My too often nonsensical and forever unenlightened reflections on people and life and everything else I understand as well as I understand everything else. Not well at all, in other words. Love thy neighbor, is my motto. Unless something better comes along. Make sure to say so when you find it.
It all began when Andrew Sullivan began talking sense again and moving away from the postmodern darkness.
First, Frankl lays bear the foolishness of the current political period.
Why Victor Frankl is the master. The one book my dad remembered from college, the last time I talked with him. And for good reason.
The cynics are wrong. And Victor explains well, here, and as ever single smidgeon of empirical evidence in the world should make perfectly clear to anyone with their eyes open, at this point.
This Harry Reasoner documentary has excellent observations about human nature.
Harry's right. Problem is group sainthood just is how all people operate, too often. All of us. Not just the hippies. In fact, the hippies did their bit to help move us more away from all that. Beams and splinters and all that. Without even a shred of doubt in our wisdom. The sign of true wisdom, apparently. Or perhaps vanity. Same as it ever was.
The cynicism is not only wrong. It makes things worse. As Victor well argues. Because without thinking of how we should be, we cannot be what we could be. Which is exactly what has happened in the last 10 years, in particular. But, really, is, tragically, so much of human history.
And our fate is more of the same. Until we choose differently. Until we choose to be better, for real. The only path to honest progress.
Everything else is a means of frustrating honest progress. For everyone involved.
I like the way Jack said it better, personally.
The path to progress, you wonder. Freedom or repression?
Mark Twain knew. John Stuart Mill did too. So did Lord Acton, Baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire, Mary Wolstonecraft and everyone else who made our free world possible.
Perhaps everyone else has outthunk them?
Perhaps that isn't vanity. Perhaps it's progress. Damn the stinkin' consequences.
Or, perhaps, as it turns out, you, too, are human. As subject to original sin, especially the deadliest of sins - pride - as anyone else. Perhaps there are no saints among us. Perhaps there really is noone without sin.
Perhaps that means you, too, Captain Infallible. Leaping human nature with a single line of bullshit.
It's a bird. It's a plane.
Awwww. It's just lovable old Grover.
And who doesn't love Grover?
Jesus Christ, that's who. And the liberal democratic world, apparently.
Liberal democracies. Hatin' on furry monsters since the dawn of furry monsters.
The best commentary on the news and politics I've ever heard, period.
I've listened to this song at least 20 times, now, on the way up from Wichita.
I made my peace with this song that if people do not want to stop the madness they do not have to. And as long as we all rationalize it, it will never go away. Ever.
Is there a goddamn thing discussed there I wouldn't teach?
Obviously not. Because it's all true, dagnabbit.
So why the political back and forth?
Because so many of us are crabby little children. Can't just have honest, thoughtful, respectful, discussions about politics. Even when there is zero real debate about anything we're debating.
Oh, and if the state board of education says that I have to teach something, is that the final word on any dang thing I teach?
Obviously not. The point of a liberal education, for anyone who managed to stay awake for it.
My conscience is the final word on everything I teach. Which is exactly as it should be. That's why we get a liberal education. For those who took it seriously.
After a conversation with a friend about perspective and the need for it in the sports and steroids debates, it occurs to me.
That the same is true for all of it.
Every last bit of it.
We are a fucking mess. Humanity. Constantly bickering about every damn thing like somehow our opinions are more infallible than they could ever possibly be. Myself included. Big index finger pointing right in my own direction, right now.
Go watch some baseball, this summer. Stop taking your opinions so seriously, goofball.
I'm talking to myself, there. I do it often. The neighbors are beginning to talk.
I spend a lot of time talking with the kids about how decency and honesty pay.
But the truth is that it's not the incentives, and certainly not the punishments, that keep us honest.
A certain Nazarene comes to mind.
Same as it's always been.
Some people are just willing to do what it takes to love thy neighbor, to do good and to be more honest, despite the incentives and punishments otherwise.
And that's what keeps us honest. And always will.
And all of us know that deep in our hearts. No matter how cynical we get.
Private business owners should be able to discriminate against serving or hiring people they don't want to serve or hire. Even if I believe with all my heart and soul that they shouldn't. And not only should they have the right to do it. They do it now, as Rand points out. Law or no law.
You want to turn away paying or better qualified folks out of your stubborn ignorance, Einstein, have at it.
No paying or qualified or even unqualified person of color has a single itsy-bitsy smidgeon to fear from you. Not just because who wants to do business or work for someone who would think like this. But because how in the world could such a person maintain a healthy, reliable, worthy business, at all, long term?
They couldn't is the answer. Bigots might find ways to keep their doors open. But, long term, in a world that recognizes the stupidity of such a notion, they will most assuredly be swallowed up in the great marketplace of common sense.
Civil rights progress occurred with a change in hearts and minds of people, as King argued well, in leadership of that movement. White, black, and all the rest. Not a fact of law. The law was needed for things legal, like voting rights and discrimination by government entities (by the government entity with honest jurisdiction).
The law was the single most oppressive fact in the lives of African Americans in American history. A fact that is patently clear when the left decides to get honest about anything, these days.
The law kept black people in chains. The law kept black people from reading. The law kept black people from owning property. The law kept black people from making a living freely in the world. The law kept black people from voting. The law kept public facilities separate but equal. And the law was what protected anything an ugly majority wanted. Same as it ever was.
And it is that same law that progressives have decided is the Great White Hope today.
The real progress we have made in America and around the world on matters of race has occurred, largely, as a matter of change in hearts and minds.
And most people, and most white people, in particular, since they are still a statistical majority in America, but black folks and brown folks and all folks of all sorts of colors and creeds, will agree, when Rand starts making that argument more plain.
On this issue, I think more people identify with Rand's dilemna than Rachel likely realizes.
And Rand is right about the politics, as well. Painting government regulation of racist speech or behavior, like painting gay marriage, as extreme is dirty politics. It's not honest discussion. Especially when the right side of the question is being bullied.
It's the reason why folks like Rand Paul who try to engage politics more honestly deserve more respect than bullies like Rachel Maddow. Who still deserve to be able to get married. No matter what bullies to her right have to say about the matter.
