000 years ago talked with people about this very thing. How much easier it is to see the sin, the vulnerability, the weakness in others than it is to see the same in ourselves.

Sometimes this world seems like one long neverending loop of this principle in action. Better aphorism than approbation, I think. Better we learned the lesson than keep making the mistake, I keep thinking.

Maybe I should give some of this bitterness some of my attention.

Hillary Cinton is a shameless monster

This woman has no shame. She is the biggest fuckin' liar, the most intellectually and otherwise dishonest candidate for President, since, well, her husband, to run for President. They are pathologically dishonest, at this point. I have zero respect for this woman, at this point. And her husband, too. Fuck 'em both. I will never vote for a Clinton, again, for any office for the rest of my natural born life. I cannot even begin to fathom the intellectual dishonesty she is engaged in, right now.



Is someone who lies this baldly to your face the person you really want for President?

If you, so fuckin' deserve her, you fuckin' dipshit.

Anyone who votes for Hillary Clinton, at this point, is either too rationalizing of power to be trusted or too stupid to be taken seriously.

Either way, you vote for Hillary Clinton, at this point, you lose my respect, too.

This woman is a fuckin' train wreck. The only good that could be done for her and for the country, right now, is to have her sit the bench. That's if people even want her on the team, anymore.

She makes me ill.

I finally figured it out

I don't know how I thought of it. But it's not 2000 or 2001. I keep thinking, "Is it the 2000 election?" or "Is it 9/11?"

But it's neither.

It's 1999.

It's the pedophile crisis in the Catholic Church.

That's what started all this shit. And that's what has us locked in this seriously fucked up direction. We went crazy around 1999, when John Geoghan was first being discovered (later murdered that year, in prison) and the roof was coming off of the U.S. pedophile priest scandal.

And we've just been a little nuts since that time. So much so, that we can't just see what is right in front of our fuckin' faces.

Somehow people missed that the Catholic Church is one of the most rules-dominated, repressive, hierachical institutions in the world and we fell into this stupid belief that the problem was not enough rules. I know, I know. Mandatory reporting to police. But the underlying reality is still the same: either people follow their consciences or not. It has always been so and it will always be so. And all the repression just makes it more complicated and difficult, not less so. Because it shuts down the necessary conversations which help clarify consciences.

We're just too foolish to see it squarely. And we don't have enough courage to do both of the things that are needed, even in that situation: to face our failure on this one, honestly, and to forgive, ourselves and others, for our failures.

We're too scared. But that's what created all the repression that has fueled all this shit from the beginning of civilization, in the first place. We're just too scared and not honest enough, with ourselves and with each other, to face up on this one.

But the bottom line on this is, there really is only one direction forward. You can call any direction progress all you want, but if it doesn't take us forward - as this direction clearly has failed to do - then it's not progress, no matter how much we mouth the words. It's only progress if we make forward movement. And this tragically hubristic route of force as a means to progress in a liberal society - a complete and utter contradiction in terms, if we could only face ourselves squarely, on that one - is clearly not taking us forward.

We need to come clean on that. And face this honestly. Because the reality is that we make all of our problems, including this one, more pronounced, not less, generally, with greater repression.

And that can only happen with a more honest conversation.

That's what we have in front of us.

What really matters in life

Watching this election, and just having a stronger expectation of what we get from democratic elections and democratic discussion, and just a lot of reflections and realizations in my own life, I think I've finally found some perspective on politics, education, public service and service to others, money and career, love and family and how all those other things fit into the scheme of the last two and my life.

What I've had to come to accept is that the world is really full of quite a bit of bullshit. We live in it. We make money off of it. We make it sport. We, tragically, make life and death decisions by it. Much policy gets made on its basis. Even very smart people often get lost in it, because it is so pervasive, and sometimes in the hopes that their lives and contributions mean something.

Palaver is what James Combs and Dan Nimmo called it in their brilliant book The New Propaganda. Bullshit is what it is and what I'm sure Combs and Nimmo would call it in less politic moments.

It informs who we are, and yet so much of it is both bullshit and us taking our own bullshit too seriously. For many people, it is the only way they know how to identify themselves, and so much of it is for often self-centered or self-righteous purpose that ignores larger questions and answers that reason might offer. We swim in it so constantly and we want so badly to know that there is something outside of it. And yet politics, in particular, but also so many other areas of our public and private discourse, make it all so much more likely the more we center our attention around power and ego and wanting to prove to the world that we matter or that we have proven our worth.

