Pulitzer A Life in Politics, Print, and Power, James McGrath Morris (Harper Collins, 2010)
For most of my life I have known of the Pulitzer Prize. However, I confess to being so ignorant and incurious that I had no idea until reading this biography just who Pulitzer was or why he gave out prizes. My ignorance and incuriosity sometimes appalls me. If you have an interest in biography, or if you have any interest in the history of our country during the period of roughly 1860 to 1915 you will find this book of enormous interest. I believe you would be hard-pressed to find a better example of biography. This one is well researched, well documented, well written, detailed, and extremely informative. I’m pretty certain it will be the definitive biography of Joseph Pulitzer for a long time. Like almost all American biography it is written in the standard chronological style, birth, youth, adulthood, marriage, achievements, death. This is, I believe, fine, if your main interest is history and the individual’s contributions to it. If you’re main interest is in the individual him or herself as a personality, it is probably more interesting to simply ask someone to tell you about their life, in which case you may not always get a chronological account. As Morris has been the editor of Biographer’s Craft it is not surprising this is such a fine example of the genre.
Joseph Pulitzer was born into a (secular) Jewish family in a small town not far from Pest. They were fairly well-off and had their own business and owned their own home. When Joseph was eight they moved to Pest (at that time adjacent to Buda) where they were even more successful. But when Joseph’s father died, leaving his mother to raise the family alone, they fell upon relatively difficult times. Joseph by then had grown to 6’ 1” seventeen year-old and decided to emigrate to America. As he had no means, he achieved this by agreeing to serve in the Union Army (by then, with 13,000 soldiers a day being killed the Union was recruiting in Europe and paying a bonus for those who agreed to serve). Joseph lied about his age and served for a time but managed to escape frontline duty. Upon his discharge he eventually arrived in St. Louis, working at whatever jobs he could find and haunting the library to teach himself English. Eventually he became a reporter for a German newspaper, the Westliche Post, and quickly established himself as an unusually bright and hard working reporter. More importantly, he became deeply involved in Missouri and national politics. Eventually, as his English improved and he had sufficient experience, backers and friends, he managed to buy a share in the Post. As the three owners did not get along the other two bought Pulitzer out, giving him a substantial profit. He later bought a failing German newspaper and, through a clever scheme managed to sell it at a profit. He then gambled $20,000 in a friend’s project that also brought him a significant profit.
Pulitzer’s next move was to buy a failing paper, the Evening Dispatch, which he quickly merged with another evening paper, gambling that he could increase their subscriptions quickly enough to pay off their debts, which he did. Pulitzer perceived something that newspapers up until that time did not, that ordinary working people, while only mildly interested in the comings and goings of the elite, would become vitally interested in news and problems that pertained more specifically to them. Pulitzer sold his papers for one cent and embarked upon a scheme to expose fraudulent companies, dishonest businesses, and publish at least one sensational article per day. He poked fun at his competitors. As Pulitzer was virtually impossible to work with it, was not long until his partner sold out and Pulitzer became the sole owner of the Post-Dispatch, a paper that made a consistent profit for the remainder of Pulitzer’s life and made him a wealthy man.
As Pulitzer was in the newspaper business not only to make money, but also to have power and political influence, and as he was called upon more and more to make important political speeches and engage in campaigning for Senators and Presidents, he became more and more famous. It was not long before St. Louis became too small for him and he lusted to own a paper in New York. The fortune he was accumulating from the Post-Dispatch eventually allowed him to take over the “World” in New York, which quickly became the most important and widely circulated paper in that key city, indeed in history. He used the same techniques in New York as he had in St. Louis, sensationalism, invasions of privacy, constant railing against corporations and defenses of labor and the working class. Nothing was too sacred for Pulitzer to attack and the more he did so the more his paper thrived. When William Randolph Hearst, who had imitated Pulitzer’s methods and techniques in San Francisco, also moved into New York, Pulitzer battled him for supremacy and eventually won out when Hearst was accused of encouraging the assassination of McKinley. Both papers had urged and supported the war with Spain over Cuba and in many ways shared the same views. When the circulation of both papers declined for a time Hearst and Pulitzer considered an illegal scheme to collaborate but when Hearst’s paper declined because of the McKinley rumor it became moot. Pulitzer’s greatest problem became Teddy Roosevelt whom he despised. The feeling was mutual and Roosevelt tried desperately (and somewhat illegally) to have Pulitzer thrown in jail for slander when he accused the Roosevelt administration of corruption in the building of the Panama Canal. This was a case Pulitzer eventually won and was also a most important case that established the absolute independence of newspapers from government retaliation.
There is so much more in this fine book. Pulitzer was a genuine case of “rags to riches,” although he was never truly in rags and the riches he attained were even beyond the imagination of most people. Ironically, although he made his fortune by attacking the wealthy and privileged, as he became unbelievably wealthy himself he basically joined their ranks and moved in high society and among the most powerful people in the world. Unfortunately, before he was fifty he became blind and a semi-recluse and invalid who could not stand even the slightest noise. He spent thousands upon thousands on rooms and buildings that would be essentially soundproof, and eventually had built a special 300 foot long yacht that was as soundproof as possible and spent much of his later life cruising and living in Europe, leaving his papers to be managed by others (but not without constant and unwelcome micromanagement). Before he died he endowed Columbia University to create the first School of Journalism and established the prizes for which he is now famous. During his last years he became more and more impossible, alienated himself from his wife and children, made impossible demands on his employees, and suffered from a host of ailments that made his life miserable. He depended entirely on a large staff to read to him and help manage his life. During the period when Rockefeller and Morgan and others were giants of industry, Pulitzer became the first giant of Newspaper publishing and virtually single-handedly converted newspapers into a mass media for the first time. William Randolph Hearst, who seems to get more publicity and fame, was a latecomer and even with access to his mother’s giant fortune, could not outdo Pulitzer. I must say I learned a great deal from this biography and I do not hesitate to recommend it.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
There's Lots of Money
Man riding by on bicycle
snatches elderly woman’s
bag of dog poop.
It has often been argued that no one should have to go hungry because there is lots of food in the world. The problem has always been one of distribution. I don’t know if this is completely true or not, but I do know that it is claimed that 50% of food in the U.S. is wasted. And I also know that perfectly good crops are sometimes burned or buried in order to keep their prices high. It must certainly be true that no one in the U.S. should have to go hungry. But they do.
So it is, it seems to me, with money. We read every day about the national debt, how much we owe China and others, and so on. But as it is with food, so it is with money. There is a lot of money, lots and lots of it. The problem is in the distribution. And the distribution is importantly a problem of priorities. I don’t know the actual figures and amounts, nor am I an economist. But I’m pretty sure that if we stopped funding our unnecessary “wars” we would have a lot of money to help pay down our debts. Similarly, if we stopped providing troops and military hardware to countries like Japan, Germany, Israel, and others, we would have still more money. And, if we stopped funding military bases all around the world in an attempt to create our hidden “empire,” we would have even more money. We’d probably be drowning in money, the national debt would soon disappear, fried chicken could be free, as would Viagra and Cialis, health care and tuition could also be free, and we’d all live happily ever after in a relative paradise. This assumes, of course, that these “wars” and military bases, etc., are costing us more than we are getting in return. Does anyone know what we are getting in return from Afghanistan and Iraq? I didn’t think so. What would we gain by attacking Iran? What exactly is the purpose of all these “wars” and such. Along with our unnecessary “wars” is the related matter of the military/industrial/political complex. Why are we spending so much building planes and tanks and ships and artillery and ammunition and supplies that are for the most part not even needed? I gather we spend something like half our annual budget on our defenses, but who are we defending against? Just who is it out there that is planning to invade the U.S.? We could, I am pretty certain, cut our defense budget in half and suffer no substantial loss of security. Think of all the money we’d have then!
Of course there is still a huge pot of money available if we did not have such strange ideas about how it should be distributed. Why should a small percentage of individuals have more money than the other 90% of the population? Can anyone offer any sensible reason for this? Is there any social, moral, ethical, logical, practical, or redeeming reason why individuals should have hundreds of millions and billions of dollars? I don’t believe that everyone should have the same amount of money, or that all individuals are equally deserving of it, but, really, when the distribution is so drastically skewed as it currently is, something needs to be done about it. This would be relatively easy matter to fix, just raise the tax rate for the obscenely rich by a very large percentage. They wouldn’t even know the difference.
What I am suggesting is no doubt obvious, and it could be done, and our country and the rest of the world would be better off for it. Of course there is no chance it will be done, at least not in the foreseeable future. It would require a kind of leadership and motivation we don’t have. It would immediately be branded as socialism or even worse, communism. Never mind that the most happy and contented people live in Scandinavian countries that practice forms of social democracy, where everyone has health care, Universities are free (or mostly free), there are relatively few homeless, few, if any, hungry, and their defense budgets are entirely realistic rather than obviously insane. Our current values of “greed is good,” “privatization,” “shop ‘til you drop,” “it’s your fault if you are poor,” and “I’ve got mine,” along with our intense religious faith in the profit motive, will never allow us happiness or well-being (except for the few). We have lost any real sense of community or any basic ideas about human worth and dignity. Some are now observing that the recent mine disaster resulted from putting profits ahead of human lives. So…that has become part of our basic ethos, it happens every day in one form or another. Forty five thousand a year die from not having medical care, we can’t afford it. We just killed some innocent children, it’s their parents fault for bringing them along, you’re hungry, get a job, we just blew up another wedding party, collateral damage, land mines kill hundreds of children every year, we need them for protection (visitors from outer space), people in Gaza are being slowly destroyed, Israel is our closest friend, we reserve the right to preventative “war” (they might do something, someday, we wouldn’t like), and so it goes. It is, I fear, the American way.
LKBIQ:
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
Artemus Ward
TILT:
Brie and Camembert are essentially the same, being made from the same “recipe.”
snatches elderly woman’s
bag of dog poop.
It has often been argued that no one should have to go hungry because there is lots of food in the world. The problem has always been one of distribution. I don’t know if this is completely true or not, but I do know that it is claimed that 50% of food in the U.S. is wasted. And I also know that perfectly good crops are sometimes burned or buried in order to keep their prices high. It must certainly be true that no one in the U.S. should have to go hungry. But they do.
So it is, it seems to me, with money. We read every day about the national debt, how much we owe China and others, and so on. But as it is with food, so it is with money. There is a lot of money, lots and lots of it. The problem is in the distribution. And the distribution is importantly a problem of priorities. I don’t know the actual figures and amounts, nor am I an economist. But I’m pretty sure that if we stopped funding our unnecessary “wars” we would have a lot of money to help pay down our debts. Similarly, if we stopped providing troops and military hardware to countries like Japan, Germany, Israel, and others, we would have still more money. And, if we stopped funding military bases all around the world in an attempt to create our hidden “empire,” we would have even more money. We’d probably be drowning in money, the national debt would soon disappear, fried chicken could be free, as would Viagra and Cialis, health care and tuition could also be free, and we’d all live happily ever after in a relative paradise. This assumes, of course, that these “wars” and military bases, etc., are costing us more than we are getting in return. Does anyone know what we are getting in return from Afghanistan and Iraq? I didn’t think so. What would we gain by attacking Iran? What exactly is the purpose of all these “wars” and such. Along with our unnecessary “wars” is the related matter of the military/industrial/political complex. Why are we spending so much building planes and tanks and ships and artillery and ammunition and supplies that are for the most part not even needed? I gather we spend something like half our annual budget on our defenses, but who are we defending against? Just who is it out there that is planning to invade the U.S.? We could, I am pretty certain, cut our defense budget in half and suffer no substantial loss of security. Think of all the money we’d have then!
Of course there is still a huge pot of money available if we did not have such strange ideas about how it should be distributed. Why should a small percentage of individuals have more money than the other 90% of the population? Can anyone offer any sensible reason for this? Is there any social, moral, ethical, logical, practical, or redeeming reason why individuals should have hundreds of millions and billions of dollars? I don’t believe that everyone should have the same amount of money, or that all individuals are equally deserving of it, but, really, when the distribution is so drastically skewed as it currently is, something needs to be done about it. This would be relatively easy matter to fix, just raise the tax rate for the obscenely rich by a very large percentage. They wouldn’t even know the difference.
What I am suggesting is no doubt obvious, and it could be done, and our country and the rest of the world would be better off for it. Of course there is no chance it will be done, at least not in the foreseeable future. It would require a kind of leadership and motivation we don’t have. It would immediately be branded as socialism or even worse, communism. Never mind that the most happy and contented people live in Scandinavian countries that practice forms of social democracy, where everyone has health care, Universities are free (or mostly free), there are relatively few homeless, few, if any, hungry, and their defense budgets are entirely realistic rather than obviously insane. Our current values of “greed is good,” “privatization,” “shop ‘til you drop,” “it’s your fault if you are poor,” and “I’ve got mine,” along with our intense religious faith in the profit motive, will never allow us happiness or well-being (except for the few). We have lost any real sense of community or any basic ideas about human worth and dignity. Some are now observing that the recent mine disaster resulted from putting profits ahead of human lives. So…that has become part of our basic ethos, it happens every day in one form or another. Forty five thousand a year die from not having medical care, we can’t afford it. We just killed some innocent children, it’s their parents fault for bringing them along, you’re hungry, get a job, we just blew up another wedding party, collateral damage, land mines kill hundreds of children every year, we need them for protection (visitors from outer space), people in Gaza are being slowly destroyed, Israel is our closest friend, we reserve the right to preventative “war” (they might do something, someday, we wouldn’t like), and so it goes. It is, I fear, the American way.
LKBIQ:
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
Artemus Ward
TILT:
Brie and Camembert are essentially the same, being made from the same “recipe.”
Friday, April 09, 2010
Point of no Return
Man drives to jail drunk
to serve two day sentence
for drunk driving.
I think we may have reached the point of no return. Forget any hope of bipartisanship, Republicans have now established themselves as living in an alternative world completely, and are being aided by our corporate owned MSM. When Silly Sarah is given time to criticize President Obama on nuclear matters you might surmise that we have passed the point of sanity entirely. When Liz Cheney is given a microphone to claim that President Obama is destroying our country because he is willing to talk with Muslims you know that reason has been abandoned. And when Newt Gingrich, the great pontificator, who some time ago established his credentials as probably the worst hypocrite that ever lived, claims Obama is a radical, you know that his brain has turned to pig pucky, and he and his supporters (if there are any) are living in an alternative world where intelligence, reason, and truth have no place. When Governor Pawlenty, with delusions of being Presidential, supports Michelle Bachmann, I suspect the line of sanity has been irrevocably breeched. When John McCain claims he never said he was a maverick…well, you know, senility comes to some earlier than others. And these are presumably all leaders of the Republican Party, I haven’t even mentioned the total insanity of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter, and other ultra-right wingers that daily spread their hate and lies and also speak for the Republican Party. What these individuals are doing has now gone so far as to preclude any possibility of bipartisanship for the benefit of our country. The point of no return has now been passed, there is no way the two parties can ever again come together and act as a responsible government. The Republicans have so demonized Obama as a Black, foreign-born, Muslim communist anti-Christ there is no way they can now admit they are wrong. This is now truly a battle between what might rightly be described as good and evil and one side or the other simply has to go. This is no longer an argument between two competing points of view, two philosophies of government, two opponents who at least respect one another, two different ways of governing, two thoughtful positions on a few different issues, it has become obvious that one side is no longer, shall I say, entirely compos mentis.
Listening to the babble that now comes out of the mouths of Republicans reminds me of visiting an insane asylum. Their words have lost all meaningful connection with reality. I suppose you might argue they are not truly insane because they are just trying to destroy the Obama administration no matter what it attempts to do, but their means of doing it are so outrageously dishonest and divorced from the facts, they might as well be certifiably insane. I guess that Obama’s desire to extend medical care to all is pretty radical from the Republican point of view. They would obviously prefer to allow some 45,000 a year die from lack of medical care. Attempting to stimulate the economy is also radical if you prefer to see a depression to insure that cheap labor might get even cheaper. Signing a nuclear pact with Russia is petty radical if you prefer to maintain and use nuclear weapons to achieve your goals of world domination. Even pro-choice is pretty radical if you prefer people to be forced to have babies they don’t want who can then be abused, abandoned and die as children. The truth is, Republicans believe anything that attempts to help ordinary working people is radical. In a way this has always been true of Republicans, but seldom before has it reached such a level of passionate and unremitting intensity. Contemporary Republicans would apparently rather see our nation destroyed than give one penny to anyone in need or cooperate with Democrats. And they refuse to compromise, preferring to boast of being the party of “no.”
This absolute refusal to cooperate is now going to play out with respect to the replacement for Supreme Court Justice Douglas who has announced his retirement at the end of this term. Republicans like Orin Hatch and John Kyl are already threatening to filibuster Obama’s nominee, even though there is no nominee as yet. They can’t even extend Obama the courtesy of waiting until he actually nominates someone before threatening to oppose him or her. I guess if you are as bonkers as they are you might consider this an example of responsible government. Republican extremism has now forced them into a position from which they cannot escape, short of making an abject apology to the citizens of the U.S. for their totally irresponsible and uncooperative behavior up until now. As this is highly unlikely the situation will continue as it is with not even the possibility of compromise or bipartisanship. This certainly does not bode well for the immediate future of our country and possibly for a much longer time to come.
