Independence

I have come to the conclusion, watching politics and the markets of the last few years, that I have no interest, whatsoever, of being dependent on any other soul - not an employer, definitely not the government, not any charity organization, noone - for any important thing in my life.

Life is interdependent as a matter of fact. There is no escape from that reality.

But some people carry bigger loads than others, that is just a fact.

And I intend on carrying the heaviest loads and living a live of financial, professional, personal, political, intellectual, and otherwise independence with no hesitation, anymore. My life is my own. And if want it to remain my own, I need to create a life that will support that kind of independence.

That is my aim in life, right now.

Everything else is an illusion.

And if there is anything I do not want for my life, it is to live a life of illusions.

Democracy in the market - the capacity for self-correction

While I take issue with the idea that finance executives were "trapped in a dance" they could not quit - they made choices and they are responsible for those choices; they were just mistakes and not some conspiracy against the economy - this is the best explanation of the finance crisis that I have read to date.

The financial system: What went wrong?

The Economists' warning that reregulation would be foolish and undermine the responsibility and learning about the risks and benefits of securitization that needs to take place to avoid such messes in the future is a wise one.

That, not its perfection or even just its information-producing capacity, is the brilliance of the market: it's capacity, and all of our capacity, for self-correction. That is the democratic nature of the market that liberal democracies would be ill-advised to take for granted.

Read this article if you want to understand, better, how this meltdown happened, what it says about investing in ventures that produce real value, and how to avoid this kind of problem in the future.

Benjamin Graham (and Friedrich Hayek) would just shake his head and say, "They should have read my book."

And Warren Buffet is laughing all the way to the bank.

Giving, independent of ideology

George Will redeems himself with this excellent column on charitable giving.

Bleeding Hearts but Tight Fists

I have to admit that I have gotten less charitable, as of late, largely because I am taking more seriously living within my means, after too many adventures in credit cards in my young adulthood, and building savings and investment and fiscal responsibility into my budget.

I have no interest in maintaining that as a permanent habit. I just need to learn to live within my means and build wealth to give to others as well as support myself and my family.

Benjamin Graham is my model, right now. He went broke at about my same age during the Crash of 1929. Generosity is my instinct. I just need to trust that I'm taking fiscal responsibility seriously enough to build wealth to be generous with. Warren Buffet, I believe, has given more than half his wealth away, at this point. I want to have that kind of flexibility in my life.

And the money wouldn't hurt, either.

What the world should look like, when the bullshit clears

One where people have the freedom to learn from their own mistakes.

That's the kind of world I want for my own children.

That's the kind of world I need for my students, if they are to have a shot at a decent and good life.

Truth be told, that is the life that we all need, when we're honest with ourselves.

That's what a liberal democracy should be, when all the bullshit clears.

The power of honest thought

Roger Cohen has an excellent column in the International Herald Tribune, this morning, and the strongest argument I have heard, yet, for an Obama Presidency.

Imaginary snipers, real challenges

He writes:

"Here's some news for Hillary Clinton: The Bosnian war was over in 1996.

Those of us, like myself, who first went to Bosnia at the start of the war in 1992 and then, in 1994 and 1995, endured Bill Clinton's circumlocutions as we sat in an encircled Sarajevo watching pregnant women getting blown away by shelling from Serbian gunners, know that.

We know that as President Clinton mumbled about "enmities that go back 500 years, some would say almost a thousand years," Bosnia burned. We know what that talk of intractable grievances dating back to 995 was meant to communicate: No Western intervention could achieve anything in the Balkan pit.

Only after the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, three years after the initial Serbian genocide of 1992 against that population (and one year after a genocide on his watch in Rwanda), did the gelatinous Clinton develop some backbone. NATO bombed, Richard Holbrooke did his brilliant work at Dayton in November 1995, and the guns fell silent in Bosnia.

So, yes, the war was well and truly over when Hillary Clinton arrived in the northeastern Bosnian town of Tuzla on March 25, 1996. It was over, although she recently recalled "landing under sniper fire." It was over when "we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

Oh, please. Researching a book, I also visited that base in 1996 to talk to Major General William Nash, then the commander of U.S. troops in Bosnia. If you'd lived the war, the base was a small miracle of American order and security...

...Clinton made up Bosnian sniper fire in an attempt to show that she's tougher than Barack Obama; that she's a hardened, seasoned, putative commander-in-chief ready to respond to crisis when the "red phone" of her fear-mongering ad rings.

John McCain's own recent "misspeaking" about Iran, placing (Sunni) Al Qaeda in (Shiite) Iran, also smacked of muscle-flexing: He wanted to signal toughness to the mullahs in Tehran, where Obama has suggested he'd seek dialogue.

But what the United States, and those that look to it, need now is not more braggadocio from the White House. We've had a seven-year dose. That's enough.

What's needed, rather, is some new, creative thinking about a changed world in which authoritarianism is enjoying a renaissance and America and its allies need to work together to spread peace, prosperity, freedom, equity, security and, yes, democracy.

U.S. hard power has not worked. The Iraq invasion was bungled. European soft power is insufficient.

As Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund notes in an important recent essay called "Trans-Atlantic Power Failures," a "European Union with 27 member states and a total of 1.8 million men and women under arms" is incapable of pacifying little Kosovo ("one quarter the size of Switzerland") on its own.

