The Weakness of Power

The Chinese government has accused the Dalai Lama of trying to undermine the Olympics. The Dalai Lama replied that he has always supported the right of Beijing to host the Olympics.

The Chinese government also says that the Dalai Lama is “masterminding” Tibetan unrest, and is in league with terrorists.

Let’s take a look at the antagonists here. On one side you have China, a nuclear superpower with the fastest-growing economy in the world and a population of about 1.3 billion people.

On the other side you have the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist wearing a robe. He has no weapons, no party apparatus, no secret police, and no territory. He lives in exile in northern India.

Yet the Chinese government, through its various interchangeable spokesmen, throws regular spoiled brat-style tantrums about the Dalai Lama and how much of a threat he is. And these people are not even aware of how ridiculous they sound.

Authoritarian states are founded on the principle of brute force. The people are considered mere raw material to be ordered about, indoctrinated, supervised, transported, or killed, at the whim of the state. But in almost every case, the elite authorities attempt to formulate the power principle in terms of some version of the “good.” The Chinese dress up their cruelty, arrogance, and venality in communist jargon, at this stage so far removed from its origins that the rhetoric can hardly be distinguished from standard old-style fascism—the “glory” and “wisdom” of the party and so forth. The American rightists, on the other hand, prattle about “freedom” and “democracy” while draining the terms of all meaning and doing everything they can to suppress the realities they correspond to. And so it goes.

But it’s a curious thing, this lip service that needs to be paid to some idea of goodness. I suppose it’s not merely meant to fool others, but a way to fool ourselves. When Bush goes on about how Saddam Hussein was such an evil despot, I’m sure he believes in his own goodness and the rightness of his cause. Any rational person (still a minority in this country, however) can see that Iraq was invaded because of oil and geopolitics, not morality—but Bush can’t come out and say that. There needs to be some good, righteous selfless reason for invading, and the invader probably even believes his own bullshit. On the other hand, the fact that the Chinese government oppresses, enslaves, and tortures its own people—the fact that there are no civil rights in China, doesn’t merit a mention from the President. China is a big market for corporations—therefore we don’t care about what its government does. We forget about goodness in this case, because it doesn’t coincide with self-interest. (I’ve remarked before that I suspect a secret envy of China in the minds of Richard Cheney and company—no protesters there, no sir, and torture is legal!)

All this is fairly self-evident. But when we see a public figure who actually practices some form of sincere good action, however imperfect, it’s amusing and instructive to see how it drives authoritarians crazy. The Dalai Lama teaches on such subjects as compassion, peace of mind, freedom from anger, service to all beings, and so forth. Everything he says is directed to the existing human being as such. Whatever political statements he might make are always in that context. In contrast, the voice of the Chinese government recognizes nothing except the human mass in abstract—the individual is worse than useless; there are only the ideas of “China,” “the party,” “the people,” etc. If the authorities were to respond to the Dalai Lama with a realistic assessment of relative strength, in worldly terms, they would act calm and courageous and unruffled—but they never do.

If I had to characterize the official voice of the Chinese state—not only in regards to Tibet, but on each and every issue on which official doctrine is challenged—it would be as a heedless, petulant pre-teen, an ignorant and insensitive bully, incapable of self-examination and reflection, who still regularly wets his bed and consequently lashes out in shame at anyone who dares to criticize him. There’s also an element of mental illness, of paranoia: all this talk about plots and masterminds and insidious enemies. These petty, small-minded elitists are infuriated by anyone who acts on principle, and they feel a loss of prestige and influence just from the existence of the Dalai Lama. Someone who takes a spiritual stance, who actually and sincerely attempts a public life of integrity, is a threat because he or she appeals to the remnants of conscience that underlie our deepest desire for the good. Thus, the Chinese government’s rage at the protesting Tibetans, and at the Dalai Lama, is founded in fear of its reputation and prestige being damaged. These people don’t even see that they have no reputation or prestige, that their power is based on nothing but brute force, in other words, nothing at all that can be rationalized as “good.” Therefore anyone who comes from a different place than this power principle is automatically a threat, whether he means to be or not. For instance, the Dalai Lama really does support the idea of the Beijing Olympics. Don’t you think that’s funny? And aren’t the statements of the Chinese authorities pathetic in their weakness and helplessness before this one bald guy in a robe?

George Orwell once remarked that Gandhi’s strategy would never have worked against the Nazis, because nonviolence presupposes a fundamental decency or conscience on the part of the oppressor. He was probably right, but what’s remarkable is how much influence decency and conscience still has in this ravaged world. After two obscene world wars and numerous smaller ones, after countless crimes and ethnic cleansings, there is still an expectation, or assumption, even on the part of the greatest liars and hypocrites in the world, that there is some standard of goodness in the hearts of men and women. We talk about the system, about the overwhelming apparatus of military power, police power, capitalist power. Still, there are only existing individuals. The power principle is a principle of weakness because it sees human beings as objects, as instruments towards some inhuman end. It is also fearful and insecure—it may bluster, but its confidence is hollow. In the end it will always betray itself and fail. The absurd ravings of authoritarians, like the pipsqueak Chinese spokesmen who point at the Dalai Lama and whine, “It’s all his fault!” reveal the fundamental impotence of power in the face of even an approximate attempt at truth.

Five years too many.

Five years of blood and death.

Five years of lies, of deadly deceit.

Five years of hiding behind “the troops” instead of admitting failure.

Five years of demonizing all of us who have been brave enough to oppose this madness.

Five years of ignoring the warnings and advice of our own military.

Five years of incompetent planning, incompetent supply, and non-existent diplomacy.

Five years of fear-mongering, of bogus links between Iraq and 9-11.

Five years of changing the reasons that we’re supposedly in Iraq, from 9-11 to weapons of mass destruction to “democracy” to the pathetic goal of “less violence.”

Five years of war profiteering by contractors like KBR, ripping us all off, and especially the soldiers, while making huge profits and remaining unaccountable to oversight, with the collusion of the Bush administration.

Five years of atrocities. Five years of cover-up and denial of what’s really happening in Iraq, including American support of terror groups, the use of chemical weapons in Fallujah, the use of enriched uranium, the bombings and deaths of civilians, including hundreds of thousands of children.

Five years of torture, five years of arguments for torture by the Bush administration, five years of moving our country into a state of acceptance of such sickening perversions as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the other torture sites.

Five years of Blackwater and other mercenary death squads, answerable for their crimes to no one.

Five years of cowardly politicians in both parties.

Five years of plummeting regard for our country in the world.

Five years of shame.

Five years of betrayal.

By conservative estimates: 700,000 Iraqi civilians dead.

4 million homeless Iraqi refugees fleeing the country.

The callous destruction of a country by a superpower, cynically using terror to justify its quest for oil.

4,000 American soldiers dead, not counting those who died later from wounds, suicide, or war-related illness.

At least 60,000 American soldiers wounded, not counting PTSD and trauma victims.

The sacking of the U.S. treasury by criminals posing as patriots, to the tune of $500 billion so far, and more to come, with the economic results evident today to everyone except the obscenely wealthy, blood-soaked perpetrators of this crime against humanity.

Five years. Five years too many.

Today I go once again to march in the streets. I hope you are joining me. Silence means acceptance. We must say No, again and again, for as long as there is breath in our bodies, to the murder and corruption and degradation, the destruction of what we stand for as a country and the commission of war crimes in our name.

Out of Iraq! End the War of Terror that is being waged on all of us. We must say No to a government of war and crime before we can say Yes to a meaningful future.

After These Messages

I’ve come to believe that there’s a huge disconnect between the world portrayed in the media, and the world of ordinary working people. Case in point: a co-worker—one of the nicest, most patient, most generous people I know—mentioned off-hand to me that she enjoys listening to Michael Savage when driving home from work.

It took me a few seconds to absorb this. Then I shook my head and said softly, but emphatically, “Oh…I don’t like him.”

She seemed slightly taken aback. “Oh, he does exaggerate quite a bit, I guess.”

“He preaches hatred,” I said. “He says that people like me are enemies of America, and I’m sure if he had his way I would be shot or put in a camp, along with my family.”

Visibly flustered, she changed the subject.