The corporate MSM bears much of the responsibility for this terrible situation. They give air time and a platform to people who ought to be ignored as irresponsible, lying, hypocritical, and dishonest. Do you remember anytime, anytime at all, when the MSM challenged the virtually pathological lying of Bush and Cheney, or Rumsfeld or Rice? All of them lied so routinely it became impossible to believe anything you heard. You could not separate the lies from the truth because there never was any truth at all.
There is now sworn testimony from Wilkerson that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld were aware that hundreds of individuals interned in Guantanamo were completely innocent but did nothing about it, an absolutely horrendous crime. Do you think Obama and Holder will do anything about it? They won’t, but how can they in good conscience not?
LKBIQ:
All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
James Thurber
TILT:
The orchid family is the largest family of flowering plants.
to serve two day sentence
for drunk driving.
I think we may have reached the point of no return. Forget any hope of bipartisanship, Republicans have now established themselves as living in an alternative world completely, and are being aided by our corporate owned MSM. When Silly Sarah is given time to criticize President Obama on nuclear matters you might surmise that we have passed the point of sanity entirely. When Liz Cheney is given a microphone to claim that President Obama is destroying our country because he is willing to talk with Muslims you know that reason has been abandoned. And when Newt Gingrich, the great pontificator, who some time ago established his credentials as probably the worst hypocrite that ever lived, claims Obama is a radical, you know that his brain has turned to pig pucky, and he and his supporters (if there are any) are living in an alternative world where intelligence, reason, and truth have no place. When Governor Pawlenty, with delusions of being Presidential, supports Michelle Bachmann, I suspect the line of sanity has been irrevocably breeched. When John McCain claims he never said he was a maverick…well, you know, senility comes to some earlier than others. And these are presumably all leaders of the Republican Party, I haven’t even mentioned the total insanity of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter, and other ultra-right wingers that daily spread their hate and lies and also speak for the Republican Party. What these individuals are doing has now gone so far as to preclude any possibility of bipartisanship for the benefit of our country. The point of no return has now been passed, there is no way the two parties can ever again come together and act as a responsible government. The Republicans have so demonized Obama as a Black, foreign-born, Muslim communist anti-Christ there is no way they can now admit they are wrong. This is now truly a battle between what might rightly be described as good and evil and one side or the other simply has to go. This is no longer an argument between two competing points of view, two philosophies of government, two opponents who at least respect one another, two different ways of governing, two thoughtful positions on a few different issues, it has become obvious that one side is no longer, shall I say, entirely compos mentis.
Listening to the babble that now comes out of the mouths of Republicans reminds me of visiting an insane asylum. Their words have lost all meaningful connection with reality. I suppose you might argue they are not truly insane because they are just trying to destroy the Obama administration no matter what it attempts to do, but their means of doing it are so outrageously dishonest and divorced from the facts, they might as well be certifiably insane. I guess that Obama’s desire to extend medical care to all is pretty radical from the Republican point of view. They would obviously prefer to allow some 45,000 a year die from lack of medical care. Attempting to stimulate the economy is also radical if you prefer to see a depression to insure that cheap labor might get even cheaper. Signing a nuclear pact with Russia is petty radical if you prefer to maintain and use nuclear weapons to achieve your goals of world domination. Even pro-choice is pretty radical if you prefer people to be forced to have babies they don’t want who can then be abused, abandoned and die as children. The truth is, Republicans believe anything that attempts to help ordinary working people is radical. In a way this has always been true of Republicans, but seldom before has it reached such a level of passionate and unremitting intensity. Contemporary Republicans would apparently rather see our nation destroyed than give one penny to anyone in need or cooperate with Democrats. And they refuse to compromise, preferring to boast of being the party of “no.”
This absolute refusal to cooperate is now going to play out with respect to the replacement for Supreme Court Justice Douglas who has announced his retirement at the end of this term. Republicans like Orin Hatch and John Kyl are already threatening to filibuster Obama’s nominee, even though there is no nominee as yet. They can’t even extend Obama the courtesy of waiting until he actually nominates someone before threatening to oppose him or her. I guess if you are as bonkers as they are you might consider this an example of responsible government. Republican extremism has now forced them into a position from which they cannot escape, short of making an abject apology to the citizens of the U.S. for their totally irresponsible and uncooperative behavior up until now. As this is highly unlikely the situation will continue as it is with not even the possibility of compromise or bipartisanship. This certainly does not bode well for the immediate future of our country and possibly for a much longer time to come.
The corporate MSM bears much of the responsibility for this terrible situation. They give air time and a platform to people who ought to be ignored as irresponsible, lying, hypocritical, and dishonest. Do you remember anytime, anytime at all, when the MSM challenged the virtually pathological lying of Bush and Cheney, or Rumsfeld or Rice? All of them lied so routinely it became impossible to believe anything you heard. You could not separate the lies from the truth because there never was any truth at all.
There is now sworn testimony from Wilkerson that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld were aware that hundreds of individuals interned in Guantanamo were completely innocent but did nothing about it, an absolutely horrendous crime. Do you think Obama and Holder will do anything about it? They won’t, but how can they in good conscience not?
LKBIQ:
All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
James Thurber
TILT:
The orchid family is the largest family of flowering plants.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Unknowns
Landlord, feuding with tenant,
climbs on roof and soaks him
with a bucket of water.
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."
You no doubt recognize these words of profound wisdom. They were uttered by one of our known war criminals when he was a known known Secretary of Defense, one we apparently didn’t know we didn’t know (how excruciatingly awful he was). Now I don’t know where he is but I don’t know I don’t know (for sure, anyway). But I digress.
The reason I resurrected this marvelous quotation is because somehow it seems to me it has something to do with Obama’s new nuclear defense plan. As I understand it, we will not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have nuclear weapons and have signed a nuclear treaty saying they will not have them. Under former President Bush and his minder, Dick the Slimy, we apparently reserved the right to attack anyone with nuclear weapons. Thus Obama’s new plan is regarded by many as an improvement that might help to deter those who might wish to have nuclear weapons, and also might make those who do have them think more carefully about having and using them. This is part of Obama’s strategy to someday have a nuclear-free world (almost surely a pipe dream, but a good one). The problem with this new plan is that it makes an exception for Iran. But Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and, as far as is known, is in compliance with existing rules about nuclear energy. The last I heard about this was that Iran does not have nuclear weapons, has no desire to have them, and there is no real evidence they are trying to produce one. Unfortunately, no one seems to believe this and even today you can hear important people say things that just assume Iran is going to have nuclear bombs. Here is a remarkable case in which we don’t know a known, we don’t know a known unknown, and in fact we don’t seem to know we don’t know. This, however, does not keep us from pretending that we know they are going to have nuclear bombs when we don’t in fact know that we know. If this is confusing, so is Obama’s new nuclear plan. It is not only confusing because of the Iranian situation, but also because when push comes to shove (if it ever does) we would use nuclear weapons anyway. Far be it for me to make sense out of this, but I guess by changing the Bush/Cheney threat to nuke everyone indiscriminately to nuke more discriminately is an improvement. If the rest of the world is as confused as I am they may believe this.
Another interesting question that has arisen has to do with whether or not using drones as we have been doing is legal. Being a more or less reasonable person I would have thought the legal status should have been determined before we began using them. But I guess this would be just as silly as expecting us to know whether or not drugs might be harmful before letting them on the market (it is, after all, the American way). Although I am not a legal expert (or even an expert), I should think that using drones to kill people in countries with which we are not even at war would be illegal. Of course in war lots of things are done that are illegal and nothing is usually done about it. We just acknowledge that, yeah, lots of things happen in war, and let it go at that. What I find of even more interest in this discussion of drone warfare is that no one even bothers to ask if it is moral. I guess the assumption is that if it is legal it must also be moral, but of course morality has little to do with it. Personally, I think using drones is both illegal and highly immoral, to say nothing about, arguably, cowardly and disgusting. It certainly has none of the glory of something like “Into the valley of death rode the four hundred.” Nor does it reflect the nobility of conflict as in “There is neither border, breed, nor birth, when two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth.” What passes for warfare now has nothing to do with what warfare was in the past. It is not really war, it is just mass slaughter in which “He who has the most toys wins.” I cannot reconcile myself to the thought of a few nerds sitting in Nevada guiding their drones around the world killing people at weddings and funerals (and occasionally someone who might clearly be defined as an enemy). I wonder if they sharpen their skills on videogames.
Do you think that now that Acorn has been shown to have been mistakenly and illegally accused of something they did not do they might be reinstated? Fat chance, Republicans will never allow an organization to sign up poor voters and would surely block any attempt along those lines. This is a classic case of “roviation,” whereby, in this case, an entire organization was slimed and maligned and forced out of business. Karl Rove has certainly left a legacy of which he, at least, is no doubt proud. He’s been sort of a non-violent Timothy McVay for a long time but never held accountable for his actions. Shame, remorse, guilt, compassion, fair play, truth, and conscience are all concepts foreign to those trained and influenced by Rove and his political strategies and techniques.
LKBIQ:
Lady you bereft me of all words,
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins,
And there is such confusion in my powers.
William Shakespeare
TILT:
Jerusalem artichokes are not artichokes and have nothing to do with Jerusalem.
climbs on roof and soaks him
with a bucket of water.
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."
You no doubt recognize these words of profound wisdom. They were uttered by one of our known war criminals when he was a known known Secretary of Defense, one we apparently didn’t know we didn’t know (how excruciatingly awful he was). Now I don’t know where he is but I don’t know I don’t know (for sure, anyway). But I digress.
The reason I resurrected this marvelous quotation is because somehow it seems to me it has something to do with Obama’s new nuclear defense plan. As I understand it, we will not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have nuclear weapons and have signed a nuclear treaty saying they will not have them. Under former President Bush and his minder, Dick the Slimy, we apparently reserved the right to attack anyone with nuclear weapons. Thus Obama’s new plan is regarded by many as an improvement that might help to deter those who might wish to have nuclear weapons, and also might make those who do have them think more carefully about having and using them. This is part of Obama’s strategy to someday have a nuclear-free world (almost surely a pipe dream, but a good one). The problem with this new plan is that it makes an exception for Iran. But Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and, as far as is known, is in compliance with existing rules about nuclear energy. The last I heard about this was that Iran does not have nuclear weapons, has no desire to have them, and there is no real evidence they are trying to produce one. Unfortunately, no one seems to believe this and even today you can hear important people say things that just assume Iran is going to have nuclear bombs. Here is a remarkable case in which we don’t know a known, we don’t know a known unknown, and in fact we don’t seem to know we don’t know. This, however, does not keep us from pretending that we know they are going to have nuclear bombs when we don’t in fact know that we know. If this is confusing, so is Obama’s new nuclear plan. It is not only confusing because of the Iranian situation, but also because when push comes to shove (if it ever does) we would use nuclear weapons anyway. Far be it for me to make sense out of this, but I guess by changing the Bush/Cheney threat to nuke everyone indiscriminately to nuke more discriminately is an improvement. If the rest of the world is as confused as I am they may believe this.
Another interesting question that has arisen has to do with whether or not using drones as we have been doing is legal. Being a more or less reasonable person I would have thought the legal status should have been determined before we began using them. But I guess this would be just as silly as expecting us to know whether or not drugs might be harmful before letting them on the market (it is, after all, the American way). Although I am not a legal expert (or even an expert), I should think that using drones to kill people in countries with which we are not even at war would be illegal. Of course in war lots of things are done that are illegal and nothing is usually done about it. We just acknowledge that, yeah, lots of things happen in war, and let it go at that. What I find of even more interest in this discussion of drone warfare is that no one even bothers to ask if it is moral. I guess the assumption is that if it is legal it must also be moral, but of course morality has little to do with it. Personally, I think using drones is both illegal and highly immoral, to say nothing about, arguably, cowardly and disgusting. It certainly has none of the glory of something like “Into the valley of death rode the four hundred.” Nor does it reflect the nobility of conflict as in “There is neither border, breed, nor birth, when two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth.” What passes for warfare now has nothing to do with what warfare was in the past. It is not really war, it is just mass slaughter in which “He who has the most toys wins.” I cannot reconcile myself to the thought of a few nerds sitting in Nevada guiding their drones around the world killing people at weddings and funerals (and occasionally someone who might clearly be defined as an enemy). I wonder if they sharpen their skills on videogames.
Do you think that now that Acorn has been shown to have been mistakenly and illegally accused of something they did not do they might be reinstated? Fat chance, Republicans will never allow an organization to sign up poor voters and would surely block any attempt along those lines. This is a classic case of “roviation,” whereby, in this case, an entire organization was slimed and maligned and forced out of business. Karl Rove has certainly left a legacy of which he, at least, is no doubt proud. He’s been sort of a non-violent Timothy McVay for a long time but never held accountable for his actions. Shame, remorse, guilt, compassion, fair play, truth, and conscience are all concepts foreign to those trained and influenced by Rove and his political strategies and techniques.
LKBIQ:
Lady you bereft me of all words,
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins,
And there is such confusion in my powers.
William Shakespeare
TILT:
Jerusalem artichokes are not artichokes and have nothing to do with Jerusalem.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Derelicts
Three teenagers buy an iPad,
destroy it with a baseball bat,
for “something to do.”
Derelicts would appear to be an appropriate term for our current 41 Republican Senators. They have apparently been abandoned by their constituencies and they have certainly been negligent in their duties. I don’t remember precisely what the oath of office is for Senators, but I’m pretty certain it has to do with faithfully upholding the Constitution and discharging their duties of office. I cannot state exactly what their duties of office are because as far as I know they are not specifically listed anywhere. But I believe it is entirely reasonable to assume that duties of office do not mean voting like robots for whatever the Republican Party itself insists they should do. In general I don’t believe they are either supposed to or required to vote consistently along party lines. This has sometimes been a problem for some Senators, such as Idaho Senators Crapo and Risch, who automatically vote (at least over 90% of the time) for whatever the Republican party wants. Former Senator Craig did the same. With Senators like this you might as well send robots to the Senate, they would be cheaper to maintain and could vote the party line almost unfailingly.
Senators are important people. There are only 100 of them, two from each states, and they hold and can exercise a great deal of power. Now you might think that people elected to such important positions are elected to serve the best interests of their constituents, or at least to use their power, influence, and judgment for the benefit our country and citizens. You would not expect them to simply act robotically, without thought, conscience, or judgment, and consistently without doing what would appear to be the best and most reasonable thing for their state and nation.
If this is true, how do you explain that for over a year now virtually not one of our current Republican Senators has ever voted “yes” on any proposal put forward by the Obama administration? Can it possibly be the case that there has never been an issue upon which Republican Senators might have disagreed, and one or more broken ranks to vote in the affirmative? Not one Republican thought the Stimulus bill was necessary? Not one that thought universal health care might be a good thing? Not one who thought banks should be regulated? Not one who believed a “bailout” might have been necessary? I find it impossible to believe that out of 100 powerful Senators, supposedly responsible public officials, elected specifically to serve the public, there have been virtually none that have broken with the party line of voting “no” on everything. To me this can only mean one thing, dereliction of duty. These powerful and presumably independent public servants have voted consistently to put party ahead of the public interest. Although I am not certain, I doubt this has ever happened before, at least not so consistently. I say they have been abandoned by their constituents because I see no evidence any of them have been held accountable for this rather unprecedented behavior by those constituents. And unless carrying out the duties of office mean simply voting the party line no matter what the issue, they have been universally derelict in their duties. They have seemingly become nothing but mindless robots, with no independent thoughts or beliefs of their own, just dutifully doing as they have been told. This is certainly not my idea of what a Senator should be. Perhaps I have the wrong idea about Senatorial duties, but I doubt it. In any case these 41 U.S. Senators should be highly ashamed of what they have done and I hope history will record their unprincipled attempt to bring down our elected administration. I would also think that every single one of them should be voted out of office for this mindless, despicable, and virtually treasonous behavior. In their lust for power they have abandoned their responsibilities as citizens and representatives of the people.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”
From The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service
destroy it with a baseball bat,
for “something to do.”
Derelicts would appear to be an appropriate term for our current 41 Republican Senators. They have apparently been abandoned by their constituencies and they have certainly been negligent in their duties. I don’t remember precisely what the oath of office is for Senators, but I’m pretty certain it has to do with faithfully upholding the Constitution and discharging their duties of office. I cannot state exactly what their duties of office are because as far as I know they are not specifically listed anywhere. But I believe it is entirely reasonable to assume that duties of office do not mean voting like robots for whatever the Republican Party itself insists they should do. In general I don’t believe they are either supposed to or required to vote consistently along party lines. This has sometimes been a problem for some Senators, such as Idaho Senators Crapo and Risch, who automatically vote (at least over 90% of the time) for whatever the Republican party wants. Former Senator Craig did the same. With Senators like this you might as well send robots to the Senate, they would be cheaper to maintain and could vote the party line almost unfailingly.
Senators are important people. There are only 100 of them, two from each states, and they hold and can exercise a great deal of power. Now you might think that people elected to such important positions are elected to serve the best interests of their constituents, or at least to use their power, influence, and judgment for the benefit our country and citizens. You would not expect them to simply act robotically, without thought, conscience, or judgment, and consistently without doing what would appear to be the best and most reasonable thing for their state and nation.
