It's not what Robin Sparkles (Scherbatsky) had in mind when she was a teeny-bopper rock queen (see here), but in some places it's hot enough that one local newspaper feature on the heat had a doctor recommending that people without air-conditioning go to the mall (see here). Not the summer I would like to spend on the campaign trail.
We here in Washington have no lack of hot air, despite the congressional recess, but I shudder to think of the diabetic guy in that story who lives on disability aid, which turns out not to be enough to have A/C.
Some of us who grew up without A/C everywhere are tempted to scream: Stop whining, you Southern, do-nothing slobs! (You do know that Southern states are net takers of the federal aid your lawmakers are constantly trying to shrink, dontcha?) Most of humanity did fine without A/C for millions of years.
Yet the story's not the heat. It's the poverty—in the richest country in the world.
Nobody, not even bigoted, lazy Southern slobs who hate the hand that feeds them, deserves poverty. We're forgetting, aren't we, that as we lick our portfolio's chops in expectation of GM's IPO, there's a lot of poverty out there.
The rising new wave of home foreclosures is almost all caused by unemployment—not Wall Street shenanigans (although those are coming back, too). Just think: the government is giving up its share of GM, after reviving it, now that there's real profit to be made.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
All Unhappy People
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” wrote Leo Tolstoy memorably in the opening sentence of Anna Karenina. He may have been wrong. It's the unhappy who are, in general, quite common and ordinary, the happy rare and uncommon.
In "My Life in Therapy" by Diana Merkin, the author discloses a tidbit about Freud that I had never heard before and struck me with the simplicity of a classic truth:
Maybe the problem is that there is a common unhappiness that, like the common cold, cannot be cured.
Most of us are in some respects garden variety neurotics. We have the hangnails of mental illness. Our parents were not perfect—nor did we understand them perfectly as children. Our spouses fail us—just about as much as we fail them. We are afraid of the dark, of being alone, of being poor—and of living alone and poor in a dark room, most of all. We suffer the wouldacouldashouldas of life.
Our mental hangnails are, to be sure, elaborately shaped, worthy of an exhibit at one of the more bizarre of modern art galleries. But they are still hangnails.
Most of our families are not “dysfunctional.”
Most of us are all fed, clothed, housed, schooled, eventually employed for some of our lives. Sure some are fed and clothed better, schooled in name schools and end up with corner offices overlooking a famous avenue. But the rest of us muddle through just fine.
Families exist mainly to help us muddle through, regardless of the members emotional quirks.
So, perhaps, Tolstoy bears rewriting. All people are alike in their common unhappiness; a few are happy, for a while. All happy families don't stay that way; all unhappy families, welcome to the club.
In "My Life in Therapy" by Diana Merkin, the author discloses a tidbit about Freud that I had never heard before and struck me with the simplicity of a classic truth:
Therapy, as Freud himself made clear, is never about finding a cure for what ails you. Its aim, despite the lyrical moniker it is known by (“the talking cure” was not actually Freud’s phrase but rather that of Dr. Josef Breuer’s patient Bertha Pappenheim, whom Freud wrote about as Anna O.), was always more modest. Freud described it as an effort to convert “hysterical misery” into “common unhappiness,” which suggests a rather minimalist framework against which to judge progress.Common unhappiness. I haven't spent nearly a tenth of the fortune or time the author devoted to psychiatrists, but I am just as convinced that therapists are a colossal waste of time, not to mention money. It may not be their fault.
Maybe the problem is that there is a common unhappiness that, like the common cold, cannot be cured.
Most of us are in some respects garden variety neurotics. We have the hangnails of mental illness. Our parents were not perfect—nor did we understand them perfectly as children. Our spouses fail us—just about as much as we fail them. We are afraid of the dark, of being alone, of being poor—and of living alone and poor in a dark room, most of all. We suffer the wouldacouldashouldas of life.
Our mental hangnails are, to be sure, elaborately shaped, worthy of an exhibit at one of the more bizarre of modern art galleries. But they are still hangnails.
Most of our families are not “dysfunctional.”
Most of us are all fed, clothed, housed, schooled, eventually employed for some of our lives. Sure some are fed and clothed better, schooled in name schools and end up with corner offices overlooking a famous avenue. But the rest of us muddle through just fine.
Families exist mainly to help us muddle through, regardless of the members emotional quirks.
So, perhaps, Tolstoy bears rewriting. All people are alike in their common unhappiness; a few are happy, for a while. All happy families don't stay that way; all unhappy families, welcome to the club.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Where's the Reform in Health Reform?
Having lived in Canada and the United Kingdom, I would have happily had single-payer socialized medicine in the United States, just as President Truman proposed in 1947. But I am mad as hell as I see President Obama's "reform" kick in.
My company got no increase last year for health care (note: it's two words!). That's when the whole medical gouging system was afraid of reform. Now they got the reform they want and rates have jacked up: 29 % for us in no-inflation times!
That's not the worst case.
An acquaintance, I'll call him Bob, lost health insurance because he is unemployed. United Healthcare and Kaiser Permanente rejected him because he suffers from depression -- I'm talking serious, clinical depression. As always, you have to be healthy to sign up for medical care, right?
Bob is on disability. He could work with medication, but he can't get any prescribed.
OK, "reform" kicked in during July. Everyone has to be insured. But if commercial firms won't insure you, Bob learned, you have to have been uninsured 6 months to qualify for "high risk" pool. Then he gets to pay more than $600 a month for insurance that has a $6,000 deductible.
So if you're unemployed, you have to have spent about $13,000 out of pocket. Where, pray tell does someone uninsured (because he is unemployed), get $13,000 in the first place? Get it, unemployed? Meaning little or no income?
This is not the "change" I voted for, Mr. Obama.
My company got no increase last year for health care (note: it's two words!). That's when the whole medical gouging system was afraid of reform. Now they got the reform they want and rates have jacked up: 29 % for us in no-inflation times!
That's not the worst case.
An acquaintance, I'll call him Bob, lost health insurance because he is unemployed. United Healthcare and Kaiser Permanente rejected him because he suffers from depression -- I'm talking serious, clinical depression. As always, you have to be healthy to sign up for medical care, right?
Bob is on disability. He could work with medication, but he can't get any prescribed.
OK, "reform" kicked in during July. Everyone has to be insured. But if commercial firms won't insure you, Bob learned, you have to have been uninsured 6 months to qualify for "high risk" pool. Then he gets to pay more than $600 a month for insurance that has a $6,000 deductible.
So if you're unemployed, you have to have spent about $13,000 out of pocket. Where, pray tell does someone uninsured (because he is unemployed), get $13,000 in the first place? Get it, unemployed? Meaning little or no income?
This is not the "change" I voted for, Mr. Obama.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Death Month
(This is a repost for the benefit of the people involved.)
For two sisters I know who live together, and their third sibling far away, today is what they regard as the second "Death Day" in less than a month. August brings anniversaries of the death of both their parents.