There's nothing wrong with that motivation. It's just that we can't really find it the way we search for it and the way we treat one another. What we all really want is to have people say, "You've really contributed something important to life. You've really contributed something important to my life. You've really done something important. You've really proven your worth."

But no matter how much we do it, we're constantly tearing one another down or seeking out all that recognition or power or money or whatever for all the wrong reasons, out of our own fears that whatever we do or offer or contribute or make or whatever is just never enough. And, really, what we all want is just someone to say, "You matter. Your contributions matter. You deserve to be rewarded for what you have to offer."

And I guess, at some level, though having some more money wouldn't be such a bad thing and contributing something important to the world before I leave would feel like my time here was worth it, I guess the older I get, the more I realize that what really means something to me is having a life where I feel good about myself and my contributions, where I share love and have it shared with me, where I have as honest a relationship with people I care about as I feel I can, and where my efforts and my contributions feel like they mean something and are not just some irrelevant blip on a giant and forever cynical and denigrating screen.

The world has taken a turn, here, in the last few years, where that cynicism has become much more pronounced and where decency and honesty have been treated much less worthy than they obviously are when we're not trying to rationalize what cynics and shitheads we've become.

It occurred to me, today, that I am responsible for all of my failures in my life. That, though there have been times, as in everyone's life, that I haven't felt like and probably wasn't treated fairly and as generously or with as much forgiveness as I might have liked, that I am responsible for my failures as much as for my successes and that my life, at this point, is a consequence of my choices, good and bad.

My relationship with Brandi, my experience in graduate school, my first teaching job, all of it.

And what I would really like in my life, more than any of the money or attention or any of it, is love like the kind I've known before, and maybe a little bit more honest, even, than the fairly honest and open relationship that Brandi and I shared by the standards of most relationships, and definitely more loving and stable. I'd like a job that makes some kind of real difference in the world. I wouldn't mind making some money, but not at the expense of doing real good. I'd like to be somewhere where the important questions get explored and where my contributions might make some real difference in the world, whether that is close to people with power or not, since I'm pretty convinced that such people might make for some uneasy company, often.

Mostly, though, I'd just like to have a nice life that means something, in the bigger picture, without a lot of fanfare or attention, necessarily.

More than anything else, I just want to find someone that I can spend my life with and share some of these things that matter to me and weigh on my heart. I want to make some real successes in my life. Successes that matter, not these trite ones that we, myself included, so often settle for. And I want to share them with a woman and a family and friends and colleagues who are not all lost in the bullshit and propaganda and the bitterness and the cynicism and all of the stuff that makes life so much worse for the wear.

I want to live life sharing about the opportunity for us to do better, by being more honest with ourselves, and live lives that we love, not constantly staring at our navels and wondering why we always feel so afraid. I want to offer more real solutions to problems we face that transcend our tendency to propose ideas that fail and then to blame others for their failure because we lack the courage to acknowledge our failures. I want to offer a more honest and better example to my children.

But, mostly, I want to be share love with people, and especially one person who I spend my life with and who has comparable love to share with me. I want to be loved by someone with as much love as I have to offer. And I don't want to spend my life wondering if it's real because I've been burned in the past. That's why I wanted to be a teacher, actually. But it's always been why I wanted to fall in love and keep that flame alive for a lifetime. And to have a family and to have kids that I love with all my heart.

And what this election has taught me is that all of the successes that I've sought out before - in my career, for my favored political or social causes, financially or otherwise (though, being a teacher, that kind of success is not something that has figured highly in my estimation of my life), all of it - is much less important to me than that kind of love in my life.

I've spent a lot of time in my young adulthood after Brandi and I broke up - since Brandi had been the benchmark for me of what I wanted in life - wondering what kind of woman I might want to marry and to spend my life with. Smart women were often bitchy, I found, which I could not tolerate. Nice girls were often hard to hold a conversation with. I can't handle a snotty girl and a snotty anyone, for that matter, and must have someone I can have an honest and low-down-dirty sense of humor with. I need someone I can share openly and honestly with and as much as I need to, but I need someone to share back with me.

But the one thing that really rings true for me, these days, knowing how most people are, at this point, and knowing what I really admire in other people and what I really need in a spouse if I'm going to have a happy, loving, functional marriage for the course of my lifetime is someone with a lot of love to offer.

This is why I liked Brandi so much, when I first met her. It wasn't sexual. It was just a really loving spirit. And I just know, today, after much experience, that though women my age who still have that kind of love in their hearts and who are not lost in pain and fears and bitterness and the cynicism that follows is far too rare, that I will never really be happy in that way, again, until I find someone with that kind of heart, again.