I had a similar experience with an acquaintance—not quite a friend, but not a stranger—who always showed me a great deal of kindness and concern, expressed his admiration for me, and was supportive during difficult times. In a casual conversation it emerged that he liked Bill O’Reilly.

“Bill O’Reilly!” I said. “He’s a right-wing extremist, and a liar.”

“Well, I don’t want to get into a political debate with you. I just know that I feel grateful for the information I get from his program. He’s a very smart man.”

“So was Goebbels.”

“Who’s Goebbels?”

At that point I became speechless, but in any case the particular circumstance was such that it made no sense to pursue the subject.

How often do we run up against these startling incongruities between the positive qualities of someone we know and their political inclinations? I don’t even know in these cases how serious or casual their beliefs might be. It seems the best I could do was express my disapproval of the persons referred to (Savage and O’Reilly) without making it disapproval of the person I was talking to. Why? Because disagreements should be about principles, and not about attacking the person we disagree with. However, this is the very idea that Savage and O’Reilly and the rest of the rightist haters never honor.

Incidents like these make me wonder about the awareness of the media audience. My co-worker is a thousand times the human being that Michael Savage could ever hope to be. So I can’t help but think that she fails to make the connection between a voice on the radio, ranting and raving, and the reality of people’s lives. Perhaps it’s something abstract to her—“other” people out there who are undermining America and need to be stopped (or whatever), and not real people that she might know, that she might like, that might even be in her own family.

I don’t know what percentage of the hate media audience consists of died-in-the-wool wingnuts. But I suspect there’s a good chunk of the viewing/listening group that resembles my co-worker and my acquaintance: people who listen and believe without thinking too hard or suspecting where the beliefs might lead. In our culture politics is made to seem like a kind of entertainment—powerful people doing things in a world from which we are both excluded and insulated. The media is very much like a drug that lulls the mind into a softly pliable, semi-conscious state of passive acquiescence.

What does it take to get through to this limited type of consciousness? But before asking that, I should ask, how do I first break away from this consciousness myself, and in such a way that I can act as a force for understanding rather than reaction? Reaction is understandable for progressives, considering the attacks that have been aimed our way for so long. It’s even necessary and appropriate, to some degree. But when I hear friends say that they love Bill Maher, I realize that the sword does cut both ways. I suppose because Maher hates George Bush, folks nod their head without really listening critically and realizing what an inane and superficial prick he is. On a recent show he asked why the Bush gang even talks about waterboarding—why not just do it and keep it a secret? There’s so many things wrong with this statement that I won’t even try to analyze it, but the point is that there’s a kind of cultural liberalism that pretends to represent an alternative, but in fact doesn’t.

Actual debate with people of a right-wing persuasion is a rare event for me. In the instances I mentioned, the topic came up in awkward situations that didn’t really allow for a meaningful discussion. For the most part, the people I hang out with share my general outlook. More importantly, though, the narcotic nature of the media has made it difficult for many people to even grasp what actual debate would look like anymore. Name-calling, catchphrases, and talking points are not methods of argument, they’re strategies for preventing meaningful discussion.

The only thing I know for sure is that it’s wrong to be silent, to deliberately avoid stating my views on a subject. If someone, no matter how nice, praises Bush or parrots Sean Hannity, or whatever, I’m going to speak my mind. Where it goes from there, however—where it can go, I still don’t know.

Race is Nonsense

If you’re American, you grew up with the idea of race, whether you liked it or not. This would be self-evident to black people, whose second-class status is impressed on them every day. To white people it might be less obvious, but it’s there. I was a kid during the 1960s, and I lived in an all-white community. My family was liberal. We heard about the civil rights movement on the news; we supported it and voted for politicians who supported it. But the belief in the reality of race was transmitted to my consciousness simply by being in the culture—I couldn’t help having prejudiced thoughts, fear of the “other,” an overriding self-conscious sense of difference, because of the prominent place that race issues occupied in what you might call the national psyche.

When we talk about racism it can mean a lot of different things. There is basic racial fear and prejudice. Then there’s discrimination, which goes hand in hand with the former. Institutional racism is discrimination writ large—the supremacy of a particular race as the assumed and established system of political and economic power. Finally there is racism as an ideology, which posits race as a system of biological superiority and inferiority. All these aspects flow into and mix with one another in various permutations.

For a white liberal or progressive during the last forty years, the standard belief was that no race was superior to any other, that everyone should have equal rights and opportunities, and that racism was a problem that needed to be dealt with. I suppose this was a good start—good intentions must count for something. But it never occurred to most of us to challenge the very idea of race itself. We just assumed that there were different races of people. Well, wasn’t it obvious?

Xenophobia would appear to be as old as humanity, but the ancients don’t talk about race in the modern sense of the word. Herodotus mentions people with dark skin, but doesn’t say or even imply that such people are essentially different than other people—his report that the Ethiopian men were said to be the tallest and handsomest in the world would certainly contradict any notions of superiority. Slavery was usually a result of capture in war. In the ancient world, a slave would often look just like a free man. A slave might be a foreigner, but there was no racial standard at work.

It was only a thousand years later or so, when the Europeans discovered that the world was bigger than they assumed, that the concept of race was born, or at least came into its own. Some historians have said that the Europeans were struck with fear and dread when they saw the black skin of the Africans, along with their unfamiliar dress and customs. I suppose the narrow and repressive nature of Christian culture would contribute to such a response, but it still doesn’t add up for me. No elemental fear of “blackness” can account for what happened. Europeans were familiar with Arabs, Turks, and other Muslim peoples who were often dark-complexioned. There was plenty of fear and hatred there, but it was basically religious, not racial.

What the Europeans saw were people at an earlier stage of political and technological development. This meant that they could be exploited on a scale never before attempted. By enslaving Africans, the Europeans would gain a source of labor that would build huge empires in a very short period of time. For various reasons, it was less practical to enslave the natives of America and Asia, but the Europeans went about conquering and colonizing their lands with equal energy.

That which we call self-interest—in the unenlightened sense of a quest for power and wealth—creates in its wake the ideas that justify it. It was to the European’s advantage to believe that Africans, Asians and American Indians were an inferior type of human, because it provided a rationale for what they did. European culture had developed to the degree that it needed rationales. It had not developed to the point, other than in the case of advanced thinkers like Montaigne, that it could tell when it was lying to itself in order to gain an advantage.

A gradual moral awakening led to the abolishment of slavery, but not of the idea of race. Along came various white scientists telling us that the white brain is bigger and better than the black one. We’ve seen an endless succession of theories regarding heredity, eugenics, “survival of the fittest.” Every decade some new book comes out correlating race with intelligence or performance—remember The Bell Curve? It never seems to occur to these “thinkers” and the audience that listens to them, that such theories will always support the dominant social order. If a particular system of supremacy is in place, then statistics can always be produced that seem to establish this supremacy as natural and necessary. Self-interest rules the discourse, and those who argue against it face an uphill battle, because people who enjoy the benefits of privilege and power don’t want to believe that it’s undeserved.

But science can’t be corrupted forever. There’s a stubborn impulse at its core—the search for empirical truth. What we’re seeing now, when we really get down to it and sweep cultural preconceptions aside, is that race is not a valid biological concept. There is no actual, measurable physical phenomenon that corresponds to it. Now, in addition to skin color we think of hair and facial characteristics. They all vary in ways that do not necessarily accompany one another. The latitudinal difference in the intensity of the ultraviolet component of sunlight, which is correlated to skin color, is not directly related to whatever factors have resulted in the type of hair or the shape of the nose, etc. Their significance is merely ethnographic, not biological except in the most general evolutionary terms. When people resided in the same place for a few hundred thousand years, their skin color, their hair, their eyes, developed in certain ways. The people who lived in a somewhat different climate a few mountain ranges away may have had a different skin shade, but similar hair and the same eyes. In the modern world, with more and more contact between different people and regions, these characteristics become more and more diverse. If my mother is Italian and my father is from Brazil, what race am I? If my skin is dark, the old thinking would be that I’m “black.” What does it really mean objectively? Nothing. It is nonsense that has been enshrined in the public mind as a way of framing the social order as if it were the natural order.

