Inspiring Bravery vs. Just Mailing It In

Being one of those no-TV people, I'd managed to miss this footage until I went looking. Three things, for me, are striking. The first is Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi's amazing aim. The first throw was dead on, and the second, performed under extreme duress, was a little less forceful but largely on target as well. It looks to me that velocity was slightly sacrificed on the second throw for accuracy.

I've tried throwing a boot a similar distance, and it's not easy. That's the thing about terrorists. They have discipline. Even more impressive was the simultaneous verbal delivery, which the video censors.

"This is the farewell kiss, you dog!" as he threw the first shoe, and "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq" with the second.

Obsessive effort went into this. I'm visualizing Travis Bickle alone in his apartment, getting ready to kick some pimp butt.

The second is the President's remarkable reflexes. He's like one of those guys on the Matrix who sees bullets coming at him in slow-mo.

Finally, there's the fact that the man waited until Bush was looking at him. Just a moment before, while Bush was turned to the side, the shoe would have firmly connected with Presidential ear. But that would have been a sucker punch and comparatively cowardly.

This man didn't want ear. He was after nose.

The video footage clearly reveals this to be the action of a lone shoe-thrower. Had at least four shoes been thrown, possibly from varied trajectories, the outcome may have been different. We'll never really know.

This Saturday, at 1402 E. Pike from 11 am - 1 pm, you may join others in mailing your own shoes to President Bush as a parting gift. It's not as brave, nor nearly as satisfying, but you probably won't get both your hands broken and then face at least two years in prison, so, it's a trade-off.

This guy's my hero. Is it illegal to say that? I don't even know anymore.

Here Be Monsters

When ancient cartographers described areas beyond the border where knowledge and experience failed, they would simply write "here be monsters." This is a lovely metaphor for all that we'd rather not think about. This might be about denial. It might be about simply not knowing. It might be that the truth is more unimaginable that we ever dreamed, and not in a good way.

Over the last week, I've been running into people who believe things are far worse than I can bring myself to imagine. An old friend I hadn't seen in ten years turned out to be a 9/11 Truth Movement activist.

"I can accept," I said, "that our government would stage some sort of Reichstag fire event to provide cover for imperial ambitions and internal repression, but why would elites take out the heart of their own financial system?"

He didn't blink. Obviously the question had arisen before.

The buildings were old and needed to come down anyway. And they needed several thousand deaths to make it look good.

Oh.

Later last week, I met someone else who believes this. She also said that boxcars were being manufactured that have built-in shackles. And guillotines.

Guillotines?

Yes. Three to the car. Very efficient.

To me, this seems crazy. But what the hell do I know? At this point, pretty much anything feels like it might be possible.

Global warming is a fast-approaching death sentence for millions in the southern hemisphere, but the powerful in this country, other than Greg Nickels, don't much seem to give a shit. And he probably only cares because we just remodeled the aquarium, and it would be a shame to only get fifteen or twenty years out of it. The smart money, you'll notice, builds on higher ground.

The White House seems hellbent on fulfilling their Christian Armageddon fantasy in the Mid-east. Is George Bush crazy enough to attack Iran? Hell yes. It isn't really about "crazy." He just needs to be a greedy sociopath. That much is self-evident, and he has plenty of company.

The government heavily contracts military and security operations to a private mercenary army. The plans are in place to arrest and imprison internal "subversives" when the time comes. The surveillance society that already exists makes the most paranoid 50s fantasy seem tame in comparison.

That much is well-established.

According to the Bureau of Justice's own statistics, 1 in 32 adults are now in jail, prison, or on parole. I find it rather easy to believe that, given current trends, that number is likely to rise and, worse, at some point include me.

But obviously I'd rather not think about that.

So I don't know. These are dangerous times. 9/11 an inside job? Guillotines in box cars? Why not?

For all I know, homeless people are being ground up for dog food in the basement of City Hall. We're becoming a city of homeless-hating dog lovers. It would make sense.