And I realize, today, over the course of this election, that it is because politics and the world is so fucked up and so cynical and so nasty and repressive and illiberal and so dysfunctional, that I really need to have that kind of love in my life to feel any real sense of honest emotional safety and happiness in my life.

It was on a search for that kind of love, ironically, that really put my life in a tailspin, at one point, in so many ways. But it is only that kind of love that will ever really feel like something more honest and decent and real animates my life.

And now I know that I can only live a life with that kind of commitment. Because most of the world is too full of bullshit and the pursuit of bullshit to ever really come close to offering that kind of honest happiness.

We could have that kind of life if we would give up the bullshit. And, until we do, bullshit will never be something more real and honest.

I'll never feel that with having written or having read a book or as a teacher or helping to solve any of the problems that have animated the larger purposes in my life, I realize today. Those all might be fine things to do with my life.

But the truth is that I will not feel that except in the love of someone that has as much love to offer as I do. And nothing else is too much worthy of my time or efforts. And I just don't care about that other stuff, is the truth.

I have absolutely no clue where I'm going to find her. Which is ironic, because I have more interest from girls, these days, than I have ever had in my life. But having interest from a lot of women, even women who wouldn't have thought twice about me 10 or 20 years ago, is really not at all the same thing as having the love of someone with a lot of love to give. It really doesn't even compare, actually, I can say confidently, after experience with both.

I just wish I knew where to find her. Because nothing else matters at all really, to me, anymore, in even close to the same way.

Maybe that's why my apartment is still in boxes, why my ambitions just never feel quite as passionate as passion I have known in my life before, and why life just never feels quite right, no matter how much more I do with it. It's the only explanation that really makes any sense. I just wish I could translate that understanding into something real with someone and stop obsessing so much about a politics, a financial world, a world of unending public inquiry and opinion that really means so little that is real in my life and in this world as long as it so consumed with the bullshit as a means of avoiding what is real and meaningful.

I guess, at least, it offers perspective for my life. For what really matters.

When the dust settles

This Obama flap about Barack telling the truth about the ugly insecurities that are at the heart of what is wrong with the world and the politics meant to deal with the challenges of that world has got me thinking.

This whole godforesaken period of romanticism of the rules and force, like they solve more than they do, is reflective of a complex reality. On the one hand, it reflects all of those insecurities, which is why things have gotten so much worse. Because instead of challenging us to be better - which is what Obama has been doing with remarks like those he made about how many, especially uneducated, people tend "cling to guns and religion," when the going gets tough - so many people have chosen, instead to pander and coddle and genuflect and otherwise avoid the harder discussion which would involve challenging us to be better than our insecurities about life would suggest.

Our fears have driven us this period. That's what has fucked everything up. That's why I chunk it together the way I do. From about 2000/2001 to the current time, fear and insecurity has dominated the way that we have engaged in politics and the world. And it is reaped all sorts of bad consequences. And like the impulse that leads us to run with fear and insecurity as better guides than they are, we just keep rolling with those consequences until we can find the courage to face up to our failures.

Some people rarely or never find such courage. Many of those people are those who Barack was addressing. Neo-Nazis, Communists, radicals of all stripes, street thugs, serial killers. If you want a list of all of the people who fail to find the courage to face up to themselves, I'm sure it's quite long. And a lot of those folks, even when they don't situate themselves out in the extremes of contemporary life, are ordinary folks like you and I.

So, on the one hand, all this talk of rules and force is reflective of those fears and insecurities.

On the other hand, it is also a well-intentioned, if failed, effort to try to keep the world straight through all this mess.

The truth is that only our consciences can do that. Rules and force just complicate things, when they are used when other options are available and more effective. They always have. That's the nature of the bulk of our illiberal and repressive past. That's how it worked. We saw problems. We made rules. We used force. Things got fucked up. If you need a four sentence explanation of much of our tragic history, that will probably do. Our fears and insecurities drove us then, too. And they had consequence. And, luckily, then, as now, we had a handful of more honest people in the world - intellectuals, scholars, thinkers, compassionate and decent thinking folk all around made up the bulk of these people - who helped point us in better directions when our pride did not lead us to face up to our fuck ups.