Americans will likely identify with Rand more than Rachel, on this question. Many Americans may feel that gay marriage is extreme, as well. But, over time, that will not be the case. Because giving people the right to marry who they choose it is the right thing to do.
And the heart of this debate between Rachel and Rand is:
Do Americans (and most people) change for the better because the law tells them so? Or because it's the right thing to do?
Not only is Rand right on the merits of this question.
It's good politics, if he thinks about it for a second.
Because most Americans likely identify with Rand's argument, here. At a personal level. Black folks, too. Even if they, similarly, would be sheepish to articulate it so.
Leftwing and rightwing bullies will lose these battles. Just as religious and imperial bullies lost similar battles over the long term of human history. No matter how many people they murdered and intimidated in their wake.
Because they're wrong about humanity, that's why.
"...all experience hath shewn," as Jefferson wrote, "that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government..."
Cynics thought these words would fail to move a nation, too. But, they were wrong. And that eventually proved to be the case. Because people got tired of being bullied otherwise.
And more Americans are like Rand, tired of being bullied on these matters, than Rachel or most bullies on the right and left appreciate.
Lord Acton was right. And so was Twain.
And there's not a damn thing that bullies on the left or right can do about. They won't even be able to bully, long term.
Because, eventually, no one will trust them, at all.
No matter how they try to bully and spin otherwise.
The more activists, journalists, and people in government frantically try to prove just how important they are to every issue they get they get their egos wrapped up in.
And the more they fail, repeatedly, without end, to actually resolve any of those issues.
The more they demonstrate just how irrelevant they are to the lives of most people.
And the less people trust or turn to them to resolve those issues.
And the sad thing is that there are a few things that government really is necessary to address because no other institution literally can address those issues as well. Criminal justice and national security, in particular.
It's ironic, isn't it?
They buzz around like busy little bees. Loudly proclaiming just how important they all really are. And they fail, again and again and again, to do any of the jobs they set before themselves.
And all the rest of the country can conclude, rightly, is just how unimportant they are to most things of importance.
Ego. Big fat, insatiable ego.
I know. I know what comes immediately to mind. Joe Biden. It's true. But it's all the rest of them, too. Believe me.
And all for naught.
Because all Americans can do is look at this enormous and ridiculous spectacle - governing officials taking on every issue that tickles their fancy and failing to really resolving any of them - and come to the quite logical conclusion that these fools can't be trusted to do a damned thing of any import.
Even if most Americans had no clue that was the logical conclusion when they started.
Your English teacher was right, killer. Irony. The world is full of it. It's full of something.
"Eventually, 200 people joined the group, organizing activities 35 times between 2007and 2009, Yao quoted his client as saying. Ma himself participated in 18 sessions. Members decided on their own where to meet, Yao said. Among the 14 men and eight women arrested were white-collar workers, taxi drivers and salesclerks.
His trial highlights the vast social changes that China has undergone in the decades since it embraced economic reform. 'Sex liberation stymied by law,' trumpeted a front-page article in the official China Daily, which ran an in-depth piece that questioned whether China's laws on sexual behavior are lagging behind the times.
Chinese attitudes toward sex have changed dramatically during the last 20 years, said sociologist Li Yinhe, China's most prominent sex expert. Even a generation ago, holding hands and kissing in public were virtually unheard of. These days, studies indicate that 60 to 70 percent of Chinese have had sex before marriage, up from 15 percent in 1989.
'In the past, any sex activity outside marriage was unacceptable among people and could be punished,' said Li, a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
China used the so-called charge of 'hooliganism,' a catchall term that criminalized everything from premarital sex to dancing with members of the other sex and listening to Western music. During the early 1980s, a woman was sentenced to death for participating in secret dance parties, according to the China Daily.
But with rising prosperity and an easing of government controls on personal freedoms, China has shifted toward a more progressive view on sex, though attitudes remain much more traditional in the countryside than in urban centers. Sex motels cater to college students who rent by the hour, pornography is widely available on the Internet, and radio and TV shows devoted to sex advice are highly popular.
Even public views on the once-taboo topic of homosexuality have changed, Li said. Sodomy was decriminalized in 1997, while a survey she conducted two years ago found that 91 percent of people believe gays should not face discrimination in the workplace.
The immense growth of the Internet in China has played a factor in giving niche groups a space to operate, she said. The largest online site about group sex, Happy Village, has more than 380,000 registered members.
When Ma's case surfaced publicly, Li, along with other social commentators and academics, came to his defense. Though 'partner-swapping' is against social norms, 'just violating social convention isn't violating the law. As long as activities don't harm anyone else, one has a right to participate in them,' she wrote in one blog post.
A prominent campaigner for sexual rights, Li even drafted a proposal to scrap the crime at the March session of the National People's Congress. It was submitted but no action was taken.
'Most people don't like Ma's activities. But most people also believe Ma should not be sentenced. People are more tolerant and they think that the authorities should not interfere in such things as long as it's not against someone's will,' she said.
Ma has received some public backing. An online survey taken by Phoenix TV showed that 70 percent of 2,000 respondents believe he should be acquitted. A 2006 survey by the Institute on Sexuality and Gender showed that 40 percent of 6,000 respondents believed group sex should not be a crime, while most of the remainder felt it was immoral but that the penalties should not be so severe.
Even some of Ma's students have weighed in, posting their support on the popular Internet forum Tianya.
'We support him,' wrote one student who identified himself as David. 'How about those corrupt officials who secretly have mistresses? There are so many other issues in people's lives. Why don't (government officials) solve those instead of dwelling on this case?'
But others have been equally scathing in their criticism of what they view as a shocking crime. Group sex 'should face a crackdown with a heavy hand. This case proves the law was necessary,' wrote the Jiangsu Legal News, a Nanjing-based newspaper.
Regardless of the outcome, Yao said the case has challenged the government in highlighting the importance of individual privacy.
'I think because of this trial, many more people will realize the privacy issue. The case is about the government's intervention in privacy. It's about the protection of citizens' rights. People have the freedom to decide what to do with their body,' Yao said."
Progress does not mean you're right all the time, genius.
That's the opposite of progress. Otherwise known as willfull ignorance.