The trans-Atlantic bond of Cold War years is gone forever. The alliance is going to be looser, more pragmatic. But it has to find "the right mix of idealism and realism," and a new cohesion, if one-pipeline Russia and one-party, Tibet-tormenting China are not to prosper with authoritarianism-for-export.

Foreign policy debate in this election campaign has been paltry. I'd like to hear something about GWOT - the "Global War on Terror" - the heart of U.S. national security strategy. It amounts to war without end because "terror" is a tactic and tactics don't surrender. GWOT should be abandoned: It's externally divisive and internally treacherous. Al Qaeda can be beaten sans GWOT.

I'd like some discussion of what NATO might do to help spread the Iraqi burden and ease a gradual extrication of most U.S. troops from Iraq.

On issues that cross borders - terrorism, financial market volatility, global warming - and on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq - three things are essential: a new moral authority in the White House, the capacity for original strategic thought, and a 21st-century understanding of the border-jumping networks that have knit humanity into new relationships.

Obama, in his speech on race, did important things. He confronted reality, thought big, probed division, sketched convergence. He took Americans and many people beyond U.S. shores to a different mental place. Imagine that capacity applied to GWOT, Iran, Russia, China and Israel-Palestine.

If you don't like the sound of that, there's always seasoned swagger of the kind that runs from imaginary snipers."

Banking on the promise of Obama's stronger thought process is tempting for me. I'd be more willing to do it if he wasn't pressuring for a pull-out. It's clear, from his last ditch political maneuvering, this primary, that Obama is politician as much as honest leader, so I don't know exactly what to trust with him, anymore. That's the downside to playing conventional politics. And it's a downside that Obama is stuck with, at this point, until I'm clear that he's more on the up and up.

But I do know that I will not vote for a politician pressuring or calling for pullout to appease war-weariness in lieu of leadership.

Leadership does not mean doing what is popular. Leadership may account for popular opinion. But leadership, by definition, means having vision of a genuinely better path and persuading others of that path.

Pull-out is not a better path. I have not seen one strong argument on pull-out that would, in the least, justify, honestly, good that it would do for Iraqis or American soldiers or the rest of the world. I have seen plenty of rationalizations for war-weariness. I have seen plenty of emnity for George Bush and Republicans. I have seen plenty of bullshit "peace at all costs" arguments from the left. But I have yet to see an honest and strong argument for pullout that demonstrates benefit for Iraqis, Americans, or anyone else, for that matter, other than the butchers ready to slaughter more Iraqis in the name of any number of ugly causes.

Barack Obama knows that, I imagine, though there is no way for me to be sure of that or anything from him or any leader or any person as long as it contradicts their word. And if I take Barack Obama at his word, he is pulling out American troops from Iraq. And without making that argument.

John McCain is not pulling out. There are plenty of concerns I have about a McCain presidency. But pulling out of Iraq is not one I have to worry about.

I am tired of politics as a bullshit business of lying and divination. I do not trust politicians, at this point, except by what they say. And if that bothers them, they can start getting more honest.

It is power and its seductive call that allows people to rationalize both their dishonesty and, as a consequence, their dishonest reasoning about power and its consequences.

And I have no interest in being a part of that, anymore, as much as I can avoid it.

I'd love to have Barack's creative and intelligent thought to unravel so many international security messes we find ourselves in, today.

But not at the expense of the soldiers that he or any President send into harms way to do the life-threatening work that they commit them to and not at the expense of the lives of Iraqis who have found themselves a part of a civil war that many of them did not ask for and had no role in creating.

If Barack wants my vote, he needs to earn it. Same goes for any candidate for any office.

And, at this point, in history, given the depths of bullshit that it is clear to me occupies political circles, they either need to be honest with me and the American people more or expect me to take even their benign lies as truth until they can demonstrate different.

I am tired of settling for a politics that confuses lies with truth, too often, because the participants lose track as everyone comes to confuse bullshit with something more honest.

Thought has the power to imagine our way out of our often tragic situations in life and create something better. Barack has that power, if he so chooses. So does John McCain.

The question is whom understands the problems of power and security, and so many of the policy issues we face, better and can lead us out of those problems.

These two candidates split the difference of a political system too geared around power and not geared nearly enough around substantial thought. John McCain splits that difference slightly better, for me, at this point. Barack Obama could do the same if his serious thinking does more than just try to affirm a liberal or Democratic Presidency, neither of which are compelling reasons to me, at this point, for an American President or for electing any world leader.

What I need is more honest discussion and debate and more honestly better ideas. Whoever has those, will get my vote, generally.

The lying has consequence. And it clearly has and and does all through our culture. Ignoring that or pretending that the law or force or whatever damned fool pretense that someone has about what will make us more honest is doomed to more of the same.

If we like the way things are, we should just continue pretending like somehow things are better than they are or that we are not responsible for how shitty things are, today.

Both are tempting lines of reason. Both are bullshit.

And I want leaders who are ready to end the bullshit.

May the best candidate win.

The world we choose

I think I've finally made some peace with the bullshit of the scolds in the world and all of our own similar tendencies to repress in lieu of more decency.