I’m not advocating that we stop talking about racism. People who are oppressed because of race have no choice but to pay attention to race. A black person in America is not going to be “colorblind,” simply because race is the rationale for his or her inequality and subjection. But what we’re talking about is the social order, the system of white supremacy (or any such supremacy, for that matter—it just so happens in history that it turned out to be “white”). We’re talking about a system of power and domination, not about racial characteristics, biological or natural or genetic.

There are also, of course, the commonalities of culture that nurture people in their families and communities — similarities of language, customs, ways of thinking; the shared history that every group has. But that’s not “race,” really—that’s the human condition, that’s what culture is.

And white people especially need to talk openly about racism. Right-wing groups try to smother honest speech on this topic, playing on white people’s desire to avoid feeling guilty. It’s not about guilt, it’s about freedom. Race is a shackle of the mind that prevents us from speaking the truth without fear. It constricts our understanding of the human as such. It’s like an ancient taboo that has power only through silence. When we wake up and look around we see centuries of talk about race, about the superiority or inferiority of people, evaporate into the mist of illusion from which it came. It was a huge potent brew of nonsense, hypnotizing us into submission, into accepting the worst aspects of our character, our greed and fear and hatred, as the truth of our nature.

We Have Ways

(With apologies for not offering something new, I present a piece that I wrote a few years ago for Buzzflash. Unfortunately, with only a few name changes, the article is still relevant today.)

I watched a lot of old movies on TV when I was growing up, and a lot of regular TV shows too. And one thing I remember was that torture was the exclusive province of bad guys. "We have ways of making you talk!" I don't know when this was first said in a movie, or why it became a cliche, but it was a villain who said it. No American hero would ever be seen inflicting pain on someone who was tied down. Can you imagine John Wayne doing that, or Humphrey Bogart? That was what those Nazis did, or the Japanese, or maybe some mad scientist played by Bela Lugosi, or the evil priest in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

That's the trouble with growing up on a diet of Hollywood movies. It left me unprepared for the real world.

Now I've discovered that in order to defeat the enemies of freedom, we need to declare the Geneva Conventions' strict prohibition against torture "obsolete." In fact, we should no longer define beatings, humiliations, the use of dogs, having naked people sit handcuffed for days without food or water, holding their heads under water for long periods, urinating on them, sticking objects up their rectums, forcing them to lick their own feces, putting bags on their heads and making them stand still, etc. as torture. (I refer you to The Logic of Torture by Mark Danner, and its accompanying documentation for these instances.)

Also, despite claims by our leaders that they disapprove of torture, we should recognize that these statements are for public consumption (the public still lives in the obsolete past, as typified by these old Hollywood movies, and thus must be placated) and do not reflect the reality of official approval of these methods at the highest level. The techniques have been consistent not only at Abu Ghraib, but elsewhere in Iraq, military intelligence was fully aware of it, and senior military officials continually discounted reports by the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International.

It is clear also that Mr. Rumsfeld knew what was going on, and in fact authorized it. Reports indicate that the torture still continues. The estimable Mr. Gonzales has been rewarded by being nominated to the post of our highest law enforcement officer, so it's evident that this is the direction we need to go in.

So I think it's necessary to realize that we live in a brave new world and that the old ideas of good and evil presented in our movies are dangerously outmoded. In order to bring the American people into the more enlightened realm to which our fine leader and his staff are taking us, I propose that our films start showing what is really necessary in order to defeat tyranny. We should see Bruce Willis performing "waterboarding" on a suspect, and we should have films featuring Jennifer Garner setting dogs on frightened, naked men. Nicolas Cage should be depicted savagely beating a helpless prisoner with a club while other soldiers watch, laughing. Instead of his silly kung fu moves, Steven Seagal should use hooding, sleep deprivation, and the trussing of bound prisoners in painful positions.

This may not be as glamorous as the old "action" film formulas, but it will better prepare our people for the challenges we will face in the fight against tyranny. I hope our films will soon come to more accurately reflect what we really need to do in these dangerous times.

Our police films are also out of date, I'm afraid. Although we've made some progress in terms of showing cops using brutality and other extra-legal means to get convictions, there's still the old-fashioned idea of the maverick police officer working within the system as an underdog. This is really kind of insulting.

In fact, as the militarization of our police forces advances in this century, we see hordes of cops dressed in very cool SWAT-style black, with visors hiding their eyes, using pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse those demonstrators who are trying to stop our leaders' push for greater world freedom by using disruptions and anti-American slogans.

Good guys should be wearing all black now, with helmets and visors. They should appear scary and impersonal, like the Gestapo or Darth Vader. Villains should be scruffy looking people wearing sneakers & t-shirts, or little old ladies, academic types, that sort of thing. Only by being dark and scary ourselves will we defeat evil.

This is for real, folks. As the saying goes, United We Stand -- so we need to start looking and behaving alike. And our movies need to reflect that. No more of this "lone hero helping the underdog" thing. Hopalong Cassidy won't cut it any more. We're not underdogs. We're the United States, the greatest country in the world. We need to start acting like it, and our movies need to start reflecting that.

So the next time we hear "We have ways of making you talk" in a film, it should be said by a true-blooded American like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the audience should stand up and cheer.

Immigration is an "issue"

Immigration is an “issue.” I know this because politicians and pundits have continually repeated it. It’s always listed as one of the primary issues of the Presidential campaign. What are the candidates’ positions on immigration, inquiring minds want to know?

Excuse me, I mean illegal immigration. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the issue.

I can’t remember exactly when this became an issue. At some point, a bunch of people got together and decided to make it one. When the Republicans tried to pass a “tough” bill in 2006, there were huge demonstrations across the country against them. Against the Republicans, I mean. Oops, that’s not the response we expected.

All this can be kind of puzzling, because when I talk to people about politics, they never mention immigration as one of their concerns. They talk about the war, the destruction of the environment, the scary financial situation, the corruption. (Did I mention the war?) But nobody I know seems worried about illegal immigration.

It must be the crowd of people I hang out with. They’re probably too educated.

If you study the politics of Europe for any length of time (say, for an hour) you’ll notice that neo-fascist groups always start out by attacking immigrants. It stands to reason that a hate movement will target “outsider” groups in order to attract frustrated, ignorant people, expressing their powerlessness by raging against someone even more powerless than they are. It’s an extension of the old antisemitic template. There’s an insidious minority threatening your job and your family. Attack!

The immigration “issue” operates the same way in America, except that it’s not confined to fringe rightist groups—it’s the mainstream. Whenever things start to go sour for the elites—a war not turning out as planned, large-scale theft sending the economy into a spiral, etc.—immigration suddenly pops up again as an issue. While Mr. and Mrs. Average White American are getting royally screwed, the people who own the country start gesticulating towards Mexico. Those brown people are causing this! And then Mr. and Mrs. A.W.M., who are patriots and wouldn’t be caught dead protesting the war or questioning the wisdom of corporations, get all hot and bothered over illegal immigration and end up voting for the yelling, pointing, bloviating, anti-immigrant candidate.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. I’m not sure it’s working that well this time. People are still more worried about the war and the economy for some reason. And the Latino voters are getting pissed off. If you were wondering why Bush’s immigration proposals were moderate compared to the frothing of the rightists (“moderate” meaning in the current political lexicon “slightly less insane”), I can tell you it was not because Bush could give a tiny fraction of a damn about immigrants (or anything but his pathetic self and his rich handlers' checkbooks), but simply because Karl Rove wanted to claim a chunk of the Latino vote. The nativists, however, are ruled more by their hate than their desire to win elections. They would have none of Rove’s Machiavellian strategy, and the result is that the Republicans are facing the probable loss of the Latino vote, a devastating blow which, if there’s any hope in this world, will flush them down the electoral toilet.

In the meantime, contemplate the wholly artificial nature of immigration as an “issue.” The media talks about it, therefore it’s an issue. If people hear about it often enough, they start to believe that it must be an issue. The losers who listen to AM radio are told (ordered) to consider it an issue by the usual gang of insane demagogues, so of course they believe it. Lou Dobbs yammers about it every night, and I guess that’s good enough for me. Let’s build a fucking wall around our country!