Think about it, professor. It's a logical impossibility.
Bullshit comes in all flavors and varieties. But it still stinks when you put in a cone.
Someone might want to tell the guys with the scoops.
"The other day, upholding the sacking of a black Christian for declining to provide 'sex therapy lessons' to gay couples, Lord Justice Laws ruled that 'law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds is irrational, divisive, capricious, arbitrary.' Actually it’s the law of Lord Justice Laws that is increasingly 'irrational, divisive, capricious, arbitrary.' Or as George Orwell, in Animal Farm, formulated it: all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. In the land of Laws, a gay is more equal than a Christian. A Muslim is more equal than anybody. A black man is more equal than a white man, unless the white man is gay and the black man a Christian. An eco-zealot is more equal than an Anglican. Not long before Lord Justice Laws’ decision on the 'irrationality' of legal protection for Christianity, Tim Nicholson, a 'Head of Sustainability' fired for questioning his property management group’s environmental policies, sued for wrongful dismissal under 'Employment Equality (Religion And Beliefs) Regulations.' He wound up with the best part of one hundred thousand pounds after Mr. Justice Burton ruled that Mr. Nicholson’s faith in anthropogenic global warming was a 'philosophical belief' on a par with religion. So the Employment Equality (Religion And Beliefs) Law protects belief in apocalyptic 'climate change' but not in Jesus...
...As for Muslims, in December Tohseef Shah sprayed the words 'KILL GORDON BROWN,' 'OSAMA IS ON HIS WAY' and 'ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD' on the war memorial at Burton-upon-Trent. But the Crown Prosecution Service decided his words were not 'religiously motivated.' Phew! Thank goodness for that, eh? So a week or so back he walked out of court a free man, except for £500 in compensation to the municipal council for cleaning off his non-religiously motivated 'ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD' graffito.
I am currently slogging my way through a rather stodgy 650-page tome called Extreme Speech And Democracy. On the back is a question from Christopher McCrudden, professor of human rights law at Oxford: 'What are the appropriate limits to freedom of expression in societies that wish to be democratic, multicultural, and committed to the human rights of all?'
Whether or not you regard that as a legitimate query, it’s certainly an irrelevant one. Because whatever you decide are the 'appropriate' limits, by the time they percolate down to the transgendered liaison officer patrolling Workington shopping centre they’ll be reliably inappropriate. As I always point out in retailing the latest idiocy from Canada’s 'human rights' fanatics, none of the above are 'right-wing' in any sense that Steyn or Rumsfeld or Cheney would recognize the term. Mrs. Duffy is a lifelong Labour voter; Mr. Newman is one of those pox-on-all-their-houses types; the property company that fired Mr. Nicholson is so wretchedly politically correct it employed him as 'Head of Sustainability,' a title of near parodic bogusness. Yet all fell afoul of Lord Justice Laws’ 'irrational, divisive, capricious, arbitrary' laws. Because it’s hard not to. Because once you establish the principle that the state has the right to police ideas, sooner or later one of yours will catch their eye. I say 'principle,' but that’s not really the word. The spirit is more aptly caught by a new joint initiative by the Canadian 'Human Rights' Commission, the Manitoba 'Human Rights' Commission and the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba to “promote and enhance the learning experience relative to human and treaty rights for all people living in Canada and around the world.' No idea what that means, but, as the CHRC press release says, this is the first time that these three useless taxpayer-funded sinecures have come together to 'further their cause.' Since when do government agencies have ideological 'causes'? And what happens if you disagree with their 'cause'?
As for the 'balancing act' that Professor McCrudden urges between individual rights and broader responsibilities, only a truly free people have the incentive even to seek it. The more you haul nobodies off to the cells for putting up a poster or quoting the Bible, the more a timid conformist populace will keep its head down, mind its own business, and avoid broader social engagement—or at any rate non-alcohol-fuelled engagement. Big Government is dismantling civic identity, and the slow-burn bonfire of liberties in Europe and North America will eventually consume us all."
He's right. The home of the brave, and really the homes of all free peoples, has been cowered into the home of the timid and their frightened little schoolyard bullies.
Fuck that shit, I say.
These colors don't run, bitch. Find somebody else to push around, dicks.
The Missouri Legislature lived up to its well-earned reputation of a regular gathering of notorious jackasses, recently, renaming a stretch of Mark McGwire Highway to Mark Twain Highway.
Mark Twain would get a hearty laugh, I'm sure.
Jim Caple says it better than I could in his column ways back in March about the plan.
"You don't know about me without you have driven on a road by the name the Mark McGwire Highway in St. Louis; but that ain't no matter anymore, on account the Missouri Senate voted to rename it for Mr. Mark Twain this week. They had been talking about this ever since the book "Juiced'' was made by Jose Canseco. He told the truth mainly, but there were some stretchers in his book, like him and me taking a dead cat to the graveyard and running off to be Pittsburgh Pirates and injecting syringes full of steroids into each other in a cave. But that is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Ozzie Guillen.
Anyways, the Missouri legislature named that piece of highway for me after I hit 70 big taters to break the record of 61 made by Roger Maris many years before. When I done it, reporters from all over the country took to following me around from city to city like I was the lost dauphin of France, writing stories about me being almost a god out of scripture just cuz of how I hit so many round-trippers and all. They said my circuit clouts practically saved the game, what with all the fans who been turned off before by the players' affair and the commissioner canceling the 1994 World Series and Ken Burns "Baseball'' series. The way everyone went on, it was like going to your own funeral and standing in the back of the church listening to folks who was no relation all praying and sobbing about what a wonderful soul you was and how lucky they was to have knowed you and how you made everyone everywhere happier. Not that no one could attend their own funeral, without signing with the Pirates.
The thing is, I pretty much whitewashed them all, the reporters and the fans and everybody. I was taking steroids -- just to keep healthy, mind -- but no one never cared a bit at the time. They seen how big me and my acne was and knowed I took androstenedione, but they didn't mind none. All they wanted to talk about was all them round-trippers. Fooling them was easier than an owner getting taxpayers to pay him to build him his own stadium by fibbing how it will create jobs.