If people keep choosing to take this route to fruitlessly force people to be better, they deserve the world it creates.

That is the direction we've taken. I hope these are the consequences we intended.

Because this is the world we chose.

Why is it so hard for us to imagine or believe that we choose to be good people? Or bad people? Why is it so hard for us to imagine that we choose to be good, to do good, or to be bad, to do bad, of our own accord?

Why is it so hard for us to accept that we choose to do good of our own conscience?

It's not. For people who choose to do so.

The only people for whom it is hard to accept such a premise are those who don't choose to be good or do good, for real, but only do so for fear of the consequences otherwise.

And those people are not good people, genuinely, of their own accord. Their life is one long lie to themselves. Because they have never, honestly, chosen to be good of their own free will because it is the right thing to do. They've never really chosen to be good, for real, is the truth.

And how sad for anyone who chooses that life.

And if we don't take a different direction, that is the life we chose.

And how sad for us.

In which case, thank goodness we have children to choose better than us.

Yes we can

...cut this bullshit out.

Detroit mayor, aide plead not guilty to lying about affair

What are we doing investigating a mayor for having an affair?

Why are they facing felonies for lying about it under oath?

We have become such petty, mean-spirited little scolds.

We have got to be insane if we really think that history will look back and say we did good with this nonsense.

I realize now that the reason I love all of the great writers and artists I grew up loving was not because they made assholes like this prosecutor go away, but because they made plain who was the real asshole in situations like this.

Is this really what makes this country great? Hardly.

It's hard to believe that anyone could be older than 10 and think anything different.

Why we need to stick

Michael Ware gives the most credible argument I have ever seen on a national TV program for why we need to stay. And why we should trust soldiers on the ground more than any fuckin' politician or politician activist or columnist any fuckin' day of the fuckin' week.



All I have to say after this election is, fuck the Democratic and Republican parties. Those asswipes can suck my fuckin' balls until they learn to demonstrate 1/1000th of the courage of the men and women they send in harms way.

Too hard to stand up for my and their freedom? Fuck you, you cowardly pieces of shit.

Go fuck yourselves with your bellyaching about your goddamn careers.

And, Hillary Clinton, there is a special place in hell for cowards like you. These folks can't question orders. Your job is to question orders, you coward. You just thought it was more important to have the power than the responsibility. And fuck you for your cynicism and your cowardice.

I'm well aware that it's more complicated that all that. Political pressure and yada, yada, yada. You don't like political pressure? Try suicide bombing. Or having the heads of children sent back to you in coolers. Try that political pressure on for size.

What the fuck do you think terrorism and such brutality is all about, you brainless fuckin' cowards? Advancing the radical, progressive agenda of Palestinian statehood. Yeah, you would believe that, you fuckin' ninnies.

What the fuck did you get those Ivy League educations for? To brag to your friends about how tough your life was to get that piece of paper?

Try standing between some semblance of order and fuckin' chaos and endless bloodletting, you fuckin' pussies.

Grow some fucking balls and get honest with America and what needs to be done in this war.

And stop letting people like Michael Ware and those soldiers he's representing for, here, out to fucking dry.

You got a friend in Hal

Sean Hannity's on the hot seat, these days, because, after an effort to tar Barack Obama with guilty by association with his Reverend, Hannity's at one time close friendship with a neo-nazi radio talk show host, Hal Turner, was revealed on air on his talk show.

Sean Hannity Confronted Over His Relationship with Neo-Nazi Hal Turner

Here's Hal Turner confirming the relationship and the line that really caught my eye:

"I was quite disappointed when Sean Hannity at first tried to say he didn't know me and then went on to say that I ran some senate campaign in New Jersey. In fact, Sean Hannity does know me and we were quite friendly a number of years ago.

When Hannity took over Bob Grant's spot on 77 WABC in New York City, I was a well-known, regular and welcome caller to his show. Through those calls, Sean and I got to know each other a bit and at some point, I can't remember exactly when, Sean gave me the secret "Guest call-in number" at WABC so that my calls could always get on the air...

...I can tell you from my firsthand, personal experience that Sean Hannity does, in fact, agree with many of my political and social views. I can also tell you that Sean Hannity disagrees with some of my political and social views. I won't go subject-by-subject to say which he agrees with and which he disagrees with. You can figure that out easy enough on your own!...

...Another big difference is that I am perfectly willing to use force and violence against my enemies while Sean Hannity and others are not. Those using me as a prop to attack Sean Hannity would do well to remember this fact. Rest assured I will remember them when the opportunity presents itself; especially as it pertains to that douche bag sodomite Max Blumenthal for the falsehoods and total trash he wrote about me in 'The Nation' magazine."

Yeah, Hal Turner looks like quite the shithead.

And for everyone romanticizing force, right now, notice who you're gettin' chummy with. Congratulations on your new best bud, one of the millions of minions of the other great leader in history who romanticized force as a governing philosophy.

As Hal makes clear, this isn't just hyperbole. The people who really do believe in force as a governing philosophy are real fuckin' shitheads.

Congratulations if you just joined or have long joined their ranks.

Why are we such chickenshits?

George Will writes this horribly reasoned column, yesterday, that really gets at what has worn on my last nerve during this political period.

