[A Bomb a nation] (not) Becoming the Enemy

What spares a group who see themselves pitted against an enemy (some other group) from becoming just like that enemy in order to win? What spares them is the questions they ask themselves. Because answers arrived at by partisans generally are predermined from their questions, it is the questions that should be drawn up with care.

I sit for several hours a week in poorly airconditioned MoveOn.org office space crammed with phones, rickety chairs and tables and determined volunteers. One call at a time, we are finding the seven to ten percent of all MoveOn members who think its so important to get out the vote that they will put aside a few hours of their week, brave the interesting wierdness of calling strangers and help us make the calls. There are few lulls so we don't spend much time chatting with each other but we can't help but try our pet slogans and pitches out on each other. That is how I have come to trust these volunteers have asked "What should we be fighting for?" rather than "How can we win?" In that choice is an opporunity to make a seductive mistake. Even at this foot soldier level, you can see that opposition to the corrupt and cowardly congress and the bush regime is spontaneous and multifacited. There are college kids here, a few gray heads such as mine and 30-somethings.

We now witness in the newspapers the unraveling of the unwholesome coalition of neoconservative and cryptofascist theorizers, corporate influence marketers and the narrow and biggoted excesses of the religious right wing. What put that tacky marriage together in the first place? Tough that wedding of antidemocratic factions seemed to work, the source of their fears and desperation were distinct. It was brokered by folks like Karl Rove who would only ask this question: "how can we win?" There must be a war or some other metaphor that revolves around winning. No principle comes before winning. And so "winning" comes first and all its costs come later. Mr. Rove, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Bush: history has presented you with your tab and its time to pay up. You have taken far more freedom from us than Osama Bin Laden ever dreamed of. You have become the enemy and even your admirers see it.

The crush of things that must be done this month leave me little time to blog but there appears to be a theme so bear with a post that wads together what might better have been two or three short reads. My friend Shokai finds synchronicities but for me the coincidence of the several occasions for blogging is to be understood as arising from a common cause: the poisoning of many aspects of our lives by the pervasive reach of neoconservative policy: the starved arts and sciences, the life-wasting and money-wasting foreign policy, the pall of fear that dims political vision...all these taint a life we used to enjoy living. Everywhere, like rising vomit, we are soon going to try and heave out the poison.

Late last night [why oh why do such good authors get shunted to the deadest time slots] on C-SPAN bookenotes, I caught a wonderful talk by Thom Hartmann promoting his book "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- And What We Can Do About It". The guy taught more insight in to history in 40 minutes than Bush slept through in his years at Yale. It bothers me to be reminded that over 30% of my income is taken by the IRS because I work for a living while the dividend-funded lifestyle parts with only about 15% of its income...not to mention what obscene things are done and what vital things NOT done with that money.

The musical 1776 has just completed a run at the Lyric Stage in Boston. When we took in the show Saturday, the producer introduced the show with the news that it was the best attended performance this company's 32 year history. Ben Franklin's punchlines adorn a serious struggle to get the declaration of independence written by a bunch of men who could easily [and some did] have hoped to keep their comfortable station in life by appeasing King George. The audience gave it a standing ovation. It was not anti-war [probably why it beat out HAIR for the Tony award in 1969] but not too subtly anti-conservative. It sang of how the conservative urges among the continental congress provided all the resistance to declaring our independence. And then last night I was hearing Hartmann reminding me that G. Washington and Thom Jefferson were self identified liberals: the cummulative result of all this stimulation is that I awake this morning aware that our history is still alive, our great experiment is neither dead yet nor forgotten but needs to be defended from its internal enemies, the sightless selfish who find in true democracy a chaotic threat to their priveleges.

The time of separation between moral pondering and political action has past. For too many of us that separation has meant that uninhibited greed, fear and xenophobia have worked their will on the character, policy and enterprises of our nation. We now witness the stinking debris in the wake of that will. Act. Act now. Get your face down to the party meetings, the candidate coffees, put a sign on your lawn and support the Get Out The Vote efforts. Act even though mistakes may be made, because systematic destruction of lives, human rights and the environment are not likely to be among those mistakes.

Yesterday I got an email via a fellow congregant from a group of rabbis against torture.

Vigil Mourning the Death of Our Most Cherished Values

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 at 9 a.m.

Lafayette Square or at a Post Office Near You

"Don't mourn -- organize!" It's time to do both. On Tuesday, October 17, at 9:00 a.m., President Bush is scheduled to sign the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This is the much-opposed bill which eliminates the right to habeas corpus for detainees, allows them to be tried without access to evidence against them and places decisions about interrogation methods solely under the President's control. The Washington Regional Religious Campaign Against Torture (WRRCAT) is calling for a "vigil mourning the death of our most cherished values" and for signing a counter-statement to the one that President Bush will sign that day. Vigil participants will attempt to get this statement to the President.