Only one day, they all turned against me. All of a sudden, they decided steroids was bad and I was going to hell or jail or Kansas City for taking them. I don't know why; maybe it was the Widow Douglas stirring them up or the U.S. Congress subpoenaing me to testify. All I know is all them people who went on and on about me saving the game in 1998 when they must have knowed I took steroids now said I done ruined it. Well, I was blindsided. It was like afloating on the river, bound for Cooperstown and enjoying a smoke on a corncob pipe and watching the stars in the heavens with your best friend all peaceful like and then having a steamboat run you over and smash up your boat and leave you for dead on the river bank. Or like being a Cubs fan.
Well, I snuck off and lived alone on an island and didn't talk to no one for awhile, not even Congress. I was practically a hermit, sort of like Milton Bradley. But now I am back in baseball with my old manager, Skipper Tony, learning his Cardinals how to hit. But I will take a blood oath (which is different than a blood test) that I won't have nothing to do with those steroids anymore. I learnt my lesson. I just think maybe I can give something back to baseball after all it gived me. And maybe I can make people remember that I wasn't such a bad egg after all. That I was friendly and helped kids and made people feel happy and hit 49 home runs as a rookie before I was on the juice.
I certainly ain't doin' this for the money. Thanks to all them taters I hit, I got more money than a body could tell what to do with, lessun he had a vengeful ex-wife and bad judgment, which was definitely the case with Canseco. That is why he wound up doing time in jail and appearing on reality shows. I don't know which was worse, though if I had to guess I would say boxing one of the ex-"Partridge Family" kids is about as low as a player can sink. Without it was ratting on your teammates in a book.
I also hope the state House votes to not change the highway name. It seems to me that if you name a road for someone, you shouldn't a go and change it without he does something real low down and despicable. I mean, Pete Rose still has a street named after him but that's a story for another book entirely."
The Missouri Legislature has obviously never read any Mark Twain. The man's whole life was dedicated to getting people to accept themselves for their failures, not rub their noses in it.
It's like having a Stone a Prostitute Fundraiser for Jesus. It makes no goddamn sense. Except to anybody with no goddamn sense.
The Missouri Legislature should consider changing the name of the Three Stooges Highway to the Missouri Legislature Highway. It's a more appropriate switch.
And would better acknowledge the Legislature's appreciation for the legacy of their favorite son. Both of them.
And the ever shortening distance between their heads and their posteriors.
This is what progress looks like. No matter what your grandma told you.
Homeboys Industries make the American press corps look like the Special Olympics.
And it facilitates responsibility and is real progress in a way that no ideology or political party or religious affiliation or any other group even comes close to demonstrating.
The heart of it:
Compassion. With a big C, motherfucker.
The only road to honest courage. You big sissy.
And those who tell you otherwise are liars, liars, pants on fire.
I just have to share this because I've enjoyed the shit out of this ad. And it's sparked a lot of interesting class discussion.
The campaign is all kinds of crazy consumerism. But it's a good time and sweet as all shit, you gotta admit. The future is gangster, baby.
Jesus, as I remember, talked about loving everyone. Not just the poor. Or the rich. Or the saints. Or the sinners. And he certainly didn't say a damn thing about jailing, or threatening, or shaming everyone in sight. In fact, I'm pretty sure his message was about loving people and not casting stones.
Do you got what it takes to take responsibility and love thy neighbor?
If not, perhaps you can just enjoy the tight beats.
Maybe drink with your pinkie up, every once in awhile, like the rest of my crew.
"In moments when we are presented with a sore provocation, the temptation is to respond with unrestrained fury. But wanton indulgence of anger usually ends up compounding foolishness with lunacy.
You can fight fire with fire. As a rule, though, it's better to use water."
If stupidity was dollar bills, America, and the world, be rich, bi-atch.
It's finally occurred to me, deep in my bones, that there really is no other endgame for democratic politics than a liberalized future. Meaning a future of greater liberty.
The major empires of the world tried exactly the kind of logic that both major parties and ideologies have taken in the last 10 years. The logic of might makes right. And the infinite manipulations around that and trying to look like that is not what they are doing.
And the consequences became so tragic and obvious, that they simply could not continue down the same path. The rise of Hitler and Stalin being the most obvious. And Communist imperlialism and the ugly rationalizations of power geopolitics being the longer term tragic consequence.
And the illiberal policies, of the right and left, in the last decade, and every player in the circles of power, will suffer the same fate. Without question, at some point. With a world of unnecessary tragedy, all in the name of fruitless ego, as a consequence.
The most enduring principle in politics, as in life. What comes around goes around. And all assholes get their due.
And, after a time, people get tired of what's coming around.
The real question that all of us need to ask ourselves is, "Will I be proud of my behavior and my contributions, when that day comes?"
Because whether we will or we will not, the world will become freer right underneath our noses, as George Orwell intimated.
And there's not a damn thing to be done to control it otherwise.
If you are not familiar with Homeboy Industries, get to know them, homey.
Father Greg Boyle's successful efforts to help former gang members turn their lives around are a light for all of us who live our lives in darkness. Homeboys Industries
And what real progress looks like.
Note to the small-hearted. You are wrong, gangster.
This kind of compassion is what real progress looks like.
Whether you have the courage to acknowledge that or not.
"There are millions of parents out there who don’t have enough money for private school but who have thought just as sensibly and care just as much about their children’s education as affluent people do. Let’s use the money we are already spending on education in a way that gives those parents the same kind of choice that wealthy people, liberal and conservative alike, exercise right now. That should be the beginning and the end of the argument for school choice."
This has always been the essence of this debate, for me. As a child from a poor family, I have always loathed the snottiness of educated and not-so-educated members of various elites and parties who could not fundamentally respect my choices and the choices that families like mine would make because of some arrogant certainty that they knew better. Because they said so, that's why.
It's not only unwarranted. The older I get, the more I recognize the pretense of it. Generally, meant to serve the interests of the same snots.
School choice is a good idea because peoples' choices, especially in the most intimate and important matters in their lives, should be respected. Period.
Here's the Cliff's Notes version, by my lights, of the stakes for the humanity in this current political era:
Was Hitler right or not?