If this is true, how do you explain that for over a year now virtually not one of our current Republican Senators has ever voted “yes” on any proposal put forward by the Obama administration? Can it possibly be the case that there has never been an issue upon which Republican Senators might have disagreed, and one or more broken ranks to vote in the affirmative? Not one Republican thought the Stimulus bill was necessary? Not one that thought universal health care might be a good thing? Not one who thought banks should be regulated? Not one who believed a “bailout” might have been necessary? I find it impossible to believe that out of 100 powerful Senators, supposedly responsible public officials, elected specifically to serve the public, there have been virtually none that have broken with the party line of voting “no” on everything. To me this can only mean one thing, dereliction of duty. These powerful and presumably independent public servants have voted consistently to put party ahead of the public interest. Although I am not certain, I doubt this has ever happened before, at least not so consistently. I say they have been abandoned by their constituents because I see no evidence any of them have been held accountable for this rather unprecedented behavior by those constituents. And unless carrying out the duties of office mean simply voting the party line no matter what the issue, they have been universally derelict in their duties. They have seemingly become nothing but mindless robots, with no independent thoughts or beliefs of their own, just dutifully doing as they have been told. This is certainly not my idea of what a Senator should be. Perhaps I have the wrong idea about Senatorial duties, but I doubt it. In any case these 41 U.S. Senators should be highly ashamed of what they have done and I hope history will record their unprincipled attempt to bring down our elected administration. I would also think that every single one of them should be voted out of office for this mindless, despicable, and virtually treasonous behavior. In their lust for power they have abandoned their responsibilities as citizens and representatives of the people.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”
From The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service
Sunday, April 04, 2010
War Dances - book
War Dances, Sherman Alexie (Grove Press, N.Y., 2009)
I rarely read fiction anymore, and even more rarely, contemporary short stories. But as I was desperate for something to read, and our small (but fine) library failed to produce any new non-fiction work I was interested in reading, I checked out this book of short stories by Sherman Alexie, knowing that he had recently won The National Book Award (for his book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, that I have not read). While I found the stories and poems collected in War Dances of interest, I cannot honestly claim to have truly enjoyed them. Interestingly enough, my failure to enjoy them is not, I think, because Alexie is an Indian, and also not because he is an ungifted writer. He seems to have come a long way from his earlier Angry Young Indian persona, and has obviously matured as a writer, although he understandably continues writing mostly about being an Indian and Indian themes. In addition to his novels, short stories, and screenplays, he is also importantly a poet.
I suspect the reason I did not enjoy this book is the same reason that keeps me from reading contemporary fiction in general. For the most part I don’t find it enjoyable. I am, perhaps I should not admit it, old-fashioned when it comes to fiction. First, I want to enjoy it, not receive lessons on sociology and prejudice, but the themes that seem to predominate these days are usually dark and somewhat unpleasant. Second, I want a story, that is, something with a plot, a beginning, a question or problem, and an end. Much of today’s fiction seems to me to consist more of encounters, experiences, confrontations, stream-of-consciousness accounts that often seem written more for the sake of writing something than to tell a coherent story. I can’t say there is necessarily anything wrong with this type of prose, it’s just that I don’t usually enjoy it. Third, I object to the language. I am not particularly prudish about language and I don’t mind an occasional “fucking,” or “shit,” or even “mother-fucker,” if they seem really necessary (which is not usually the case in my opinion), but when such words occupy so much of the text they dominate it, I object. I believe writing in the language of the gutter, so to speak, is basically an insult to our language in general, our beautiful English language that deserves to be cherished, promoted, and enjoyed to its limits. If contemporary writers are hung up on realism and want to write about people who speak only in obscenities that is their right, but I don’t particularly want to read it, certainly not with the frequency with which it currently seems to occur. I take no umbrage at the so-called “free-speech movement,” that convinced people that words were really just words and should not have such shock value, and I enjoyed the pioneers like Lennie Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and others, but I did not interpret their message to mean that our literature should suddenly consist mostly of “shit, piss, fuck,” (the favorite expression of one of my friends whenever he was upset or frustrated), or that it should come to predominate our literature as it seems to be doing.
Contemporary fiction obviously reflects themes that our culture has become preoccupied with in recent years, so we have writers dealing with crime, addiction, war, homosexuality, and other such themes that formerly were not so prominent. It is in the nature of the case that such themes tend to be unpleasant, just as the language associated with them is in ways unpleasant. Thus it is understandable that Alexie, for example, can write of his father dying a “normal” Indian death of alcoholism and diabetes, or the killing with a baseball bat of an intruder stealing his videotapes, or how the inmates in a prison would treat Bruce Lee. I think he is at his best, however, when he recounts how he was hired to write a screenplay and then ordered to change it in ways that made no sense (“Fearful Symmetry”). I cannot explain why, when I read one of the feature stories (“The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless”), I could not escape the eerie feeling I was reading Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Banana Fish.” The two stories, quite different in terms of content, do seem to me to be similar in some ways, perhaps in their surreality. There are a few poems included in War Dances. Here, too, I have a problem, because I do not understand poetry very well and I find most contemporary poetry even harder to understand than the more classical stuff. I guess Alexie is considered a competent and talented poet. You couldn’t prove it by me as I am completely “tone deaf” when it comes to poetry, especially modern poetry.
I suppose my, shall I say, “discontent” with contemporary fiction is a result of my having lived for so long. I just do not like “modern art” in general: painting, sculpture, design, architecture, music, you name it. When I want to read short stories or novels I always return to the past; masters like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Wolfe (I know, I know, he’s passé at the moment), and others. One of my all-time favorites, a genuine story-teller, is W. Somerset Maugham, who writes wonderful stories in a fine but not ostentatious prose style. All of these writers, and many more, wrote wonderful short stories and novels without all the “potty talk,” and I, for one, think our literature was all the better for it.
But do not let my out-of-fashion opinions keep you from reading (and possibly enjoying) War Dances. Sherman Alexie does have interesting things to say, an active imagination, unusual themes, and a gift for writing poetry and prose.
I rarely read fiction anymore, and even more rarely, contemporary short stories. But as I was desperate for something to read, and our small (but fine) library failed to produce any new non-fiction work I was interested in reading, I checked out this book of short stories by Sherman Alexie, knowing that he had recently won The National Book Award (for his book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, that I have not read). While I found the stories and poems collected in War Dances of interest, I cannot honestly claim to have truly enjoyed them. Interestingly enough, my failure to enjoy them is not, I think, because Alexie is an Indian, and also not because he is an ungifted writer. He seems to have come a long way from his earlier Angry Young Indian persona, and has obviously matured as a writer, although he understandably continues writing mostly about being an Indian and Indian themes. In addition to his novels, short stories, and screenplays, he is also importantly a poet.
I suspect the reason I did not enjoy this book is the same reason that keeps me from reading contemporary fiction in general. For the most part I don’t find it enjoyable. I am, perhaps I should not admit it, old-fashioned when it comes to fiction. First, I want to enjoy it, not receive lessons on sociology and prejudice, but the themes that seem to predominate these days are usually dark and somewhat unpleasant. Second, I want a story, that is, something with a plot, a beginning, a question or problem, and an end. Much of today’s fiction seems to me to consist more of encounters, experiences, confrontations, stream-of-consciousness accounts that often seem written more for the sake of writing something than to tell a coherent story. I can’t say there is necessarily anything wrong with this type of prose, it’s just that I don’t usually enjoy it. Third, I object to the language. I am not particularly prudish about language and I don’t mind an occasional “fucking,” or “shit,” or even “mother-fucker,” if they seem really necessary (which is not usually the case in my opinion), but when such words occupy so much of the text they dominate it, I object. I believe writing in the language of the gutter, so to speak, is basically an insult to our language in general, our beautiful English language that deserves to be cherished, promoted, and enjoyed to its limits. If contemporary writers are hung up on realism and want to write about people who speak only in obscenities that is their right, but I don’t particularly want to read it, certainly not with the frequency with which it currently seems to occur. I take no umbrage at the so-called “free-speech movement,” that convinced people that words were really just words and should not have such shock value, and I enjoyed the pioneers like Lennie Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and others, but I did not interpret their message to mean that our literature should suddenly consist mostly of “shit, piss, fuck,” (the favorite expression of one of my friends whenever he was upset or frustrated), or that it should come to predominate our literature as it seems to be doing.
Contemporary fiction obviously reflects themes that our culture has become preoccupied with in recent years, so we have writers dealing with crime, addiction, war, homosexuality, and other such themes that formerly were not so prominent. It is in the nature of the case that such themes tend to be unpleasant, just as the language associated with them is in ways unpleasant. Thus it is understandable that Alexie, for example, can write of his father dying a “normal” Indian death of alcoholism and diabetes, or the killing with a baseball bat of an intruder stealing his videotapes, or how the inmates in a prison would treat Bruce Lee. I think he is at his best, however, when he recounts how he was hired to write a screenplay and then ordered to change it in ways that made no sense (“Fearful Symmetry”). I cannot explain why, when I read one of the feature stories (“The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless”), I could not escape the eerie feeling I was reading Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Banana Fish.” The two stories, quite different in terms of content, do seem to me to be similar in some ways, perhaps in their surreality. There are a few poems included in War Dances. Here, too, I have a problem, because I do not understand poetry very well and I find most contemporary poetry even harder to understand than the more classical stuff. I guess Alexie is considered a competent and talented poet. You couldn’t prove it by me as I am completely “tone deaf” when it comes to poetry, especially modern poetry.
I suppose my, shall I say, “discontent” with contemporary fiction is a result of my having lived for so long. I just do not like “modern art” in general: painting, sculpture, design, architecture, music, you name it. When I want to read short stories or novels I always return to the past; masters like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Wolfe (I know, I know, he’s passé at the moment), and others. One of my all-time favorites, a genuine story-teller, is W. Somerset Maugham, who writes wonderful stories in a fine but not ostentatious prose style. All of these writers, and many more, wrote wonderful short stories and novels without all the “potty talk,” and I, for one, think our literature was all the better for it.
But do not let my out-of-fashion opinions keep you from reading (and possibly enjoying) War Dances. Sherman Alexie does have interesting things to say, an active imagination, unusual themes, and a gift for writing poetry and prose.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
On Pedophelia
Italian road sign, “Attenzione Prostitute,”
featuring provocatively dressed woman,
confuses drivers, are they crossing or available?
It appears that the Unholy Church of the Unrepentant Pedophiles is coming in for more and more criticism, and rightly so I think. For a while the Church tried to pass off the problem of pedophilia as a peculiarly American problem. But now it has spread so far around the world that can no longer be used to dismiss it. It seems even the Pope himself is now thought to be guilty of protecting pedophiles, and there is, I gather, evidence this may well be so. This scandal involves quite a number of questions that are of interest. For example, some say the Pope cannot even be questioned about his role in defending pedophiles because he is a head of state (the Vatican). Does this mean, like Yoo’s argument about executive power, that heads of state are not subject to the same laws as other people? This seems unreasonable to me, what if the President or the Pope were themselves guilty of pedophilia (I am not suggesting this might be so). I mean, are there individuals who are in fact above the law? I do not mean this as a diatribe against the Catholic Church, but as an atheist and a non-Catholic I must confess I have always thought the Catholic Church was, shall I just say, “medieval.” When I think of grown, mostly older men, walking around in brocaded gowns and funny hats (and sometimes shoes), looking like wealthy women in the 16th century, I cannot take them seriously. What is worse, they attempt to tell the rest of the world how to behave and promote ideas that are themselves medieval. No female priests, for example. No birth control, abortions, euthanasia, and etc. As I understand it many members of the church do not even follow this advice these days, and I gather their membership is declining. Given how completely out of touch they seem to be I do not find this surprising.
But what I find of the greatest interest is how widespread pedophilia must have been for such a long time. Was there something about the Church that attracted pedophiles, or did priests become pedophiles because they could not marry? I do not find this latter condition to be very convincing because one would think priests violating their vows of celibacy with females would be much more common that it apparently is. Further, I think pedophiles, for the most part, are in fact interested in children specifically rather than other sex objects. I am not surprised that pedophilia occurred in the Church, I am surprised at how common it seems to have been. I am also surprised to learn how common it apparently is outside the Church. For example, the Boy Scouts are now in the midst of a scandal over pedophilia and it appears to have been far from rare in that organization. I note there have also been cases among some of the more fundamental congregations. And pedophiles are arrested, I guess, almost every day, especially in conjunction with child pornography. It also occurs with some regularity in prisons, and, of course, is known to be widespread in Afghanistan (I believe that it is more or less culturally accepted there). And adult/boy “love” was practiced in Greek culture and has long been fairly common in English boarding schools.
As pedophilia appears to have been so commonplace it makes me wonder all the more about human sexuality. To me the desire to have sex with children seems completely unnatural. But it is apparently fairly common. Has this always been so, or does this have something to do with evolution or cultural change? As far as I could determine the people I worked with in the New Guinea Highlands were completely unaware of such problems and, when informed about them, thought it was too stupid to be true (it apparently does occur in some places in New Guinea but is, I believe, pretty rare). When I think of pedophilia along with the current apparently insatiable demand for Viagra and Cialis, and that, also along with the more widespread acceptance of homosexuality in general, plus the seeming growing acceptance of oral sex (which prior to Hefner was regarded as a disgusting no-no), and all of this along with what we have learned in recent years about sadistic and masochistic sex, and other perversions so strange as to be almost unbelievable, I think our views about human behavior in general, and sexuality in particular, might need some serious updating. It could be the case that all of this has always been the case and has only come to light now in more enlightened times. I suspect, however, that even Freud, if he were still with us, would find his views on human sexuality rather naïve. “Sexual addiction” has not yet officially been including in the Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual (I forget its official title), but I bet it will before long (anything to make a buck), and I won’t even be the least bit surprised when a pill for it is discovered and marketed.
LKBIQ:
I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
George Burns
TILT:
Giant bamboo is the largest plant of the grass family.
featuring provocatively dressed woman,
confuses drivers, are they crossing or available?
It appears that the Unholy Church of the Unrepentant Pedophiles is coming in for more and more criticism, and rightly so I think. For a while the Church tried to pass off the problem of pedophilia as a peculiarly American problem. But now it has spread so far around the world that can no longer be used to dismiss it. It seems even the Pope himself is now thought to be guilty of protecting pedophiles, and there is, I gather, evidence this may well be so. This scandal involves quite a number of questions that are of interest. For example, some say the Pope cannot even be questioned about his role in defending pedophiles because he is a head of state (the Vatican). Does this mean, like Yoo’s argument about executive power, that heads of state are not subject to the same laws as other people? This seems unreasonable to me, what if the President or the Pope were themselves guilty of pedophilia (I am not suggesting this might be so). I mean, are there individuals who are in fact above the law? I do not mean this as a diatribe against the Catholic Church, but as an atheist and a non-Catholic I must confess I have always thought the Catholic Church was, shall I just say, “medieval.” When I think of grown, mostly older men, walking around in brocaded gowns and funny hats (and sometimes shoes), looking like wealthy women in the 16th century, I cannot take them seriously. What is worse, they attempt to tell the rest of the world how to behave and promote ideas that are themselves medieval. No female priests, for example. No birth control, abortions, euthanasia, and etc. As I understand it many members of the church do not even follow this advice these days, and I gather their membership is declining. Given how completely out of touch they seem to be I do not find this surprising.
But what I find of the greatest interest is how widespread pedophilia must have been for such a long time. Was there something about the Church that attracted pedophiles, or did priests become pedophiles because they could not marry? I do not find this latter condition to be very convincing because one would think priests violating their vows of celibacy with females would be much more common that it apparently is. Further, I think pedophiles, for the most part, are in fact interested in children specifically rather than other sex objects. I am not surprised that pedophilia occurred in the Church, I am surprised at how common it seems to have been. I am also surprised to learn how common it apparently is outside the Church. For example, the Boy Scouts are now in the midst of a scandal over pedophilia and it appears to have been far from rare in that organization. I note there have also been cases among some of the more fundamental congregations. And pedophiles are arrested, I guess, almost every day, especially in conjunction with child pornography. It also occurs with some regularity in prisons, and, of course, is known to be widespread in Afghanistan (I believe that it is more or less culturally accepted there). And adult/boy “love” was practiced in Greek culture and has long been fairly common in English boarding schools.
As pedophilia appears to have been so commonplace it makes me wonder all the more about human sexuality. To me the desire to have sex with children seems completely unnatural. But it is apparently fairly common. Has this always been so, or does this have something to do with evolution or cultural change? As far as I could determine the people I worked with in the New Guinea Highlands were completely unaware of such problems and, when informed about them, thought it was too stupid to be true (it apparently does occur in some places in New Guinea but is, I believe, pretty rare). When I think of pedophilia along with the current apparently insatiable demand for Viagra and Cialis, and that, also along with the more widespread acceptance of homosexuality in general, plus the seeming growing acceptance of oral sex (which prior to Hefner was regarded as a disgusting no-no), and all of this along with what we have learned in recent years about sadistic and masochistic sex, and other perversions so strange as to be almost unbelievable, I think our views about human behavior in general, and sexuality in particular, might need some serious updating. It could be the case that all of this has always been the case and has only come to light now in more enlightened times. I suspect, however, that even Freud, if he were still with us, would find his views on human sexuality rather naïve. “Sexual addiction” has not yet officially been including in the Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual (I forget its official title), but I bet it will before long (anything to make a buck), and I won’t even be the least bit surprised when a pill for it is discovered and marketed.
LKBIQ:
I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
George Burns
TILT:
Giant bamboo is the largest plant of the grass family.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Yeah, so what?
