Voiceless

This post was started in November (2009) and then just sat there, aging but not gaining in quality like wine might. It’s essence remains even truer now in that I haven’t written anything in over a year and have stifled my creative voice. And pretty much any other voice I might have. It seems that reading other voices had the effect of shutting me up. Google Reader asks: Having trouble keeping up with the sites you visit? At the time, I was only reading a few blogs but once I joined into the RSS feed reading stream, I kept adding more voices, more views, and more sites until simply keeping up with that flood took so much time that the feed reader became the drain down which my own writing spiraled away. I wrote this:

YES!

Obama Sweeps to Victory

Happy day!

We went to vote this morning and happily stood in line for a little over an hour before casting our votes. It was wonderful to see the line, which never got shorter behind us but kept adding people.

Now, watching the election coverge, with all stations calling this for the good guys and McCain giving his classy concession speech, I can hear the joyous hoots and hollers on the streets of DC. I can hear the U Street party from my living room and my heart soars.

That map is so blue. It does my heart and soul so much good to see that much blue. We needed this. We needed to give the finger to eight years of Bush and the bancrucpy and corruption of Republican “government.” The damage that cabal did to this country has not been fully accounted for yet, even now, but now at least we have some hope that it will stop.

Let’s get to cleaning up. Let’s do this right.

I am so happy right now. Come what may, this is a good night, this is a great result, and this country – we – did us all proud in electing That One. Congratulations to President-Elect Barack Obama!

P.S. I am also heartened by the fact that Colorado decisively voted down the ridiculous Amendment 48 (Full personhood rights to fertilized eggs) and South Dakota looks to be rejecting (again) the draconian arbortion restrictions (I’m crossing my fingers).

Cop-Out List Post (Thoughts before Bed)

Things I read about, think about and would like to comment on if I didn’t also need sleep so badly:

Adventures in Speaking

First off, I want to declare my admiration for British Adventuress, who in his most recent adventure managed to 1) think of a great comeback in an uncomfortable situation and then 2) actually had the mettle to open his mouth and say it. I’m in awe of this not only because by the time I think of anything clever to say in such situations the pigs have had this flying thing down pat for years and are building nests and the devil has learned to do triple Axles on his ice skates, and the person who should have been flattened by my witty retort has long since moved on, but also because, even if I should ever think of anything to say at the right time, I would never ever have the balls to say go ahead and say it.  My hat, if I actually wore one, is off to you, British Adventuress!

In other adventurous speech, desperate people (Republicans, I’m looking at you) are spouting some pretty incredible stuff. My favorite?

“If you make a little mistake with one of your ‘hos,’ you’ll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked.”

“That’s too cold. I don’t snuff my own seed.”

“Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican.”

Courtesy of J. Patrick Rooney (via You Are Dumb Dot Net – go read it).

The Way We Speak

Today it’s time to give some thought to language and the meaning of the words we use. I realize that this is becoming increasingly difficult, in a world where labels mean more than substance, facts are made to bow to ideology, and education, reasoning and logic are considered elitist. But it is necessary in order to remain sane and rooted to the real world where said facts can up and kill you if you’re not careful. Yelling that the mess in Iraq is just the negative and faulty reporting of the biased liberal media doesn’t help the soldiers and civilians being killed by IEDs every day.

It is important to understand the words you throw around so carelessly. Like “fascist” say, as in Islamo-fascist, a very popular designation these days among the right-wing politicians running for re-election for labelling all those faceless hordes of evil extremists Muslims who want to kill us all because they hate our freedom. Do these guys know the definition of fascism? We wonder.

And point you to this article in the LA Times (via Slacktivist) on the term “Islamo-fascists” by a linguist, who has the following to say:

[Quote] Time was when right-wingers called the ACLU a bunch of communist sympathizers. Now Bill O’Reilly labels the group and others as fascist, with a cavalier disregard for the word’s meaning that would have done Jerry Rubin proud. Of course, it’s the point of symbolic words such as “fascist” to ease the burden of thought — as Walter Lippmann observed, they “assemble emotions after they’ve been detached from their ideas.” And it may be that Americans are particularly vulnerable to using “fascism” sloppily, never having experienced the real thing close up.