Other people they know have died this month, but nothing quite tops the loss of a father in childhood. A father who by all accounts was an older man besotted with the daughters of his senectitude, yet a strong-willed pater familias with ideas of yesteryear that would have clashed with these children's in a matter of a few years.
The young woman he'd met as a spy in World War II -- true story! -- was left to spend nearly half a century on her own; well provided, yet surely bereft as she raised three daughters. Decades later she still referred to herself as Mrs. X, rather than by her own given first and family names.
He died what must have been an excruciating struggle with cancer a few decades earlier than the actuarial expectations would have led anyone to expect. She died at a ripe old age, in her sleep.
They were both individuals whose lives, and the artifacts of their lives, with which I became acquainted long after the heyday of either one, bespoke a manner of abiding seemingly now gone. People of few spoken emotions, of thorough learning received and augmented as a given, lucky enough to be born to see the fruits of their labors pay off handsomely.
They were people of distinction, yet also rebels. She was a mother and housewife with a then-rare graduate degree designed to fulfill her unrealized ambition to run worldwide cartels. (I recounted her interment here.) He was that unusual businessman with a love of Dante Alighieri.
After people have lived long enough, there are always death days throughout the year; dates that remind us of people long gone.
In my mother's childhood it had been December, for her older sister, whose teenage death had put an entire household in mourning. For me it was November for years, the month my father died; that is, until my mother died on a date that was, only a few years after her passing, destined to become famous -- September 11.
Now I have photographs in which everyone portrayed is now dead. People I knew, people whose jokes still resonate from the picture as if they were still speaking.
I suspect that is what the two sisters will recall: their parents in their light summer clothes having evening drinks by the lake beside their home; he tossing witticisms, she laughing gently and her laughter rippling across the water.
For two sisters I know who live together, and their third sibling far away, today is what they regard as the second "Death Day" in less than a month. August brings anniversaries of the death of both their parents.
Other people they know have died this month, but nothing quite tops the loss of a father in childhood. A father who by all accounts was an older man besotted with the daughters of his senectitude, yet a strong-willed pater familias with ideas of yesteryear that would have clashed with these children's in a matter of a few years.
The young woman he'd met as a spy in World War II -- true story! -- was left to spend nearly half a century on her own; well provided, yet surely bereft as she raised three daughters. Decades later she still referred to herself as Mrs. X, rather than by her own given first and family names.
He died what must have been an excruciating struggle with cancer a few decades earlier than the actuarial expectations would have led anyone to expect. She died at a ripe old age, in her sleep.
They were both individuals whose lives, and the artifacts of their lives, with which I became acquainted long after the heyday of either one, bespoke a manner of abiding seemingly now gone. People of few spoken emotions, of thorough learning received and augmented as a given, lucky enough to be born to see the fruits of their labors pay off handsomely.
They were people of distinction, yet also rebels. She was a mother and housewife with a then-rare graduate degree designed to fulfill her unrealized ambition to run worldwide cartels. (I recounted her interment here.) He was that unusual businessman with a love of Dante Alighieri.
After people have lived long enough, there are always death days throughout the year; dates that remind us of people long gone.
In my mother's childhood it had been December, for her older sister, whose teenage death had put an entire household in mourning. For me it was November for years, the month my father died; that is, until my mother died on a date that was, only a few years after her passing, destined to become famous -- September 11.
Now I have photographs in which everyone portrayed is now dead. People I knew, people whose jokes still resonate from the picture as if they were still speaking.
I suspect that is what the two sisters will recall: their parents in their light summer clothes having evening drinks by the lake beside their home; he tossing witticisms, she laughing gently and her laughter rippling across the water.
Monday, August 02, 2010
Why Congresscritters (and "Outsider" opponents) Don't Care About You
Congress and the self-dubbed "outsiders" who are vying to win their seat this November ultimately don't give a damn about the likes of you and me (assuming you're not a billionaire) -- nor much, much less the unemployed and the poor. The question is: How come?
Aren't these supposed to be the people's spokesmen and women defending "the little guy" (and gal)? No. Here are three reasons why:
So, if they're not average folk, they don't need our campaign money and can do just fine without our votes -- why in hell would they care?
Aren't these supposed to be the people's spokesmen and women defending "the little guy" (and gal)? No. Here are three reasons why:
- They are not like you and me. Almost anyone who runs for Congress, certainly almost everybody in Congress, is a multimillionaire. They went to the best (read: most expensive, private) schools and played ... what's that Iroquois game called, again? ... ah, yes, lacrosse.
- You and me can't finance electoral campaigns. Didn't the last presidential candidates spend about $100 million apiece? You can frisk me all you want, but I don't have that kind of money. If I did, why would I throw it away on someone else's political campaign? The only reason would be to get laws that apply to everybody else, but not me.
- You and me don't have the necessary votes. Who votes the most? The elderly, who are as a whole well off and want their well-being protected. The rich and most educated, ditto. Some of the middle class (including those people who can't tell Jay Leno what the candidate they voted for looks like) -- most against their best interests. Not enough people who depend on public services and help ever vote.
So, if they're not average folk, they don't need our campaign money and can do just fine without our votes -- why in hell would they care?
Sunday, July 25, 2010
It's Still Legal to Be Racist
The lesson no one seems to be taking away from l'affaire Shirley Sherrod is that in the United States it's still legal to be racist. The Constitution protects the right to think racist thoughts and express racist ideas; the only thing legislation since 1964 bars is acting on these thoughts or ideas.
Even in the so-called Fox News network's truncated and out-of-context video of Sherrod's statements, she was perfectly within her rights to express a dislike of whites. That's not what she was expressing in the full unexpurgated version, but if she had been, it would have been legal.
No civil servant, employer, supervisor, renter or seller, and so forth, may legally refuse goods, services or opportunities or rights to anyone merely on the basis that the individual is white, Christian, British, male or (in some states) heterosexual. That's the law.
However, you can caricature and even express a hostile disposition in your mind and in your speech against any legally protected group. Neither the civil rights movement, nor much less Congress, ever thought the government could ever actually change minds by law -- only actual external behavior.
The psychologist William James was fond of this approach: force yourself smile and you'll feel more lighthearted. It's a very American approach to social problems such as racism.
Even in the so-called Fox News network's truncated and out-of-context video of Sherrod's statements, she was perfectly within her rights to express a dislike of whites. That's not what she was expressing in the full unexpurgated version, but if she had been, it would have been legal.
No civil servant, employer, supervisor, renter or seller, and so forth, may legally refuse goods, services or opportunities or rights to anyone merely on the basis that the individual is white, Christian, British, male or (in some states) heterosexual. That's the law.
However, you can caricature and even express a hostile disposition in your mind and in your speech against any legally protected group. Neither the civil rights movement, nor much less Congress, ever thought the government could ever actually change minds by law -- only actual external behavior.