Wife slips and falls in wet bathroom
after hitting drunken husband
in the face for missing the toilet.
A decline in the salmon and steelhead runs in the Snake River prompt a study by the Army Corps of Engineers into the feasibility of breaching some dams. This study, it is said, will cost 20 million dollars and take years to complete. Then, if breaching is recommended, it will be up to Congress to decide.
Question: Why bother?
Another yeah, so what, moment: A Federal Judge has determined that the Bush/Cheney unwarranted wiretapping was illegal. Most everyone knew it was illegal all along but I guess it is nice to have it confirmed legally. So now that it has been do you seriously believe anything will be done about it, that anyone will be held accountable? I don’t. Bush/Cheney committed other crimes far more egregious than illegal wiretapping and have not been held accountable, so why should this be any different? The fact is, our Attorney General and Justice Department simply do not function as they should. No one seems to care. I suggest this is not a good sign for the future of our nation.
Recently a 72 year-old woman was hit with a stun gun because she refused to sign a traffic ticket. A 10 year-old elementary student was hit with a stun gun because he was bothering other children. These are only two cases out of how many? I guess they are examples of our highly-trained and efficient police forces at work.
Has anyone given any serious consideration to what the effects of all the pharmaceutical advertising may be? It is perfectly obvious, for one thing the cost of all this advertising is adding substantially to the cost of drugs. I guess it is also a kind of boon for the legal profession as they no longer have to chase ambulances. Now they just advertise themselves in order to find people who may have suffered harm from different drugs and stuff, build a clientele and sue (think of all the time and gasoline they are saving). But what I’m really concerned about are hypochondriacs. Over the years I have had several (perhaps even many) hypochondriacal friends. Most of them could not read or even peruse medical dictionaries or similar books because if they did they would immediately worry they had whatever it was they were reading about. At least a couple of them were actually forbidden by their spouses or others from reading medical books. I have one of these friends right now. He calls me almost every week. I tell him to stay away from medical people, medical books, magazines, and television. This results in his telling me all his medical problems, in great detail. I’ve known him for years. I love him. I tell him, “Buddy, you’re nuts.” He knows he’s nuts but he can’t help it. So what are these poor unfortunates to do, not watch television? That doesn’t seem fair. But what are you to think if you suffer from this problem, when you not only hear about dozens upon dozens of different drugs you should ask your doctor about, but you also must listen to lists of the potential (and serious) side effects? Fortunately I do not suffer from this problem, but I confess that even I feel somewhat queasy when I have to listen to the potentially horrible side effects that might result from drugs that I don’t even need in the first place. Perhaps hypochondriacs should get together as a group, contact some of these eager lawyers, and sue the pharmaceuticals, on the grounds they are suffering grievous mental problems, loss of sleep, unnecessary worry, inability to enjoy television, and even loss of consortium. This is such a worthwhile and potentially lucrative idea I almost wish I was a hypochondriac.
LKBIQ:
Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
Ambrose Bierce
TILT:
Cats seem to have no ability to taste sugar.
after hitting drunken husband
in the face for missing the toilet.
A decline in the salmon and steelhead runs in the Snake River prompt a study by the Army Corps of Engineers into the feasibility of breaching some dams. This study, it is said, will cost 20 million dollars and take years to complete. Then, if breaching is recommended, it will be up to Congress to decide.
Question: Why bother?
Another yeah, so what, moment: A Federal Judge has determined that the Bush/Cheney unwarranted wiretapping was illegal. Most everyone knew it was illegal all along but I guess it is nice to have it confirmed legally. So now that it has been do you seriously believe anything will be done about it, that anyone will be held accountable? I don’t. Bush/Cheney committed other crimes far more egregious than illegal wiretapping and have not been held accountable, so why should this be any different? The fact is, our Attorney General and Justice Department simply do not function as they should. No one seems to care. I suggest this is not a good sign for the future of our nation.
Recently a 72 year-old woman was hit with a stun gun because she refused to sign a traffic ticket. A 10 year-old elementary student was hit with a stun gun because he was bothering other children. These are only two cases out of how many? I guess they are examples of our highly-trained and efficient police forces at work.
Has anyone given any serious consideration to what the effects of all the pharmaceutical advertising may be? It is perfectly obvious, for one thing the cost of all this advertising is adding substantially to the cost of drugs. I guess it is also a kind of boon for the legal profession as they no longer have to chase ambulances. Now they just advertise themselves in order to find people who may have suffered harm from different drugs and stuff, build a clientele and sue (think of all the time and gasoline they are saving). But what I’m really concerned about are hypochondriacs. Over the years I have had several (perhaps even many) hypochondriacal friends. Most of them could not read or even peruse medical dictionaries or similar books because if they did they would immediately worry they had whatever it was they were reading about. At least a couple of them were actually forbidden by their spouses or others from reading medical books. I have one of these friends right now. He calls me almost every week. I tell him to stay away from medical people, medical books, magazines, and television. This results in his telling me all his medical problems, in great detail. I’ve known him for years. I love him. I tell him, “Buddy, you’re nuts.” He knows he’s nuts but he can’t help it. So what are these poor unfortunates to do, not watch television? That doesn’t seem fair. But what are you to think if you suffer from this problem, when you not only hear about dozens upon dozens of different drugs you should ask your doctor about, but you also must listen to lists of the potential (and serious) side effects? Fortunately I do not suffer from this problem, but I confess that even I feel somewhat queasy when I have to listen to the potentially horrible side effects that might result from drugs that I don’t even need in the first place. Perhaps hypochondriacs should get together as a group, contact some of these eager lawyers, and sue the pharmaceuticals, on the grounds they are suffering grievous mental problems, loss of sleep, unnecessary worry, inability to enjoy television, and even loss of consortium. This is such a worthwhile and potentially lucrative idea I almost wish I was a hypochondriac.
LKBIQ:
Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
Ambrose Bierce
TILT:
Cats seem to have no ability to taste sugar.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Cloud-Cuckoo-land
Florida man angry with father
for cooking potatoes, pours
potatoes and urine on his head.
Somehow life seems to go on In Cloud-cuckoo-land. There are apparently going to be not one, but two marches on Washington by gun-totin’ patriots, upset, among other things I guess, because Obama is going to take away their guns. The fact that Obama has done nothing whatsoever to take away anyone’s guns is apparently irrelevant to these gun-obsessed loonies (I suspect Obama has other things on his mind). But I confess I’m not really at all clear about this. It seems that it is illegal to carry guns in Washington, D.C., whether openly or not, so one of these groups is going to assemble in Virginia, as close as they can get to Washington. The other group is supposedly going to march in Washington (but without guns?). I guess these people enjoy tilting at imaginary windmills, as most of the things they seem to be opposed to are not about to happen. It’s like they live in an imaginary world where not even a semblance of reality is allowed to penetrate.
I don’t understand the purpose of these demonstrations. If it is to demonstrate they have guns, and the right to have guns, it would seem utterly pointless as no one is claiming otherwise. They pretty obviously are not intending to actually overthrow the government (at least not yet), so I guess maybe they think they will intimidate Obama and Congress into doing something (precisely what I do not know). This is similar to the Starbucks situation where some of their customers are coming armed for reasons that are, I think, absurd. The only explanation I have heard is that they are trying to prove they have the right to do so. I think “childish” might be too generous a description of this behavior. Anyway, I don’t care whether they carry their guns into Starbucks or not (I don’t drink coffee), nor do I care to worry about whether they have the right to do so (I assume if they don’t have the right they will eventually be arrested). I suspect there may be a few of the Teabaggers and others who have legitimate arguments against one thing or another, but those who are carrying around banners of Obama as Hitler, or Obama as communist, socialist or fascist (or all three at the same time), or Kill the Bill, simply have no idea what they are about. They are truly in Cloud-Cuckoo-land (Cloud-Cuckoo-land is a place I first heard about from A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, a well-known anthropologist, who, I think, spent much of his time there, but that is another story entirely).
Well, it appears that my President, whom I voted for and supported, is now embarked on a campaign to do everything I did not want him to do. He is going to allow drilling off our coasts, is helping promote nuclear energy and even burning biomass, all things I think are highly undesirable. This is in addition to his accelerating the ridiculous and unnecessary “war” in Afghanistan, sanctioning Iran, and I’m pretty sure doing other things of which I do not approve. I might give him some slack on drilling, but never on nuclear. And as I think burning biomass is a lost cause they will probably be abandoned as soon as people come to their senses and realize how both unfeasible and undesirable this would be. So why do I continue to (more or less) support him? Because, as I have mentioned before, it’s the only game in town.
The alternative would be to support Republicans, but they, too, are living entirely in Cloud-Cuckoo-land at the moment. When Obama became President they announced they would be the party of “no,” and they have kept their pledge. They have done absolutely nothing for either our country or its citizens, nothing. They have even consistently been opposed to things they themselves first thought of doing, like individual mandates, offshore drilling and so on. They are opposed to these things now simply because Obama wants to do them and they are dedicated to one thing, and one thing only, bringing down the Obama Presidency (as they tried to bring down Clinton’s), thinking this will allow them to regain power. Why they believe that by being totally uncooperative at all times, and for everything, is going to restore them to power is evidence of their residence in Cloud-Cuckoo-land. Similarly, if they think by embracing the Teapartyers they will win elections, that, too, is evidence of Cuckoo-land. Decent Republicans (a questionable assumption at best) have allowed their party to be taken over by the residents of Cloud-Cuckoo-land, have mistakenly even been seeing encouraging them, and have thereby destroyed any credibility they may have had. They have allowed their party to slowly rot away while embracing racism, greed, immorality, hatred, and injustice. Now, desperate because of this, they are threatening violence and promoting civil discord, and above all, making a mockery of government.
LKBIQ:
It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.
Saint Jerome
TILT:
Horses can sleep both standing up and lying down.
for cooking potatoes, pours
potatoes and urine on his head.
Somehow life seems to go on In Cloud-cuckoo-land. There are apparently going to be not one, but two marches on Washington by gun-totin’ patriots, upset, among other things I guess, because Obama is going to take away their guns. The fact that Obama has done nothing whatsoever to take away anyone’s guns is apparently irrelevant to these gun-obsessed loonies (I suspect Obama has other things on his mind). But I confess I’m not really at all clear about this. It seems that it is illegal to carry guns in Washington, D.C., whether openly or not, so one of these groups is going to assemble in Virginia, as close as they can get to Washington. The other group is supposedly going to march in Washington (but without guns?). I guess these people enjoy tilting at imaginary windmills, as most of the things they seem to be opposed to are not about to happen. It’s like they live in an imaginary world where not even a semblance of reality is allowed to penetrate.
I don’t understand the purpose of these demonstrations. If it is to demonstrate they have guns, and the right to have guns, it would seem utterly pointless as no one is claiming otherwise. They pretty obviously are not intending to actually overthrow the government (at least not yet), so I guess maybe they think they will intimidate Obama and Congress into doing something (precisely what I do not know). This is similar to the Starbucks situation where some of their customers are coming armed for reasons that are, I think, absurd. The only explanation I have heard is that they are trying to prove they have the right to do so. I think “childish” might be too generous a description of this behavior. Anyway, I don’t care whether they carry their guns into Starbucks or not (I don’t drink coffee), nor do I care to worry about whether they have the right to do so (I assume if they don’t have the right they will eventually be arrested). I suspect there may be a few of the Teabaggers and others who have legitimate arguments against one thing or another, but those who are carrying around banners of Obama as Hitler, or Obama as communist, socialist or fascist (or all three at the same time), or Kill the Bill, simply have no idea what they are about. They are truly in Cloud-Cuckoo-land (Cloud-Cuckoo-land is a place I first heard about from A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, a well-known anthropologist, who, I think, spent much of his time there, but that is another story entirely).
Well, it appears that my President, whom I voted for and supported, is now embarked on a campaign to do everything I did not want him to do. He is going to allow drilling off our coasts, is helping promote nuclear energy and even burning biomass, all things I think are highly undesirable. This is in addition to his accelerating the ridiculous and unnecessary “war” in Afghanistan, sanctioning Iran, and I’m pretty sure doing other things of which I do not approve. I might give him some slack on drilling, but never on nuclear. And as I think burning biomass is a lost cause they will probably be abandoned as soon as people come to their senses and realize how both unfeasible and undesirable this would be. So why do I continue to (more or less) support him? Because, as I have mentioned before, it’s the only game in town.
The alternative would be to support Republicans, but they, too, are living entirely in Cloud-Cuckoo-land at the moment. When Obama became President they announced they would be the party of “no,” and they have kept their pledge. They have done absolutely nothing for either our country or its citizens, nothing. They have even consistently been opposed to things they themselves first thought of doing, like individual mandates, offshore drilling and so on. They are opposed to these things now simply because Obama wants to do them and they are dedicated to one thing, and one thing only, bringing down the Obama Presidency (as they tried to bring down Clinton’s), thinking this will allow them to regain power. Why they believe that by being totally uncooperative at all times, and for everything, is going to restore them to power is evidence of their residence in Cloud-Cuckoo-land. Similarly, if they think by embracing the Teapartyers they will win elections, that, too, is evidence of Cuckoo-land. Decent Republicans (a questionable assumption at best) have allowed their party to be taken over by the residents of Cloud-Cuckoo-land, have mistakenly even been seeing encouraging them, and have thereby destroyed any credibility they may have had. They have allowed their party to slowly rot away while embracing racism, greed, immorality, hatred, and injustice. Now, desperate because of this, they are threatening violence and promoting civil discord, and above all, making a mockery of government.
LKBIQ:
It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.
Saint Jerome
TILT:
Horses can sleep both standing up and lying down.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Publicity
Green Bay man gets
six years for roasting
ex-girlfriend’s Pekinese.
I am hardly an authority on publicity. I basically despise publicity and those who deal in it. But if it is true that all publicity is good publicity (and I’m afraid may be correct), I think Rachel Maddow is being sucker-punched by Scott Brown, the freshman Senator from Massachusetts. If you have not followed this story, Brown has claimed that Rachel is going to run against him for the Senate. He also has said that the Democratic Party in Massachusetts has asked her to do so. Neither of these claims is true, they are demonstrably and absolutely false. Maddow, of course, denies it, as no doubt she should. She keeps insisting on her show it is not true she is running, she has not been asked to run, and Brown has just made the story up to aid him in fundraising. I have little doubt this is true. Rachel demands that he stop lying about this, a reasonable demand given that he has, in fact, been lying consistently about it. However, Rachel seems to have lost sight of the basic premise that all publicity is good. The more she complains about it and insists it is not true, the more publicity Brown receives. In fact it doesn’t matter in the least whether Brown is lying, he’s getting far more attention than he could possibly get otherwise, millions of dollars worth of publicity, simply by the fact that he is being mentioned on Rachel’s show night after night. The fact that he is lying, which Rachel rightly thinks is wrong, is basically irrelevant. Nobody will care if he is lying, all they will hear is Senator Scott Brown’s name over and over and over. So Rachel, as much as I adore you and your show, you are the one who should stop. Just ignore him, he’s taking advantage of you. You are right, he is a liar, and he is indeed capitalizing on your name, but you are unfortunately helping him. It’s just like our dear departed Lyndon Johnson said, “I know he didn’t have sex with a goat, but I want to hear him deny it,” or something to that effect.
“The proof,” I guess, “will be in the pudding.” That is, I’m still not too enamored of the Health Care Bill. I want to believe that it has good things, and some of the things do seem to be truly fine: 30 plus millions more insured, no refusal for children with existing conditions, no longer a limit on benefits, and so on. But with no public option, no real control over premiums, health care costs could presumably just keep on spiraling up and up forever. If this should happen it will be a disaster. If, on the other hand, we end up with a public option, or even more sensibly, with a single-payer system, it will be an absolute triumph. But as I have said before, until the insurance companies are dealt out completely, it will not constitute real reform. I wonder why it is so easy to understand why banks and lending companies should not be allowed to act as unnecessary middle-men for student loans, while insurance companies are allowed to continue as unnecessary middle-men for health insurance. I suspect the billions involved in the student loan case are probably a pittance compared to what the insurance companies will harvest.
I hate being kept in the dark about what is going on here and there in the world. I strongly suspect I am not being informed about why we are in Afghanistan. I don’t like believing that President Obama is stupid, but if there is not some reason we are in Afghanistan I don’t know about, I think he must be. First, it is known that Afghanistan has long been the “graveyard of empires.” No one, including Alexander the Great, managed to conquer this rugged, tribal land, nor could England or Russia. Second, there is no obvious reason we should continue to be there, al Quaida is apparently gone, third, we claim no territorial demands, fourth, the Taliban are not a threat to us, fifth, it is now clear that attempting to train a functional Afghan army is a total disaster, sixth, the government we are trying to support is completely corrupt, and seventh, The Afghans don’t want us there. It must have something to do with oil, or at least keeping oil from central Asia from flowing to China or somewhere we don’t want it to go. But, if this is true, we are never told this. We are just told it is to insure our security, a claim that is so hollow it is pathetic. Or, failing the oil hypothesis, we are there for no other reason than to keep a “war” going to feed our greedy, insatiable, military/industrial/political complex. The one thing I am absolutely positive about is that we are not there for any humanitarian motive. Humanitarian motives might provide a pathetic excuse for our infernal meddling around the world but they do not exist in our aggressive and misguided attempt to rule the world.