The war, however, is not an issue. The war is a PR problem. People need to be convinced that the “surge” is working, and that everything’s ok. That’s the only “issue.” You see how this works? It’s really quite simple. Whatever actually affects the mass of ordinary working people in this country, whatever political, social, and economic conditions have a real impact on our lives—that is not the “issue.” The “issue” is whatever stream of empty, pretentious, distracting bullshit happens to emerge from the political-media cesspool, drowning all of our actual concerns in its putrid, miasmic, mind-deadening slop.

Happy President's Day!

Land of the Dead

There’s been quite a bit of controversy within the zombie movement lately. We, the living, have become accustomed to seeing the zombies loping along in unison, or what appears to be unison, attacking their victims, stopping to eat their flesh, and then moving on. So it’s some relief to observe the undead arguing among themselves. Nevertheless, it is difficult for anyone who is not a zombie to fully comprehend the issues involved.

John McCain appears to be headed for victory in the Republican nomination. Many zombies are visibly upset over this prospect, claiming that McCain is in fact not a zombie at all. Now, if you’ve been watching McCain over the years, and you are one of the living, it’s difficult to see what these objections are based on. McCain has the same shambling gait, the same awkward swinging of the limbs, as any other zombie. His eyes and mouth are distorted, and blood is visibly dripping from his mouth. To me, he looks more zombie-like than many of the more outspoken undead people who are attacking him. Moreover, he has made a point of publicly devouring human flesh. He’s even gone to the lengths of eating a dead baby on TV.

His critics, however, claim that this is mere pandering. They point out that he’s never been seen ripping the organs out of a human being, at least not in front of a camera. He’s only been seen eating the flesh of people who are already dead. They could have been killed by someone else. He has expressed views in the past that have sounded suspiciously like those of the living. There’s also this matter of his popularity with the press. Admittedly, there are plenty of zombie journalists and pundits now, but the press is still regarded with extreme suspicion by the undead community.

There were similar problems, you may recall, when Harriet Miers was nominated to the Supreme Court. Even though she had prepared many bodies to be eaten by others, there were doubts as to her own flesh-eating proclivities. We saw in this case that the standards for bona fide zombie leadership had become much stricter since the ghouls had taken the White House in 2000. It wasn’t enough that a person had died and then risen from the grave to stalk the living. Their capacity for mayhem, and their appetite for flesh, had to be impeccable.

Our political discourse is incredibly confusing these days because both the living and the undead use the same terminology, but with widely different meanings. Within the living community there are differing attitudes towards the zombie movement. Polling indicates that most of us are tired of these rampaging reanimated corpses, and that it doesn’t make any difference to us whether a zombie actually eats flesh, or just helps other zombies secure their meat. We want a government, and a policy, that promotes the interests of the living. On the other hand, there are still quite a few among the more prominent and privileged classes who seek to cooperate with the zombies in a “non-partisan” manner. Sometimes you can’t tell whether these people have become zombies themselves or are just deluded. It’s more difficult to tell the difference than it used to be, judging just from appearances. I suspect that many of those calling for cooperation are afraid that they will be devoured unless they go along. On the other hand, if they placate the zombies, they may be allowed to become one of them after they’re dead. The zombie leaders have proven adept at employing this strategy to divide us.

If you watch the Zombie Channel for an extended time, you will be astonished at how familiar words and phrases have changed in meaning in order to fit the zombie agenda. For instance, “freedom” means having a choice between different kinds of human flesh, without government interference. But there’s no concept of freedom as the choice not to be eaten in the first place. It also constantly warns of a threat from the zombies overseas who worship a different blood-sucking monster than the American zombies do. I suppose this makes some kind of sense, but then there is the constant implication that living people are somehow in league with these foreign zombies, which although completely false has gained a lot of traction as a dividing tactic.

I’ve always argued that the entire zombie enterprise is a failure, and that we need to turn our backs on this whole undead business if we are to move forward as a nation. The important thing in this election year will be for living voters to not be fooled by all the talk about McCain not being a zombie. There’s blood coming out of his mouth, so don’t vote for him. Hopefully the controversy over McCain within the zombie movement will keep many zombies from voting, and give the White House back to a living human. Now, I know that the Democrats have been scandalously weak when it comes to resisting the flesh-eaters. Over and over again, they’ve betrayed our interests in order to gain zombie support and funding. Many zombies have infiltrated the party while pretending to be still alive. But we have to start somewhere. The election of a human being, however weak or compromised, may at least help start a process of zombie regulation and oversight, and curb the movement’s worst excesses. There’s so much blood and organs and rotting flesh lying around, that I don’t think we can stand the stench for another four years. Enough is enough.

Pen pals

From the office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

Dear Mr. Dashiell,
Thank you for contacting me regarding your opinions about impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney. As you know, Congressman Dennis Kucinich recently introduced House Resolution 333 to impeach Vice President Cheney. Impeachment is one of the most powerful actions possible by the House of Representatives, punishing "high crimes and misdemeanors." I do not take this matter lightly.
I respect my colleague's legislation and will give it serious consideration if I have an opportunity to vote on its passage. Preserving the U.S. Constitution and maintaining the important checks and balances in our democratic system demand strong congressional oversight of the executive branch.
In fact, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, of which I am not a member, has been conducting hearings on many questionable policies and actions of the Bush Administration-the decision to go into Iraq, the use of domestic wiretaps without the benefit of warrants, and the use of no-bid contracts in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina reconstruction in the gulf coast. Investigating and possibly litigating these issues will most likely continue during the second year of the 110^th Congress. However, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee does not have the authority to initiate the impeachment process.
In all past impeachment proceedings (President Jackson [sic], President Nixon and President Clinton for example) the House has examined impeachment charges prior to entertaining any vote. The process has included an initial exploration by the Judiciary Committee to which investigating and reporting duties are delegated. Based on its findings, the Committee has then drafted an impeachment resolution that reflects the charges being presented. Afterwards the Judiciary committee has then voted the resolution out of committee and sent it to the full House.
Congressman Kucinich's impeachment resolution, H.R. 333, has not gone through this process. Therefore, when it came directly to the floor on a procedural motion, I voted to send it to the Judiciary Committee for proper consideration.
There are serious allegations about the Vice President's actions over the past seven years and Congress is trying to repair some of the damage. I am working hard to change the direction of the country and correct mistakes of the Bush Administration, particularly in Iraq.
If an impeachment measure passes the Judiciary committee and is referred to the floor for final passage, I will review the charges carefully, examine transcripts from Judiciary committee hearings and debate, and consult with my colleagues and constituents on how to vote.
Thank you for your active engagement in our democracy. Participation and vigilance in monitoring the actions of elected officials is the responsibility of all citizens. Without accountability, our system of government would be in great peril. I am honored to represent you and look forward to working with you to continue bringing the voice of Southern Arizona to Washington. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if you require assistance, and feel free to sign-up for e-news updates on my website at www.giffords.house.gov.
Sincerely,
Gabrielle Giffords
Member of Congress