Is humanity largely a mass of sheep easily and necessarily cowered by intimidation of a leader powerful enough to cower them?
Or are people generally worthy of our faith, capable of learning from mistakes, capable of working with one another reasonably with genuine respect and appreciation for differences and disagreements, which serve to enhance their options for better thinking and action, and best served by a government that fundamentally respects their freedom?
What we all need to do is to find the courage to answer that question honestly, without excuses for our cowardice.
I am without a shadow of a doubt confident about what my answer to that question is.
Do you realize what a big statement this is to everyone in Arizona about how seriously they should take that bullshit law? And the kind of loyalty that these guys have for one another?
Never underestimate the power of principled badasses from underdog schools. And teams from gorgeous southwestern cities.
Because they will smoke your spurs long before you realize that you are fucking toast.
Note to the smallhearted:
This is what courage looks like. When you get done pretending that you have it, you might consider actually demonstrating some.
Arizona always treated me well. And folks like Steve, the big-hearted folks, were the ones that made that happen.
I think I just found my NBA team. Can't do worse than my Royals.
Though, like everyone I love, I'm loyal to them, too.
In an age, like all ages, when compassion has become a dirty word. These folks help us clean up that legacy.
Jesus 101. For those who take his message, and the principles of all major religious traditions, more seriously than their egos. It was his signature message, when those who lack his courage and strength, take a moment to consider the beams they carry.
Did you here them take responsibility for their failures? Refreshing change of pace, huh?
Note the contrast with the current era. In every walk of life.
That's what real progress looks like. No matter the protestations of those with less love in their hearts.
When bullies remind you that they could be bullying you much worse, if they pleased, on any issue that they see fit, remind them, nicely, to go fuck themselves. Because that is exactly how bullies and illiberalism have functioned since the beginning of time and the world over. The Iranian mullahs have made it into a theology. As did our own Judeo-Christian adventures in illiberalism. And virturally every culture has tried the same since the beginning of organized human existence.
And we left those ways behind for a reason.
Freedom and compassion are and always have been the values that make us great. They are what distinguish us from our illiberal past and illiberal cultures the world over.
It is our freedom and compassion and a wiser, more courageous notion of human nature that liberal values offer that make us stronger and better as people.
What we are doing today is what we have been doing since the beginning of humanity.
Choosing between our more honest and compassionate strength and our more self-centered and petty-minded weakness.
Wanna know a secret?
There is no such thing as too liberal. Or too free. Or too compassionate. Or any of the rest.
There is only a thoughtful, more decent, and honest application of these values and our missteps and failures. That's it. The rest is excuses by the less thoughtful and decent among us to excuse their own cowardice and much more profound failures of humanity.
Obviously, we need policies that make sure that we cannot hurt one another with impunity. And policies that constructively facilitate genuine responsibility when we do hurt one another. And contain those, in the meantime, who are honestly dangerous to others.
There is no world where more recrimination, aggression, punitiveness, and mean-spiritedness makes the world better. Never has been. Never will be. No matter our protestations to the contrary.
And the places where despotism and terrorism fester should be evidence enough for that conclusion.
America was conceived so that legacy could be thrown off for good. There is no reason we should be treating that logic like it is our birthright when, in fact, it was the very past we were casting off to offer something better.
Something freer. Something more decent.
Something to make us genuinely proud to bear that name American.
I needed this, today. And a much better English lesson than anything that Tim James has to offer.
Limited INS resources should be used to stop terrorists and violent criminals likely to reoffend. Everyone else should be encouraged to take the legal route. But peoples' lives don't need to be disrupted to do that.
Why do we persistently go to dick mode to address any issue we face? Because it gives us an excuse to be a dick, that's why. Everyone likes the dick, apparently. Your mother, for instance. Or so I'm told.
I've always had a serious soft spot for English-as-a-Second-Language teachers, actually. Single ESL ladies should definitely hit me up. That sex has got to be nuclear.
Because, fundamentally, there are just people who see any problem and think, "What excuse can I find, here, to not give a shit about whose life I dick with?"
And others who say, "How can I help?"
I respect the latter. And want to bear their beautiful, brilliant, decent-hearted, multilingual children.
And the former can go fuck themselves. In whatever language they please.
Harold and Maude was one the favorite movies of my first real love in life, and the one we never got to watch before it was through. And, as it turned out, it was the movie my second love and I watched the night I started to fall for her.
And, mostly, because Cat's song Father and Son is one of the most beautiful songs about fathers and sons I've ever heard. And I couldn't get enough of it, this morning.
So Yusuf Islam's got something goin' right for him, in my book.
In the process, I came across this classic from Jackson Browne, today. Got me thinking about my own dreams. And all the dreams of people and kids I come across.
I don't know why, exactly. Why so many people resign their dreams. Resign themselves to lives they fell into. Or got too comfortable with. Rather than lives they love.
The beauty of it all?
It's not the end. Nothing ever is. Until it is.
Life's not a beautiful, tragic melody. The life you love is just waiting for you to make your move.
Just ask Nick Vujicic.
I love this little life of mine. Even the stumbles. And the failures. And the heartbreak. All of it.
"Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) yesterday actually scolded the executives for 'betting with other people's money and other people's futures.'
Taxpayers -- pitchforks in hand -- should hold a hearing and grill these senators along the very same lines.
Here is the difference between Goldman and Congress:
Goldman may be trying to sell ice to Eskimos, but nobody is making the Eskimos buy it. With Congress, either you give them your money or you go to jail."
It's not just the dirty deals made in Congress. And the shady accounting. And the selfish pursuit of self-interest.
It's the damn fool notion that these would be the very folks we would go to to fix all of these matters.
Why don't you listen to some Michael Buble and then consider whether you're gonna lie to me, again, and tell me how it's all the nice guys that fuck everything up in the world.
Because none of these guys look nice to me. Just ordinary assholes. Who just can't face up to their bullshit. Same as it ever was.
"The researchers found that compared to participants without power, powerful participants were stricter in judging others’ moral transgressions but more lenient in judging their own: 'power increases hypocrisy, meaning that the powerful show a greater discrepancy between what they practice and what they preach.'
Nothing new there.