Have you ever seen anything as pathetic as Silly Sarah trying to sell an increasingly senile old man to the voters of his home state? With that awful shrill voice and the utter hogwash that pours virtually non-stop from her mouth she just manages to make McCain look older and more useless than he is. He will probably win because his Republican opponent is so much worse, and the voters in Arizona will probably get what they deserve, but it is truly painful to watch. There is nothing like watching one complete phony try to sell another one. McCain did enough damage to our country when he insulted us by picking this nitwit woman as his running mate and gave her a national stage, he should retire before doing any further damage. As far as Sarah goes, having had her greedy moments of fame, she should take her money and return to her rightful status as feisty but basic brood mare. I confess I cannot stand her, cannot stand the sound of her voice, cannot stand her abysmal ignorance and pretentiousness, and most of all I cannot stand what her dangerous lies portend for the future.
LKBIQ:
There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.
Orson Welles
TILT:
The Olmec, and perhaps others in the Americas, invented a wheel, but used it only on toys.
six years for roasting
ex-girlfriend’s Pekinese.
I am hardly an authority on publicity. I basically despise publicity and those who deal in it. But if it is true that all publicity is good publicity (and I’m afraid may be correct), I think Rachel Maddow is being sucker-punched by Scott Brown, the freshman Senator from Massachusetts. If you have not followed this story, Brown has claimed that Rachel is going to run against him for the Senate. He also has said that the Democratic Party in Massachusetts has asked her to do so. Neither of these claims is true, they are demonstrably and absolutely false. Maddow, of course, denies it, as no doubt she should. She keeps insisting on her show it is not true she is running, she has not been asked to run, and Brown has just made the story up to aid him in fundraising. I have little doubt this is true. Rachel demands that he stop lying about this, a reasonable demand given that he has, in fact, been lying consistently about it. However, Rachel seems to have lost sight of the basic premise that all publicity is good. The more she complains about it and insists it is not true, the more publicity Brown receives. In fact it doesn’t matter in the least whether Brown is lying, he’s getting far more attention than he could possibly get otherwise, millions of dollars worth of publicity, simply by the fact that he is being mentioned on Rachel’s show night after night. The fact that he is lying, which Rachel rightly thinks is wrong, is basically irrelevant. Nobody will care if he is lying, all they will hear is Senator Scott Brown’s name over and over and over. So Rachel, as much as I adore you and your show, you are the one who should stop. Just ignore him, he’s taking advantage of you. You are right, he is a liar, and he is indeed capitalizing on your name, but you are unfortunately helping him. It’s just like our dear departed Lyndon Johnson said, “I know he didn’t have sex with a goat, but I want to hear him deny it,” or something to that effect.
“The proof,” I guess, “will be in the pudding.” That is, I’m still not too enamored of the Health Care Bill. I want to believe that it has good things, and some of the things do seem to be truly fine: 30 plus millions more insured, no refusal for children with existing conditions, no longer a limit on benefits, and so on. But with no public option, no real control over premiums, health care costs could presumably just keep on spiraling up and up forever. If this should happen it will be a disaster. If, on the other hand, we end up with a public option, or even more sensibly, with a single-payer system, it will be an absolute triumph. But as I have said before, until the insurance companies are dealt out completely, it will not constitute real reform. I wonder why it is so easy to understand why banks and lending companies should not be allowed to act as unnecessary middle-men for student loans, while insurance companies are allowed to continue as unnecessary middle-men for health insurance. I suspect the billions involved in the student loan case are probably a pittance compared to what the insurance companies will harvest.
I hate being kept in the dark about what is going on here and there in the world. I strongly suspect I am not being informed about why we are in Afghanistan. I don’t like believing that President Obama is stupid, but if there is not some reason we are in Afghanistan I don’t know about, I think he must be. First, it is known that Afghanistan has long been the “graveyard of empires.” No one, including Alexander the Great, managed to conquer this rugged, tribal land, nor could England or Russia. Second, there is no obvious reason we should continue to be there, al Quaida is apparently gone, third, we claim no territorial demands, fourth, the Taliban are not a threat to us, fifth, it is now clear that attempting to train a functional Afghan army is a total disaster, sixth, the government we are trying to support is completely corrupt, and seventh, The Afghans don’t want us there. It must have something to do with oil, or at least keeping oil from central Asia from flowing to China or somewhere we don’t want it to go. But, if this is true, we are never told this. We are just told it is to insure our security, a claim that is so hollow it is pathetic. Or, failing the oil hypothesis, we are there for no other reason than to keep a “war” going to feed our greedy, insatiable, military/industrial/political complex. The one thing I am absolutely positive about is that we are not there for any humanitarian motive. Humanitarian motives might provide a pathetic excuse for our infernal meddling around the world but they do not exist in our aggressive and misguided attempt to rule the world.
Have you ever seen anything as pathetic as Silly Sarah trying to sell an increasingly senile old man to the voters of his home state? With that awful shrill voice and the utter hogwash that pours virtually non-stop from her mouth she just manages to make McCain look older and more useless than he is. He will probably win because his Republican opponent is so much worse, and the voters in Arizona will probably get what they deserve, but it is truly painful to watch. There is nothing like watching one complete phony try to sell another one. McCain did enough damage to our country when he insulted us by picking this nitwit woman as his running mate and gave her a national stage, he should retire before doing any further damage. As far as Sarah goes, having had her greedy moments of fame, she should take her money and return to her rightful status as feisty but basic brood mare. I confess I cannot stand her, cannot stand the sound of her voice, cannot stand her abysmal ignorance and pretentiousness, and most of all I cannot stand what her dangerous lies portend for the future.
LKBIQ:
There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.
Orson Welles
TILT:
The Olmec, and perhaps others in the Americas, invented a wheel, but used it only on toys.
Monday, March 29, 2010
On Accountability
Arrested for running nude
through supermarket, young
man says he was “just bored.”
I am wondering how long any organized group, be it a city, county, state, or federal government, a sports league, investment group, church league, restaurant, or any other organization can last when there is no accountability. At the moment this is, or I believe is going to be, a serious problem both for the U.S. government and the Unholy Church of the Unrepentant Pedophiles. I don’t care much for Christopher Hitchens, but I think he is quite right to point out that in spite of the virtually world-wide sex scandal involving that institution, no Priest has been held accountable. That is, at least none has been convicted of a crime or gone to jail even though their crimes have now been often made public. Whether the Pope himself is involved in this scandal I do not know. It would seem to be true, however, that the Pope’s insistence this is just “gossip” cannot be taken seriously. This scandal, which seems to grow worse with every passing month, has already cost the church millions if not a billion or more, and there is seemingly no end in sight. Will the church be able to survive this or will it eventually collapse?
Unfortunately, the same lack of accountability seems to be involved in our own government. Whereas it is known that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Yoo/Rice/and many others were involved in war crimes, some of these even admitted, there is no move to hold any of them accountable as near as I can tell. Apparently the hope is that everyone will just forget about it and it will eventually disappear, lost in the dustbin of history. But if there is no accountability in government how can such an institution continue to function?
It would seem to me that accountability is something that is fundamental to organization of any kind. If the members of an organization can do anything they wish and not be held accountable, that is the very antithesis of organization. That is, how can there even be organized life without accountability for failure to honor the organization? Are we to believe that individuals, like corporations, can be “too big to fail?” Can the obvious and even admitted war crimes of Bush/Cheney simply be ignored, swept under the rug, or excused because of their former high office? This seems to be what is about to happen. I suspect that however long it may take, this lack of accountability will bring down our nation. Citizens will refuse to respect the laws, criminal banks and insurance companies will be “to big to fail,” and someday the whole edifice will come crashing down. This may not happen in my lifetime, or even a longer time, but it would seem to me (at least hypothetically) inevitable.
Quite by accident I stumbled on Obama’s speech to our troops in Afghanistan. After a short time I had to turn it off. I suppose as Commander-in-Chief he had to say the things he said, but I thought it was an absolutely shameless performance. He insisted, for example, that he would not send our troops anywhere unless there was a good reason for doing so, but he was standing right in the middle of a situation where that was not true. There is no good reason for us to be in Afghanistan, and there is also little likelihood that we can in any way “win” or be successful no matter how long we stay. He said our presence in Afghanistan was vital for American security. I do not believe that even for a moment. Al Quaida seems to consist of at most a few hundred criminal individuals, mostly in Pakistan and in other parts of the world. There are said to be very few in Afghanistan. The Taliban are no threat to the U.S. and never have been. Obama said we have to help the Afghan people defend themselves from the Taliban. The Taliban are themselves Afghans, they didn’t descend on that unfortunate place from outer space or even from other parts of the world. In any case the Taliban are a problem for Afghans. To assume they cannot deal with their own problems (as they have for thousands of years) is nothing but blatant paternalism, just as is the assumption they desperately want our form of democracy (or the democracy we foolishly seem to believe we have). Furthermore, if our presence in Afghanistan is so critical for our national defense, why are we at the same time desperately trying to figure out how to get out of the mess we have made?
LKBIQ:
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce
TILT:
Rice is the second most cultivated grain after maize.
through supermarket, young
man says he was “just bored.”
I am wondering how long any organized group, be it a city, county, state, or federal government, a sports league, investment group, church league, restaurant, or any other organization can last when there is no accountability. At the moment this is, or I believe is going to be, a serious problem both for the U.S. government and the Unholy Church of the Unrepentant Pedophiles. I don’t care much for Christopher Hitchens, but I think he is quite right to point out that in spite of the virtually world-wide sex scandal involving that institution, no Priest has been held accountable. That is, at least none has been convicted of a crime or gone to jail even though their crimes have now been often made public. Whether the Pope himself is involved in this scandal I do not know. It would seem to be true, however, that the Pope’s insistence this is just “gossip” cannot be taken seriously. This scandal, which seems to grow worse with every passing month, has already cost the church millions if not a billion or more, and there is seemingly no end in sight. Will the church be able to survive this or will it eventually collapse?
Unfortunately, the same lack of accountability seems to be involved in our own government. Whereas it is known that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Yoo/Rice/and many others were involved in war crimes, some of these even admitted, there is no move to hold any of them accountable as near as I can tell. Apparently the hope is that everyone will just forget about it and it will eventually disappear, lost in the dustbin of history. But if there is no accountability in government how can such an institution continue to function?
It would seem to me that accountability is something that is fundamental to organization of any kind. If the members of an organization can do anything they wish and not be held accountable, that is the very antithesis of organization. That is, how can there even be organized life without accountability for failure to honor the organization? Are we to believe that individuals, like corporations, can be “too big to fail?” Can the obvious and even admitted war crimes of Bush/Cheney simply be ignored, swept under the rug, or excused because of their former high office? This seems to be what is about to happen. I suspect that however long it may take, this lack of accountability will bring down our nation. Citizens will refuse to respect the laws, criminal banks and insurance companies will be “to big to fail,” and someday the whole edifice will come crashing down. This may not happen in my lifetime, or even a longer time, but it would seem to me (at least hypothetically) inevitable.
Quite by accident I stumbled on Obama’s speech to our troops in Afghanistan. After a short time I had to turn it off. I suppose as Commander-in-Chief he had to say the things he said, but I thought it was an absolutely shameless performance. He insisted, for example, that he would not send our troops anywhere unless there was a good reason for doing so, but he was standing right in the middle of a situation where that was not true. There is no good reason for us to be in Afghanistan, and there is also little likelihood that we can in any way “win” or be successful no matter how long we stay. He said our presence in Afghanistan was vital for American security. I do not believe that even for a moment. Al Quaida seems to consist of at most a few hundred criminal individuals, mostly in Pakistan and in other parts of the world. There are said to be very few in Afghanistan. The Taliban are no threat to the U.S. and never have been. Obama said we have to help the Afghan people defend themselves from the Taliban. The Taliban are themselves Afghans, they didn’t descend on that unfortunate place from outer space or even from other parts of the world. In any case the Taliban are a problem for Afghans. To assume they cannot deal with their own problems (as they have for thousands of years) is nothing but blatant paternalism, just as is the assumption they desperately want our form of democracy (or the democracy we foolishly seem to believe we have). Furthermore, if our presence in Afghanistan is so critical for our national defense, why are we at the same time desperately trying to figure out how to get out of the mess we have made?
LKBIQ:
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce
TILT:
Rice is the second most cultivated grain after maize.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
1491 - book
1491 New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2008)
I cannot honestly claim to have read this book. I intended to read it. I have read parts of it and I have perused all of it. But it is far too detailed and complex to simply sit down and read for pleasure. It is my intention to read it carefully, probably in the fall, when the garden is put away, the snow is on the ground, there is a fire in the living room, and I have the time to dedicate to such a tour-de-force.
The major questions are simple enough, when did the first people arrive in the Americas, where did they come from, and how many were here before Columbus? The answers are not so simple, involving as they do evidence from archaeology, botany, genetics, linguistics, geology, medicine, chemistry, climatology, and other sciences, to say nothing of the historical records, such as they are.
More specifically, this book reviews the growing evidence against the claim that the Clovis peoples of the American Southwest were the first arrivals, coming across the Bering Strait during a specific time period when a land bridge existed, and also against the long-standing claim that all of these early arrivals were simple hunter/gatherers living in small groups and constituting a relatively small population.
Unless you read this fine book (or are a professional researcher up-to-date with all the developments) you cannot possibly understand the enormous complexity of these issues and the evidence pro and con. It is necessary, for example, to understand the importance of crops like cotton, beans, squash, potatoes, and most of all, maize, as well as the methods and techniques employed to grow these various crops. You will no doubt be amazed, as I was, to discover that slash-and-burn agriculture, long believed to be thousands of years old, probably was not even possible before the advent of stone tools, or that the invention of the milpa (type of planting) is one of the world’s greatest inventions.
With respect to population density the author visits all of the major large cultures, cities, and civilizations that have been more and more revealed in the archaeological record: the Inca and Maya, of course, but also the Toltec, Cahokia, Norte Chico, the Iroquois, other lesser known areas, and even the Amazon basin that, until recently, was regarded as very sparsely populated. In most of these cases the archaeological evidence cannot be questioned as the people left behind huge monuments and cities that are still being discovered and excavated. In cases like the Amazon, however, it is not so simple. It was assumed that the jungles did not support large populations and therefore there must have been few people there, but now the opinion is changing. This is partly based upon the writings of Gaspar de Carvajal who, for reasons I will not bother to explain, left the first written description of the Amazon. He reported large populations living in villages stretching over hundreds of kilometers. He was not taken seriously for a very long time because he also reported giant, bare-breasted Amazon women who captured men in order to mate with them. It is true that the soil in the Amazon was extremely poor and could not have sustained large populations, but there is now evidence that large areas were artificially built up for the purpose of growing crops, a development that perhaps makes de Carvajal’s account not quite so far-fetched.
Of course when it comes to this type of research it is always the interpretations that come to be questioned, and not only the interpretations themselves, but the means used to make them. With respect to populations, for example, some argue that shortly after the post-contact period a full 95% of the American population perished because of introduced diseases. There is no doubt that many perished but 95% may not be a reasonable assumption. You also must consider that early estimates of the populations tended to run to a million or so individuals, whereas now there are some who argue for almost hundreds of millions (these are the ones who believe in the 95% death rate). Still other people argue that the initial estimates were deliberately kept low to hide just how bad the Americas were violated by Europeans. Some claim there were more people in the Americas at the time of contact than there were in Europe, and some believe that “New World” cities were larger than Paris or London. Some claims are so apparently outrageous you might think the book should be titled “Archaeologists Gone Wild.” And some of the interpretations are so at odds with others they result in personal animosities and feuds.
There are, even now, no answers to the three questions. We still do not know with any certainty where the earliest Americans came from, how long ago they arrived, or how many there were at the time of contact. We seem to be creeping slowly along towards answers that may in fact never be completely possible. At this point it is probably safe to say the earliest settlers did not all come across the Bering Strait, did not all come at once, they arrived before the Clovis people, and there were many, many more than previously believed.
This book provides such a wealth of information, so much detail, so many questions and controversies it requires serious study. It is clearly the most definitive survey of the available evidence and is deserving of a great deal of time and effort. Study its slowly and enjoy.
I cannot honestly claim to have read this book. I intended to read it. I have read parts of it and I have perused all of it. But it is far too detailed and complex to simply sit down and read for pleasure. It is my intention to read it carefully, probably in the fall, when the garden is put away, the snow is on the ground, there is a fire in the living room, and I have the time to dedicate to such a tour-de-force.
The major questions are simple enough, when did the first people arrive in the Americas, where did they come from, and how many were here before Columbus? The answers are not so simple, involving as they do evidence from archaeology, botany, genetics, linguistics, geology, medicine, chemistry, climatology, and other sciences, to say nothing of the historical records, such as they are.
More specifically, this book reviews the growing evidence against the claim that the Clovis peoples of the American Southwest were the first arrivals, coming across the Bering Strait during a specific time period when a land bridge existed, and also against the long-standing claim that all of these early arrivals were simple hunter/gatherers living in small groups and constituting a relatively small population.
Unless you read this fine book (or are a professional researcher up-to-date with all the developments) you cannot possibly understand the enormous complexity of these issues and the evidence pro and con. It is necessary, for example, to understand the importance of crops like cotton, beans, squash, potatoes, and most of all, maize, as well as the methods and techniques employed to grow these various crops. You will no doubt be amazed, as I was, to discover that slash-and-burn agriculture, long believed to be thousands of years old, probably was not even possible before the advent of stone tools, or that the invention of the milpa (type of planting) is one of the world’s greatest inventions.