Dear Ms. Giffords,

Thank you for your letter of January 23 regarding my opinions about impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney. I agree with you that without accountability, our system of government would be in great peril. However, I maintain that in fact there has been practically no accountability for this administration’s lawless behavior during the last seven years, and that therefore our system of government is already in great peril. It was a dire sense of urgency, not a casual whim or opinion, that prompted me to contact you regarding impeachment. Your reply, which treated this issue as largely a procedural matter, lacked the sense of urgency that I think would accurately reflect our true situation.
If the Democratic leadership really took Rep. Kucinich’s resolution seriously, I don’t think it would still be sitting in committee. It was first submitted in April of last year, and then resubmitted in November. No hearings have been scheduled on this resolution. I think that if House Democrats were sincere about accountability, the resolution would at least be in the hearings stage by now. The fact that it isn’t is a source of grave disquiet to me and to many other citizens who care about the integrity of our political process.
As one of your district’s constituents, and as someone who voted for you in 2006, I urge you to co-sponsor Rep. Kucinich’s resolution, as your Tucson colleague Raul Grijalva has done.
It has been common knowledge for some time that the Bush administration had fixed the intelligence around the policy of invading Iraq, and repeatedly misled the American people concerning Iraq and its supposed link to Al Qaida. Mr. Bush also authorized illegal wiretapping of American citizens. His administration has pursued a policy of torturing prisoners, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and standards of human decency. He has authorized secret prisons where people are held indefinitely without charges. He sought to undermine the integrity of the Justice Dept. by using it to suppress the votes of citizens in largely Democratic regions, firing U.S. attorneys that refused to go along with this corrupt policy. He allowed a CIA agent’s identity to be revealed as political retaliation against the agent’s husband for revealing one of the deceptions used to attack Iraq. These are only a few prominent aspects of the rampant corruption that has characterized this administration. The conduct of the Iraq war alone reveals numerous instances of fraud and theft from the U.S. treasury by contractors with political ties to the administration that, instead of being accountable to oversight, have been continually shielded from investigation by the administration. War profiteering is an extremely grave, I would even say potentially fatal, threat to our country. It has been going on since the beginning of this war on an unprecedented scale, and all of us are paying for it, while high-level criminal activity goes unpunished and in fact rewarded. Moreover, Mr. Bush continues to explicitly claim powers that put the Executive Branch above the law. He has instructed his aides not to answer Congressional subpoenas. He has used signing statements to contradict and disregard laws that have passed the Congress. He has sought to eliminate the principle of habeas corpus, one of the rights for which our forefathers pledged their lives and honors, and he has partly succeeded in this aim. He has continually exploited the atrocities of 9/11/01 for political advantage, to the shame of all people of conscience.
In your letter you say that you are working to correct the administration’s “mistakes,” especially in Iraq. I really think it is too charitable to refer to the policies regarding Iraq as mistakes. This administration deliberately misled us to prosecute this war, and have since showed criminal disregard for the safety and well-being of American troops and returning veterans. A recent poll conducted by a non-partisan British group concluded that more than one million Iraqis have died as the result of this conflict. Add to that the thousands of American soldiers killed and wounded. I don’t think “oops” is a mature response to this devastating event.
If impeachment proceedings are not brought against this President and Vice-President, then we are essentially saying that it is ok for this level of corruption to exist in our government. If we let this slide, in the hope that somehow another election will solve everything, we lose a vital opportunity for the United States to stand up as a country for the rule of law and the value of human decency. There is no guarantee that a new President, even if he or she is a Democrat (which is by no means certain), will not continue to promote untrammeled executive power above all law or oversight. There is no guarantee that our future will not continue to be auctioned off to the highest bidder by unscrupulous profiteers.
I voted for you in 2006 because I wanted accountability and true change in our country. I did not vote for you so that we could simply sit on our hands and wait until a new President takes office in 2009. I consider the situation in our country so perilous that I am not sure we can survive another year of criminal behavior in the White House without permanent damage to our institutions and our very freedom. Mr. Bush has already shown his eagerness to involve us in yet another war, the disastrous consequences of which I can barely contemplate without being overwhelmed with despair and horror. Ms. Giffords, polls indicate that over half of the citizens of this country favor impeachment. The people are far ahead of the politicians in their rejection of Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their policies. With the Republicans' dismal record of failure on every level, and a list of lies and scandals so long that it is difficult to even keep track of all the deceptions and crimes, why aren’t the Democrats using this as an issue for all its worth? But even if public support was lower, impeachment is simply the right thing to do. To let this behavior go by without anyone taking responsibility sends a clear message to the country, and to our kids, that we don’t really care about honesty at all, and that power and money are our real priorities, not the values of responsibility, citizenship, or providing for our future.
I am sorry to have to say that unless you take a stand against this corrupt White House, I won’t be able to vote for you when you come up for re-election. I say “won’t be able” rather than “won’t be willing” because I think you’re a good person with good intentions. I want to vote for you. But I am literally unable to cast my vote for anyone, no matter how well intentioned, who will not actively oppose this criminal administration. For me to do so would be to countenance torture, mass murder, the undermining of our precious Constitution, and ultimately treason. This is not business as usual, Ms. Giffords. This is not normal politics. This is the future of our country, and silence at this point equals complicity. My conscience can no longer allow me to be complicit.
Thank you again for your time, and I hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely,
Chris Dashiell

The sound of silence

It’s hard for me to imagine an intelligent person of conscience not being dismayed by the spectacle of the current race for President. However, my expectations concerning what folks will or will not put up with have been continually challenged during the last seven years. Be that as it may, the disgrace of electoral politics is never more evident than in a time of real crisis such as now.

It’s obvious, first of all, that television news is nothing more than a sham, intellectually and morally bankrupt beyond calculation. To watch the news on TV is to be sucked into a dizzying vortex of unreality. The immaculately coiffed fools who “anchor” the news and present us with their opinions seem to think that there is nothing more vital for us to know than who is ahead or behind, what strategies the candidates are employing to get ahead or avoid falling behind, and what is going to happen next ahead- or behind-wise. That anything could possibly be at stake other than the status of an insider’s scorecard seems not to have entered what passes for their minds. The idea that any of this is entertaining—given, after all, that the entertainment divisions have absorbed the news departments into their bloated, celebrity-obsessed maws—is in itself ludicrous. To understand what the candidates actually stand for in any detail is impossible. The talking heads will continue to jabber over the snippets of footage of candidate’s speeches, telling us again about the many variation of “ahead” or “behind,” etc., and the candidates have long ago bought into this themselves, saying very little if anything outside of the most generalized bits of inspirational rhetoric.

Let us turn to the candidates, then, and try to hear them outside of the TV prism. What I hear most of all is the sound of silence. The depredations committed by the current White House occupant are rarely mentioned. The horrifying carnage wreaked on the people of Iraq is never acknowledged. The war is treated like some sort of embarrassing domestic problem that we have to tiptoe around for fear of upsetting right-wing nutjobs. The fact that the Cheney-Bush administration has sought to draw us into the sinkhole of their perversions with torture, illegal detentions, and illegal spying on American citizens, provokes no outrage whatsoever, in fact barely a mention unless it’s to applaud the degradation of our souls as Romney, Huckabee, and Guiliani have done, or utter mild reproofs like McCain (who nevertheless supports the criminal occupation with regular bleatings of “We’re winning!” and “The surge is working!”). The corruption that is laying waste to our society, from the Justice Department to FEMA to the Abramoff and Plame affairs to countless others, including the sacking of the U.S. Treasury by licensed military contractors, is met with complete and total silence. Corruption does not even register as an issue.

Silence, many of you may know, equals complicity. There is a hell of a lot of complicity going around.

It’s hard to conceive of a more ghoulish group of pandering hate-filled liars than the Republican candidates, who seem to be competing to see who can be a bigger fascist. To elect any one of them to the White House would sound the death knell for any hopes of improvement. The press dutifully reports on their candidacies because, after all, they’re the Republican candidates. Outside of a Washington cocktail party, one can’t escape the conviction that a fair election should trounce any one of these bozos into the dirt and deliver a landslide to the Democrats. But a greater silence envelops this conviction—the poisonous stench of rigged elections. Karl Rove, one of the most revolting American political figures to ever crawl out from under a rock, has left an odious legacy, to the Republicans and thereby to all of us who suffer their antics. Their way to victory is to suppress the vote by any means available. They’ve done it, they continue to do it, and they’ll try their best to do it again—yet virtually no one in the mainstream talks about it.

The Democratic candidates inspire more complicated feelings: disappointment, impatience, frustration, betrayal. What kind of hell are we in that the opposition party spends so little time opposing the manifest corruption and criminality of the White House and its enablers? No one in the field possesses even the minor virtue of eloquence—the ability to step outside the cliché-ridden political discourse and speak truth directly and powerfully, with an appreciation of the crisis we are in, and the courage and decency to appeal to our better natures. Servile fear inhibits the candidates, fear of losing the confidence of their corporate sponsors, fear of rocking the boat.

I watched Obama’s speeches after Iowa and New Hampshire. The pundits gushed over his rhetoric. What I heard was a stringing together of inspirational phrases without point or substance. The word “change” became a mantra that is supposed to unite us, but I fail to see the meaning of change without an overt declaration of what exactly the mess is that we want to change, and why. It is impossible to predict from his rhetoric how Obama would actually govern. It’s a given that he would be a vast improvement over Bush—any non-fascist with a mind and a heart would be—but I wonder how much the imperative of the national security state would dictate his actions, or if he would ever have the nerve to challenge the Wall Street-Pentagon axis.