"The government of this fiefdom south of Phoenix claims that when it approved Dale Bell's blueprint for his Western-theme restaurant with an outdoor stage in an enclosed courtyard, it assumed the stage would be used for mimes or poetry readings. Mimes in Arizona scrubland? Poetry at the San Tan Flat Steakhouse and Saloon? The authorities were, they insist, shocked when country music broke out, and they are scandalized because some customers, not content to tap their feet to the Western beat while they eat, get up and dance.

Foot tapping is, so far, still legal in Pinal County. Outdoor dancing is not, at least at a dance hall, and Pinal says San Tan Flat morphs into one at certain points on certain evenings, when customers dance and Bell does not make them stop. He thinks the U.S. Constitution's protection of self-expression encompasses the right to (in the language of his brief to the county court) 'sway, shuffle or even dance.'...

...But when the county imposed fines against Bell of $5,000 every day that anyone dances, he headed for court. The question concerns statutory interpretation. The statute includes "dance hall" -- along with bowling alleys, penny arcades, skating rinks and other things -- among the "amusement or recreational" enterprises that must be "within a completely enclosed structure." Does Bell's restaurant, which makes 99.75 percent of its revenue from food and drink (the rest comes from pool tables and trinkets) become an illegal (because not completely enclosed) dance hall when someone rises to "sway, shuffle or even dance"?

Down in the legal weeds, Arizona's tax code says dance halls charge admission fees. Bell does not. And there is no Pinal prohibition -- an oversight, perhaps? -- of outdoor musical entertainment.

Beyond the weeds there is this mighty oak of a principle: There must be a judicial leash on governments to prevent them from arbitrarily asserting that the plain language of a statute means something that it plainly does not say.

The 14th Amendment's guarantees of equal protection and due process of law should mean that government may interfere with a citizen's economic liberty only to promote important government interests that cannot be advanced through less restrictive means. Under today's weak "rational basis" standard, courts validate virtually any abridgement of economic liberty, no matter how tenuous the connection to even a minor public purpose. Conservatives, note well: Restoring economic liberty requires a kind of judicial activism -- judges judging rather than merely ratifying government's caprices.

Despite Pinal County's nit-picking, Bell, who is represented by Arizona's chapter of the Institute for Justice, is still in business, partly because his customers fancy the Maine lobsters -- not normal fare at dance halls. Children prefer marshmallows they roast over fires next to the space for the forbidden dancing. Roasting is not illegal in Pinal, yet."

Does George really believe that if this town outlaws dancing that it is a legitimate use of government authority even if "the plain language of a statute means something that it plainly does."

No, is the answer to that. Does he really believe that dancing should be outlawed anywhere? No. And if he did, would so many people be reading his columns? Of course not. Why doesn't he just say that. Because the of the forced reasoning of this godforsaken political period.

That's what bothers me about this period. All the goddamn lying.

Everyone tip-toeing their way around matters of liberty for fear that to do otherwise makes them an accomplice to terrorism, child rape, and other assorted evils of the world.

As if anyone who advocates liberty is really arguing that anything goes, which is the perpetual fear of liberal societies that keeps them from taking liberty seriously.

The truth is that we are cowards. And I don't have the stomach to keep watching this cowardice over and over again and pretend like it is better than it is.

The lying wears me down, is the truth. So does the pressure. And every new futile rule that is meant to save us from ruin.

Has it ever worked before?

The obvious answer to that is no. We just don't have the courage to face it.

I am tired. That's the design, actually, which is why I am so resistant to resigning on this one. But I'm tired. And I'm afraid people are too small to consider anything else for themselves.

And it all just makes me want to give up on humanity as this hopelessly fearful, stupid, unjust lot.

Why are we such chickenshits? Because we're just too goddamn scared, that's the truth.

All I know is that it leaves me not wanting to help this stupid, scared lot at all. Go do something more worthwhile with my time.

Something that doesn't involve lying, my whole life, about how people can be forced to be better than they really can.

Where we go from here

Colbert King has an excellent defense of Barack Obama and his loyalty to his reverend, Jeremiah Wright, in today's Washington Post.

Why Obama Stands With His Church

I have to say, how refreshing to be having an honest, substantive conversation of something of importance in this campaign.

These racial issues that Colbert King describes, have everything to do with why I was a liberal for the great majority of my life. This was the work that inspired me. To bridge this divide. It is an inspiration that's been spoiled by a lot of hateful, nasty shitheads who have decided that healing around these issues is less important than scoring political points that get us a program, here, a public rebuke, there that doesn't really get to the heart of why this issue of race is so difficult and painful for people. And how we move on.

It's good to have all this difference aired out. For people to be honest about where they're coming from rather than suffocated under all of the hypersensitivity and political correctness and, generally, the covers of polite society that usually surrounds this issue. People need to get honest about their attitudes - pretty and ugly - around this issue, like so many other issues, so that people can start finding some genuine closure and resolution of the various pains and resentments around race in America and the world.

Because, eventually, we have to get to the place of, "Where do we go from here?"

And if the answer to that question, from all sides, is, "Remain stuck in the grief and resentment," then things aren't going anywhere, for real. We shouldn't confuse policies meant to appease that sense of grief and resentment with real progress.