My favorite line from Andrew, though, is this one:
"Power corrupts. Always has. Which is why we need more assholes in the press and fewer people, like Mike Allen, annotating and revering every word that drops from the platters of the connected and the powerful."
Yeah, that's been a plan of pure genuis. Get back with me about how that's workin' for ya, fellas.
Cause from here, to quote the advertisers for the beer of choice for assholes, it just can't get any better than this.
That and I agree with your son. You have my pity. And even my empathy and genuine concern. For how you could so totally twist the decent, compassionate teachings of Jesus of Nazareth into your hateful screeds. And so utterly undermine your family's more honest strength and well-being, in the process.
Fear, of hell and damnation, as a means of coercing conscience is exactly what Fred Phelps stands for. Fear of mass murder is how Al Queda goes about it. Fear of the government is how Iranian clerics and the Taliban do it.
Surely, we can stand for something stronger.
Meaning, something more like Jesus. Something more compassionate and decent. And loving.
And which more honestly respects peoples consciences.
Because if not, we really are just lesser versions of this dick. A man who really does believe in force and fear as a governing philosophy. All in the name of scaring people into good conscience.
Just like him.
Let him eat the court costs of his little adventures, I say. The families of U.S. Marines certainly shouldn't be picking up the tab.
But, at some point, all of us should take a step back, I think, and ask ourselves, "Am I more like Fred Phelps than I would like to admit?"
For many among us, the answer to that question, even unintentionally, is yes.
It's your people, dumbass. You're the prime minister. Americans are not standing in the way. And, by and large, Israelis are not standing in the way. What's standing in the way is the willingness of Palestinians (and Israelis, to a lesser extent) to give up the bullshit and stop using peace deals as a means of manipulating for more shit.
Who cares about who gets what shit, you assholes? Sign a deal and stop killing people. It's not fucking rocket science.
And finally figure out that all of you are going to have to learn how to live with one another and stop killing each other. The end, maestro. Buh-dum-bum.
This is the consequence of all this rationalization of pressure, in lieu of responsibility, as political gamesmanship. It rationalizes the very kinds of games that Palestinian terrorist groups have played for years to get more stuff and kill more Israelis and Palestinians to get it.
This shit has got to end, in the broadest sense, if the world is to get safer for real. For any moron who isn't defending the bullshit along with them.
If Palestinians and Israelis want to be safe, they need to stop killing one another and to make arrangements to capture or kill those not prepared to end that ugly legacy and all of the horrific consequences that this security nightmare has created for Palestinians and Israelis.
And they need to genuinely commit themselves to live in peace. Period. Everything else is gravy. Or any number of excuses for why they'd rather people continue to die than to settle this insanity once and for all.
There are no winners in this kind of politics. And many, many dead losers.
In a world of fools - meaning, me and you, fool - scared of our own little bitch shadows and making excuses for just about anything we hope will make all of our scared, stupid, selfish impulses go away forevah, or visit-Granny-in-hell-trying, Matt Stone and Trey Parker cut through the bullshit better than just about anything on ye olde boob-tube, these days. Except General Hospital. And Fox News.
And now some goodie-goodie terrorist douchebag named Yunus Muhammad has threatened their lives. Because they dare tell Muslims that they, too, are morons like the rest of us. Making enormous fools of themselves in the name of all that fear. And making a mess of their societies in the process.
Just like us. See. Now everyone can be like America.
And for eating all those delicious pork chops. Hmm. Pork chops.
These two boys are what America is all about. When we wipe our snot-filled noses and stop crying in our tiny little pillows about how scary and selfish the world is.
We are. You too, dumbass. Me too, asshole. Thanks for reminding me. Now get over it. And do better. And go do something useful with your life. Other than threatening everyone else to get your way.
And if you still can't handle life as it is, Drs. Stone and Parker have the treatment you need. That means you, ladies.
I don't have nearly enough knowledge of this area of policy to be able to say whether Rich's charges are true or not.
But they are remarkably plausible, given Democratic ideological and political strategy, right now.
Meaning, I don't know the details of the cases in the charges he is making, here, about businesses buying favor from the party and members of Congress.
But I can believe them, prima facie, because they match the general pattern of behavior from Democrats in the last 2 years, in particular.
Reap what you sow. So reap carefully, I suppose is the lesson.
You preach an unforgiving attitude to matters criminal and political, you may just get to taste the fruits of your labors.
Perhaps Democrats will be sounding a more liberal tone on such matters. I know. Democrats liberal. Who'd a known?
And, sadly, all of this is it likely to be for naught. The political winds do not blow leftward, this season.
Spending time talking with the kids, today - the real fundamental of quality parenting and teaching, and all the emotional scarring they inspire in tiny little hearts - it's become all too clear to me that this problem just never seems to go away.
I hope parents of my generation remember Will's message. Now that we're the Einsteins with breadpins.
The more I watch liberal and illiberal democratic and autocratic politics, the more I am convinced that Lord Acton had the last word on power.
Power corrupts. Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. And so does your mother.
So the big question is:
So where's the hope, genius?
If power corrupts and that's the last word, what's the way out? Or aren't you ready to concede that there is no way out, pretty boy?
Two things.
First, don't hate me cause I'm beautiful. It's just uncouth. And it just makes me sizzle in ways your momma warned you about.
Second, it's a damned good question, don't you think?
Why is it that if power corrupts that liberal democracies like America still seem to stumble forward in the biggest picture? Or was your high school history teacher just inescapably full of shit.
Well if your high school history teacher was me, then the answer to that last question is an inescapable and emphatic, "Booyah." Can't get anything past this guy. Except with magic.
But the answer to the first question is actually pretty straightforward.
Power corrupts. That's for sure.
But, the light at the end of that tunnel is that it also falls apart.
Every single time.
No exceptions.
Why?
For the same reason that bullies always get their due.
Because, after awhile, you piss off enough people, you create enough enemies, eventually, you're going down. Either of your own accord. Or someone will make sure that you go down. Or be subject to the musical wrath of Mr. Barry Manilow.