Clinton is establishment through-and-through. The DLC and other centrist Democrats who feed at the corporate trough and try to out-conservative the conservatives are backing her, just as they backed her husband. President Clinton did nothing for progressives—his impersonation of a “liberal” is due entirely to the actions of his Republican enemies and not to his own actions as President. If you like globalization, old-style imperialism, and losing both houses of Congress to the Republicans, than with Hillary Clinton you’ll get more of the same. I’m sorry, but the fact that she’s a woman is not enough. Margaret Thatcher was also a woman.

Edwards is not so much out of the mainstream of establishment thinking as the media or the Republicans would have you believe. The same doubts surround his eventual governance as Obama’s. For what it’s worth, though (which isn’t much), I plan to vote for him in my state’s primary. Why? Because he’s the only one talking about inequality. And as long as huge economic inequality is encouraged by the political elites, favoring a tiny master class over the rest of us, all other reforms will be stopped dead in the water. I have no illusions—Edwards’ stand against gay marriage pisses me off mightily. But at the present time, he’s the one viable candidate that scares the corporate puppet masters, and that’s enough to get my vote, at least for now.

It is absolutely imperative that the Republicans lose the White House. The probable effect on the Supreme Court of another Republican president, to mention only one factor, is enough to force me to vote for whomever wins the Democratic nomination. We rightly deride the “lesser of two evils” as a corrupting electoral yardstick, but the War of Terror being waged on us (and if you think you’re not the target of this war, you’re either a fascist or a fool) makes the choices utterly stark. We can elect a more conventional establishment President who is still part of the corporate system, or we can slide further into the outrageous crime and despotism that already threatens to engulf us beyond reprieve.

What hopes I have (abashed as I am to even admit any remaining hopes for our political life) rest on an increasingly outraged citizenry. For the first time in my memory, the majority of the people are showing themselves as smarter and more compassionate than their so-called leaders. That needs to be sustained and increased. Ultimately, the White House needs to become less powerful. We need to stop being fascinated by Presidential elections, and the media-induced aura of unconditional respect for whomever is President needs to be dissipated. Representative government requires a re-thinking of the Executive branch—no more kings, emperors or righteous “deciders,” but just servants of the people. This mindless, fascistic “commander in chief” mentality needs to be cut down to human size if we are to survive as humans.

A tale of two anthems

Patriotism is a term so long ill-used that it is tempting to propose scrapping it completely. But if it is indeed “the last refuge of a scoundrel” as Samuel Johnson famously said, this is due more to the degradation of politics in general than to anything inherent in the idea of patriotism itself.

In my view, much of the harm can be attributed to the confusion between patriotism and nationalism. The sentiment behind the former is quite ancient, while the latter notion is relatively recent—dating perhaps no earlier than the 17^th century. Patriotism as I define it is love of country in the oldest sense—i.e., love of the land and the people who live on it, along with their language and culture. Nationalism, on the other hand, really has nothing to do with love. It is allegiance to a state or government, commonly symbolized by a flag. The essence of nationalism is obedience to authority conceived as a primary virtue. Its expression is most often of a military nature, because the state defines itself essentially as separate and distinct from other states. This in-group against out-group stance lends itself perfectly to racist ideas as well, and in the modern era we often see nationalist movements taking on racist ideologies of one form or another.

The two words have, of course, been hopelessly muddled together in political discourse. The common view of patriotism nowadays is most often synonymous with nationalism. When you hear someone say, as Mitt Romney said recently, that the United States is the greatest country in the world, this is an expression of what is popularly considered patriotism. It is, however, nationalistic, because it finds value only by abstractly separating the country from other countries presumed to be inferior. The idea of dissent as patriotic, on the other hand, is foreign to the nationalist mind. To criticize the state is considered unpatriotic by nationalists, and it is significant that dissent is especially frowned upon in times of war, which is, conveniently, just about all the time.

An uncanny illustration of the difference between nationalism and patriotism is presented by two American songs, The Star-Spangled Banner, our official national anthem, and the popular patriotic song, America the Beautiful.

To reprint the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner in full would perhaps only confuse the reader, since its poetry is infamously and ineptly convoluted. Kurt Vonnegut wasn’t far off when he wrote that the United States had the only national anthem consisting of “gibberish sprinkled with question marks.” For those few who are unfamiliar with the meaning of the song, such at is, it can be summarized as the musings of a person observing a night bombardment against an American fort and asking, in a rhetorical way, whether our flag is still up and waving. The impression aimed at is that no matter how fierce the attack may be, the flag will always fly proudly.

It’s an innocuous piece of writing, as such things go, I suppose, although the thoughtful listener may be excused for being a trifle embarrassed that his national anthem contains the words “bombs bursting in air.” I wouldn’t normally associate the love I feel for my country with such an image. But of course, as I said before, this isn’t about love of country. This is about the pride of loyalty and allegiance to a national power, and in typical nationalist fashion, the subject of the song is the piece of symbolic cloth on a pole.

A Canadian friend once confided to me how dumfounded he was observing the fetish we have in the U.S. about the flag. Flags are of course symbolic objects—the idea is that all eyes turn toward the symbol in an almost mystical unity of purpose—but I don’t think any other country has taken the flag thing and run with it to the degree that Americans have. In any case, it follows as a matter of course that the “pledge of allegiance” would be to the flag, and the wording even says, “…and to the republic for which it stands…,” a frank admission of the simplistic nature of the symbolism involved here. The idea of a country’s citizens being told to pledge allegiance conveys a certain insecurity that underlies nationalist thinking—a person’s value is tested and conferred by the state, rather than recognized as a birthright.

Now let’s turn to the other song, and here I will actually quote from the first stanza. The other stanzas get us into troublesome territory, but almost no one knows them or sings them.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

Love of the land is the first and primary characteristic of patriotism. Nationalism is concerned only with the abstraction of loyalty to a state. The land is just the place you happen to live, a place to be exploited for all it’s worth.

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee

Well, the atheists will have a problem with this, and I understand that. However, religion is one of the main cultural aspects of a people, like it or not. And in this case, notice that God is not punishing sinners or calling us to arms against the heathen. God is being asked to shed grace on the country—a humble expression that is incomprehensible to a nationalist who believes only in pride, not humility, despite any lip service paid to such religious beliefs.

And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

The reference to brotherhood clinches the case. Brotherhood (and sisterhood) is a state enjoyed by equals, and it suggests compassion, fellow-feeling, and even hints at social justice. Nationalism doesn’t want brotherhood, with its peaceful connotations, but triumph over enemies. Nationalists don’t want to be brothers with anyone except other nationalists—not dissenters, communists, homos, feminists, civil rights activists, or left-wing intellectuals. There are people in the country who represent a threat to the nation—the “enemy within.” Brotherhood is a code-word for weakness.

I’m not arguing that America the Beautiful should be our national anthem. We didn’t have a national anthem until 1931. The branding phenomenon, that plague of modern life, was unknown to earlier generations. They apparently had more important things to think about. I just find it interesting that the opposition of patriotism and nationalism, an opposition that has been purposely obscured and denied by authoritarian ideologies, is so clearly expressed by two cultural artifacts, two songs whose lyrics are recited mechanically more often than not, providing two contrasting windows into a fundamental conflict in the American soul.

My father

Adrian “Duke” Smith, my father, died on Monday, Jan. 7, after a brief bout with cancer. He was 84.

Dad was passionately involved in my home town—Mountain Lakes, N.J.—as a councilman, mayor, and citizen. Everyone he met felt welcomed and appreciated, and his passing is mourned by many people, young and old. He was a great husband, father, and grandfather, and I feel so lucky to be his son.

He left his best gift to me for last: a true appreciation of what life is really about. For Dad, giving was both the greatest pleasure and the highest good. And I give the most emphasis to the pleasure aspect, because giving to other people—embracing them with his friendship, humor, and love—was Dad’s favorite way of having fun. He loved being with people, laughing and playing games, the feeling of togetherness with family and friends. He wasn’t afraid to be silly or tender or sentimental. He was also a lifelong liberal, and he taught me the values of honesty, understanding, and generosity that are the hallmarks of true liberalism.