Have I gone completely around the fucking bend? Not yet. But I expect to get there eventually.

Deeply, In a Deep Kind of Concerned Way

Every once in a great while, someone recycles something on YouTube and actually makes it better. Here, some kid sitting in his bedroom who goes by blueraycrazy2006 does a spot-on Bush impersonation while lip-synching to a Will Ferrell bit on Global Warming that aired last November on TBS's two-hour Earth to America comedy special. It's easy to find the original on YouTube as well, but this one's better. Way better. There's something about Bush that only a fourteen year-old can really nail.

Emperor Bush II

Today I opened a conversation with the line, "So, on the drive up, I was thinking of Emperor Constantine ...," and my good friends Wes, Anitra, and Bonnie thought that was pretty damn amusing. Once they stopped laughing, I expounded upon my great insight over lunch.

President Bush, as you are most likely unaware, recently criminalized the anti-war movement by signing an Executive Order that clears the way for the seizure of your property if you interfere with the war effort. While this probably wouldn't actually be used unless, oh, say, martial law were declared, it's there, and the vice is closing.

As one analysis on the website of the Centre for Research on Globalization put it,

This latest executive order criminalizes the peace movement. It must be viewed in relation to various pieces of "anti-terrorist" legislation, the gamut of presidential and national security directives, etc., which are ultimately geared towards repealing constitutional government in the case of an impending "national emergency".

The war criminals in high office are intent upon repressing all forms of dissent which question the legitimacy of the war in Iraq. The executive order combined with the existing anti terrorist legislation is eventually intended to be used against the anti-war and civil rights movements. It can be used to seize the assets of antiwar groups in America as well as block the property and activities of non-governmental humanitarian organizations providing relief in Iraq, seizing the assets of alternative media involved in a critique of the US-led war, etc.

Which brings me to Constantine. As I grew up Catholic, I learned that Constantine was the benevolent Roman Emperor who found God, ended the regrettable practice of feeding Christians to lions, and made theirs the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire, thus paving the way for Catholicism for which we are all eternally grateful.

Jacob Burkhardt, the great classicist and historian who had the distinction of being Friedrich Nietzsche's mentor, offers a more nuanced version in his astonishing work The Age of Constantine the Great. In this, he describes a Rome coming unglued at the seams. Religious practice in 300 CE varied so widely as to be almost incomprehensible. What united them all, however, was a hatred of the Christians, who offered a convenient scapegoat for the many military setbacks that assailed the Empire.

Constantine's genius was in recognizing that a.) this negative blood lust was an unsustainable downward spiral, and b.) that the dizzying array of pagan cult practices that typified Roman religion had no center and was incapable of offering a unifying idea. Christianity, however, had this straight line of authority from God thing going on that was rather appealing, and offered numerous other points of unity as well. But only if some uniformity could be created, for there were a number of unsettled issues.

It's been said that the law is like a sausage. You really don't want to know how it's made. The same can be said of Christianity.

Among the outstanding issues was the question of whether divinity was innate, or something external and in need of mediation by a third party. There being power to be derived from the latter formulation, Constantine acted decisively, giving us the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which Catholics everywhere now treat as if it were pretty much the entire fucking Bible.

The Gnostics, on the other hand were screwed. It was Great to be a Christian under Constantine, but only a certain party-line-towing sort of Christian. For the others, the killings continued. To make things interesting, after he killed you, he would destroy your family as well by seizing all of ones property and assets. All heretical texts were to be destroyed, under penalty of death and penury for your family.

So, apparently, this is just what Empires do.

It's interesting that the property seizure tactic was pioneered against those accused of drug crimes, which few will step forward to defend, and has now been cleared for use against the rest of us.

A few months ago, I'd have argued against impeachment proceedings as being too divisive and tactically stupid. I no longer believe this. The greater evil, I think, would be to allow the legacy of this Presidency to remain unchallenged, and leave in place the considerable damage he has done to Democracy and the constitution.