With respect to population density the author visits all of the major large cultures, cities, and civilizations that have been more and more revealed in the archaeological record: the Inca and Maya, of course, but also the Toltec, Cahokia, Norte Chico, the Iroquois, other lesser known areas, and even the Amazon basin that, until recently, was regarded as very sparsely populated. In most of these cases the archaeological evidence cannot be questioned as the people left behind huge monuments and cities that are still being discovered and excavated. In cases like the Amazon, however, it is not so simple. It was assumed that the jungles did not support large populations and therefore there must have been few people there, but now the opinion is changing. This is partly based upon the writings of Gaspar de Carvajal who, for reasons I will not bother to explain, left the first written description of the Amazon. He reported large populations living in villages stretching over hundreds of kilometers. He was not taken seriously for a very long time because he also reported giant, bare-breasted Amazon women who captured men in order to mate with them. It is true that the soil in the Amazon was extremely poor and could not have sustained large populations, but there is now evidence that large areas were artificially built up for the purpose of growing crops, a development that perhaps makes de Carvajal’s account not quite so far-fetched.
Of course when it comes to this type of research it is always the interpretations that come to be questioned, and not only the interpretations themselves, but the means used to make them. With respect to populations, for example, some argue that shortly after the post-contact period a full 95% of the American population perished because of introduced diseases. There is no doubt that many perished but 95% may not be a reasonable assumption. You also must consider that early estimates of the populations tended to run to a million or so individuals, whereas now there are some who argue for almost hundreds of millions (these are the ones who believe in the 95% death rate). Still other people argue that the initial estimates were deliberately kept low to hide just how bad the Americas were violated by Europeans. Some claim there were more people in the Americas at the time of contact than there were in Europe, and some believe that “New World” cities were larger than Paris or London. Some claims are so apparently outrageous you might think the book should be titled “Archaeologists Gone Wild.” And some of the interpretations are so at odds with others they result in personal animosities and feuds.
There are, even now, no answers to the three questions. We still do not know with any certainty where the earliest Americans came from, how long ago they arrived, or how many there were at the time of contact. We seem to be creeping slowly along towards answers that may in fact never be completely possible. At this point it is probably safe to say the earliest settlers did not all come across the Bering Strait, did not all come at once, they arrived before the Clovis people, and there were many, many more than previously believed.
This book provides such a wealth of information, so much detail, so many questions and controversies it requires serious study. It is clearly the most definitive survey of the available evidence and is deserving of a great deal of time and effort. Study its slowly and enjoy.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The World Sort of Turns
Widow takes his ashes
on world tour he missed
because of his fear of flying.
I suppose I might write a blog about Silly Sarah and John the Elder but I can’t bring myself to do it, it’s just too absurd and Silly Sarah is precisely the kind of housewifey know-it-all that could easily excite me (and I suspect many other men) to domestic violence. So let me offer a brief run-down of some recent events in the ongoing comedy otherwise known as human behavior:
An immigrant couple was arrested because there were photos of the man kissing his baby. Really, this happened. A clerk in some store processing film saw pictures of a man kissing a baby and suspected him of child abuse. The child was taken into protective custody, the parents may be deported, hopefully back to some country where men routinely kiss their babies. It is not clear what will happen to the baby.
A man was arrested for running through the meat section in a supermarket with a knife, cutting open packages and throwing raw beef on the floor. He said he was doing it to protect girls from becoming chubby. He is a vegetarian who was angry at his mother for cooking a pot roast.
A 33 year-old man was arrested for beating a quadruple amputee because she was blocking his view of the television.
A pregnant Seattle woman was hit with a stun gun because she refused to sign a citation, thinking it might mean she was guilty. She was driving a son to a sporting event. No doubt he learned a lesson about law enforcement.
A road rage incident was sparked because a driver had an Obama bumper sticker. A car following him repeatedly rammed into his back bumper, gave him the finger, and shouted obscenities.
As I have mentioned before, after 68 years of marriage a 90 year-old man murdered his 89 year-old wife during a domestic dispute.
The first male prostitute at a Nevada brothel quit because there was not enough demand.
A drunken man was arrested in Pennsylvania for giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dead opossum.
In Memphis a corpse was found under the bed in a motel room where a couple had just spent the night. It was not clear how long the corpse had been there.
As you are no doubt aware this is just a teeny-weenie sample of what passes for everyday life here in the U.S. (and, I am sure, around the rest of the world as well). And these are only mild examples!
Perhaps a better example of the absurdity of human behavior might be found characteristic of Republicans. They have held up Obama appointments to important posts in government for months for purely political reasons. Now they are angry because he has made 15 recess appointments. He did this in spite of a letter they sent him signed by all 41 of the fools asking him not to do it. Go figure. Go Obama!
Several weeks ago I googled the question: “Why was Edward Kennedy called Teddy?” I began receiving “Google alerts” regularly, at least one every day and often more than one. I have yet to receive one that says simply that “Teddy” is a common nickname for Edward. Go figure.
I think it is quite interesting that Silly Sarah is campaigning for McCain, a basic nobody trying to help someone who was somebody. I wouldn’t vote for McCain no matter what, but you know what, the guy running against him for his Republican Senate seat is far worse. It’s hard to believe but I think it’s true.
Once when I first started this blog I suggested that the worst country-western song was probably “Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Post of Life.” Someone from England commented: “How about ‘It’s Mighty Lonesome in the Saddle Since My Horse Died.'” See, there used to be things that were actually funny.
LKBIQ:
Think of what would happen to us in America if there were no humorists; life would be one long Congressional Record.
Tom Masson
TILT:
There may be as few as 100 red wolves surviving in the wild.
on world tour he missed
because of his fear of flying.
I suppose I might write a blog about Silly Sarah and John the Elder but I can’t bring myself to do it, it’s just too absurd and Silly Sarah is precisely the kind of housewifey know-it-all that could easily excite me (and I suspect many other men) to domestic violence. So let me offer a brief run-down of some recent events in the ongoing comedy otherwise known as human behavior:
An immigrant couple was arrested because there were photos of the man kissing his baby. Really, this happened. A clerk in some store processing film saw pictures of a man kissing a baby and suspected him of child abuse. The child was taken into protective custody, the parents may be deported, hopefully back to some country where men routinely kiss their babies. It is not clear what will happen to the baby.
A man was arrested for running through the meat section in a supermarket with a knife, cutting open packages and throwing raw beef on the floor. He said he was doing it to protect girls from becoming chubby. He is a vegetarian who was angry at his mother for cooking a pot roast.
A 33 year-old man was arrested for beating a quadruple amputee because she was blocking his view of the television.
A pregnant Seattle woman was hit with a stun gun because she refused to sign a citation, thinking it might mean she was guilty. She was driving a son to a sporting event. No doubt he learned a lesson about law enforcement.
A road rage incident was sparked because a driver had an Obama bumper sticker. A car following him repeatedly rammed into his back bumper, gave him the finger, and shouted obscenities.
As I have mentioned before, after 68 years of marriage a 90 year-old man murdered his 89 year-old wife during a domestic dispute.
The first male prostitute at a Nevada brothel quit because there was not enough demand.
A drunken man was arrested in Pennsylvania for giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dead opossum.
In Memphis a corpse was found under the bed in a motel room where a couple had just spent the night. It was not clear how long the corpse had been there.
As you are no doubt aware this is just a teeny-weenie sample of what passes for everyday life here in the U.S. (and, I am sure, around the rest of the world as well). And these are only mild examples!
Perhaps a better example of the absurdity of human behavior might be found characteristic of Republicans. They have held up Obama appointments to important posts in government for months for purely political reasons. Now they are angry because he has made 15 recess appointments. He did this in spite of a letter they sent him signed by all 41 of the fools asking him not to do it. Go figure. Go Obama!
Several weeks ago I googled the question: “Why was Edward Kennedy called Teddy?” I began receiving “Google alerts” regularly, at least one every day and often more than one. I have yet to receive one that says simply that “Teddy” is a common nickname for Edward. Go figure.
I think it is quite interesting that Silly Sarah is campaigning for McCain, a basic nobody trying to help someone who was somebody. I wouldn’t vote for McCain no matter what, but you know what, the guy running against him for his Republican Senate seat is far worse. It’s hard to believe but I think it’s true.
Once when I first started this blog I suggested that the worst country-western song was probably “Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Post of Life.” Someone from England commented: “How about ‘It’s Mighty Lonesome in the Saddle Since My Horse Died.'” See, there used to be things that were actually funny.
LKBIQ:
Think of what would happen to us in America if there were no humorists; life would be one long Congressional Record.
Tom Masson
TILT:
There may be as few as 100 red wolves surviving in the wild.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Meant to Be?
Watch 'n Wait: So good to hear from you after all this time! Yes, it's true, lots of men eventually suffer from prostate cancer, but not usually until they should be well past worrying a lot about erectile dysfunction (I said "should be"). I'm not sure I think this accounts for the apparent insatiable demand for aids for performance. A lot of it is probably just a result of the pharmaceuticals manufacturing and encouraging demand. Anyway, thanks for the comment and best wishes to you.
Drunken Punxsutawney man
arrested for giving mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation to dead opossum.
I hesitate to even mention this incredibly complex topic, and I have no idea how to realistically do anything about it, but I believe it is true – human beings were not meant to live the way we currently live. We were meant, I think, to live with nature, not to attack and destroy it. Of course when there were fewer people on earth it was much easier than it is today, and I suspect the myth of the noble savage living at one with nature is in itself just that, a myth. “Savages,” as near as I can tell, did not always live completely at one with nature, but because they were fewer, and because they did not have the destructive technology we now have, they were unable to destroy nature as easily and routinely as we have increasingly learned to do. However, in some instances they tried. For example, in the New Guinea Highlands there are vast stretches of grasslands (kunai). The soil is not very productive in these areas and nothing much grows there except a tall, tough grass with sharp spear-like leaves. Cattle cannot eat this grass except if it is periodically burned they can eat the tender new shoots. Of course there were no cattle there, having only recently been introduced by Europeans. But my point is simply that those unproductive grasslands are the result of human intervention, they were caused by the systematic burning over many years of what was there previously, burning to hunt, to clear ground for cultivation, and also during warfare and raiding. The people who inhabit these grasslands learned to adapt to life there, they learned to raise pigs that do well there, and to make salt from burning the grass and processing the ashes. They learned to trade with other people who lived in the nearby forests for products they needed but could not produce themselves, black palm for bows and arrows, stone axe blades, bird-of-paradise plumes for decorations, and so on. The Plains Indians in the United States were well adapted to their environment as well, as long as there were plenty of buffalo. Indeed, there were so many buffalo they could not possibly have killed them all even if they had desired to do so. The Arctic Eskimo, as we know, learned to adapt to an unbelievably harsh environment. If you look around the world at people who lived in various environments prior to the Industrial Revolution, in the jungles, the deserts, the arctic, wherever, it is more or less true they were adapted to their environment. People lived as hunter/gatherers or small-time horticulturalists, and did not have a particularly bad impact on their environments. As humans we tend to pride ourselves on our adaptability.
All of this began to change dramatically with the Industrial Revolution and the technological “improvements” that resulted. It seems to me we have gone from being highly adaptable to becoming highly maladaptive, as far as living with nature goes. Whereas “savages” might have destroyed things had they had the means, they couldn’t and didn’t. But we have done so and have created modes of existence that simply violate the previous human condition. Our inventions and technological innovations have become antithetical to what should be our more natural condition. The invention of the internal combustion engine, for example, in some sense a remarkable achievement, has in some respects been a disaster for life on the planet, not only wasting natural resources but also killing us by the hundreds of thousands. Bulldozers and huge cranes and backhoes have allowed us to build gigantic dams on our rivers, but only at the cost of destroying priceless natural resources. The invention of plastic, now becoming a true ecological disaster, is perhaps one of the worst of our “achievements.” These inventions were not intended to create the problems we now face, but they were created without considering the consequences that would follow their use. We have not been content to leave nature as it is, but have arrogantly thought to change it and make it exist for us, rather than we for it. This has, I believe, been in many ways disastrous, although I doubt most people today think of it that way. I do, I don’t believe humans were meant to live in huge crowded metropolitan areas, having to spend hours commuting back and forth to where they work, breathing foul air and enduring road rage and exhaust. I don’t believe each human should have a thousand or more pounds of steel and plastic, with hundreds of horsepower, just to drive to the supermarket to buy packaged food produced under questionable circumstances and of questionable nutritional value. I do not believe we were meant to suffer from obesity and diabetes to the point where it has become a national emergency. And related to all this, I don’t believe we were meant to live in a situation where profit is the most important motivating factor in our behavior. There was nothing like the profit motive that exists today in the smaller pre-industrial societies that existed for thousands of years previously. Economics was imbedded in systems of kinship and village, location, history, and even religion, it did not exist as an independent institution.
I do not mean to suggest that somehow we should go back to “the good old days,” or that all progress and technology has been necessarily “bad.” Frankly, I don’t exactly know what to think about it all, I don’t have any way of knowing what was “meant to be” in human affairs. I am pretty sure the human body and psyche were developed for hunting and gathering, digging in the earth, and wondering about the “Great Mystery” of it all. Sometimes I wonder, while sitting in front of the TV or my computer, if even wonder still exists in any extensive form: “God is dead,” but not March Madness, the NFL, “Lost,” and “American Idol,” to say nothing of “Dancing with the Stars,” and “Hip Hop.” “Life” goes on, or does it? Sometimes I think maybe some "Intelligent Designer" designed people with free will just to see if they would use it wisely. He/She/It lost.
LKBIQ:
A lifetime is more than sufficiently long for people to get what there is of it wrong.
Piet Hein
TILT:
Stem cells can be successfully harvested from wisdom teeth.
Drunken Punxsutawney man
arrested for giving mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation to dead opossum.
I hesitate to even mention this incredibly complex topic, and I have no idea how to realistically do anything about it, but I believe it is true – human beings were not meant to live the way we currently live. We were meant, I think, to live with nature, not to attack and destroy it. Of course when there were fewer people on earth it was much easier than it is today, and I suspect the myth of the noble savage living at one with nature is in itself just that, a myth. “Savages,” as near as I can tell, did not always live completely at one with nature, but because they were fewer, and because they did not have the destructive technology we now have, they were unable to destroy nature as easily and routinely as we have increasingly learned to do. However, in some instances they tried. For example, in the New Guinea Highlands there are vast stretches of grasslands (kunai). The soil is not very productive in these areas and nothing much grows there except a tall, tough grass with sharp spear-like leaves. Cattle cannot eat this grass except if it is periodically burned they can eat the tender new shoots. Of course there were no cattle there, having only recently been introduced by Europeans. But my point is simply that those unproductive grasslands are the result of human intervention, they were caused by the systematic burning over many years of what was there previously, burning to hunt, to clear ground for cultivation, and also during warfare and raiding. The people who inhabit these grasslands learned to adapt to life there, they learned to raise pigs that do well there, and to make salt from burning the grass and processing the ashes. They learned to trade with other people who lived in the nearby forests for products they needed but could not produce themselves, black palm for bows and arrows, stone axe blades, bird-of-paradise plumes for decorations, and so on. The Plains Indians in the United States were well adapted to their environment as well, as long as there were plenty of buffalo. Indeed, there were so many buffalo they could not possibly have killed them all even if they had desired to do so. The Arctic Eskimo, as we know, learned to adapt to an unbelievably harsh environment. If you look around the world at people who lived in various environments prior to the Industrial Revolution, in the jungles, the deserts, the arctic, wherever, it is more or less true they were adapted to their environment. People lived as hunter/gatherers or small-time horticulturalists, and did not have a particularly bad impact on their environments. As humans we tend to pride ourselves on our adaptability.
All of this began to change dramatically with the Industrial Revolution and the technological “improvements” that resulted. It seems to me we have gone from being highly adaptable to becoming highly maladaptive, as far as living with nature goes. Whereas “savages” might have destroyed things had they had the means, they couldn’t and didn’t. But we have done so and have created modes of existence that simply violate the previous human condition. Our inventions and technological innovations have become antithetical to what should be our more natural condition. The invention of the internal combustion engine, for example, in some sense a remarkable achievement, has in some respects been a disaster for life on the planet, not only wasting natural resources but also killing us by the hundreds of thousands. Bulldozers and huge cranes and backhoes have allowed us to build gigantic dams on our rivers, but only at the cost of destroying priceless natural resources. The invention of plastic, now becoming a true ecological disaster, is perhaps one of the worst of our “achievements.” These inventions were not intended to create the problems we now face, but they were created without considering the consequences that would follow their use. We have not been content to leave nature as it is, but have arrogantly thought to change it and make it exist for us, rather than we for it. This has, I believe, been in many ways disastrous, although I doubt most people today think of it that way. I do, I don’t believe humans were meant to live in huge crowded metropolitan areas, having to spend hours commuting back and forth to where they work, breathing foul air and enduring road rage and exhaust. I don’t believe each human should have a thousand or more pounds of steel and plastic, with hundreds of horsepower, just to drive to the supermarket to buy packaged food produced under questionable circumstances and of questionable nutritional value. I do not believe we were meant to suffer from obesity and diabetes to the point where it has become a national emergency. And related to all this, I don’t believe we were meant to live in a situation where profit is the most important motivating factor in our behavior. There was nothing like the profit motive that exists today in the smaller pre-industrial societies that existed for thousands of years previously. Economics was imbedded in systems of kinship and village, location, history, and even religion, it did not exist as an independent institution.