I slept in his room at our old house the night before I flew back home. In the morning, I picked up what I thought were my shoes, to put them on. But they were his shoes. And it occurred to me that I could never fill them.

Thank you, Dad, for showing me the way. Your love will always be with me.

A note to my readers

A health emergency in my family requires me to fly across the country on short notice. I probably won't be writing anything on this blog for at least another week. I wish you all a good new year. Well, it can't be worse than last year, right? Don't answer that.

Christmas greetings

Today, Christmas Eve, I’m sending greetings to all my pals on the Christian Right. I thought they might appreciate some Bible verses.

To Pat Robertson:

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they can be seen by men…And in praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” (Matthew 6:5,7)

Do you think this only has to do with people long ago, or does it perhaps apply today to certain, er, prominent evangelists?

To James Dobson:

“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)

How about it? Got any lumber in there, buddy?

To Tim LaHaye:
"But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." (Matthew 24:36)

Oops. Think maybe your novel-writing hobby has gotten out of hand?

To George Bush:

“Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” (Matthew 25: 41-43)

Hmm. Not too encouraging.

And that's just Matthew. There are three other gospels too.

Merry fucking Christmas, you bastards.

Talk to me about abortion

Talk to me about abortion

Only if you also talk to me about:

13 million children going hungry.

More than 9 million children with no health insurance.

Almost a million and a half homeless kids.

More than a fourth of all households headed by women living under the poverty line.

Talk to me about abortion

Only if you also talk to me about:

2 million inmates in the prison industry, with 65% of them black.

Poor and minority families provided with inferior education, inferior housing, inferior health care.

Black youth criminalized and controlled in a phony drug war.

Poor people, many of them black, left to die in New Orleans.

Talk to me about abortion

Only if you also talk to me about:

Women still treated as inferior to men.

The continuous battering and sexual abuse of women.

Sexual assault in the family.

Women demeaned, objectified, and exploited daily in the media.

Lower wages and less opportunity for women.

Talk to me about abortion

Only if you also talk to me about:

Hundreds of thousands of innocent people slaughtered in the Iraq War, including many thousands of children.

Millions of children impoverished and dying of hunger and disease worldwide.

Corporations poisoning out water, food, and air while exploiting and impoverishing Third World countries.

Women and children enslaved in sweat shops so that corporations can make huge profits.

The U.S. practicing torture, secret renditions, and assassinations.

The existence of nuclear weapons, giving human beings the power to wipe out entire nations, and even the entire human race.

Addiction to oil causing catastrophic climate change threatening millions of lives, while politicians deny the problem.

Talk to me about abortion

Only if you also talk to me about

Sexism, white supremacy, hate crimes, homophobia, religious bigotry, corruption, misogyny, racism, fascism, election fraud, death squads, treason, imperialism, and genocide.

Talk to me about abortion

Only if you talk to me about all these other things.

Otherwise, don’t talk to me.

Freedom vs. Security

In late 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, The Economist and Shell Oil announced an essay competition with the subject: How much freedom should we trade for our security? Below is the essay I submitted. It was intended to be satire, but what I find astonishing now is how much of it has really come true. Of course, it didn't win. (Here are the essays that did win.)

How much freedom should we trade for our security? We are faced with this question at a moment of crisis, but it also represents an opportunity. Perhaps now, confronted with the threat of terrorism, we can finally put to rest old ideas that have not only hampered our security, but have prevented us from attaining our proper development as a society.

Above all, it is the idea, expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the phrase "inalienable rights," that we are called to overcome. The notion that rights are bestowed at birth, and cannot be traded for security or anything else, has repeatedly placed our safety in peril. By declaring that individual freedom has an absolute, one might even say metaphysical basis ("endowed by our Creator," in the quaint words of the Declaration), this concept of rights constantly impedes the effective functioning of police and military authorities that are charged with keeping us secure. Legal strategies that attempt to circumvent this idea have only partly succeeded. We need a reevaluation of principles rather than a mere tinkering with machinery. The terrorist attacks have made clear that we need to change our thinking in a fundamental way.

The "freedom" of dissent, the "freedom," even, to overthrow the government, was undoubtedly important to a group of eighteenth century planters justifying a break with their colonial parent. But we live in a different world now. What the majority of people find important is the freedom of economic well being, i.e., the freedom to buy and own what we want, and to live in a degree of material comfort unknown to our forefathers. This way of life is provided by our free market system, with its corporations providing goods and services not only to the West but to the entire world, and which has made the United States economy the envy of all.

Terrorism represents a direct attack on that freedom. The terrorists couldn't have been clearer in their choice of targets. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon symbolized our economic and military power. It is here, then, that our freedom lies, not in abstract, disruptive concepts of inalienable rights. It is our duty to protect, at all costs, what we truly value. When people are insecure about their safety, the market becomes insecure. What possible political freedom could compensate for the loss of our material prosperity? We need only look at the underdeveloped world, that supposedly won its freedom from the colonial powers, to know the answer.

We know, then, that terrorism must be eliminated. But in order to do so, we need to dismantle those antiquated features of the American Constitution that are based on outmoded ideas concerning civil rights. These traditions only make it easier for terrorist or subversive groups to escape detection, while adding nothing to our essential quality of life.

Of what value is dissent in the modern world? We may bravely ask this question, in defiance of certain sacred cows, because our very existence is at stake. Difference of opinion is safely expressed within the parameters set by our governmental leaders and by the media. The people are as well informed in this respect as they want to be. But dissent in a wider sense - as a questioning of our system itself, of the legitimacy of government and corporate practice, or of the proper exercise of authority to ensure national security either by war or police action - has no use in the modern world, other than to create disunity, encourage unrest, and help to foster the very conditions under which terrorism can thrive. It could be argued, however, that the opportunity for dissent offers a necessary release valve for antisocial tendencies that could not otherwise be satisfied or controlled. I recognize some justice in this observation, and I expect the "right" of dissent to be preserved, at least in appearance - but with the important proviso that groups and individuals expressing dissent outside the mainstream need to be kept under rigorous surveillance by the police, so that any movement towards disruptive actions, such as demonstrations or political organizing outside of accepted institutions, can be immediately nipped in the bud by the authorities.

The U.S. government has already shown considerable wisdom by taking a hard line towards immigrants, and by avoiding the loopholes of the civilian justice system through military tribunals. By arguing in terms of war rather than crime, our leaders have shown the way towards a new understanding of freedom and security. War is no longer a temporary condition from which we can retreat into an illusion of disengagement. The rise of terrorism signals the beginning of a war that is essentially continuous. In order to maintain the economic well being that constitutes our true freedom, the so-called political freedoms need to be sacrificed. The government must be gradually militarized, and the capacity for surveillance and control of subversive elements must be increased tenfold in order to eliminate terrorism. In addition, the empowerment of the police authorities, at the national and local level, must continue even after terrorism is defeated, in order to ensure that this peril can never threaten us again. To this end, the current trend towards paramilitary training of police forces must continue and become more pervasive. Ultimately, our political institutions will need to take on more of the character of military government rather than "representative" government, which has proven inefficient and has, moreover, lost the faith of the people. The military retains its popularity, as well it should, since it represents the best of us - those who selflessly serve the nation in order to preserve our freedom. We can be confident that our economic growth will become more robust after the legalistic impediments to rightful authority are finally removed.

There is no need to give our institutions new names. A certain amount of continuity with tradition helps foster a sense of comfort. The old paradigm of political rights is already practically obsolete in mainstream society, where people have enough common sense to know that our culture will simply break down without the cooperation, expertise, and financial clout of multinational corporations. No clearer evidence could be provided for this than the almost palpable anxiety and concern that is generally expressed when the stock market is going through a downturn. We know that our true security depends on these markets, and therefore our trust lies in the successful men and women who run our economy. To question these institutions, or actively oppose them, is alien to the desires and concerns of the average person, and to allow fringe elements to do so is a luxury that has become increasingly unacceptable. Now, just as the people trust our economic system, so they can gradually grow to have more trust in our governmental system, provided that the state takes the vigorous steps needed to prosecute the war abroad and suppress dissent at home. Terrorism, along with other revolutionary ideologies, is fostered by ideas of fundamental social change, ideas which are delusory and only serve to agitate people. We must let go of the remnants of these ideas in our own traditions if we are to defeat them when advocated by others.