The psychologist William James was fond of this approach: force yourself smile and you'll feel more lighthearted. It's a very American approach to social problems such as racism.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Some Blogging Changes
I don't have it in me to keep my day job and write my little essays with great frequency. Therefore, I have started a separate blog, Headline du Jour, for pithy daily commentary. This blog, Antipodes (formerly Shavings Off My Mind), will become my weekly "editorial" or "sermonette." Spanish readers may also try Desde Yanquilandia, my effort to comment on life here in the First World, with some perspectives borrowed from the Third.
Friday, July 16, 2010
45 Days without Money
If you have ever gone without any income or benefits for 45 days, welcome to the world of roughly 2,138,000 Americans this week. What crime did they commit? They had the effrontery of not being able to find a job before June 2, 2010, when Congress allowed extended unemployment benefits to expire.
"Oh, extended" you say? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6.8 million unemployed Americans have lacked a job for more than six months. That's 46% of out-of-work Americans, which is an all-time historical high (a detailed study on this is available from the National Employment Law Project here).
Now, of course, not all of them will lose benefits right now. But keep in mind that federal extended benefits had provided up 99 weeks (close to two years) of benefits in some states.
That sound too long? Republicans thinks so: they say the benefits are keeping people from looking for a job, which is ridiculous since the last national unemployment figure shrank to 9.5 percent only because people left the workforce in huge numbers. They were discouraged just before Congress cut them off.
Now they're just plain desperate.
"Oh, extended" you say? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6.8 million unemployed Americans have lacked a job for more than six months. That's 46% of out-of-work Americans, which is an all-time historical high (a detailed study on this is available from the National Employment Law Project here).
Now, of course, not all of them will lose benefits right now. But keep in mind that federal extended benefits had provided up 99 weeks (close to two years) of benefits in some states.
That sound too long? Republicans thinks so: they say the benefits are keeping people from looking for a job, which is ridiculous since the last national unemployment figure shrank to 9.5 percent only because people left the workforce in huge numbers. They were discouraged just before Congress cut them off.
Now they're just plain desperate.
Friday, July 09, 2010
Goodbye, Uptown Cathay
Incredible! After so many years I don't know where to write or call Peter, the man I have known as the proprietor of the Uptown Cathay since 1991.
I'd like to tell him that I will miss him and his food. For years, it seems, this cozy little neighborhood place was where I went with my younger son every Saturday around lunch time.
We had a prandial ritual that the waitress, Grace, knew by heart: pan-fried pork rolls and a half-Peking duck. Enough to feed an entire Chinese family. She didn't know, of course, about our rip-roaring game of 20 Questions.
You know the game: I think of someone famous and you have 20 chances to ask me for clues to the identity of this person. You can only ask questions that can be answered "yes" or "no." Female? American? 20th century? (It was the 20th century, then.)
We began playing traditional 20 Questions, although I gave my son a handicap appropriate for his age (6? 7?). When it was time for him to guess, I once chose the educator after whom his school was named. Later came the grand figures of history; of course, never Hitler or Napoleon, because they were too easy.
Later still, came Reverse 20 Questions, in which the guesser would ask directly "Are you thinking of Napoleon?" If you were, he'd have to continue guessing. The object was for the guesser to ask a name you weren't thinking of, so you had to keep thinking of new historical figures every second.
Then came Anything Goes 20 Questions, a variant of the traditional game in which you didn't have to think of a person: it could be a thing or an idea. I was finally defeated with my son's thinking of "nothingness." He was then about 11 and about to graduate from going anywhere with his father, even if it was just half a block from home.
Of course, the restaurant evolved, just like our game.
The enclosed open-air table area on the sidewalk (lower left, by the date imprint), wasn't there originally. Nor did the menu include Japanese sushi, nor Thai food (added after the Thai Room, once across the street, closed its doors). Before the Cathay, there'd been a deli that was never quite to my taste -- or wallet.
In later years, after my family moved away and I remained. I kept going to the Cathay because I knew the menu by heart. When I didn't know what to order, Grace, who has just had her second child, could pretty much guess something I'd like. One could call that Food 20 Questions, except that the idea would be lost in translation.
Once, Peter gave me a formal Chinese dress shirt similar to one of his that I had admired. It was an Asian version of the guayabera. The one he gave me was too tight around the abdomen. I still have it, always hoping to slim into it next year.
Finally, there came on June 19 the occasion of a friendly postmortem of reading by Sam Munson from his new novel "November Criminals" across the street -- at the bookstore that is (sigh!) on the block to be sold.
That night, I had longtime friends with me, along with my younger son. I had had lunch there and Peter had told me his troubles. This was why I'd brought my entourage after the reading; I was set on spending my way into saving the place.
Peter's wife came over and remarked that she had seen me earlier, so I told her of my "plan." She hugged me.
Next Saturday, the place was shut.
 |
| Uptown Cathay Restaurant, Connecticut Avenue, Washington, D.C. |
We had a prandial ritual that the waitress, Grace, knew by heart: pan-fried pork rolls and a half-Peking duck. Enough to feed an entire Chinese family. She didn't know, of course, about our rip-roaring game of 20 Questions.
You know the game: I think of someone famous and you have 20 chances to ask me for clues to the identity of this person. You can only ask questions that can be answered "yes" or "no." Female? American? 20th century? (It was the 20th century, then.)
We began playing traditional 20 Questions, although I gave my son a handicap appropriate for his age (6? 7?). When it was time for him to guess, I once chose the educator after whom his school was named. Later came the grand figures of history; of course, never Hitler or Napoleon, because they were too easy.
Later still, came Reverse 20 Questions, in which the guesser would ask directly "Are you thinking of Napoleon?" If you were, he'd have to continue guessing. The object was for the guesser to ask a name you weren't thinking of, so you had to keep thinking of new historical figures every second.
Then came Anything Goes 20 Questions, a variant of the traditional game in which you didn't have to think of a person: it could be a thing or an idea. I was finally defeated with my son's thinking of "nothingness." He was then about 11 and about to graduate from going anywhere with his father, even if it was just half a block from home.
Of course, the restaurant evolved, just like our game.
The enclosed open-air table area on the sidewalk (lower left, by the date imprint), wasn't there originally. Nor did the menu include Japanese sushi, nor Thai food (added after the Thai Room, once across the street, closed its doors). Before the Cathay, there'd been a deli that was never quite to my taste -- or wallet.
In later years, after my family moved away and I remained. I kept going to the Cathay because I knew the menu by heart. When I didn't know what to order, Grace, who has just had her second child, could pretty much guess something I'd like. One could call that Food 20 Questions, except that the idea would be lost in translation.
Once, Peter gave me a formal Chinese dress shirt similar to one of his that I had admired. It was an Asian version of the guayabera. The one he gave me was too tight around the abdomen. I still have it, always hoping to slim into it next year.
Finally, there came on June 19 the occasion of a friendly postmortem of reading by Sam Munson from his new novel "November Criminals" across the street -- at the bookstore that is (sigh!) on the block to be sold.
That night, I had longtime friends with me, along with my younger son. I had had lunch there and Peter had told me his troubles. This was why I'd brought my entourage after the reading; I was set on spending my way into saving the place.