Real progress will only happen when we start to talk about this stuff, honestly, to deal with it in our hearts, to let go of the defenses for all of the pain and guilt and resentment and all of the bullshit that keeps us from connecting and understanding the experiences of one another more genuinely and with more genuine compassion and concern.

This is what all that hatred has meant and threatens to shut down. That's why it's so poisonous. Because it blocks our ability to find the only real healing and resolution of these issues that is honestly available.

This very much takes me back to my race dialogue work in grad school. Having people talk about this thorniest of issues in a small room where people want to find some resolution, but where anger and resentment boil over in a way that obscures any real resolution or honest conversation - the very likely reason that we do not talk about issues of religion, sex, and politics, in this country and many countries, as well, by the way - is a really difficult thing to navigate when you care, genuinely, about having a more honest conversation. And the nice byproduct of all of this controversy is the beginnings of a more honest race conversation - and more substantive anything conversation - than we've had in a long time. It's been somewhat refreshing.

The denigration of that kind of discussion and thought is what has been fucking everything up since 9/11 or so. The attitude that the only thing that matters is "what action I take," which essentially translates as, "It's too hard for my brain to think about what options, perspective, ideas, and otherwise that we might consider on this issue and so I'd rather just assume I'm right and move on that, even if I'm not, which, frequently, is clearly true, whether I like to admit that or not."

This has been the pretension of the Hillary Clinton campaign that has driven me up a fucking wall. The fact that I act without more thoughtfulness or, worse, that I fail to take the thought and engagement seriously enough to even articulate a dissenting or constructive view for fear of pissing off voters with all that stinkin' thinkin', is evidence of my experience with just being in the room like a coatrack, whether my contributions have actually been helpful or constructive or critical or not. It's the Strong Thermond philosophy of public service: even if I've been terribly wrong on many important issues in my career, the fact that I've been in the thick of it, wrong or not, is some kind of evidence of my superior wisdom. I mean, how much bullshit do we have to live through in American politics. Not that much, I say.

Anyway. Having a more substantive conversation about anything is a step forward, nevertheless something as difficult as race in America.

It's been a refreshing departure from an otherwise cowardly and regressive period where we've run away from such difficult conversations and otherwise denigrated them because we're too fuckin' full of ourselves to think that there is any more that we might have to learn and any direction for growth. Which is really when everyone should say to us, "You really don't have much to say of worth on this matter, do you?" Which, for any decent, humble person would have them sit down and think a little bit about what they might have to learn and maybe engage people who think different from them.

And that is where real progress is going to come from, on this issue and so many other issues.

Martin Luther King told us it was so. Remember. He said that we must operate out of love and prick the conscience of our neighbor. He knew that racism was not going to be rooted out with the Voting Rights Act or any act, for that matter. Because how could it, if you were someone like King who took the time to actually think where racism lies and how it was going to be rooted out and what we were going to do with this or any other serious issue we faced.

Laws don't change people. At best, they corral them. And, often, the don't even do that.

People change people, more often than not. And, ultimately, people change themselves or they don't. And that is just the fact, jack.

I think this is a good start. Now we've got work to do in the form of more discussion and thought and reflection.

But it's not a bad place to begin.

"We are full of ourselves and we hate. And we do it 24-7."

Gene Weingarten, of the Washington Post Magazine, writes this brilliant and funny piece of journalistic hilarity and wisdom, after an experiment with a 24 binge of TV, internet, radio, print and other news and commentary.

Cruel and Usual Punishment

The last little bits are the best.

Gene sends this text message to a hip, new radio show only taking text message requests. It reads:

"'Gentlemen:

I have been alone in a room for almost 24 hours with 6 TVs, a laptop and two radios, listening to and watching and reading only political shows and pundits and blogs, sometimes monitoring four or five things at the same time. Just to see if it can be done.

I'll tell you it can be, but I cannot tell you how horrible it is. It rattles the very center of your being. If you care about the state of humankind, it fills you with despair. We are as a people bleak and hostile and suspicious, filled with senseless partisanship and willing to believe anything and everything about anyone. We are full of ourselves and we hate. And we do it 24-7.

Would you be willing, as a sign of compassion and empathy, to do the unthinkable and broadcast right now, as a Valentine to me, 20 seconds of blessed dead air?

Complete silence. Just read my text and then say . . . nothing. Twenty seconds.

Just to show it can be done.'

I SEND IT IN.

It turns out, no, it can't be done."

Read the whole thing. I recommend it.

"We are full of ourselves and we hate. And we do it 24-7."

Progress isn't politics based in that kind of hate. Progress is finding that out about ourselves.

Real progress is choosing differently.

No power in the world could make us stop hating. Courage has us choose better.

And that's what real progress looks like.

Freedom

I've been in a funk all week. This has been spring break, for me, and I haven't done a goddamn thing but watch movies and work through all kinds of depressing feelings I've had all week.

I've just been a little depressed that the whole goddamn world is a mess. And the one and only solution that might do any goddamn good - more freedom - is the one they're resisting the most, these days. And it means a depressing outlook for my own life, as much as the lives of everyone around me, and every aspiration I've had for myself, my students, my friends, my family, and everyone I care about.

So no big deal, you know?