It might seem wiser to simply take incremental steps towards increased police and military power without bothering to reassess our philosophical assumptions. In the short run, this may be true. But as the struggle continues, the clarity of our thinking will become just as vital to our security as any practical measures. Terrorists will seize on our weaknesses in order to undermine our society. That's why it will become necessary, sooner or later, to repudiate the Jeffersonian doctrine of inalienable rights. As long as "liberty" - individual independence involving the freedom to actively oppose our system by word and deed - is seen as inherent in the human condition, it will continue to be invoked by our enemies in an effort to protect themselves and destroy us. This old concept has taken on a new guise in the idea of "human rights" that extend beyond the boundaries of America and the West, applying to all people regardless of their nationality or economic condition. In practice, this notion has always been used as a challenge to our economic power and military presence.

The truth is that freedom is a privilege, not a right. It is bestowed on us by those who possess legitimate power, won through economic risk and initiative. Middle class citizens, who constitute the majority in America, know that there is nothing to fear from the just exercise of their leaders' power, because they participate in the benefits of our system, the greatest the world has ever seen. The claims to power made by advocates of civil and human rights are illegitimate because they depend on birth, on the mere condition of being human, rather than on effort and merit. Their "freedom" is illusory because it leads only to misery, as evidenced by the failed experiments of communism. The civil liberties allowed in the West are fragile luxuries, and should be taken away when they represent a danger to our security. September 11th showed us that this time has indeed come, the time to "face facts." At the present time we need to carefully monitor all dissent, and as much as possible maintain the secrecy that is indispensable in this effort. If terrorists attack again, as our leaders seem sure they will, martial law will provide the necessary transition towards a future organization of society that will satisfy both our need for security and our freedom to buy and own the possessions that we need in order to live a happy and comfortable life. That is the freedom that counts. The danger is that we will lose this freedom, and our security, in a vain attempt to preserve the illusion of political freedom.

Ultimately there is no real freedom that is independent of national security. That, as uncomfortable as it feels to those living in the past, is the truth we need to embrace. How much freedom, then, should we trade for our security? The answer is simple: all of it.

Radicals needed

One of my favorite bloggers, and in fact one of the top political blogs out there, is Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque. He understands the big picture, is consistently informative, and his writing has that quality of righteous indignation at the corporate state that is a prerequisite for political sanity in our time. He doesn’t see all the evils of our system as caused by Bush-Cheney, but regularly points out the complicity of both parties in the misbegotten drive for American empire. (The most recent example of his work along these lines is here, but you can find this penetrating insight throughout his blog.)

Regarding the Bush administration’s various operatives and other functionaries, particularly in the contexts of appointment and confirmation, Floyd is fond of pointing out that anyone who is willing to work at high levels for this blood-soaked regime is by definition assenting to its criminality, and is therefore unfit to serve our country. I agree with him, and I think it’s important to grasp the principle involved here if one is to maintain a realistic view of the political situation. It is one thing to say that so-and-so is a bad president, or attorney general, or whatever—or to say that one disagrees with the policies of a given administration or party. It is quite another to say that so-and-so is a criminal, that the administration is a criminal operation, and that (in the only possible conclusion that follows from this) said administration or government is illegitimate.

The list of abuses is a long one, of course. The case for impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors has long ago been made thoroughly and convincingly. Prior to all this, however, even prior to the grave crimes against humanity committed in the name of a phony war on terrorism, this administration is essentially illegitimate because, I would argue, of the deliberate perpetuation of fraud and abuse in the electoral system. Any persons or organizations that take away the people’s suffrage by either falsifying or suppressing the vote, has violated one of the most basic values of our republic. If the state cheats on the vote, so that the voting public may no longer trust that the announced results of an election are true, the most basic element of legitimacy, the connection between the people and the elected public servants, is completely severed. This is not to say that the voting process hasn’t already been compromised, manipulated, degraded, and trivialized to an incredible degree over the years. But there’s a yawning gulf between the perception of general decadence in the electoral system, as serious as that is, and the perception of outright fraud and illegality reversing the actual objective results of a given vote. The former represents corruption; the latter goes further into dictatorship. In other words, it is truly subversion, and in my view is tantamount to treason because it completely invalidates even the appearance of government legality.

Now, this subversion occurred not only in the 2000 election, but in the 2004 election as well. And the crime of 2004 was actually more serious, since it was perpetrated by the administration in power in the White House, and thus indicates an even more dangerous incursion. The media has maintained an almost universal, deathly silence on the fraud of 2004, precisely because the implications are so frightening. For the Bush administration to have criminally re-elected itself would clearly identify it as an illegitimate government, thereby raising the bogeyman of a “Constitutional crisis” for which the establishment and its media have no stomach. Perception of the fraud on the part of the public is, however, widespread, and especially damaging to public trust. Furthermore, underneath the recent scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys is the greater scandal that the administration sought to use the Justice Dept. to subvert the electoral process. This is of course not as well known by the general public, but it is known by the Democratic leadership. In their own self-interest, then, the Democrats pursued that investigation, at least to the point of forcing the Attorney General from office, but it’s not clear if things will go any further at this time.

Which brings us back to Chris Floyd’s point about appointees and confirmations. You may note that even Russ Feingold, one of the more principled progressive Democrats in the Senate, voted to confirm Michael Mukasey to replace Gonzales as AG, even while expressing misgivings. Mukasey, of course, refused to say whether waterboarding is torture, and that’s what got the headlines. But in general he’s been an advocate of the police state, and his history includes a close relationship with crypto-fascist Rudolph Giuliani. Floyd’s principle applies, as always. Anyone who would be willing to work for Bush is by definition unfit to serve the country. But the principle is considered unworkable in the context of Congressional politics. Democrats, even liberals like Feingold, are afraid to oppose Bush in everything, because they are afraid of being painted as unprincipled obstructionists. On a deeper level, the Democratic Party must believe—or at least must publicly appear to believe—in the legitimacy of the government. To admit that we are being governed by a criminal outfit would constitute, once again, a “Constitutional crisis,” which in the mind of a politician is feared as a dangerous disturbance of the peace, a stepping out into the dread unknown. Better, they think, to bide their time and elect a Democrat to the White House in 2008.

This is assuming that the election of 2008 would be fair. But wait—that’s exactly the problem. We can no longer make any such assumption. This is precisely the most basic underlying reason for the illegitimacy of the present regime. There is no assurance that the vote will not be falsified again. It’s sheer foolishness for Democrats to continue to postpone their opposition to an illegitimate regime by putting their faith in an electoral process already subverted by said regime.

Having said all that, we come to the much more serious crisis, which is a crisis that predates the ascension of Bush and his friends to power. Both political parties are complicit in a long-term imperial project, a drive for world hegemony that goes back, at least in its most threatening form, to the end of World War II and the beginning of the so-called “Cold War.” That’s the paradigm that is strangling us. The crisis of Bushism is serious enough, since it threatens a takeover by what is, in effect, a neo-fascist cabal that would destroy what vestiges of freedom we have left. But even if the neocon and rightist Republican movement is defeated domestically, the imperial project remains in place, regardless of which party is in power. Those putative progressives who expect the struggle to relax when (if) a Democrat occupies the White House, are living in a fool’s paradise indeed.

The correct political strategy in the long run is to oppose the Bush administration in everything. Bipartisanship has been dead a long time, and it was killed off quite deliberately by the Republican Party. Those who still believe in it and try to practice it will lose every single time because they’re playing by defunct rules. Those who support the Bush administration in anything, regardless of party, need to be opposed in regards to that support. If my representative in the House is a Democrat, and she votes to keep going in Iraq, or to confirm some crackpot Bush appointee, or whatever, she needs to know that I oppose that, and she can’t take my vote for granted. More significantly, we need to oppose imperial policies regardless of which party supports them—in this respect we can see how it makes perfect sense for people to stage protests at Nancy Pelosi’s office, and for Cindy Sheehan to talk about running against her. I don’t give a damn who is annoyed about it. The times are too serious for half-assed measures.