Peter's wife came over and remarked that she had seen me earlier, so I told her of my "plan." She hugged me.
Next Saturday, the place was shut.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
To love is to bug
This is a new insight that comes courtesy of my special friend, who is prone to flashes of affection, followed by retreats assuring me she won't “bug” me any more. I've come to realize I like being “bugged” that way.
My mother was very affectionate and no one has, or likely will, ever quite match that warmth that comes from the one person to whom you are perfectly beloved, no matter what, for as long as she lives. I lost that when I was 17 and moved away, later irretrievably when she died.
Yet I was not a mama's child. I even complained to her about the sheer arrogance of mothers on Mother's Day.
This was a variation on the critique raised by a classmate to baffle our religion teacher. My classmate had argued that, given all the insistence on worship and obedience attributed to the Supreme Being, God must surely be a preening narcissist.
And, hey, weren't mothers next to God in authority, pomp and circumstance on their day — as well as in and sheer guilt-inducing power if their desires were somehow ignored? And, boy! Mothers could surely bug you with embarrassing displays of affection in front of your peers!
Some people — especially North Americans — react to affection with the horror reserved for strangers' accidental brushes with one's shoulder or arm on the subway or bus. All right, so the Parisian lovers — I have seen this with my own eyes — go to the other extreme with their ... um ... French kissing and embracing on busy corners.
In the end, though, love involves a bit of “bugging” the loved one who is reading The New York Times' book review. You might get carried away by your affection to kiss and caress the reader's arm. For no reason. Even if no one sees.
My mother was very affectionate and no one has, or likely will, ever quite match that warmth that comes from the one person to whom you are perfectly beloved, no matter what, for as long as she lives. I lost that when I was 17 and moved away, later irretrievably when she died.
Yet I was not a mama's child. I even complained to her about the sheer arrogance of mothers on Mother's Day.
This was a variation on the critique raised by a classmate to baffle our religion teacher. My classmate had argued that, given all the insistence on worship and obedience attributed to the Supreme Being, God must surely be a preening narcissist.
And, hey, weren't mothers next to God in authority, pomp and circumstance on their day — as well as in and sheer guilt-inducing power if their desires were somehow ignored? And, boy! Mothers could surely bug you with embarrassing displays of affection in front of your peers!
Some people — especially North Americans — react to affection with the horror reserved for strangers' accidental brushes with one's shoulder or arm on the subway or bus. All right, so the Parisian lovers — I have seen this with my own eyes — go to the other extreme with their ... um ... French kissing and embracing on busy corners.
In the end, though, love involves a bit of “bugging” the loved one who is reading The New York Times' book review. You might get carried away by your affection to kiss and caress the reader's arm. For no reason. Even if no one sees.
Saturday, July 03, 2010
The Will to Be Blond
In a discussion of whether we have free will — we don't —I suddenly became fascinated with the imaginary possibility that we could decide our physical beings, pretty much the way we can design an avatar.
I would give myself my overall body as it was when I was somewhere between 17 to 23: thinner, more limber, more easily renewed of energy and vitality.
Then, what if I had the ability to change coloring? I could literally make my skin green with envy or red with anger, look a reflective albino pale if I was crossing a street at night or greenish if I was trying to surprise someone (for something like a birthday, at a picnic.
The color toggle could apply also to hair and eyes. I could be blond or redheaded and have those blue-green-gray irises that change with the mood.
To improve on the present body, I'd make myself permanently and invincibly immune to the common cold and STDs.
And, hey, while I'm playing, maybe I could design some “template” appearances that I could change in and out of, like a suit.
Just imagine what you could do ...
I would give myself my overall body as it was when I was somewhere between 17 to 23: thinner, more limber, more easily renewed of energy and vitality.
Then, what if I had the ability to change coloring? I could literally make my skin green with envy or red with anger, look a reflective albino pale if I was crossing a street at night or greenish if I was trying to surprise someone (for something like a birthday, at a picnic.
The color toggle could apply also to hair and eyes. I could be blond or redheaded and have those blue-green-gray irises that change with the mood.
To improve on the present body, I'd make myself permanently and invincibly immune to the common cold and STDs.
And, hey, while I'm playing, maybe I could design some “template” appearances that I could change in and out of, like a suit.
Just imagine what you could do ...
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Socialism isn't ... and is ...
Since forever and a day the Democratic Socialists of America has embodied to me, largely because of my admiration for founder Michael Harrington for picking up from the ruins of the old Socialist Party, the only kind of U.S. socialism I could abide.
Like Harrington, I chucked Catholicism, but not its social teachings, on which I grew up. Of course, I was growing up in Latin America, with a foot in the USA, and liberation theology blowing through the Catholic schools and seminaries just as U.S. soldiers committed atrocities in Vietnam.
The singular “Other American,” as a biographer dubbed Harrington, wrote a book that set off the spark that led to the War on Poverty, in which — despite Ronald Reagan's cynical quip — poverty was rolled back, from 19% to 11% in less than a decade, a feat never repeated. Poverty today in the USA hovers at a little more than 12%.
Yet socialism isn't really about poverty, but the economic order. In all socioeconomic systems conceivable, there will always be those who have less than everyone else — although not necessarily in as abject and degrading a manner as we know poverty today — and those who have more than everyone else — albeit not the stratospheric wealth we know today.
Socialism aims to reorganize the way society goes about waging the human struggle for survival, so that everyone participates, as an owner, in deciding how all the available resources are used. We can, of course, all be as stupid together as the present elite.
Wouldn't you rather make your own mistakes than suffer those of Wall Street or the Pentagon?
Socialism is not — Lenin be damned — about setting up a police state. Nor is socialism about setting up a comfortable bureaucracy for some to claim to represent workers as they play golf with the bosses, nor much less about championing the issues raised by our particular sexual or ethnic identity, nor even about “reforming” anything, be it the money-clogged electoral system or the inequitable and wasteful medical system.
In a real socialist society democracy we would all get a chance to make sure there was more butter than guns, for all enough butter and bread, and — as the women of Lawrence, Massachusetts, sang nearly a century ago — roses, too.
Like Harrington, I chucked Catholicism, but not its social teachings, on which I grew up. Of course, I was growing up in Latin America, with a foot in the USA, and liberation theology blowing through the Catholic schools and seminaries just as U.S. soldiers committed atrocities in Vietnam.
The singular “Other American,” as a biographer dubbed Harrington, wrote a book that set off the spark that led to the War on Poverty, in which — despite Ronald Reagan's cynical quip — poverty was rolled back, from 19% to 11% in less than a decade, a feat never repeated. Poverty today in the USA hovers at a little more than 12%.
Yet socialism isn't really about poverty, but the economic order. In all socioeconomic systems conceivable, there will always be those who have less than everyone else — although not necessarily in as abject and degrading a manner as we know poverty today — and those who have more than everyone else — albeit not the stratospheric wealth we know today.
Socialism aims to reorganize the way society goes about waging the human struggle for survival, so that everyone participates, as an owner, in deciding how all the available resources are used. We can, of course, all be as stupid together as the present elite.