Thank goodness for those folks, no matter how much we have always taken them for granted. Because this world would be in a much bigger mess if it weren't for their honesty. We'd be one big glob of bullshit and confusion. Which is why societies like Cuba and North Korea and Iran and Iraq and Syria and China and so many of the most repressive places in the world are such godawful messes. Because without the room for that kind of honesty - without that kind of freedom - there is no room to correct for the bullshit.

Nevertheless, all the talk about the rules and the rule of law, etc., is also, in part, a well-intentioned, if foolishly conceived, attempt to provide some kind of compass through all of the bullshit. But the truth is that the only compass that matters is a moral one, a compass of conscience and reason and judgment. And rules and force just make it all the more difficult to see through the bullshit, in great part because they help enhance it. Which is why so many indicators of well-being in the last 7-8 years have gotten worse and not better while we have rationalized them both.

If you have any doubts about that, go spend some time in places where rules and force are really taken seriously as governing philosophy, like any of those repressive countries I just named, and you will find a world of cynicism and ugliness with very little responsibility for the consequences they offer humanity.

There's really only one way forward. It's very much like any other regressive period in our past. You bullshit and bullshit all you want, but as things keep getting worse, people eventually start wanting better. They will today, too, just as always. It just takes some time to own up for the bullshit.

And when the dust settles, the only way forward is one of more freedom and more genuine, honest, and democratic engagement. Those who have studied liberal values know that deep down, even as many of them rationalize what they must know in their hearts is a bad direction.

And when we finally find our way, after fumbling around with this unfortunate path, we will not find a perfect world. Ever, really. What we will find is a world where more freedom and more genuine, honest, decent democratic engagement offers us better solutions, institututions, opportunities, etc., not perfect ones. Perfection and a perfect world doesn't exist. It's an illusion, and a dangerous one, at that, when it is used to rationalize all of the worst and most cynical gambles for power, greed, and a whole world full of ugliness. That's where the ulginess stems from, actually. That rationalization.

If the world isn't going to be fair, too many people rationalize, then I want to be on the side of the unfair stick that is to my advantage and to the disadvantage of others. It's an ugly gamble. It also happens to be one that doesn't pay off, much of the time, as it turns out. Honesty and virtue really do pay. Dishonesty really does end up fucking you in the end. I know from being on both sides of that stick, unfortunately. Most people have spent some time on both sides of that stick, unfortunately. Which should give us some compassion in a world where we all end up lost in the bullshit, some.

When the dust settles, we won't have a world that is completely fair. Even given a more honest commitment to our highest values, we will have a world that is more fair. There will never be a world that is perfectly fair. It just doesn't exist. We can make it more fair, with work. But this period has not been about making life more fair, really. This period has been about us rationalizing what shitheads we are.

Progress happens as we learn to own up for that tendency. And that is the only claim on progress that will ever be real. Everything else is a cheap shot meant to satiate our pettier natures that have just not learned to own up. Meaning, everything else is us avoiding the hard work that real progress necessitates. Which is fine. We're just never going to experience real progress without it. Avoid it all we want, I say. We're just not going anywhere until we own up.

That was the beauty of Barack's remarks. They reflected real progress. The need to be honest about ourselves. And to the extent that people resist that honesty, they can claim all kinds of things, but real progress isn't one of them.

A freer world will guarantee nothing. But that's the beauty of it. It places responsibility for our most important values and most important commitments - education, health care, retirement, employment and ownership, our democratic discussion, even national security, the most important priority that governments are responsible for - squarely in our laps. And if we don't take that responsibility, if we abdicate it, as we too often do today, then we are responsible for it, no excuses.

And that is the only way that we will make any real progress. Everything else is a well crafted illusion. And what always gives away illusions is that they never deliver.

It took 70 years for people to get figured out the illusion of Communism. I don't know how long it will take people to get this one figured out. At some level, I don't care. Because it's still an illusion, no matter how much its proponents prop it up. And eventually, whether it takes 70 years or 70 minutes, eventually people figure it out. It took thousands of years for humanity to get figured out that slavery was wrong. It took thousands of years for humanity to figure out that religion and unbridled force should not be the basis for governance and that reason and pragmatic, scientific, secular evaluations of ideas on their merits should be the basis for government. We eventually got it figured out. But it was wrong the whole time, no matter how much people pretended otherwise. This period is no different.

When the dust settles, we will choose freer lives. Because less free lives do not ever realize the illusion they promise. They just continue to sell the illusion. And when we do, that freedom will not solve all of our problems or make the world fair, out of the blue. We will need to make choices about how to solve our problems more effectively and how to make the world more fair. But it will be squarely up to us and noone else. And that will become clearer the more freedom we have and the more we take seriously that freedom and finding solutions that solve our problems on their merits and not based on some insecure, bitter, self-centered notion of how the world should be if it were perfect. It isn't and never will be. And facing that fact is probably the most important move towards progress that we could make.