But like “terror,” and “evil” before it, “Islamic fascism” has the effect of reducing a complex story to a simple fable. It effaces the differences among ex-Baathists, Al Qaeda and Shiite mullahs; Chechens and Kashmiris; Hezbollah, Hamas and British-born Asians allegedly making bombs in a London suburb. Yes, there are millions of people in the Muslim world who wish the U.S. ill, and some of them are pretty creepy about it. But that doesn’t mean they’re all of a single mind and purpose, or that a blow against any one of them is a blow against the others. As Tolstoy might have put it, every creep is creepy in his own way.

[End Quote]

Edited to add: Hm, perhaps I should have titled this post “Easing the Burden of Thought” because we spend an awful lot of time doing that in this society.  As Ganesha is fond of pointing out, we like things easy and simple and, given a choice for fixing a problem of  Difficult (but effective and good) v. Easy Quick-Fix (but not lasting or effective), we will choose Easy almost every time. Because we’re lazy easily distracted morons and/or we’re being manipulated by those who stand to profit from the quick-fix non-solutions.

I can’t quite decide which is worse. But by now I’m too frustrated to give this any more thought, so I’ll go off to You Are Dumb to read someone who’s rants are much better than mine and who reminds me that there are still some smart people left who are noticing the shit storm of idiocy we are being pelted with every day and who are making an effort to point this out to anyone who stumbles across their site. Plus, it’s entertaining.

The Nature of the World We Live In

So, The Washington Post reports that our esteemed president “strongly disagrees” with the federal judge’s surveillance ruling that says Bush’s disregard of FISA, warrants and the law is *gasp* unconstitutional. Aha, the federal judge, who’s job it is to study the law and know it well, must be wrong because our president, who is not a lawyer and not all that familiar with the law, disagrees with her ruling. Well then.

Bush also said, according to the Post article, that “those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live.” And he went on to mention the foiling of the liquid-explosives-on-airplanes-plot in London as an example of why we need unconstitutional, warrant-less wiretapping programs like his little secret power grab. Except that, in the case of that investigation, the authorities actually did obtain warrants from FISA, and were still able to do their job and foil the plot. So, contrary to this administration’s claims, FISA is not a block in the fight again terror plots, but actually helpful. But let’s not allow that reality to interfere with Bush’s reach for limitless power to use as he sees fit. Excuse me while I spit.

Since the dispicable behavior, the constant lies, evasions, twists and smears of this administration and the Republican Congress tend to leave me incoherent with rage, here are some people who express things that I’m thinking and do it clearly, concisely and sometimes even with humor.

First off, an argument that should be shouted from the roof tops, used by every Democrat and Independent running for office, and repeated Republicans are Bad on National Security. Or at least, the Republicans who have been in charge these last 5 years are bad on national security. The president who had a briefing entitled Bin Laden determined to strike in US and chose to ignore it in favor of clearing brush on his ranch? A Republican. The administration that has yet to successfully prosecute a major terrorist operative? Republican.

To be precise: a Republican president and a Republican Congress and a Supreme Court made yet more conservative, but they still claim they are victims of the evil liberals and that a government that is incapable of saving its own cities (New Orleans, anyone?) much less capturing bin Laden, eradicating the daily terror in Iraq, or even holding on to any potential progress made in Afghanistan (thought we’d forgotten about that country? Well, the administration has) is somehow not their fault. But they have to gall to announce that if Americans vote for Democrats, then the terrorists will attack.