RHR-NA is a proud co-sponsor of this event and we are writing to urge you to participate in this event or in solidarity events in your local area.

How frightfully inured we have become to Bush wiping his ass with the constitution. The dubious points in support of this act raised by Bush apologists would not be relevant even if they were legally sound: the man already pays far less attention to the laws than his toadies and this one only gives him further latittude.
Sad to report only a few of us from the congregation are willing to show up with signs on a work day morning. It does benefit the Bush league that being in the middle class now means "working too many hours to show up for a protest". Sick as we are of Bush, it would benefit us all if a few more were ready to have America vomit him and his congress out of office. We are looking to other synagogues and a local mosque for some show of solidarity. I have a costume in mind, if I can figure out how to hold my arms out straight for an hour:


I expect a few idiots to lean out of their pickups and yell "traitor" or such at us Tuesday. For them I have the same answer as to the question that begins this post:

Don't get mad. Ask questions.

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Posted by GreenSmile to A Bomb a nation at 10/16/2006 11:11:00 AM

[A Bomb a nation] Timely bit of sociology research

This is one of those findings that mostly make you think "they got grant money to discover something obvious again". But if you think about what a load of grief has come to us because one or two percent of voters did not go to the polls for Gore or Kerry...maybe you'll read this and see if it can be applied in your efforts to get out the vote. The problem isn't that the category of "shy people" [my term] the Ohio State U. researchers identified don't vote...they may or may not. The problem is they don't talk about politics and avoid situations where they might have to talk about politics. In a word, these people are unplugged from the two-way communication that keeps political beliefs from being an untested or completely indefensible mishmosh of recieved notions.

Hayes said... the local political climate for individuals may be more important than the national climate. Self-censors probably are more concerned about how their opinions will be viewed by their immediate friends, neighbors and co-workers

If you are afraid to express your opinion, what makes you so sure you really have one?

For these shy people the first ammendment is already half dead. By citing the rancorous incivility that increasingly characterizes political speech, the research makes me wonder if a larger than ever before and a growing segment sit out the game, as if determining our nation's leadership had become a spectator sport only played by mean, overendowed professionals. The lack of particpation in political debate on the part of individuals impoverishes the election results even if this silenced minority does vote. Nominally, we are citizens by merely having been born here. But the laws affect every one. I don't grant the title "citizen" to any who have not worked to affect the laws through the democratic channels of vote and free speech. "Citizen" is a rank above any office but only if one does the work of citizenship. If you vote like cattle, you get a cowboy for president.

Note: According to the top US law enforcement official, A. Gonzales, doing the job he was appointed by the president to do, the laws do not apply to the president. The congress has put up with this state of affairs. That really ought to get you off your butts to do something about this congress.

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Posted by GreenSmile to A Bomb a nation at 10/12/2006 04:50:00 PM

Is there a Darwinian first mover advantage?

This is a question for any biologists who happen to tune in. In 1981 I was building a house in Massachusetts and spent many days out doors. That summer a massive infestation of gypsy moths denuded the oaks and their droppings fell like rain. The next summer I found a few dead caterpillars, turned into little bags of pus by a fungus called Entomophaga maimaiga. I gave the parasite a leg up by collecting the dead gypsy moths, making a puree of them and freezing jars of this puree to paint on my trees the next season. By 1984, when the moths were picking the trees in the north part of town clean, I hardly saw any damage. My neighborhood has been nearly free of the pests since then. My observation is that humid weather favors the fungus and so drought is when the trees are hit the hardest both for water and from the damned moths. I have a way to mist my woods if need be to insure the survival of my cultured fungi but it has not been necessary yet. I imagine the local moth and fungus populations are now locked in an evolutionary war.

Since selection of fittest requires a reasonably consistent application of some "selection pressure" to prevail in the environment, Darwinian success comes from a reaction to circumstances. This means that the great survivors often have succeeded by doing what humans caution themselves NOT to do: plan and provision for winning the previous war. A species that can manipulate genes in anticipation has a huge advantage in the world as Darwin has explained it to us.

The Question: In the natural evolution battles, does any advantage go to the first antagonist that can nearly wipe out its nemesis? Once ahead, do they stay ahead? Is the logic entirely different for host/parasite compared to two species competing for the same resource or niche?