I do not mean to suggest that somehow we should go back to “the good old days,” or that all progress and technology has been necessarily “bad.” Frankly, I don’t exactly know what to think about it all, I don’t have any way of knowing what was “meant to be” in human affairs. I am pretty sure the human body and psyche were developed for hunting and gathering, digging in the earth, and wondering about the “Great Mystery” of it all. Sometimes I wonder, while sitting in front of the TV or my computer, if even wonder still exists in any extensive form: “God is dead,” but not March Madness, the NFL, “Lost,” and “American Idol,” to say nothing of “Dancing with the Stars,” and “Hip Hop.” “Life” goes on, or does it? Sometimes I think maybe some "Intelligent Designer" designed people with free will just to see if they would use it wisely. He/She/It lost.
LKBIQ:
A lifetime is more than sufficiently long for people to get what there is of it wrong.
Piet Hein
TILT:
Stem cells can be successfully harvested from wisdom teeth.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
The Inevitable
After 68 years of marriage,
90 year-old man kills 89 year-old
wife in domestic dispute.
As the health care bill is finally passed and the overwhelming news topic is now the threats, violence, and blame, all of which will no doubt be covered more or less exclusively for days (to keep our little minds away from serious problems like bankruptcy, war, accountability, and so on), my idle mind once again has turned to thoughts of little importance but intense curiosity. I have been thinking about the inevitable. Not the inevitable in general, but the inevitability of certain developments in the future. For example, I believe it is inevitable that soon “Don’t ask, don’t tell” will be a policy of the past. As I believe in this inevitability I wonder why they bother with the half measure they are now touting, a measure that will temporarily help some and unfairly not help others. Gates said the reason for this approach is not because DADT is not going to be repealed, but rather, how it is to be accomplished. This seems to me a feeble excuse as it could just be done, just as Truman integrated the army. In other words, just do it!
Another inevitability, I believe, is Gay marriage. There is no doubt in my mind that eventually Gay marriage will be the law of the land. As more and more states are already allowing such marriages it will become more and more apparent that having Gay marriage only as a States’ right will become dysfunctional and increasing problematic. By then it will be impossible to rescind such rights and the fact that it was regarded as such a social problem will recede into dim memory.
Legal marijuana is another problem that will eventually pass and be recognized everywhere. It is inevitable. The absurdity of keeping pot illegal and jailing hundreds of thousands for the (non) crime of using it, thus needlessly filling up our jails and prisons will soon be more widely recognized, along with the fact that governments are missing out on a lot of tax monies, will bring us to our senses eventually. This will start this year in California and will undoubtedly spread elsewhere. Laws in various states have already begun to change.
I think it is also true that we will inevitably lose the “war” in Afghanistan (just as we lost the “war” in Iraq). We might eventually get out with some false claim of “winning” but it will be just that, a false claim. First of all, there is nothing we can “win” there to begin with. The only way we can avoid losing is to continue what we are doing now, continuing the “war” for no purpose other than that it exists (and keeps the military/industrial/political complex going). Sooner or later we will have to acknowledge we can no longer afford such expensive busy work and it will end.
Closer to home I think it inevitable that the Snake River dams will eventually have to be breached. It will become apparent, even to those who don’t think like I do at the moment, that maintaining and operating the dams and potentially losing the salmon runs is a fool’s errand (it probably always was). Not having the dams will be more economically sound than having them and there are other ways of moving potatoes and wheat to the coast (if, that is, we still have a viable economy at all in the future).
There are no doubt other things that will prove to be inevitable that I can’t think of at the moment. And you may not agree these things are inevitable as I do. I think they are inevitable because they are “right.” They all “make sense,” and to not do them will prove to be foolishly maintaining rules and laws that are no longer either necessary or useful. Only the future will tell if I am right about this, but if I were a betting man, I’d bet on it. If these developments are inevitable why not just do it now? Of course it’s because not everyone agrees with me. I guess that’s inevitable.
On a different topic entirely, I am beginning to wonder about erectile problems. We are currently being absolutely overwhelmed with ads for Viagra, Cialis, and other products designed to help men with erectile dysfunctions. I recently heard on one ad somewhere or other that “millions of men have now used “x” (one of these “aids”). It occurs to me that if that many American males are having problems with their erections, there must be some more serious problem involved, like maybe bad water, poor diets, oedipal guilt, mother fixations, maybe even talk radio or global warming. That is, it doesn’t seem “normal” to me that so many American men apparently suffer from this problem. Of course they could just want more and more sex and the limpness they experience is simply from exhaustion and overindulgence.
One final stupid question: will automobile insurance eventually be free? I ask this because I know little or nothing about economics and I hear repeatedly that the marketplace will determine prices. As there are now almost as many ads for car insurance as there are for erectile dysfunction, and as each of these companies claims to have substantially lower prices than the others, if this keeps on, will the “product” be reduced in price sufficiently by the competition to be given away (perhaps as a bonus for buying life insurance or flood insurance or something else entirely)? I realize this is a stupid question, but if I can buy furniture with no money down and no payments or interest for “x” amount of time, why can’t I get anything I want in much the same way? It’s the American way.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
Thomas Gray
90 year-old man kills 89 year-old
wife in domestic dispute.
As the health care bill is finally passed and the overwhelming news topic is now the threats, violence, and blame, all of which will no doubt be covered more or less exclusively for days (to keep our little minds away from serious problems like bankruptcy, war, accountability, and so on), my idle mind once again has turned to thoughts of little importance but intense curiosity. I have been thinking about the inevitable. Not the inevitable in general, but the inevitability of certain developments in the future. For example, I believe it is inevitable that soon “Don’t ask, don’t tell” will be a policy of the past. As I believe in this inevitability I wonder why they bother with the half measure they are now touting, a measure that will temporarily help some and unfairly not help others. Gates said the reason for this approach is not because DADT is not going to be repealed, but rather, how it is to be accomplished. This seems to me a feeble excuse as it could just be done, just as Truman integrated the army. In other words, just do it!
Another inevitability, I believe, is Gay marriage. There is no doubt in my mind that eventually Gay marriage will be the law of the land. As more and more states are already allowing such marriages it will become more and more apparent that having Gay marriage only as a States’ right will become dysfunctional and increasing problematic. By then it will be impossible to rescind such rights and the fact that it was regarded as such a social problem will recede into dim memory.
Legal marijuana is another problem that will eventually pass and be recognized everywhere. It is inevitable. The absurdity of keeping pot illegal and jailing hundreds of thousands for the (non) crime of using it, thus needlessly filling up our jails and prisons will soon be more widely recognized, along with the fact that governments are missing out on a lot of tax monies, will bring us to our senses eventually. This will start this year in California and will undoubtedly spread elsewhere. Laws in various states have already begun to change.
I think it is also true that we will inevitably lose the “war” in Afghanistan (just as we lost the “war” in Iraq). We might eventually get out with some false claim of “winning” but it will be just that, a false claim. First of all, there is nothing we can “win” there to begin with. The only way we can avoid losing is to continue what we are doing now, continuing the “war” for no purpose other than that it exists (and keeps the military/industrial/political complex going). Sooner or later we will have to acknowledge we can no longer afford such expensive busy work and it will end.
Closer to home I think it inevitable that the Snake River dams will eventually have to be breached. It will become apparent, even to those who don’t think like I do at the moment, that maintaining and operating the dams and potentially losing the salmon runs is a fool’s errand (it probably always was). Not having the dams will be more economically sound than having them and there are other ways of moving potatoes and wheat to the coast (if, that is, we still have a viable economy at all in the future).
There are no doubt other things that will prove to be inevitable that I can’t think of at the moment. And you may not agree these things are inevitable as I do. I think they are inevitable because they are “right.” They all “make sense,” and to not do them will prove to be foolishly maintaining rules and laws that are no longer either necessary or useful. Only the future will tell if I am right about this, but if I were a betting man, I’d bet on it. If these developments are inevitable why not just do it now? Of course it’s because not everyone agrees with me. I guess that’s inevitable.
On a different topic entirely, I am beginning to wonder about erectile problems. We are currently being absolutely overwhelmed with ads for Viagra, Cialis, and other products designed to help men with erectile dysfunctions. I recently heard on one ad somewhere or other that “millions of men have now used “x” (one of these “aids”). It occurs to me that if that many American males are having problems with their erections, there must be some more serious problem involved, like maybe bad water, poor diets, oedipal guilt, mother fixations, maybe even talk radio or global warming. That is, it doesn’t seem “normal” to me that so many American men apparently suffer from this problem. Of course they could just want more and more sex and the limpness they experience is simply from exhaustion and overindulgence.
One final stupid question: will automobile insurance eventually be free? I ask this because I know little or nothing about economics and I hear repeatedly that the marketplace will determine prices. As there are now almost as many ads for car insurance as there are for erectile dysfunction, and as each of these companies claims to have substantially lower prices than the others, if this keeps on, will the “product” be reduced in price sufficiently by the competition to be given away (perhaps as a bonus for buying life insurance or flood insurance or something else entirely)? I realize this is a stupid question, but if I can buy furniture with no money down and no payments or interest for “x” amount of time, why can’t I get anything I want in much the same way? It’s the American way.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
Thomas Gray
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Irrational Hate
Woman gardener dressed only
In yellow thong and pink gloves,
inspires rule changes in Boulder.
I guess I may be hopelessly confused as I sometimes am. What’s with this awful show of violence, the cursing, spitting, rock-throwing, death-threatening, apparently irrational response to the health care bill? I might understand this if there was an issue that somehow warranted it, for example, abortion, or anti-war, or even gay marriage, issues that people might at least conceivably have strong passions about. But we’re talking about health care, trying to improve health care for those who already have it and for the many millions that do not. How can anyone be so passionately against such a thing? What makes it worse is that most of what they are so worked up about are things not even in the bill or about to happen. I mean, one might feel strongly that it is going to cost too much, but we argue about costs on lots of things all the time, arguments that don’t lead to violence or death threats. You might also legitimately be opposed to “a government takeover,” but this is not a government takeover. To want to kill someone because they voted for it is to perform a completely irrational act on behalf of something that isn’t happening. You might not like the individual mandate that makes you have to buy insurance, but you have to buy car insurance and as far as I know, no one killed over it. Someone might feel truly passionate about abortion being federally funded, but there is no federal funding for abortion in this bill, to insist otherwise is, again, completely irrational. You might be concerned over so-called “death panels,” but there are no death panels. This is health care for people we’re talking about, health care, get it? It is trying to alleviate pain and suffering and bankruptcies and the madness of losing your health care because you get sick or lose your job. So…even if there are parts of the bill you don’t like you are ready to kill? There are parts of almost all bills someone doesn’t like, they don’t threaten to kill anyone about it. It appears to me that those who are threatening violence and throwing bricks and spitting on people and yelling racial and homophobic slurs are all worked up about purely imaginary problems. That is, they are completely delusional and out of control for reasons that make no sense. I guess this is what happens after weeks, months, even years of listening to Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Coulter, Savage, Malkin, and the rest of the weekly hate mongers who, for a few pieces of silver (actually many pieces) are willing to promote anything, including mindless violence. This is not how government is supposed to work, at least not in the United States.
What about this militia guy from Alabama, living on Social Security Disability checks, inciting people to throw rocks at democratic buildings and suggesting they load up their guns and so on? Aren’t there laws against inciting to riot? Is he being investigated or arrested or anything? And if he is, what about Silly Sarah who isn’t really silly anymore, telling her mindless minions to reload and take aim at certain democrats? What about Limbaugh and Beck? These jerks have been inciting people to riot for years. Do we have to wait until someone actually gets murdered, perhaps many people get blown up, before being able to do anything about this constant stream of utter irresponsible, hateful drivel that emanates from our airwaves and televisions? And now even Republican leaders, desperate to find support anywhere they can, are encouraging these filthy lies and threats. The worst elements of our society are taking over what used to be a viable political party and turning it into a frenzied mob of crazies who no longer even need a viable excuse for their behavior, they are, indeed, just a mob.
What has happened is, I think, a direct result of the Nightmare Years of the Bush/Cheney administration, although the seeds of their fall began in earnest during the Clinton administration when they began to morph into a criminal conspiracy rather than a legitimate political party. The Republican Party itself is now every bit as irrational as the mobs they have inspired. If they believe they are going to make great gains in the coming elections based upon their performance in the past few years they are going to be badly mistaken. If they think they can win because the Democrats have failed they will now have to think again. Of course they will always have their base of the altogether loony, but that is probably no more than 30% of the voters at most. Personally, I believe the Republican Party is doomed and will eventually either have to disappear or emerge as something entirely different.
LKBIQ:
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
Friedrick Nietsczhe
TILT:
It is technically possible for an oyster to fertilize itself.
In yellow thong and pink gloves,
inspires rule changes in Boulder.
I guess I may be hopelessly confused as I sometimes am. What’s with this awful show of violence, the cursing, spitting, rock-throwing, death-threatening, apparently irrational response to the health care bill? I might understand this if there was an issue that somehow warranted it, for example, abortion, or anti-war, or even gay marriage, issues that people might at least conceivably have strong passions about. But we’re talking about health care, trying to improve health care for those who already have it and for the many millions that do not. How can anyone be so passionately against such a thing? What makes it worse is that most of what they are so worked up about are things not even in the bill or about to happen. I mean, one might feel strongly that it is going to cost too much, but we argue about costs on lots of things all the time, arguments that don’t lead to violence or death threats. You might also legitimately be opposed to “a government takeover,” but this is not a government takeover. To want to kill someone because they voted for it is to perform a completely irrational act on behalf of something that isn’t happening. You might not like the individual mandate that makes you have to buy insurance, but you have to buy car insurance and as far as I know, no one killed over it. Someone might feel truly passionate about abortion being federally funded, but there is no federal funding for abortion in this bill, to insist otherwise is, again, completely irrational. You might be concerned over so-called “death panels,” but there are no death panels. This is health care for people we’re talking about, health care, get it? It is trying to alleviate pain and suffering and bankruptcies and the madness of losing your health care because you get sick or lose your job. So…even if there are parts of the bill you don’t like you are ready to kill? There are parts of almost all bills someone doesn’t like, they don’t threaten to kill anyone about it. It appears to me that those who are threatening violence and throwing bricks and spitting on people and yelling racial and homophobic slurs are all worked up about purely imaginary problems. That is, they are completely delusional and out of control for reasons that make no sense. I guess this is what happens after weeks, months, even years of listening to Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Coulter, Savage, Malkin, and the rest of the weekly hate mongers who, for a few pieces of silver (actually many pieces) are willing to promote anything, including mindless violence. This is not how government is supposed to work, at least not in the United States.
What about this militia guy from Alabama, living on Social Security Disability checks, inciting people to throw rocks at democratic buildings and suggesting they load up their guns and so on? Aren’t there laws against inciting to riot? Is he being investigated or arrested or anything? And if he is, what about Silly Sarah who isn’t really silly anymore, telling her mindless minions to reload and take aim at certain democrats? What about Limbaugh and Beck? These jerks have been inciting people to riot for years. Do we have to wait until someone actually gets murdered, perhaps many people get blown up, before being able to do anything about this constant stream of utter irresponsible, hateful drivel that emanates from our airwaves and televisions? And now even Republican leaders, desperate to find support anywhere they can, are encouraging these filthy lies and threats. The worst elements of our society are taking over what used to be a viable political party and turning it into a frenzied mob of crazies who no longer even need a viable excuse for their behavior, they are, indeed, just a mob.
What has happened is, I think, a direct result of the Nightmare Years of the Bush/Cheney administration, although the seeds of their fall began in earnest during the Clinton administration when they began to morph into a criminal conspiracy rather than a legitimate political party. The Republican Party itself is now every bit as irrational as the mobs they have inspired. If they believe they are going to make great gains in the coming elections based upon their performance in the past few years they are going to be badly mistaken. If they think they can win because the Democrats have failed they will now have to think again. Of course they will always have their base of the altogether loony, but that is probably no more than 30% of the voters at most. Personally, I believe the Republican Party is doomed and will eventually either have to disappear or emerge as something entirely different.
LKBIQ:
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
Friedrick Nietsczhe
TILT:
It is technically possible for an oyster to fertilize itself.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Stuff and Nonsense
Two women fight so violently
in Children’s Museum they
create massive hole in lobby wall.
Stuff and nonsense. How in world has the United States managed to fall into so much confusion, hate, and seemingly endless conflict. The passage of the health care bill was a great and long overdue achievement. You might think people would be relatively content to have a kind of security they have never experienced before. You might think they should even be happy about it. Perhaps they will be after it has begun to work and people will perceive what a massive and welcome change it is. In the meanwhile, however, there is more darkness than light, more confusion than common sense, more violence than reason, more hate and bigotry than we’ve seen for a long time. There are many different ways to look at this.