In democracies, we have elections. Without democracy, you have bloodshed and revolution. And loads of cake, apparently. Which was the long history of humanity - empire, war, and revolution - up until liberal democracy. Which is why it's so ugly that people would engage in similarly manipulative behavior, like, say, threatening war or revolution, in a liberal democracy, to get their way. Not that anyone would do that (I'm talking to you, Mr. Terrorism-is-the-perfect-preparation-for-schoolin' the-youngin' Western and not-so-Western activists and intelligencia).
In liberal democracies, we can just choose differently when someone deserves to be humbled. We don't actually have to bully them in return. Like, say, how the Republican leadership and conservative activists are gearing up to do, as we speak. Or as the Democratic leadership and progressive activists have been doing for the last couple of years. And really all of them have been doing since the beginning of politics as a social practice. And as homo sapiens have been doing to other homo sapiens - and really most of God's creation - since they first discovered bacon.
But, one thing is for sure.
Everyone gets their cummupance. Zero doubt about that one. Not sure? Go talk with Hitler. He might have a story or two after he recovers from that little matter of his suicide. Poor baby.
And that's how it always works out, in the end.
Because noone likes to be bullied and manipulated, obviously. And though bullies will often not take responsibility for their own bullying, in the beginning, they sure as hell will make sure that noone bullies them. And people find ways to confront bullying, in the end, is the truth.
In America, we have a democracy. And that's how we confront bullies who can't get the message that they need to either humble themselves or be humbled.
But, in the bigger picture, it's not our government that needs to face, most, it's bullying.
It's us.
Yeah, you, girly man.
Every single one of us who is trying to get their way with bullying because they think they can. Which is most of us. In one way or another. When we're honest, that is.
And it is most definitely every single one of us who encourages our political representatives to use bullying and manipulation and intimidation to get our way. No matter how self-destructive it so clearly is. To anyone with any kind of honest impulse in the world. Even you, James Carville.
We are a species of shitheads. Homo sapiens, that is. Always been true, at some level. As long as we have lived long enough to mistrust one another. Meaning as soon as Fox News took the airways.
And, like every real moment of progress in our history, we will not get better by success or intelligence, primarily.
We'll get better because being a shithead is a sure road to failure. And sometimes you just have to fall on your head enough times to get the lesson that noone's going to put up with your sorry ass if you can't face up. Unless you're member of the Catholic clergy, that is.
And that is the real story of human history. When all the gloss and bullshit doesn't fuck up the view.
And that, as it turns out, is the last word on power.
Until some other kid comes around and makes all of us look like the damned fools that we are.
The more the kids and I have discussed it, the more convinced I am.
The greatest bulk of human tragedy is borne of cowardice.
And the most pernicious cowardice of all is the failure to say those three little words that we find it so hard to say.
I was wrong.
Actually, as my friend Julie said recently, that's probably not true. The truth is that our cowardice is borne of our ability to say, "I love me. And I love you. Enough for both of us to be wrong plenty in life. Because that's what's gonna happen anyway, fool. Now stop hogging the blanket."
And most of that is borne of the further cowardice to acknowledge that perhaps our failure to do that is borne of our failure to treat each other more decently and forgive one another when we do screw up. And the ways that aggression is not only limited in preventing otherwise, but has generally contributed to creating many of those messes, in the first place.
When I think of all of the people who have died, lived in fear, and otherwise had lives destroyed or seriously undermined by this one common source, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the stupidity and waste of it all.
With the solid knowledge that our only hope of turning it around is finding the courage to face this failure.
And it is courage, it is clear to me, at this point, that is borne of love, and compassion, and decency, and forgiveness. And all of the values that we fear make us weak. But which really are our surest source of strength.
That is a fact, I am clear, at this point. And a stubborn fact more stubborn than our stubborn refusal to acknowledge it.
And it is our stubborness to acknowledge that fact that is the single most destructive source of the greatest share of preventable human tragedy in our sad, destructive history.
And it is a fact that does not care what we think otherwise. It is a fact that will most certainly be a part of human existence, in some smaller way, likely, for as long as we exist. And it is a fact that will engender the most serious preventable tragedy until we face it.
I've had to make my peace with this fact.
Until we find the courage to face it. And to be better, for real.
What David is wrong about is the reason. Journalism's not in sorry shape because of the evil journalists in cahouts with big industry opposing the noble progressive agenda, as this old, tired, and self-centered line of reasoning supposes.
Journalism is in trouble because of people like David.
Not progressives. Though they certainly have done more than their share to make journalism a mess. Not conservatives. Though they have created enough of the ugly milleu that the media has become. Not moderates. Though most moderates have been either playing cynical games or been too cowardly to challenge the cynical games being played.
The reason most people that I talk with don't trust the press is the same reason I trust the press so little, these days.
Because they're assholes. They are a mass gathering of vultures and cynics looking to shit on anything decent and mishandle anything serious they can get their hands on. Because it's never dawned on them that maybe being assholes has helped create most of the more intractable messes they've been covering.
Why? Because assholes, as a rule, do not take responsibility. Ever. Not until they stop being assholes, that is. At which point, they're no longer part of the problem. But which problem remains while they are. Which is the ugly and destructive self-fulfilling prophecy of the press, politics, and most serious issues that we just can't seem to get a handle on that face us, today.
As a good friend of mine was just saying, it's Network in real time. It's press cynicism feeding a cynical political, financial, and broader culture. Taken to it's logical conclusion with the exercise of formal political power, it is the ugly tragedy that is most illiberal cultures, like North Korea, Cuba, China, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Syria, and Iran. And the larger logic is what drove Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to their unimaginable depths.
And what all of those folks have in common is that none of them will take responsibility for it. Because there's too many other people to blame for their bullshit.
And no matter how much they fail and how much advocacy for more aggression to solve every problem backfires in every variation of foolish, obvious ways, they just keep at it.
Because to do otherwise would take courage that none of them seem to have.
To admit that this path of aggression and pressure to resolve our most serious problems was just a foolish, mistaken, counterproductive path.
It's ego trumping something more honest. And decent. And more genuinely liberal. And what they know is the better direction, deep in their tiny little hearts.
And you know what the saving grace for humanity is?
There's no way to get things turned around until we face up. Period. Everything else is one long lie to avoid facing the failure.