ITMFA.

My Kids' First Political Discussion

Yesterday I'm driving home from Costco with the girls in the back seat and Twin B says, "Who's the President of the United States." And I say, "I dunno baby, who is the President of the United States?" And she says, very proudly, "George Bush!"

"Is he a good man, or is he a bad man," I ask?

In unison: "He's a good man!"

"Hmmm. I think he might be a bad man. He kills people, and he cheats, and he lies. That means he's a bad man"

They're at that stage where when they think they know something, they really hate to be contradicted. I can totally relate to this, since this is also the stage that I'm in.

"Nooooo," they both wail, "He's a good man! He's a goooood maaan!!"

"Who told you that?"

"Ms. Deepika, our teacher!"

"Well, some people think he's good, and others think he's bad. Every four years, people get to raise their hand and pick who gets to be President. Mommy and daddy never picked George Bush. We always pick somebody else."

"You picked that man!"

There's a bus next to our car, and the ad on the side has a huge headshot of some crazy looking guy who sells roofing or something. Twin A is pointing at him.

"Well, that man might make a better President than George Bush."

"Wriggly should be President," says Twin B. Wriggly is our neighbors dog. Twin A starts shouting, "Wriggly is President! Wriggly is President!"

"Wriggly might make a better President too," I say.

"Our teacher says George Bush is a good man," says Twin A. "But mommy and daddy say he's a bad man."

And so it begins.

Below is a picture from our vacation. Here I've settled in for the second of four consecutive episodes of Law and Order.

E.L. Doctorow on "Moral Vacancy"

Doctorow declares 4DH the Sociopath-in-Chief.

An Essay on Our President

I fault this president (George W. Bush) for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one year olds who wanted to be what they could be.

On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him; you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion, which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted be what they could be.

They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life...They come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.

How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it.

So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options, but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.

This president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing --- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends. A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children....

He is the President who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead; he does not feel for the thirty five million of us who live in poverty; he does not feel for the forty percent who cannot afford health insurance; he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills --- it is amazing for how many people in this country this President does not feel.

But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest one percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the safety regulations for coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a- half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.

And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.

But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneously aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over the world most of the time.

But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war. The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into is his characteristic trouble.

Finally the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail: How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective war making, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

A Dangerous Asshole

I can't bring myself to write the President's name. Not even in the diminutive form. "Dubya" inspires tedium prior to one's arrival at the second syllable. Even the late, great Molly Ivans' "shrub" has grown trite through sheer overuse. He, like Yahweh, is so overwhelmingly awe-ful, that His name should remain unpronounced for all time.
This is why, whenever this blog refers to the President of the United State, I will refer to his Himness as 4DH. This is shorthand for "Fourth Degree Hemorrhoid," or, clinically speaking, a hemorrhoid that is always outside the anus and cannot be pushed into the anal canal.
This may not be perfect, but it's the best I can do at the moment.
Here's the simple truth that no one in Congress can or will say. 4DH and the oil interests that he and his cronies represent cannot, will not, and won't retreat in Iraq, no matter what. There's too much at stake.
If the US doesn't control oil in the region, someone else will, and chances are, they'll hate us. Unacceptable. If that happens, these enemies are unlikely to continue to buttress the US economy by trading oil in dollars. "Euros, yen, yuan, whatever," they'll say. "Anything but the dollar." This would devalue our over-extended currency, sending the economy into a serious skid. Unacceptable. We'd be forced to rethink the logic of our dying empire and come to terms with the limits of force. Unacceptable. Unthinkable. Over 4DH's dead body. And even that wouldn't help much.
So, what will 4DH do? Escalate. Deepen. Embroil. Get us so entrenched in a regional conflict that the only way out is through.
While Democrats prattle on disingenuously about "Iraqis standing up as we stand down," 4DH and his gang of thugs are playing for keeps, and they have a paradigm that actually makes sense in the real world.
Until we all get blown up, anyway.