There is, of course, a basic philosophical difference between Democrats and Republicans. The former see an important role for government in the affairs of its citizens, the Republicans believe less government is better. This difference has important implications for budgets and social programs of all kinds. But this cannot account for what is going on at the moment as this difference of opinion has characterized our politics for a very long time and never before caused such a mess. And most of what is going on is basically a mess. A recent poll indicates that some 67% of Republicans believe Obama is a socialist, some 47% cling to the fantasy that he is not an American citizen, and some 24% actually seem to believe he is the anti-Christ. With those numbers it is not too difficult to see where much of the trouble lies. The fact that all three of these beliefs are demonstrably and absolutely untrue doesn’t seem to register with those that hold them. Then there are those who believe Obama is acting like Hitler, totally false. Some believe he is going to take away their guns, false. Others are convinced he is a Muslim, false. Still others accuse him of being a communist, also false. Then there is claim that his health care bill will result in a government takeover of health care, false. And of course there are some who are simply blatant racists who will never accept a Black man as President. Don’t forget those who believe in death squads, and even others who seriously entertain the rumor that Obama is going to stop them from recreational fishing, both false.
There is little doubt, I’m convinced that Fox (fake) News and the preponderance of right-wing talk shows have contributed to this growing problem. The Republican Party’s singular obsession with regaining power instead of helping the country also is an important contributor. But how is it that so many Americans seem to believe in things that are so obviously false? I believe this has a great deal to do with our failed educational system. You might argue, for example, that there is a war going on between those who are well educated and those who are not. Amazing numbers of our young people never finish High School, and I don’t believe our High Schools prepare children very well when it comes to citizenship, social responsibilities, civics, and such (actually I don’t believe they prepare them very well for anything at all, but there are, I am sure, rare exceptions). With steadily deteriorating schools and grossly underpaid teachers I guess you shouldn’t expect much. I know from personal experience that our High School students are bored beyond belief with their High School experiences (exception sports, of course).
The problem is greater than our High Schools, however. There is a serious resistance to knowledge and learning for its own sake in the United States, a powerful anti-intellectualism that I think is crippling us in some respects. The idea of a “classical” or “liberal” education has all but disappeared, to be replaced by the idea that a University if supposed to prepare you for a profession, a job (which explains why there are now so many professional schools associated with Universities, Business, law, Nursing, etc.). Thus you find people highly knowledgeable about their specialty but virtually illiterate e when it comes to anything else. I have personally known and worked with many M.D’s and Ph.D’s who were experts in their respective fields but knew next to nothing about human behavior, society, or culture. Many of these individuals knew nothing about evolution, nothing about any people other than the Americans they came into contact with, and very often nothing about politics, our political system, beyond that you could probably find in eight year-olds. I have even been asked if there are people in the world who have no language, or people who married their sisters, or who thought that everyone in New Guinea must be cannibals. These were not stupid people, they were just incredibly ignorant about anything except neurology, oncology, noses, throats, and chest pains. In order to master their chosen profession as quickly as possible they simply bypassed any courses that were not considered basic and relevant. University education was not always like this, students studied languages, the classics, humanities, philosophy, literature, and other subjects as well as biology and chemistry. Even if this is all true, there still remains a vast gap between those with an education and those without.
During the last elections a friend sent me a chart that purported to show a correlation between the average I.Q. scores in different states and political preferences. There was no doubt that states with lower I.Q. scores preferred Republican or conservative candidates. I didn’t take this seriously because I don’t believe much in I.Q. scores and I didn’t know how such average scores could be obtained or how reliable they could be. Even so, I’m pretty certain there is a correlation between education and political preferences. I’ll bet that most educated people are far less likely to believe in the nonsensical claims about Obama than others, and we have far too many others here in the U.S. This is why Republicans do not in general want to fund education or improve it, they know they would lose too many votes. Obama will try to improve educational opportunities, the Republicans will oppose all attempts to create an informed citizenry (an absolute necessity for a functional democracy). As for those who believe in the anti-Christ, people being swallowed by whales or riding dinosaurs, what can I say?
LKBIQ:
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
Elbert Hubbard
TILT:
Saltwater crocodiles are the largest reptiles on earth, growing sometimes to slightly more than 25 feet in length.
in Children’s Museum they
create massive hole in lobby wall.
Stuff and nonsense. How in world has the United States managed to fall into so much confusion, hate, and seemingly endless conflict. The passage of the health care bill was a great and long overdue achievement. You might think people would be relatively content to have a kind of security they have never experienced before. You might think they should even be happy about it. Perhaps they will be after it has begun to work and people will perceive what a massive and welcome change it is. In the meanwhile, however, there is more darkness than light, more confusion than common sense, more violence than reason, more hate and bigotry than we’ve seen for a long time. There are many different ways to look at this.
There is, of course, a basic philosophical difference between Democrats and Republicans. The former see an important role for government in the affairs of its citizens, the Republicans believe less government is better. This difference has important implications for budgets and social programs of all kinds. But this cannot account for what is going on at the moment as this difference of opinion has characterized our politics for a very long time and never before caused such a mess. And most of what is going on is basically a mess. A recent poll indicates that some 67% of Republicans believe Obama is a socialist, some 47% cling to the fantasy that he is not an American citizen, and some 24% actually seem to believe he is the anti-Christ. With those numbers it is not too difficult to see where much of the trouble lies. The fact that all three of these beliefs are demonstrably and absolutely untrue doesn’t seem to register with those that hold them. Then there are those who believe Obama is acting like Hitler, totally false. Some believe he is going to take away their guns, false. Others are convinced he is a Muslim, false. Still others accuse him of being a communist, also false. Then there is claim that his health care bill will result in a government takeover of health care, false. And of course there are some who are simply blatant racists who will never accept a Black man as President. Don’t forget those who believe in death squads, and even others who seriously entertain the rumor that Obama is going to stop them from recreational fishing, both false.
There is little doubt, I’m convinced that Fox (fake) News and the preponderance of right-wing talk shows have contributed to this growing problem. The Republican Party’s singular obsession with regaining power instead of helping the country also is an important contributor. But how is it that so many Americans seem to believe in things that are so obviously false? I believe this has a great deal to do with our failed educational system. You might argue, for example, that there is a war going on between those who are well educated and those who are not. Amazing numbers of our young people never finish High School, and I don’t believe our High Schools prepare children very well when it comes to citizenship, social responsibilities, civics, and such (actually I don’t believe they prepare them very well for anything at all, but there are, I am sure, rare exceptions). With steadily deteriorating schools and grossly underpaid teachers I guess you shouldn’t expect much. I know from personal experience that our High School students are bored beyond belief with their High School experiences (exception sports, of course).
The problem is greater than our High Schools, however. There is a serious resistance to knowledge and learning for its own sake in the United States, a powerful anti-intellectualism that I think is crippling us in some respects. The idea of a “classical” or “liberal” education has all but disappeared, to be replaced by the idea that a University if supposed to prepare you for a profession, a job (which explains why there are now so many professional schools associated with Universities, Business, law, Nursing, etc.). Thus you find people highly knowledgeable about their specialty but virtually illiterate e when it comes to anything else. I have personally known and worked with many M.D’s and Ph.D’s who were experts in their respective fields but knew next to nothing about human behavior, society, or culture. Many of these individuals knew nothing about evolution, nothing about any people other than the Americans they came into contact with, and very often nothing about politics, our political system, beyond that you could probably find in eight year-olds. I have even been asked if there are people in the world who have no language, or people who married their sisters, or who thought that everyone in New Guinea must be cannibals. These were not stupid people, they were just incredibly ignorant about anything except neurology, oncology, noses, throats, and chest pains. In order to master their chosen profession as quickly as possible they simply bypassed any courses that were not considered basic and relevant. University education was not always like this, students studied languages, the classics, humanities, philosophy, literature, and other subjects as well as biology and chemistry. Even if this is all true, there still remains a vast gap between those with an education and those without.
During the last elections a friend sent me a chart that purported to show a correlation between the average I.Q. scores in different states and political preferences. There was no doubt that states with lower I.Q. scores preferred Republican or conservative candidates. I didn’t take this seriously because I don’t believe much in I.Q. scores and I didn’t know how such average scores could be obtained or how reliable they could be. Even so, I’m pretty certain there is a correlation between education and political preferences. I’ll bet that most educated people are far less likely to believe in the nonsensical claims about Obama than others, and we have far too many others here in the U.S. This is why Republicans do not in general want to fund education or improve it, they know they would lose too many votes. Obama will try to improve educational opportunities, the Republicans will oppose all attempts to create an informed citizenry (an absolute necessity for a functional democracy). As for those who believe in the anti-Christ, people being swallowed by whales or riding dinosaurs, what can I say?
LKBIQ:
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
Elbert Hubbard
TILT:
Saltwater crocodiles are the largest reptiles on earth, growing sometimes to slightly more than 25 feet in length.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sore Losers
Wisconsin man upset with
the waxy buildup on his car
attacks car washer with hammer.
Man, oh man, I’ve heard of sore losers before, but have you ever seen any as bad as these Republicans? You are probably aware of the racial comments uttered at a number of our Black Congresspersons, and the homophobic slurs thrown at Congressman Barney Franks, and the fact that one Black Congressman was actually spat on. There were also bricks thrown through the windows of Democratic headquarters in New York, and no doubt more problems that were not reported at all. It would be easy to say this was merely a few isolated cases of inappropriate behavior, but when you realize that in some cases Republican Congresspersons were themselves involved, as one from Texas who shouted out “baby killers” during the deliberations, and few, if any of them, spoke out against these abuses, it is difficult to conclude this is not at least implicitly being sanctioned by the Republican Party itself. When you add to this the intemperate and virtually out-of-control vituperation of Boehner, and the usual absurd remarks by McCain and others, you begin to wonder if anyone ever in their lives said “no” to these spoiled jerks. It was a democratic contest, you lost, you might at least lose gracefully, but there is nothing graceful about our contemporary Republican Party of no, no, no, a thousand times no, no matter what the issue is.
The Republicans have been totally opposed to health care reform from the beginning and they have done everything in their power to keep it from happening. There is every reason to believe they will keep on resisting until the bitter end. This is not at all surprising. Republicans have been opposed to every reform designed to help ordinary working people from the very beginning. They were opposed to the 40 hour work week, and 8 hour working day, paid vacations, minimum wages, and everything ever proposed to alleviate unpleasant conditions for working people. One conclusion you might draw from this record, especially relevant to the moment, is that Republicans actually would prefer you to suffer and die rather than give you a single nickel of help. If you are an ordinary working American the Republican Party is not merely an opposition party, it is your mortal enemy. It wants you to work for the least wages possible, to live in slums, to lack health care, and, presumably, to go hungry because it will motivate you to work merely to survive rather than thrive. While it is difficult to speak for history, it is obvious their behavior at the moment, at least, is motivated solely by politics. They want to recover power and they do not care what means they have to employ to get it. In other words, they don’t care if you starve or die of untreated medical conditions, or if your children have to go without health care, or if you die prematurely, have rotten teeth, cancer, or the plague, they want to recover their power to continue fleecing you from whatever little monies you might have left. You don’t think so? Where is any Republican health care proposal that addresses the problems of health care in America? Where is any attempt by Republicans to better the lot of working Americans in any aspect of life whatsoever? When have you ever heard anything from Republicans other than “lower taxes,” and “less government?” Apparently they are made to repeat these phrases one thousand times a day throughout their entire childhood: meaningless , useless, mindless, repetitions that blind them from any reality outside of their own childish selfishness. Tragically, I suspect they come to actually believe this simple-minded nonsense.
Now that the health care bill has passed they are swearing to repeal it. This confirms for me what I have suspected for a long time, Republicans have absolutely no conception of reality, especially as it has to do with the ordinary lives of ordinary people. Now that the Democrats have finally achieved something that has eluded government for almost a hundred years, and passed a semi-universal health care bill with many fine provisions, a bill, for example, that makes it illegal for children to be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and also illegal to stop someone’s insurance because they finally became ill, a bill that also allows some 32 million people who did not have health care to have it, Republicans are going to campaign to repeal it? This is, in my opinion, so ridiculous an idea as to make me question their sanity. I guess this is somehow related to their claim the American Public was/is opposed to health care reform and, now that they have it, will be willing to vote to repeal it. This suggests to me that not only are they out of touch, they are downright delusional. This idea of repealing the health care bill is not held merely by a bunch of tea party loonies who think Barack Obama is a socialist, greed is a virtue, Ronald Reagan was a saint, and Moby Dick is a venereal disease, but by the major leaders of the party, McCain, Romney, Cantor, Boehner, Huckabee, and others.
There is an old saying about gambling that I think may be pertinent here, “If you can’t afford to lose, don’t play.” Far be it from me to offer advice to Republicans, but they will surely lose if they try to repeal health care. And they can’t afford to lose any more than they already have. Their strategy of just saying “no” to anything and everything Obama tries to do in order to destroy his Presidency (and our nation along with him) verges on treason. As it is presently constituted the Republican Party has no redeeming social virtues, is actually preventing our government from functioning as it should, and is causing far more harm than good (indeed, it is impossible to perceive any “good” in it at all). Personally, I hope they will campaign on repealing health care, and I hope they run Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, along with the slogan “Up with the skirts, down with the pants.” They can’t self-destruct too soon to suit me.
LKBIQ:
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. Mencken
TILT:
Wildebeest can live for up to 20 years.
the waxy buildup on his car
attacks car washer with hammer.
Man, oh man, I’ve heard of sore losers before, but have you ever seen any as bad as these Republicans? You are probably aware of the racial comments uttered at a number of our Black Congresspersons, and the homophobic slurs thrown at Congressman Barney Franks, and the fact that one Black Congressman was actually spat on. There were also bricks thrown through the windows of Democratic headquarters in New York, and no doubt more problems that were not reported at all. It would be easy to say this was merely a few isolated cases of inappropriate behavior, but when you realize that in some cases Republican Congresspersons were themselves involved, as one from Texas who shouted out “baby killers” during the deliberations, and few, if any of them, spoke out against these abuses, it is difficult to conclude this is not at least implicitly being sanctioned by the Republican Party itself. When you add to this the intemperate and virtually out-of-control vituperation of Boehner, and the usual absurd remarks by McCain and others, you begin to wonder if anyone ever in their lives said “no” to these spoiled jerks. It was a democratic contest, you lost, you might at least lose gracefully, but there is nothing graceful about our contemporary Republican Party of no, no, no, a thousand times no, no matter what the issue is.
The Republicans have been totally opposed to health care reform from the beginning and they have done everything in their power to keep it from happening. There is every reason to believe they will keep on resisting until the bitter end. This is not at all surprising. Republicans have been opposed to every reform designed to help ordinary working people from the very beginning. They were opposed to the 40 hour work week, and 8 hour working day, paid vacations, minimum wages, and everything ever proposed to alleviate unpleasant conditions for working people. One conclusion you might draw from this record, especially relevant to the moment, is that Republicans actually would prefer you to suffer and die rather than give you a single nickel of help. If you are an ordinary working American the Republican Party is not merely an opposition party, it is your mortal enemy. It wants you to work for the least wages possible, to live in slums, to lack health care, and, presumably, to go hungry because it will motivate you to work merely to survive rather than thrive. While it is difficult to speak for history, it is obvious their behavior at the moment, at least, is motivated solely by politics. They want to recover power and they do not care what means they have to employ to get it. In other words, they don’t care if you starve or die of untreated medical conditions, or if your children have to go without health care, or if you die prematurely, have rotten teeth, cancer, or the plague, they want to recover their power to continue fleecing you from whatever little monies you might have left. You don’t think so? Where is any Republican health care proposal that addresses the problems of health care in America? Where is any attempt by Republicans to better the lot of working Americans in any aspect of life whatsoever? When have you ever heard anything from Republicans other than “lower taxes,” and “less government?” Apparently they are made to repeat these phrases one thousand times a day throughout their entire childhood: meaningless , useless, mindless, repetitions that blind them from any reality outside of their own childish selfishness. Tragically, I suspect they come to actually believe this simple-minded nonsense.
Now that the health care bill has passed they are swearing to repeal it. This confirms for me what I have suspected for a long time, Republicans have absolutely no conception of reality, especially as it has to do with the ordinary lives of ordinary people. Now that the Democrats have finally achieved something that has eluded government for almost a hundred years, and passed a semi-universal health care bill with many fine provisions, a bill, for example, that makes it illegal for children to be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and also illegal to stop someone’s insurance because they finally became ill, a bill that also allows some 32 million people who did not have health care to have it, Republicans are going to campaign to repeal it? This is, in my opinion, so ridiculous an idea as to make me question their sanity. I guess this is somehow related to their claim the American Public was/is opposed to health care reform and, now that they have it, will be willing to vote to repeal it. This suggests to me that not only are they out of touch, they are downright delusional. This idea of repealing the health care bill is not held merely by a bunch of tea party loonies who think Barack Obama is a socialist, greed is a virtue, Ronald Reagan was a saint, and Moby Dick is a venereal disease, but by the major leaders of the party, McCain, Romney, Cantor, Boehner, Huckabee, and others.
There is an old saying about gambling that I think may be pertinent here, “If you can’t afford to lose, don’t play.” Far be it from me to offer advice to Republicans, but they will surely lose if they try to repeal health care. And they can’t afford to lose any more than they already have. Their strategy of just saying “no” to anything and everything Obama tries to do in order to destroy his Presidency (and our nation along with him) verges on treason. As it is presently constituted the Republican Party has no redeeming social virtues, is actually preventing our government from functioning as it should, and is causing far more harm than good (indeed, it is impossible to perceive any “good” in it at all). Personally, I hope they will campaign on repealing health care, and I hope they run Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, along with the slogan “Up with the skirts, down with the pants.” They can’t self-destruct too soon to suit me.
LKBIQ:
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. Mencken
TILT:
Wildebeest can live for up to 20 years.
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