Anyway. I've been in this funk all week, reading, writing, watching great movies like Shadowlands and The Age of Innocence and not-so-great-movies like Tim, this early movie with Mel Gibson about a young, developmentally disabled man (that's special ed code for: retarded) who has an affair with an older businesswoman. I actually didn't finish it and probably should before I return it to the library. But it wasn't so hot, what I saw of it.

Anyway, after much angst and depression and variously wondering why the fuck I chose to do any of the work I chose to do in my life if I was going to be forever bossed around my dumbasses at every level of this goddamned world who have decided that they know better than me how I should use my time and what I should do with it, even though I have studied, generally, far more than any of those assholes the wisdom of choices I might make and the substance of the work I do, not to mention that it's my own goddamn life, for God's sakes. After all of that, I think I've finally made some peace.

I picked this book at Borders, today, called Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Social Inequality by this husband/wife research team, Elizabeth and Stuart Ewen, at SUNY and CUNY. There's a lot of typical liberal boilerplate in it. But, on the whole, it looks like a really quality read. And I'll spend some time with it as I get to Borders and/or if I can check it (I'm getting more self-disciplined in my spending, and it's not in the budget, right now).

Anyway, as I read it, I remembered that though I disagree with a lot of liberals about the sources of social inequality, in the world, I remembered, reading it, that it is a theme that is still near and dear to my heart, that I think I have some better explanations for, and which I've dedicated my life to alleviating, for God's sakes, so it's still something that I take seriously. I'm just completely clear, at this point, that dealing with inequities more effectively and honestly means more freedom, not less, and that conventional explanations that fall back on the crutch of "the system," "the man," "structural inequalities," "biology," and whatever else goddamned excuse people have for why everyone doesn't achieve the same or make the same money or get the same recognition, or whatever inequality people are raging about, today, are not just oversimplications, they often contribute to many of the problems, because they give people the idea that they can't make good with their lives, which, at this point in our history in liberal democracies, is the most likely route that people have for creating greater meaningful equity in the world.

Anyway, I realized reading that book that despite the fact that my hands are perpetually getting tied behind by back to do some good for people in the world, and despite the fact that doing so means that many young people are not interested or inspired to do the same because they see an old broken down fart like me and say to themselves, "Why would I want to be that fuckin' miserable and make so so little money saving the world when everyone knows it can't be saved?" - which is a good goddamn question, by the way - that the work really does matter, whether people, including my students, give a shit about that or not.

I think they do. And I think if we gave both the kids and parents freedom and more choices about how they wanted to handle educating their children, teachers and administrators freedom about how they run their schools, and everyone freedom about how their going to fund those efforts, that we'd have better schools with more engaged students and teachers, more supportive parents, and better funding for the whole enterprise, including better salaries for teachers, which everyone says they want, but noone seems to notice happens so marginally with the current system that I can hardly believe that anyone takes seriously that somehow public funding is going to finally and magically solve the problem for us.

But that's kind of beside the larger point for me. The larger point is that my kids are ones who are easy to write off, for good reason, often, who are often written off by their teachers as retarded, conduct disordered, behavior disorderd, learning disabled, attention deficit disordered, autistic or Aspergers cases, or whatever excuse people have come up with, today, for why they just don't really think that this kid is going to make much of their lives.

Maybe they will, maybe they won't I say. But stop calling the kids names because you're feeling discouraged with them, I say. And stop looking for ways to get them off the hook. If they don't want learn and do the work, then let them and stop trying to explain why you can't control them. You just can't, dumbass. Children, like all people, were not meant to be controlled. They were meant to be loved and cared for and educated. And, at its best, that is the exact opposite of controlling them or anyone, for that matter. Doubt that? Ask your spouse. That is if you're honest and confident enough to have a equal and uncontrolling relationship with your spouse. If not, you're probably pretty unhappy and it's probably not President Bush who is responsible for your misery.

Anyway, I've got 2 years on this scholarship. I did give my word. Granted, it happened when I was 17 under pressure from father desperate to get me to college when we didn't have any other financial options. But, still, it was my word. And if it's a bad idea, and teaching at a charter like KIPP would be a better idea, I don't have much choice in the matter anyhow, so I better make the best of it. And the kids do need the help. I just need to dig deep and figure out how to be a better teacher for them. Every day. No matter how shitty or decent they are. Or the best I can, at least.

All of this. All of my work. And this whole goddamn world. It would all work so much fuckin' better if we took freedom more seriously. But we're too goddamn cowardly to do that and we perpetually have some boogeyman hiding under our beds that someone can appeal to to remind us how freedom is the ruin of all man. And all the while it is most definitely the repression that is responsible for all that shit, and our own choices, obviously, if we could only be honest with ourselves and one another about that fact. But we're just too scared and foolish and we confuse all that fear and our various ugly feelings with reality more than it is. It has always fucked us up. And it always will, as long as we let it. The question is, when will we stop letting it?

I don't know, is the honest answer.

All I know is that it depressed the shit out of me, this week. Just as it did last July 4th, as I sat and thought about all the ways we undermined freedom and independence all while we celebrated it. I didn't even get out to see the fireworks this last 4th.