This, as the Martini Republic so aptly terms it, is the tightrope of fear they want us to walk. As Bush said recently: “America is safer than it has been, yet it is not yet safe,” and this, as MR points out, is exactly the dilemma this administration finds itself in. It has claimed that only Bush and his Republicans can keep us safe from terrorist attacks, and that voting Democrat is a sure way of inviting attack once again. But enough time has passed by now that the fear of an attack has been slowly subsiding among American voters. So Bush must on the one hand claim he has made us safer but on the other hand keep us afraid and worried that we are not, in fact, safe. Because they could strike again, at any time, except when Bush and his limitless powers are there to keep us safe. What a crock.

Which leads directly to the question of fear. According to the administration and much of the media following their lead (FOX News, I’m looking at you), we should be afraid every time they mention another foiled plot, or rumors of a possible plot, or whispers on chat rooms about potential attacks somewhere. Because if we’re always afraid, we won’t think straight and they can so much more easily manipulate us. But what good does it do to be this afraid all the time? I’ve tried to argue that it is useless to live in fear, but Kung Fu Monkey has already done it and done an excellent job of it too. Read his Wait, Aren’t You Scared? entry and that’s almost exactly what I’ve been thinking.

In the end, the one who truly does not understand the nature of the world we live in is Bush himself, who chooses to avoid the challenging complexities of the world and instead insulates himself in a comfortable, self-serving ideology that makes him the agent of God, always in the right, never in doubt, and never accountable.

Uber den Tellerrand, or Widening Your Horizons

What with U.S. troops in Iraq and the threat of terrorism much more starkly in the forefront these days, it has become a lot harder for Americans to ignore the rest of the world, although that’s not to say some of us won’t try regardless.

Yet even with more correspondents coming to us from foreign lands, what passes for news in most media here is still very much U.S.-centric (big surprise) and doesn’t give a whole lot of space to other voices. Not what we think they think but what they are actually saying and thinking.

I know from growing up in Europe that a lot more space is devoted to the USA, its internal politics, policies, and habits, in foreign news than U.S. news ever gives to what may be motivating the rest of the world. But you know what? It’s a rapidly shrinking world and we’d be better off if we understood the other better, or at least made more of an effort.

So, to help those of us who only speak the one language along a little, here’s a site that collects and translates what the news from other countries has to say about the USA. I can’t vouch for the translations, but if you don’t like them, perhaps it’s time to give language school another try.

Terrorism Expert

Steven Weber, a professor of political science and director of the Institute of International Studies at U.C. Berkeley, is hosting a chat in the Washington Post on today’s thwarted terrorist plot. Some of the comments so far run along exactly the lines I was thinking about earlier.

From the chat:

Santa Fe, N.M.: It seems to me that liquid explosives can be transported in faux “fat” packs or even sealed in plastic and inserted into body orifices. How can security possibly detect all the creative ways that people can dream up to smuggle liquids?

Steven Weber: We can’t. I think we’ve been very lucky so far, that our security procedures have not been bypassed. There are a lot of creative people in the world who spend a lot of time thinking about how to design around security procedures. And there is always a way, there is always a loose link in the chain.
The best analogy here is to computer security. the smartest programmers in the world know that they can never beat the smartest hackers once and for all. it’s a constant race, cat and mouse.[End of chat quote.]

And this was pretty much what I was getting at: there are no guarantees. No matter what security we come up with, someone will think of a way to get around it. It’s the police work, the investigations that track such plotters and ferret out the plots that are our real hope of preventing such attacks.

Or, as Mr. Weber puts it:

Washington, D.C.: Sir,

What do you believe has done more in the last five years to thwart terrorists: large scale military actions in foreign nations or good old-fashioned police work?

Steven Weber: Undoubtably the most important question in play today. Donald Rumsfeld has said, ‘are we killing and capturing more terrorists each day, than we are creating’? I think the answer to that question, at least in Iraq, is pretty clear. Which means, stopping a terrorist from taking a bomb onto an airplane is very close to closing the barn door after the horses have run out. It’s the very last step in a process that began long before….