How far can one stretch a generalization? I know that if you only see Darwin's idea as promoting individuals that can outfight, out forage or outf__k, you miss the whole idea of cooperative adaptation being selected...its a natural mistake for conservatives to make. But when evolution driven by the competion of host/parasite is the context, can you just assume an arms-race like spiral where the balance see-saws from time to time as long as the environment is supporting the host? Probably not that simple but there are certainly applications if it is: I want biological control of winter moths which are presently denuding whole forests in not-too-distant parts of Massachusetts...I want to head them off with a well tuned parasite before they get started. After that, if things are so simple and there is a first mover advantage, the blighters will be held in check as they battel with the germs I give them.

[A Bomb a nation] Flee Enterprise

Who figured out that you could sell crap? Some genius got the idea that you could have a free enterprise solution for getting rid of pollution, stuff with definitely negative worth. We have, for instance, a market in GHG "credits" created out of thin air by just allowing every one to foul up the environment a little and then letting those who don't pollute sell their "credits" to the greedy, negligent industries who can go on adulterating our air and water for a small added cost of doing business.

I suggest the GOP put its love of free enterprise to good use in their hour [well two months would be better ] of need. They should posit that everybody with any power on capitol hill has an "indiscretion allowance" that permits them to nail exactly one page with impunity..no one will tell on them and no one will confront them: business as usual and as it has been for at least the last 5 years. Let them choose the gender of the page...we aren't hypocrits here! For those who find power to be too much of an aphrodesiac ( and what a powerful one it must be if the man with the congressional specialty of protecting underage people from sexual preditors cast caution to the wind more lustily than a sailor on leave?), there would be a market in "congressional lust and cover-up credits" whereby representatives and staffers who keep their pants on and their keyboards pristinely businesslike can sell their allowances to the Lascivious Legislators in return for a favorable vote [but that requires the Lascivious Legislator to actually show up in the House during business hours, bummer!] or a negotiable sum of unused campaign monies if the Lascivious Legislator is so endowed. Now there may not have been enough money and votes for the Republican Foley* to buy his way out but at least Hastert [a name I have labored in vain to not use in the same sentence with the word "sex" as it will surely cause nightmares] could buy a cover-up credit from the staffers from whom he is now fixing to steal those credits. See how free enterprise works?

Oh. Yeah. Well, strictly speaking you are right, we still have pollution. But its paid for! Free enterprise cleaned up the environment, surely it can clean up the House of Representatives!

*note, it is necessary to correctly label all lascivious legislators as to party affiliation in order to correct someone at Fox News who just can't stand it that their favorite party puts sexual predators in congress...so they misreport the guy's party in their coverage!

On a slightly less snarky note, does anyone have the data on whether Foley only went for pages of Republican Representatives? I could be mistaken but since both Democrats and Repulicans have been with us for more than one generation they both manage to procreate. Thus it seems likely libido could be found on either side of the isle. If sex isn't an equal opportunity sin, the Republicans have only their up tight religious backers to blame. [Gawd, can't you just here Bill Clinton smiling and saying to himself "what goes around.."?]

[Have I been reading too much Wonkette?]

And, all snark aside, I agree with every liberal commentator who finds it somewhere between ironic an truly sick that a patern of sexual misconduct and coverup brings down an administration when any amount of thoroughly exposed

1. lying to precipitate a mistaken and badly run war,
2. violating human rights,
3. abrogating the constitution,
4. letting civilians die horribly for want of competant emergency management,
5. vetoing a law passed to express the nation's wish to investigate stem cell based medicine,
6. putting the nation in ruinous debt,
7. botching the diplomacy needed to isolate the countries that really were developing WMD and
8. possibly tampering with vote counts

left that administration so unmoved that it was still mulling plans to bomb or invade Iran.

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Posted by GreenSmile to A Bomb a nation at 10/10/2006 05:32:00 PM

[A Bomb a nation] ...preserve, protect and defend...

the Constitution of the United States.

Would you recognize that phrase? Bush, not one for details, seems to have forgotten that oath.
If voters don't fight for it, and the president and his party fight against it, soon it will fail to protect the average citizen from his own government. That document was drafted with that very protection foremost in the minds of the the nation's founders based on bitter lessons. Will we now have to relearn those lessons?

[updates will dribble in here as I recount for you all the ways the neocon agenda has been a program for the dismantling of the rights that made this a uniquely felicitous country for the growth and prosperity of the individual citizen.]