Wouldn't you rather make your own mistakes than suffer those of Wall Street or the Pentagon?
Socialism is not — Lenin be damned — about setting up a police state. Nor is socialism about setting up a comfortable bureaucracy for some to claim to represent workers as they play golf with the bosses, nor much less about championing the issues raised by our particular sexual or ethnic identity, nor even about “reforming” anything, be it the money-clogged electoral system or the inequitable and wasteful medical system.
In a real socialist society democracy we would all get a chance to make sure there was more butter than guns, for all enough butter and bread, and — as the women of Lawrence, Massachusetts, sang nearly a century ago — roses, too.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Bravo, President Obama!
Watching President Obama speak in the Rose Garden yesterday, I was transfixed by the way he finally grasped the staff of stern, paternal, take-charge leadership. What he did in response to civilian vs. military bickering had the substance of presidential timber.
Whatever one may think about the military intervention in Afghanistan or the Rolling Stone piece (click here) about General Stanley McChrystal, no president should allow the public appearance of disunity at the highest levels to persist a moment longer than is practically necessary.
It sends the wrong message to friends, critics, tagalongs and enemies.
Obama knows full well that not everyone agrees with his policy, jot and tittle. As an intelligent man with a sense of humor, he probably even chuckled at some of the juvenile antics of McChrystal and his staff as reported in the magazine — I certainly did.
But, at present, Obama isn't a private citizen with an expansive intellect: he is head of state in a republic that persists in the historical tradition that people in uniform follow the civilian political leadership, do or die.
Everyone needed to know he is willing to bite the bullet and assume the command that we, the people, placed in his able hands.
Among those who needed to see this were voters like me who were disappointed Obama didn't show such mettle to bring about real reform in health and finance.
Obama's alleged friends also needed to see this: from his self-important band of national security staffers in the White House, to the spineless marvels pretending to lead the Democratic Party in Congress, to the men and women in that den of contracting thieves known as the Pentagon.
Include also critics such as such as the Sunday TV talk show second-guessers, the clueless Republicans, the appallingly undereducated tea-partiers and, yes, the self-inflated windbags such as David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer.
Count among the tagalongs the governments of France and Canada, European businesses, bowing Asian "allies" ready to stab in the back anyone who dares expose themselves that way and the leaders of the Israeli client-state who think they can go it alone.
Then there are the enemies, from the obvious ones in the Middle East, such as Al Qaeda and buddies to the enemies of the United States comfortably ensconced within our borders, less obvious but as venomous, such as BP, the oil industry as a whole, the protection racket called the insurance industry and so many others among the few and the corporate.
All take note: President Obama won't take any more childishness.
Still, I would hope Obama can find a quiet place for McChrystal doing the black ops at which he excelled (which match my prescription as explained here).
Also, I do hope that he shows the same mettle in domestic matters where conflict just as deadly as Afghanistan is going on.
Whatever one may think about the military intervention in Afghanistan or the Rolling Stone piece (click here) about General Stanley McChrystal, no president should allow the public appearance of disunity at the highest levels to persist a moment longer than is practically necessary.
It sends the wrong message to friends, critics, tagalongs and enemies.
Obama knows full well that not everyone agrees with his policy, jot and tittle. As an intelligent man with a sense of humor, he probably even chuckled at some of the juvenile antics of McChrystal and his staff as reported in the magazine — I certainly did.
But, at present, Obama isn't a private citizen with an expansive intellect: he is head of state in a republic that persists in the historical tradition that people in uniform follow the civilian political leadership, do or die.
Everyone needed to know he is willing to bite the bullet and assume the command that we, the people, placed in his able hands.
Among those who needed to see this were voters like me who were disappointed Obama didn't show such mettle to bring about real reform in health and finance.
Obama's alleged friends also needed to see this: from his self-important band of national security staffers in the White House, to the spineless marvels pretending to lead the Democratic Party in Congress, to the men and women in that den of contracting thieves known as the Pentagon.
Include also critics such as such as the Sunday TV talk show second-guessers, the clueless Republicans, the appallingly undereducated tea-partiers and, yes, the self-inflated windbags such as David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer.
Count among the tagalongs the governments of France and Canada, European businesses, bowing Asian "allies" ready to stab in the back anyone who dares expose themselves that way and the leaders of the Israeli client-state who think they can go it alone.
Then there are the enemies, from the obvious ones in the Middle East, such as Al Qaeda and buddies to the enemies of the United States comfortably ensconced within our borders, less obvious but as venomous, such as BP, the oil industry as a whole, the protection racket called the insurance industry and so many others among the few and the corporate.
All take note: President Obama won't take any more childishness.
Still, I would hope Obama can find a quiet place for McChrystal doing the black ops at which he excelled (which match my prescription as explained here).
Also, I do hope that he shows the same mettle in domestic matters where conflict just as deadly as Afghanistan is going on.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Feeling Native
For days I've mulled over a New York Times story about the town of Fremont, Neb., population 25,000, which finds itself in a raw divide over immigration. What must it feel like to experience the fading away of the town you've known forever into merely a pimple on the globe's fanny?
At the core of all the alleged immigration anxiety that has prompted an unenforceable law in Arizona, self-anointed "Minutemen" in Herndon, Va., and ripples of xenophobia in countless little towns like Fremont, where suddenly the descendants of immigrants oppose immigration, lie not merely some Angloes hankering for their pre-Civil Rights white sheets, much less any real knowledge of immigration demographics, policy or law.
At heart, this is about being a former something, in Fremont's case a mid-19th century railroad and farming town, that has now been absorbed into a more cosmopolitan world, courtesy of urban sprawl, globalization and the Internet.
Fremont is now only an exurb of Omaha, which is "big city" as it gets in Nebraska — been there. Herndon, whose "bustling downtown" you can pass in less time than it takes to read this sentence, had even less significance before its notoriety.
As for Arizona — what can you say about a state that doesn't even observe daylight saving time? — it's been downhill since the alliances between the Pueblos and the Navajos, long before Europeans set foot in the area.
Bewildering, isn't it, to dwell in country music's homeland (or a wannabe facsimile) — with whispered-about wife-swapping, divorce-prone barroom flirting and unmentionable inbred farmland fornication — to awaken with the world at your doorstep and all your wailing misunderstood.
Nothing would seem to resemble the complaint of a hateful Arizona kicker than that of a bewildered Afghan mountaineer (or Mexican farmer or Navajo tribesman or Pueblo villager): "Where do these people come from and what do they think they're doing in my country?"
Watch out, folks, history's multilingual, multicultural bulldozer is coming!
At the core of all the alleged immigration anxiety that has prompted an unenforceable law in Arizona, self-anointed "Minutemen" in Herndon, Va., and ripples of xenophobia in countless little towns like Fremont, where suddenly the descendants of immigrants oppose immigration, lie not merely some Angloes hankering for their pre-Civil Rights white sheets, much less any real knowledge of immigration demographics, policy or law.