Yes we have to have the last line of defense in place and as close to impregnable as it can be. But in no way can that ever be as efficient a response as getting closer to the sources of the problem.

[End of quote]

Let It Rain

Cliche, I know, but I’m feeling somewhat sad and mopey today and rain is soothing, especially the rain you look out at through your window, the kind of rain that patterns your windowpane and makes you glad you’re inside today.

Why am I sad? Maybe it’s last night’s candy-green apple martini in combination with Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly (based on the Philip K. Dick book) – a weird and fascinating movie, using the technique of rotoscoping to excellent and story-enhancing effect – that has the tagline “Everything is not going to be OK.”  A tagline that seems much too appropriate for the times overall.

Yes, Scanner was oddly beautiful and disturbing, delving into darkness and tinging your dreams with its swirls of crazy and paranoia and hope and love and alienation. But while it may have enhanced my dour mood today, I think the morning look at the headlines is what pushed me over the edge today. Granted, it’s surely better to hear about the prevention of a horrible attack than being confronted with the terrible aftermath of one, but every time I read about the plans of terrorists discovered it just reminds me how bad the odds are really.

It is very, very hard to thwart someone willing to die. They can ban all carry-on luggage, they can make us pack away all electronics, forbid tooth paste and shampoo on planes, make all passengers strip before boarding – and yet there are no guarantees that someone won’t, at some time, slip through security. All these people need is to fool us once, for one of them to get past the checks and succeed in one attempt, and we cannot realistically foil them all. In fact, we do not foil them all. Every day there seems to be an attack somewhere, and just because the train ripped apart in the explosion wasn’t in London but in Bombay does not mean it is any less of a threat to us. Whenever terrorism strikes, we all loose, even if we don’t always give all attacks the same kind of attention.

They say that the price of freedom is constant vigilance. But constant vigilance is hard to maintain and sometimes it can lead to paranoia. I worry that news of implemented attacks and unmasked planned attacks will be used here to stoke fear and push people into forgetting about certain important things. If we grow too afraid, we can be that much more easily manipulated and are less likely to question whether the “solutions” offered us are even true solutions. Fear is too often used to quash critique and that is a dangerous path. If we give in to fear and let it paralyse us, we may end up losing a lot more than we bargained for in seeking safety.

Heat

Last week, DC was in the grip of a truly stultifying heat wave that caused all those of us who have air conditioners to crank them up full blast and seek shelter in our homes and offices. This, of course, put enormous strain on the power system and in some cases generators became dangerously overheated (just ask Ganesh about Tuesday at the 9:30 Club). In an effort to reduce the demands made on the grid by the countless A/Cs, government offices, at least the ones I work in, turned off their hallway lighting and asked employees to limit their use of electricity as much as possible – turn off computers and other appliances not in use, use those lamps with low-energy bulbs, etc.

So for several days now it’s been eerily dark in my building and I find my way to the bathroom by the feeble glow of the emergency lighting. But I welcome working in a slightly darker office like this if it means the government, as a giant employer, has begun to conserve energy, even if it is the bottom line of their electricity bill that compels them to do this. Perhaps it seems like a small thing when you leave that one light burning all night, or the computer stays on overnight for no reason, but multiplied over the many thousand offices the federal government maintains this is a huge waste. Which is why every unattended computer left to suck down energy in the idle hours, and every light left needlessly burning, and every A/C turned up unnecessarily that is dialed down, taken off the grid, or shut down makes a difference in the energy we’re devouring every day.

Now that we are feeling the sting of our energy consumption in the high prices for gas and electricity, maybe we can begin to understand how deluded our energy use and policy really are.

And if you think that you are not part of the problem, that others (say those developing countries with the large populations, poised to consume huge quantities of energy) use more and need to change first, then I invite you to try a little exercise:  Take the Ecological Footprint Quiz and see how many resources you have so far claimed for yourself. Can you comfortably deny others what you have enjoyed in such abundance, while refusing to curb your own consumption even a little?