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Posted by GreenSmile to A Bomb a nation at 10/10/2006 01:21:00 PM

Fascism begins at home

And it has, psychologically speaking, a framework on which its layers of justifcation are draped like so many wind-blown rags caught on a barbed wire fence:

Fear is the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Wikipedia explanation of "insecurity" pretty much does my work for me in the above contention, saying

"Insecurity is often rooted in a person during their childhood years. "

It is only left to me to connect "fear" to "insecurity" which I don't think is much of a stretch. Slightly more of a stretch is needed to claim that the insecure create their own troubles and foster situations in which their apprehensions become justified...for which Wikipedia also has a succinct explanation of an ancient observation with a modern name.

Those inclined to apprehension are also apprehensive of therapists, so what IS the way out of this mess of self perpetuating fear-of-every-strange-thing? Wikipedia even points toward a solution, saying:

"Although difficult, insecurity can be overcome. It takes time and patience and a willingness to believe each person is of great value."

"...a willingness to believe each person is of great value"...that is more of a hurdle for conservatives than for liberals but even conservatives can talk a good game of tolerance acceptance and compassion...at least on Sunday mornings and campaign rallies. We should either hold them to their talk or let no person coddle that lie in their heart.

I think we always have a choice but rarely make it explicitly: life on earth will often present you with contexts where your thought could be either " I am not enough like a fortress" or "The world is a bad and dangerous place." Though neither is terribly enlightened, one is on the right path.

What fortress never fell to the pounding of heavy weapons? What cloud was ever captured or even hurt by arrows and cannon balls?

[A Bomb a nation] Return Key

If you read this, I have hit the return key. It was not so much depression or fatugue or even my usual misgivings about the vanity of blogging as it was a suspicion that I could do something more effective with my time that has kept me from the keyboard.

I am having a bit of a crisis. Mediocre complaining to no-one-in-particular about what dreadful f--kups run things is garden variety, no not even that, is a weed of discourse to be heard in every barroom, truckstop, writhewing talk show or anywhere ignorant gossip and insecurity flow unchecked. I berate us all and myself in particular for getting angrily self indulgent rather than engaging as personally as possible all the wrong headed persons who have assented to the several poisonous lines of policy this administration follows. I did not want to waste any more time chiseling sentences out of feckless anguish. I went back to using my spare minutes to design software and buildings and fix up the house as I did in days gone by. I never had time for blogging, I stole it. I am not a blogger, just an old guy with a job, a family, a house and too much to do. I quit reading TPM and Atrios and well, just about everything.

As this silence wore on, I came to feel vaguely estranged and disconnected from life. Though my role and station in life do not require me to voice anything, not outrage, not insight, nor drivel, something about me has changed so that it feels natural and necessary to bear witness to the folly of our nation and join those who speak against it. I know in my bones I only exist so that my children will succeed me. To let my country lose its bearings and to let our economy and our ecology fall apart for the benefit of a few thousand very wealthy and selfish companies and individuals and their media lackies is to leave my children a hopeless and impoverished world. I cannot detach that much no matter how distasteful involvement in politics may be. Making phone calls to strangers is the last thing I would have imagined doing...yet I do it now. Blogging too is a way to reach a few more people so it is back on my rioting to-do list. Not only is my disengagement from determining the leadership of the US unacceptable, NOBODY has an excuse even though it is a dirty and trying business. The alternative is to leave it to yet dirtier and more selfish parties. The alternative is to abandon your own future to the entropy of greed.

And then I voted in the primary election. I am so lucky. I actually had some choices.
And I still read my science magazines. Even from that corner, I feel scorn for my apathy. Screw Bush and all who go about on his behalf saying scientists are cassandras in search of a budget: There is so much to know and it will help us slow the damage we do if we learn how the world operates. Yes, I grow angry. So what?! I am angry because common sense and simple ideas of right and fair are being systematically violated and I am less of a good neighbor, less of a human being for shirking my job to not let the world remain broken. I am damned if I will let it get more broken than it already is.

--------- Blogging Resumed ----------

Back on the 21st of Sept, when doubts quite unplugged my keyboard, accidents of timing and miscued car repairs put me in earshot of Open Source. Lydon was wrapping up an interview with Niall Furguson. It was so easy, so unhesitatingly easy for this historian to run down a checklist of why empires lose wars...their military equipment hardly matters, but "legitimacy" of the claims made to support the war, the causes, is paramount. Why is it so hard for so many of my fellow citizens to see what others can see so readily? Why are we in Iraq? Well, if we had only understood Bush's campaign promises, we would have known why from the very start:

Candidates like this can only win by default: VOTE!

I promised a series of homespun white papers on all the issues I personally found important. That is forthcoming. I have been supplied with a constant stream of what is wrong with the polices and practices of the currently powerful...more difficult to suggest what would be right but I will take a stab.

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Posted by GreenSmile to A Bomb a nation at 10/09/2006 08:53:00 AM