At heart, this is about being a former something, in Fremont's case a mid-19th century railroad and farming town, that has now been absorbed into a more cosmopolitan world, courtesy of urban sprawl, globalization and the Internet.
Fremont is now only an exurb of Omaha, which is "big city" as it gets in Nebraska — been there. Herndon, whose "bustling downtown" you can pass in less time than it takes to read this sentence, had even less significance before its notoriety.
As for Arizona — what can you say about a state that doesn't even observe daylight saving time? — it's been downhill since the alliances between the Pueblos and the Navajos, long before Europeans set foot in the area.
Bewildering, isn't it, to dwell in country music's homeland (or a wannabe facsimile) — with whispered-about wife-swapping, divorce-prone barroom flirting and unmentionable inbred farmland fornication — to awaken with the world at your doorstep and all your wailing misunderstood.
Nothing would seem to resemble the complaint of a hateful Arizona kicker than that of a bewildered Afghan mountaineer (or Mexican farmer or Navajo tribesman or Pueblo villager): "Where do these people come from and what do they think they're doing in my country?"
Watch out, folks, history's multilingual, multicultural bulldozer is coming!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Elect Alvin Green?
Like most folks, I know almost nothing about Alvin Green, the nominated South Carolina Democratic Party candidate for U.S. Senate. He's a 32-year-old military veteran who has neither campaigned nor raised money, other than the blatantly anti-democratic $10,400 candidacy filing fee. Green, who is black, won a primary in a state that has not elected an African-American in living memory.
Green apparently has said nothing and seems a bit confused about his candidacy, let alone his platform -- a blank slate so far. Some say he won the primary because his was the top name on the ballot.
The Democratic Party bosses are squirming, of course. But I wonder what it would be like to have in the Senate an ordinary citizen, even a perplexed one. If this is a Republican dirty trick, as some are suggesting, let's have more of them.
What if the people conducted the people's business in Congress, instead of expensively tailored and coiffed slick mouthpieces of the wealthy and corporations?
Democracy, a novel idea.
Green apparently has said nothing and seems a bit confused about his candidacy, let alone his platform -- a blank slate so far. Some say he won the primary because his was the top name on the ballot.
The Democratic Party bosses are squirming, of course. But I wonder what it would be like to have in the Senate an ordinary citizen, even a perplexed one. If this is a Republican dirty trick, as some are suggesting, let's have more of them.
What if the people conducted the people's business in Congress, instead of expensively tailored and coiffed slick mouthpieces of the wealthy and corporations?
Democracy, a novel idea.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Warning to Whitey
There's a lot of anger brewing about a black man in the White House being left holding the bag by a bunch of white creeps in the oil business, Wall Street and the insurance industry. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
A Talibani and Jihadist West?
There's a growing tendency, among those of us who are non-Muslims and non-Jews in Western societies, to adopt a form of anti-Arab intolerance that mimics the reverse of the Taliban's and a pro-Israeli dogmatism that in some respects mirrors Al Qaeda's jihadism. Both have gained currency and a measure of respectability particularly since September 11, 2001.
Events on that date seem to justify, on one hand, sweeping negative generalizations about the Arab world, Islam and jihadism. What gets spewed as verities would be rejected out of hand if spoken by Arabs or Muslims of, say, the European world and modern rationalism.
Accompanying the smears and sheer nonsense about Arabs and Muslims, is a Gentile knee-jerk hypersensitivity to anything that seems remotely critical of Jews, Judaism or the State of Israel. Here again, the position would be laughable if it were Jews or Israelis somehow raising eyebrows about, say, Canada and Canadians.
Some of us feel entitled to declare that
We also make history revolve on the one incident that happened in two of our cities, ignoring the many similar and much more devastating incidents that happened in Arab cities and towns as Western powers (and Israel) engaged in fanatical pursuit of the holy dollar and holy petroleum. Our hurt matters, so theirs does not?
A similar and connected myopia concerns Semitic chauvinism, according to which we get illogical leaps, such as the notions that
We actually dishonor Israel, as some of its current and recent leaders have done, when we allow its rogue governments to prevail in the court of public opinion.
The swath of land between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean will not find peace until all of us admit our share of wrongdoings and follies, and begin to show tolerance for those of others with whom we disagree, or are even locked with in conflict.
We ought to lead to peace by example.
Events on that date seem to justify, on one hand, sweeping negative generalizations about the Arab world, Islam and jihadism. What gets spewed as verities would be rejected out of hand if spoken by Arabs or Muslims of, say, the European world and modern rationalism.
Accompanying the smears and sheer nonsense about Arabs and Muslims, is a Gentile knee-jerk hypersensitivity to anything that seems remotely critical of Jews, Judaism or the State of Israel. Here again, the position would be laughable if it were Jews or Israelis somehow raising eyebrows about, say, Canada and Canadians.
Some of us feel entitled to declare that
- Sharia law should be banned or somehow rejected;
- the voluntary wearing of the burqa or the niqab is an affront to human rights; and
- any unashamed presence of Muslims in the USA or Europe is a jihadist slap in the face.
We also make history revolve on the one incident that happened in two of our cities, ignoring the many similar and much more devastating incidents that happened in Arab cities and towns as Western powers (and Israel) engaged in fanatical pursuit of the holy dollar and holy petroleum. Our hurt matters, so theirs does not?
A similar and connected myopia concerns Semitic chauvinism, according to which we get illogical leaps, such as the notions that
- Germany and Poland were uninhabitable places after 1945 for Germans and Poles who happened to be Jewish;
- an act of piracy on the high seas that involves killing of unarmed civilians is a hallowed act of self-defense; and
- when Israel is responsible for espionage against its main financier, the United States, or for massive killings of Lebanese civilians who aren't even Muslim, Tel Aviv must be defended axiomatically.
We actually dishonor Israel, as some of its current and recent leaders have done, when we allow its rogue governments to prevail in the court of public opinion.
The swath of land between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean will not find peace until all of us admit our share of wrongdoings and follies, and begin to show tolerance for those of others with whom we disagree, or are even locked with in conflict.
We ought to lead to peace by example.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
The Poor Tax
Why is it that almost every day I am reminded of the Great Depression, in particular the Parker Brothers Monopoly game and its "Poor Tax" card? By taxes, I mean the endless stream of corporate scams on the poorest, least educated people.
If you pay attention at what's promoted you'll find come-ons to
"Instead of waiting in line to cash your paycheck, have your pay automatically deposited to a Chase Pay Card Plus account." Sure ...
They will allow you FREE point-of-sale transactions (they filch from the merchants, instead).
But wait ... what's this about "3.5% per international conversion rate transaction"?
This is targeted to immigrants (who else would regularly need international remittances?), in addition to the welfare mother waitress with three minimum-wage jobs living in a motel and dreaming of Aruba. The "unbanked."
Did the banks discover the low-income worker "market" while bilking states that "privatized" and "automated" their public assistance programs at the behest of the Bushies? You betcha.