More pandering and bullshit

Obama concedes remarks were ill-chosen

This is what I fuckin' hate about politics more than anything else.

"MUNCIE, Ind. - Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday conceded that comments he made about bitter working class voters who 'cling to guns or religion' were ill chosen, as he tried to stem a burst of complaints that he is condescending.

'I didn't say it as well as I should have,' he said.

As Obama tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit him with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date.

'Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch,' she said, campaigning about an hour away in Indianapolis. 'They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.'

At issue are comments Obama made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

'It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.'

The comments, posted on the Huffington Post political Web site Friday, set off a storm of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials. It threatened to highlight an Obama Achilles heel — the image that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant, aloof and carries himself with an air of superiority.

His campaign scrambled to defuse possible damage caused with working class voters that Obama needs to win in upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana.

'Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter,' Obama said Saturday morning at Ball State University. 'They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through.'

'So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country.'

After acknowledging that his previous remarks could have been better phrased, he added:

'The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to.

'And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream."

But Clinton struck hard, calling Obama's comments 'demeaning.' The increased attack showed that Clinton is eager to hold on to her working class support and is looking to open new questions about Obama's judgment that would make voters and Democratic officials reconsider their support for the Illinois senator.

'I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies," she said. 'Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith.

'I grew up in a church-going family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith. The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.

'Our faith is the faith of our parents and our grandparents. It is a fundamental expression of who we are and what we believe.'

'People don't need a president who looks down on them,' she said. 'They need a president who stands up for them.'"

What Barack Obama said was not ill-chosen. It was honest. And you know how I know that? Because I've spent my entire fucking life amongst such people. This is where I come from. They are bitter. They do turn to guns and religion and anti-trade and anti-immigrant impulses to rationalize their bitterness and insecurity in a world where they can never be responsible for their own situation. It is THE problem in poor communities, white, black, and otherwise in America, in liberal democracies, but probably in illiberal areas of the world, as well.

Why are people so generally afraid of speaking such truths?

Because there is a lot of these people. And they think, and the politicians who pander to them think, that if they just get together and rail against the world en masse, that noone will be able to speak such truths to such people.

They're bullies, is what they are. And if you notice, the policies they are advocating and people like Hillary Clinton are advocating for them, in her legacy of pandering endlessly to the bitter dumbasses of the world, are bullying too. They all involve repressive, illiberal, bullying measures looking to fuck with the guy you are competing with because you can't compete on your own merits. It's a fuckin' useless and destructive exercise. And working class people notoriously engage in it.

It's the Michael Barone philosophy of politics. It's why I don't like that guy. Or Hillary Clinton. Because they're both assholes looking to capitalize and pander to such bullshit, dishonestly, for their own weasley and dishonest ends, and fuck with every reasonable policy or policy discussion, in the meantime, because such discussions are held by people who are smarter and more honest than they are and such folks, Michael, in particular, explain their failure not because they can't compete but because those who are smarter and more honest then they are are just elites who can't understand the lives of salt-of-the-earth average people.

Michael Barone, Hillary Clinton, and those of their ilk pander and exploit the bitterness, insecurity, ignorance and other ignoble features of average Americans to have power over them rather than enlighten them and offer them real opportunities that only come with taking on real challenges.

I spent my entire life growing up with this bullshit. I spend my entire life with it now, working with such families and their kids.

But the difference between my approach and Hillary Clinton's approach is that I am honest with them about what is actually going to create the opportunities they are looking for.

And so is Barack Obama, here. Bitter dumbasses just often don't want to hear that truth because it pains them to face up to it. Which is goddamned foolish, because it costs them more in the long run to not face up to it. But Hillary Clinton doesn't care about the long run for working class people, is the truth. Neither does Michael Barone. What they both care about is the political and economic opportunities they create for themselves, right now.

And average Americans need to decide: am I going to go for the bullshit artist in the present or the honest leader for the future?

Honesty doesn't always feel good.

But it's better for you in the long run.

And the absence of it fucks with every legitimate policy and policy discussion in America and in liberal democracies that we face.

This is what I hate about politics. All of the bullshit. And the lying.