Anyway. I suppose I made some peace with all of that, this week. And decided that I'm dedicating my life to a decent life for myself and to the welfare of others, even if we are a nation of scared, dumbass little bitches, much of the time. I don't know why. Especially given more lucrative and less stressful and exhausting options available. I'll pursue some of those, too, I suppose. And I'm looking more seriously at military service, too. So who knows what's on my horizon.

All I know is that the limited peace I've found means that I feel better about creating whatever life I want to create for myself, at this point. And, surprisingly, feeling more freedom around the situation, it's not terribly different a life than I was planning before. I just feel better and more myself as I pursue it.

I better get to bed. I've got to take Melissa to the airport tomorrow.

Sweet dreams, everyone.

Love,
Ben

I think I get it now (God, we are so fucked up)

Mayhem at Fox News: Anchor Walks Off Set; Wallace Rails Network for Obama Bashing

It's the double standard.

It's all coming unraveled. Years of political correctness have taken their toll. And the white people are fighting back.

This is why it is so completely fucking stupid to try to resolve racial or any other issues with repressive measures that bully people into submission rather than through honest discussion and debate.

God, we are such fucking morons.

How many times we gotta fuck this one up before we learn the goddamn lesson?

Like so many goddamn questions.

"If I just pretend that the problem has gone away, then it's gone away. If I just pretend my failure's been a success, it's a success. If I just pretend that I'm better than I really am, I really am."

God, we are such stupid fucking assholes. And we're too goddamn stupid to recognize that everyone fucking knows it.

It's our freedom that makes us strong, dumbasses. Goddamn. Stop wallowing in the goddamn whiny bullshit.

And if you don't, don't be fuckin' surprised when the problems remain. And when do, "you know who" is responsible.

I'll give you a clue. It's not George Bush.

Keeping us honest

Charles Krauthammer has some valid criticisms of Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright's church, today, that I think deserve a read, even if I think they do not fairly reflect the complexity of the situation.

A Brilliant Fraud

"This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.

But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign. Then answer this, Senator: If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness? This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero. It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright's rants, but young people as well. Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?"

It's a valid question. God knows I would be concerned about exposing my children to such hate on a regular basis, especially on a Sunday morning.

This is why my family never went to a church like this one, I suppose. The Unity Church I attended my entire childhood was a little liberal church explicitly committed to the central principles of Jesus' teachings - love, compassion, forgiveness. The ones that everyone spends so much time running away from because they're harder to practice than to read about. I'm a soft atheist today, meaning I don't believe in God or Jesus as the messiah, as a technical matter, but I still take the teachings of Jesus and the Bible very seriously from a skeptical, independent-minded, critical, secular point-of-view. Because there is just too much in those teachings that make sense.

And God knows, from my own church experience, I just don't think I could ever expose my children to that kind of message every Sunday. It is anathema to everything that a decent religious experience would entail for me.

That is where I have a hard time defending Obama on this one. It is a strange position to be defending.

Having said that, I also take the virtue of loyalty very seriously. And I would never abandon a friend (I have given friends a rest, at times, when I've been emotionally exhausted, but I would never abandon a friend) because I didn't like their attitudes or their outlooks or if I disagreed with them.

I guess it is in this respect that I am very rooted in a liberal tradition. I believe in people in their capacity for self-correction, as E.J. Dionne put in his column today. I don't like E.J. hinting at an equivocation between Jeremiah Wright and Martin Luther King who had two very distinctly different messages. I've never approved of the equivocation of MLK and Malcolm X, who were two very different leaders, and explicitly so, if anyone would only listen to the two honestly, and one of whom, Martin Luther King, who I am completely clear, has a better message than the other, Malcolm X, who reflected the very kind hate that MLK was challenging in America, black and white.

But I do understand conservative issues with Jeremiah Wright. Because I have never equivocated the hatefulness of radicalism with the decency of liberalism the way most liberals do, and, as these conservatives sense are want to call bullshit on, when liberals do so for political advantage, having a hateful heavy to their goody-goody nice guy front.

And they are right. If Barack Obama is playing this game, being a nice guy front for a radical agenda, he and liberals who engage in this bullshit need to be called out on it. It is a big fat lie, a manipulation of the democratic process, the fodder for a dishonest debate, and an enormous contribution to everything that is wrong with the democratic process today. And conservatives, frankly, have every reason to be concerned about this switcharoo, because it has been played on them and the American and liberal democratic publics probably for as long as liberalism and conservativism as rival ideologies have existed. It is the reason that conservatives and former radicals like David Horowitz or Ronald Radosh switched sides in this rivalry. And it is a poison in the democratic discussion, I completely agree.

And the huge gap in the way that conservatives and liberals look at the race issues raised by this episode demonstrate just how cleanly ineffective the radical bullying on racial issues has been, in the last 50 years or so, to genuinely resolving the serious racial gaps that we often live with in America. And conservatives are right that these are gaps that needs radicals and African Americans to bridge as much as for conservatives and white Americans to be aware of serious racial issues in America.

I think Barack Obama was trying to do that, in that speech. But I also understand why conservatives view Barack as a typical liberal politician, as well, because many of the liberal themes he sounded - raging at outsourcing and blaming economic deprivation as the reason for black rage and hopelessness rather than the other way around - are ones that strike me as counterproductive and foolish themes, too, and ones that threaten values like free trade and treating corporations and businesspeople more fairly, that I care about, too.