There's a sucker born every day in America -- and it isn't the JPirateMorgan Chase Bank.
If you pay attention at what's promoted you'll find come-ons to
- call toll-free for "easy money" ... just sign over your car and pay interest forever
- get help with bankruptcy, foreclosure, the IRS ... from "fixers"
- ask a pharmaceutical or medical supply company ... to bilk Medicaid for you
"Instead of waiting in line to cash your paycheck, have your pay automatically deposited to a Chase Pay Card Plus account." Sure ...
- if you pay $1.50 to $3.00 per automated teller machine withdrawal,
- $1.00 to $3.00 to find out your balance,
- $5.00 for over-the-counter withdrawals (after your four "free" ones)
- $12 for a check to close your account
- $3 a month for "inactivity"
They will allow you FREE point-of-sale transactions (they filch from the merchants, instead).
But wait ... what's this about "3.5% per international conversion rate transaction"?
This is targeted to immigrants (who else would regularly need international remittances?), in addition to the welfare mother waitress with three minimum-wage jobs living in a motel and dreaming of Aruba. The "unbanked."
Did the banks discover the low-income worker "market" while bilking states that "privatized" and "automated" their public assistance programs at the behest of the Bushies? You betcha.
There's a sucker born every day in America -- and it isn't the JPirateMorgan Chase Bank.
Monday, May 31, 2010
A Strategy to Honor the Dead
In Memorial Day weekend news, the U.S. military brass is weighing plans for an attack on Pakistan in case a Pakistani smarter than the Times Square would-be bomber has a deadly success. Wouldn't it better honor the dead to mount an effective response, rather than add one more unwinnable war to our already overladen plate?
I have, you might have guessed, a modest proposal:
Take 9/11.
If we had had a military capable of deploying, lickety split, elite commando units in Tora Bora and vicinity, they could have quietly gone in, torched Osama bin Laden and everyone with him, leaving everything to be found by some clueless non-English-speaking shepherd.
"Torching? Osama? I know nothing about it," the White House press secretary would have said.
Quietly, Al Qaeda's numbers 2s, 3, 45s, would began to drop like cockroaches caught in an insecticide commercial. Sooner or later, the bad guys would get the message: don't mess with us.
No invasions, no thousands wounded and killed, no collateral damage, no prisoners, no Guantanamo, not even a war deficit.
A smart president -- oops, we had Bush -- would have tried it.
I have, you might have guessed, a modest proposal:
- Get rid of the expensive toys that go boom, leaving only a nominal nuclear rocket arsenal for deterrence and the new, very destructive sub-nuclear bomb, along with a skeleton air, water and land deployment vehicle lot.
- Demobilize 90 percent of the active duty 1.4 million military personnel from the top down.
- Use the remaining 140,000 in uniform develop a top-notch planning staff and elite commando units, along with a small unit for the conventional deployment lot.
Take 9/11.
If we had had a military capable of deploying, lickety split, elite commando units in Tora Bora and vicinity, they could have quietly gone in, torched Osama bin Laden and everyone with him, leaving everything to be found by some clueless non-English-speaking shepherd.
"Torching? Osama? I know nothing about it," the White House press secretary would have said.
Quietly, Al Qaeda's numbers 2s, 3, 45s, would began to drop like cockroaches caught in an insecticide commercial. Sooner or later, the bad guys would get the message: don't mess with us.
No invasions, no thousands wounded and killed, no collateral damage, no prisoners, no Guantanamo, not even a war deficit.
A smart president -- oops, we had Bush -- would have tried it.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Facts to What Truth?
Comments concerning my post From Facts to Truth, both public and private, suggest that there's some anxiety out there concerning the starting point and the destination in the heading of my original essay.
Some people seem to feel I have become an idolater of facts, when in reality I merely see facts as useful in discussions in which meaning hinges on them.
Others feel that I already abandoned truth by when I allegedly threw "Him" out, Christological insinuation heard. The capital-T truth that was prevalent in Western societies (America and Europe) hinged on a "Him" tossed out centuries ago by Christians themselves. Not me.
Finally, a third current of comment proposes a more intriguing question: to what truth is the Zeitgeist shifting all our facts and factoids?
Short answer: I have no idea.
Actually, I have a pretty good idea that it's not to a restoration of past theologies nor to capital-T truth. We've done that, been there and can still smell the charred human remains.
Instead, I'd suggest that once facts undergo sufficient criticism, we'll drift to some version of what used to be called "common sense," when Western commonality was white, male-dominated and Christian. Only that commonality is not coming back, thank the Echo.
I'd look for a future in which we take on the larger goals and ends: an active mind, rather than computation of two-digit whole numbers by the second quarter of fifth grade; shared prosperity, rather than a minimum $10 an hour wage.
Nothing wrong with granulated, fine-tuned goals, per se. Yet, can we deal with a whole society of 300 million diverse individuals through cookie-cutter "fact-based" solutions?
Or can we perhaps leave the details to the people who actually have to strive for the goals, relying on their uncommon sense, their gut feel for what works, their home truths?
Some people seem to feel I have become an idolater of facts, when in reality I merely see facts as useful in discussions in which meaning hinges on them.
Others feel that I already abandoned truth by when I allegedly threw "Him" out, Christological insinuation heard. The capital-T truth that was prevalent in Western societies (America and Europe) hinged on a "Him" tossed out centuries ago by Christians themselves. Not me.
Finally, a third current of comment proposes a more intriguing question: to what truth is the Zeitgeist shifting all our facts and factoids?
Short answer: I have no idea.
Actually, I have a pretty good idea that it's not to a restoration of past theologies nor to capital-T truth. We've done that, been there and can still smell the charred human remains.
Instead, I'd suggest that once facts undergo sufficient criticism, we'll drift to some version of what used to be called "common sense," when Western commonality was white, male-dominated and Christian. Only that commonality is not coming back, thank the Echo.
I'd look for a future in which we take on the larger goals and ends: an active mind, rather than computation of two-digit whole numbers by the second quarter of fifth grade; shared prosperity, rather than a minimum $10 an hour wage.
Nothing wrong with granulated, fine-tuned goals, per se. Yet, can we deal with a whole society of 300 million diverse individuals through cookie-cutter "fact-based" solutions?
Or can we perhaps leave the details to the people who actually have to strive for the goals, relying on their uncommon sense, their gut feel for what works, their home truths?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
200 Years Ago in Argentina
Today in Argentina is celebrated as the 200th anniversary of ... what? It's not quite the declaration of independence, that was on July 9, 1816, but certainly the beginning of Argentina's self-rule and, to be completely accurate, fairly consistent misrule.
A group of the educated elite in Buenos Aires deposed the Spanish viceroy, arguing that Napoleon's invasion of Spain and imprisonment of King Ferdinand VII meant that the government of Spain was illegitimate. It was a thinly veiled ruse.
Upper crust young, idealistic republican egalitarians, who looked with hope to the pre-Napoleonic events of France since 1789, allied with somewhat more cynical merchants tired of the cat-and-mouse smuggling game around the Spanish colonial trade monopoly.