Doubt that? Then live with the failure.
Most of these assholes seemed pleased as punch to do so.
All I'm going to say, for tonight, is that there are many tragic mistakes that have been made in this terribly tragic period of history in the Catholic Church. The Church, I will acknowledge, that my broader family has called home for all of my life.
But outside of leaving any child in the care of someone who will so seriously abuse their trust and love, I cannot think of a more tragic outcome to this sorry mess of human frailty than the imprisonment of this all-too-human and very decent man.
I can only hope that we will wake up from this sad frenzy of vengeance that has taken hold of us.
It's hard to believe that we still have to argue that peace in the Middle East is in the interests of all parties involved. But Zibigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz do a nice job of just that.
The outlines for a peace agreement these guys make look fine. Except for the one big hitch that has always stalled these agreements.
The details are not for Americans to work out. They are for Palestinians and Israelis to work out. And until they are, everything else is doomed to failure.
We can make our suggestions. But, they, ultimately, must make the commitments that make peace workable.
And the truth is that the hold up is not the Devil that is in the details. The hold up is each side committing themselves, for real, to an honest peace agreement for the long haul. Everything else is excuses. And the bitterness of their long and tragic past undermining a peaceful future.
And this proposal by these authors demonstrates better than most I've heard during this period the folly of the prevailing political winds.
"Accordingly, the administration must convey to the parties that if the offer is rejected by either or both, the United States will seek the U.N. Security Council's endorsement of this framework for peace, thus generating worldwide pressure on the recalcitrant party."
If America were to follow this suggestion, any peace commitment would almost certainly fall apart utterly. Though noone should root for that outcome, obviously. But noone should have any doubts about that.
If there is any region in the world where it is clear that the legacy of military and political force, pressure, and manipulation has failed the larger interests of everyone involved in a peace that allows both peoples to grow and develop to their fullest potential, this is the region.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, former P.L.O. members, and the Israeli government can point to a hundred pyrrhic victories over the years that supposedly justified the use of various forms of military and political manipulation to force short term concessions.
And every single one of those victories ignores the very clear and long term cost that each of them has incurred:
The absence of peace. And the lack of trust between Israelis and Palestinians to build a peaceful, secure, and prosperous future that does not continue to sacrafice the lives of innocent Palestinians and Israelis for the acquisition of land and political concessions.
If the President were to follow the advice outlined in this article, he would further add fuel to the very rationalization that has maintained this bloody relationship and undermined peace for almost a hundred years between these peoples.
Because the logic of political pressure is exactly the rationale used by Palestinian terrorists and those Israelis who have favored killing every peace agreement that has ever been and using peace discussions as a calculation in broader power politics.
It is an ugly logic that has won them concessions many times.
At the expense of thousands of innocent and not-so-innocent Palestinian and Israeli lives.
As long as we continue down this path, we give ammunition to the same ugly rationalizations of terrorists and despots the world over.
And nowhere has is this game being played with uglier, bloodier, more openly cynical calculations than in Israel and Palestine.
We can pretend that our cynicism has no consequences. But thousands of dead Palestinian and Israeli citizens would beg to differ. Millions more citizens living in repressive societies with governments and poltical players who rationalize in similar cynical ways bear the burden of our self-centered rationalizations.
And if we want that to end, we need to end the games and the political manipulation.
The more I watch national and international media, political leaders, academics, activists, and all the rest, this political period.
The less I trust any of them.
The more I watch people, the more dissappointed I become that so many of this foolish little species have such a hard time ever just admitting that they just don't know what to do about even the biggest problems that we face. And that, maybe, genuinely listening to one another might, consequently, be in order. If we actually want others to take seriously our concerns.
To hear all the confident assertions, you would think that more of the folks with opinions about politics actually know more than they do.
Except when you hear them repeatedly make assertions that turn out to be wrong - and I really can't think of any of the major figures in any circles who do not fit that description - the more you begin to wonder if any of those folks have ever stopped to even consider it. No matter how clearly wrong that often are.
It's a strange spectacle to watch. If you're honest, that is.
Because not many of them really are, is the truth.
Which is exactly why Lord Acton argued and was right, I think, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Because those who covet it seem to almost never to able to admit that they ever screw up with its use. Which was exactly what he was telling the Pope when he said it.
No matter how many obvious mistakes they make.
I very much understand why the wisest political observers so often situate themselves so far from power.
Because it's so often such a three ring circus headed to nowhere.
And the truth is that I just don't trust most such folks anymore.
And it's good to know that I chose a life where I can avoid them as much as possible.
Because, most of the time, what a thoroughly unpleasant and ridiculous lot they are.
"There appears to be a misconception in Thailand over the past few years that democracy equals intimidation — whether that means blockading major city intersections in Bangkok and forcing the country’s commercial center to close, tossing grenades at government buildings, shutting down a major international summit attended by Asian leaders, occupying the Government House, or closing a major international airport."
Perhaps it is because intimidation is the way even the most "mature" democracies have been conducting themselves, as of late.
Because as this articles well articulates, everyone should know, by now, that intimidation isn't the way mature people and mature democracies should engage their disagreements.
Intimidation is how less mature goverments and peoples conduct themselves.
Mature governments and peoples only use force when no other means is available. Not as a rationalization for "by any means necessary" to get whatever it is that they want.
Perhaps the Thai people are watching contemporary democracies all too closely.
Is it possible to have a politics without people wallowing so thoroughly in their own bullshit?
Don't you hear it?
Me and my kind have all the answers. They and their kind are fools and naives and a threat to the rest of us.
You know, the really obvious bullshit.
Is it possible to have a politics that does not operate like this and is more thoughtful, reasonable, and grounded?
Like the rest of America is (more, at least). The way most peoples' families typically are. The way that most people are who don't have a stake in persistently attempting to improve the stink of their own fecal matter.
Of course it is.
The question is:
Are we going to do it? And are we going expect it out of those in politics?
Because the notion that we get better the more that we pretend that we have all the answers is like the notion that finding a cure for cancer means pretending we already have.
It makes no goddamn sense. It's a literal impossibility.
Slightly better odds than my Royals having a winning season.