Having said that, I didn't find Barack's speech offensive. To the contrary, I found his frankness on this most difficult issue of the heart really refreshing, if imperfect. I guess I don't expect perfection from anyone, including politicians (hence my sympathy for Elliot Spitzer), which is much of the reason that I am so skeptical that they can make more decisions for my life than they are really capable of doing either competently or infallibly.

I think I'm watching both conservatives and liberals gear up for an election fight, right now, and decision-time about what we are going to do with Iraq.

There is no need for an honest debate or discussion, with these folks, because they have already figured things out, apparently (And so convincingly that they don't even need to talk with those who disagree with them because what would they know, anyway, if they don't already agree with them? Some people are so fuckin' weak and lame).

And that's what bothers me with all of the consistently partisan reactions to these kinds of things, especially from conservatives, on this speech.

It's so fuckin' mindless. And it reflects a lack of appreciation for people as both fallible and individuals and part of a larger web of friendships, relationships, and connections in our lives.

Andrew Sullivan posts an excellent discussion of the reaction by conservatives with two other critically-minded thinkers that I highly recommend.

The Right's Reaction

And do you know who has had some of the most understanding and compassionate remarks on this whole affair?

Mike Huckabee. Can you believe that?

Here's what he had to say:

"[Y]ou can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what ... Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable, years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say 'Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that...

As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say 'That's a terrible statement!' ... I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I'm gonna be probably the only conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you — we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names...

We've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names; being told you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie; you have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant; you can't sit out there with everyone else, there's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office; here's where you sit on the bus .. . And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder, and resentment, and you have to just say, "I probably would, too. I probably would, too. And in fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me."

This is why I like Christians who practice the love that Jesus preached. They're just more decent people to be around. And Mike is right in being consistent, here, and saying, to everyone who will jump all over any man, especially preachers, who I have agree are not the brightest lot, generally, and judge them only by their craziest statements and not by the totality of their lives and contributions, is not fair and doesn't reflect the totality of that human being and the good they have done along with the bad.

I am conflicted about this situation, because I have to agree that I would have a hard time taking my kids to the hateful sermons of either a Jeremiah Wright or a Jerry Falwell every Sunday.

Having said that, I think Obama's and Mike's instincts are right. We stick by people even when they think and say and do stupid things. Otherwise, what is the point? Of any of it, really. Why care about politics, at all, otherwise, except how it impacts your narrow, selfish interests?

I think they're right about that. And I appreciate them both opening up our democratic conversation to even some hateful motherfuckers, as much as I am tired of hatefulness dominating liberal democratic and American politics.

We open that more honest conversation with love, not with ostracism and hatefulness. That is more honest. And I appreciate people like Obama and Mike keeping us honest, even as I might disagree with their thinking or their politics.

Speak of the fuckin' devil

Bin Laden urges jihad for Palestinians

If you're a big fan of fear and hate, here is the hata' of all time.

Fear-monger and hate-monger numero uno.

And, boy, doesn't he have some suggestions about how to channel all that fear and hate.

You really think he does it for any other reason?

Do you really think that liberal fear-mongers and hate-mongers and conservative fear-mongers and hate-mongers are really so different?

Do you really think that rhetoric about "the rules" is really do different than Bin Laden's talk about an Islamic caliphate?

You might want to rethink that. Because his motivations are probably the same as yours. And the same motivation of every fear-monger and hatemonger who has ever rationalized force as a governing philosophy who has ever lived.

It's so sad to think that these assholes are motivated, at bottom, by fear isn't it? They act so macho.

When the truth is that they're scared little bitches.

That's really what all that hate is about anyway, isn't it?

How fuckin' sad for us, right now.

Fuckin' scared-i-cats is what we are. You'd think the free world could offer something better. But they're too busy pissing their little pants.

No wonder this coward thinks we're soft. Because we keep acting like such little bitches.

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

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

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

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

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

That is what has inspired this post.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All in the name of fear and hate.

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

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

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

Same as it ever was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they were right. Short term. Tragically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so it goes.

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

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

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

And that was the essence of his message.

Love they neighbor as thyself.

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

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

And forgive.

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

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

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

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

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

And dat's all she wrote, folks.

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

What the fuck is wrong with us?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surely there is more to democracy than all of this.

If not, who really gives a shit?

This is going to be a long election

Obama Ties Economic Woes to Iraq War

Is this really what Barack Obama learned at Harvard?

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

What Reverend Wright says about us

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

Throw Grandma Under the Train

From that column:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fine. Can we move on now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that rationalization has animated much of this political period.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's been an ugly spectacle to watch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And noone wants that.

Maybe courage isn't so tough, after all.

Sometimes the progress is a little stupefying

Scooter Libby loses law license

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ironic, huh? And completely predictable.

Progress hardly comes with power. Go ask Adolph Hitler.

You better fuckin' believe it, baby

Nice guys actually do finish first, Harvard study suggests

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

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

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

What to do with Iraq

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

Iraq five years on

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was five years ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Colbert is the fuckin' man.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My issues were:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Colbert is a motherfucker who takes liberal values seriously.

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