The problem for people like Hillary Clinton and Michael Barone and all of the dumbasses who fall for this bullshit is that dishonesty really doesn't serve you in the end. It's not a fairy tale. It's just a fact, jack.

So Michael Barone's legacy is that he's just some insecure asshole who worked at the U.S. News and World Report - not the most intellectually rigorous publication in the world, any sophomore in high school should be able to get figured out - and Hillary Clinton was some poorly reasoning, pandering, intellectually dishonest Senator from New York and has-been Presidential candidate who should have won it all but didn't because of all of those qualities. And all of the dumbasses that Barack is trying to be honest with in these comments can either go on being stupid, bitter, insecure, shitheads, lost in all that bullshit, and clinging to guns and religion and anti-trade and anti-immigrant impulses to rationalize all of it - just as similar dumbasses have and continue to cling to racism, nationalism, religious bigotry, homophobia, and any number of bullshit feelings about people to rationalize what fuckin' shitheads they are, or they can listen to the honesty, digest it and reflect on it a little, and use it to their advantage rather than forever trying to defend against the fucking obvious.

I got news for such people: none of those ways of looking at the world rationalize jack shit. You're just a shithead. Face the fuck up, shithead. It's better for you. I know from experience. Facing up to the bullshit makes you a better person. And it pays in the long run. And there is not a fuckin' pyrrhic victory in the world that could make up for that.

The problem with people is that they don't want to face their bullshit. And that is all of us. Just some of us have an easier time of it and some of us have a harder time of it.

Shitheads of the world thought they were going to pull a fast one on more honest people there for a bit. And more honest people have their own issues with being more honest with themselves and one another, of course.

But what the fuck do you know? Honest people come out on top. How the fuck about that?

And too fuckin' bad for the shitheads until they face up. But once you do, once we all do, things go better for us, for all of us. That goes for all of us. Me too.

Charles Krauthammer and the delusions of power

Charles Krauthammer writes a thoughtful column on deterrence, today, against an Iranian strike on Israel that is worth a read, I think.

The Holocaust Declaration

Deterring the Undeterrable

Charles' comfort with American hegemony is hardly comforting to me, much of the time. It's an impossible policy to maintain, of course, nor is it liberal (in a classical sense), democratic or desireable. But even an embrace of America swaggering its power about is reason to be concerned about anyone's thinking about power. Lord Acton had wiser things to say about the matter, I think.

Having said that, it is true, I think, that America should make clear that America will stand with Israel and respond to any attack on her soil.

That's not as ambitious a policy as I would adopt, nor is it enough to ward off any attack, as Charles concedes may be true. I actually do not believe that Iran would attack Israel without some serious provocation, which, I would acknowledge is more likely with Iran having the bomb. The leadership in both Israel and Iran operate under policies of fear and insecurity and are too ready to use military force when fear-driven rhetoric is used rather than diplomacy. That is the problem, fundamentally, which is why, though, obviously any American security policy must be backed by a clear and credible deterrent of military force, it is not nearly enough to resolve the issues between Israel and any of her neighbors, including Iran.

On-going regional security/peace discussions, like the ones already convened by the Bush Administration to deal with the situation in Iraq, that has been bandied about would be a good idea to explore. But so would direct bilateral talks with Iran, as Barack Obama has suggested.

As long as our relationship with Iran is one based on premises that seek to manipulate their sense of insecurity - by withholding engagement, by trying to isolate their regime, and by otherwise trying to establish dominant status that only serves to further reinforce their sense of real and imagined insecurity that drives their nuclear ambitions, right now - which, by my lights and, I think, by the objective evidence given Iran's recent announcement of their intentions to build 6000 new centrifuges, have become more ambitious and not less since our efforts from 2003 - rather than genuinely engage their security and other interests, the Iranian regime, with or without Ahmadinejad, will likely resent and resist American efforts to get them to give up their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The deeper issue is not just deterrence, though that may be necessary since there are all kinds of reasons to suggest for us that diplomacy may fail to dissaude the Iranians from using a nuclear weapon.There are also all kinds of reasons to think that diplomacy would fail to prevent Pakistan from bombing India, at any particular point that those relations might heat up.

But that hasn't happened yet. And there's not much reason to think that it would happen in the near future.

The deeper issue is addressing Iran's sense, as a nation, Ahmadinejad's sense, as a political leader, and the sense of most Mideast states and political leadership of insecurity in an often violent and chaotic Middle Eastern world, especially in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is why on-going regional conferences that address such issues make sense. But it is also why bilateral diplomacy makes sense, as well, and