To what end? A minimal consensus was not reached until 1852, when at least a majority of Argentinians -- or at least those who counted for decisions of this sort -- could at last agree on what they did not want.
That consensus broke down in 1930, when demands by a new, emerging class of non-Spanish immigrants and first-generation citizens was met with the hard hand of the military, martial law and a decade of extremely public electoral fraud. This led to decades of struggle, involving the emergence of a charismatic leader named Juan Perón and the recurrent counterattacks from the gendarmes serving the heirs to the mantle of landowning oligarchs, namely the new commercial and industrial elite allied with the United States.
In 1983, once again, Argentinians were in unison about what they did not want, and since then they have experienced a series of largely corrupt, ineffective governments run by politicians elected on the shoulders of a fading memory of Perón.
Only a hundred years ago one of the top ten economies of the world, Argentina today sinks ever lower toward 100th place. A nation of 40 million that produces enough food for 300 million now has millions of hungry people.
What exactly are we celebrating again?
A group of the educated elite in Buenos Aires deposed the Spanish viceroy, arguing that Napoleon's invasion of Spain and imprisonment of King Ferdinand VII meant that the government of Spain was illegitimate. It was a thinly veiled ruse.
Upper crust young, idealistic republican egalitarians, who looked with hope to the pre-Napoleonic events of France since 1789, allied with somewhat more cynical merchants tired of the cat-and-mouse smuggling game around the Spanish colonial trade monopoly.
To what end? A minimal consensus was not reached until 1852, when at least a majority of Argentinians -- or at least those who counted for decisions of this sort -- could at last agree on what they did not want.
That consensus broke down in 1930, when demands by a new, emerging class of non-Spanish immigrants and first-generation citizens was met with the hard hand of the military, martial law and a decade of extremely public electoral fraud. This led to decades of struggle, involving the emergence of a charismatic leader named Juan Perón and the recurrent counterattacks from the gendarmes serving the heirs to the mantle of landowning oligarchs, namely the new commercial and industrial elite allied with the United States.
In 1983, once again, Argentinians were in unison about what they did not want, and since then they have experienced a series of largely corrupt, ineffective governments run by politicians elected on the shoulders of a fading memory of Perón.
Only a hundred years ago one of the top ten economies of the world, Argentina today sinks ever lower toward 100th place. A nation of 40 million that produces enough food for 300 million now has millions of hungry people.
What exactly are we celebrating again?
Saturday, May 22, 2010
From Facts to Truth
The Zeitgeist is changing! the Zeitgeist is changing! You heard of its first glimmer here.
For more than 200 years North American culture (you too, Canadians, thanks to David Hume) was a beacon of ... (wait for it) ... facts. We've loved empirically quantifiable and observable reality, from RBIs to GDPs, from the census to tallies of the most Valentine cards received.
Our policymakers talk about facts that can be pressed to serve any party, any master, any point of view. None care that the unemployment rate is a ratio so approximate that it misses changes involving as many as 260,000 U.S. workers.
Taught that foundational philosophy is the mother of all scientia (Latin for knowledge), I've run for decades against the stubbornly empiricist Zeitgeist (German Zeit, time, and Geist, spirit, meaning "the spirit of the age"), even though my occupation worships it.
Truth came in observable and measurable bites; reason was king. Gods, witches, intuitions and feelings were for hippies, existentialists and (of course!) women. Damn the yang, up with the ying!
That's all about to change.
A growing panel of hostile inquisitors is asking why we can invent the Internet but still can't get Johnny to read, Janey out of the slum, let alone protect either from the bad guys? Something is wrong with the tyranny of facts.
We forgot about truth, the elusive heart's desire of Aristotle, Spinoza, Maritain and others. The bureaucrats and policymakers may not realize it, the better newspapers are just beginning to sniff it, but I've known it was coming (now you do); indeed, it's long overdue.
For more than 200 years North American culture (you too, Canadians, thanks to David Hume) was a beacon of ... (wait for it) ... facts. We've loved empirically quantifiable and observable reality, from RBIs to GDPs, from the census to tallies of the most Valentine cards received.
Our policymakers talk about facts that can be pressed to serve any party, any master, any point of view. None care that the unemployment rate is a ratio so approximate that it misses changes involving as many as 260,000 U.S. workers.
Taught that foundational philosophy is the mother of all scientia (Latin for knowledge), I've run for decades against the stubbornly empiricist Zeitgeist (German Zeit, time, and Geist, spirit, meaning "the spirit of the age"), even though my occupation worships it.
Truth came in observable and measurable bites; reason was king. Gods, witches, intuitions and feelings were for hippies, existentialists and (of course!) women. Damn the yang, up with the ying!
That's all about to change.
A growing panel of hostile inquisitors is asking why we can invent the Internet but still can't get Johnny to read, Janey out of the slum, let alone protect either from the bad guys? Something is wrong with the tyranny of facts.
We forgot about truth, the elusive heart's desire of Aristotle, Spinoza, Maritain and others. The bureaucrats and policymakers may not realize it, the better newspapers are just beginning to sniff it, but I've known it was coming (now you do); indeed, it's long overdue.
Monday, May 17, 2010
The Color of Color
I never cease to be amazed at what's in the recesses of people walking and talking our streets attired as if they were civilized, until they let slip the sheer, blind tribalism they've brought with them from their caves.
Saturday I attended a party in honor of a friend of a friend at which there were many former Americans abroad, specifically, folks whose aging parents had toiled defending the indefensible in Latin America, in this particular case, Ecuador. Suddenly a woman who became aware of the predominant group in attendance chimed, "I didn't realize there were that many white people in Ecuador."
There was no mistaking the meaning. She meant "white" as in White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, among whose trash she had obviously been reared. Her defense was that her surname, obviously through marriage, was "Ruhmeerezz."
White? "European," one peace-at-any-pricer offered.
Last I checked, however, Spain was in the European Union. Indeed, they went to Ecuador 500 years ago from Europe, long before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock. Indeed, many descendants of Spaniards in the U.S. West and Southwest think, with some historical evidence on their side, that it's really the Anglos who are the illegal immigrants there.
Part of the problem is a subtle change in the way even the most educated and liberal people speak of ethnicity in this allegedly "post-racial" era. I keep hearing at seminars and symposia the phrase "of color," applied to African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, etc. It's the new easy shorthand.
But, folks, white is a color. It's not a color of skin, however. Ever tried to draw white people with crayons as a kid? There used to be a color specifically for that (don't know if there still is) and it was not white.
That's because the people called "white" aren't really white. They come in skins that range from a sickly to mottled pink, to a tan that can be indistinguishable from some of the lighter folks of other "races," to a quite brownish brown.
Indeed, the people who think they are "white" today, weren't always considered "white," as one of my favorite and scholarly blogs notes in the recent post Before I Was White.
Saturday I attended a party in honor of a friend of a friend at which there were many former Americans abroad, specifically, folks whose aging parents had toiled defending the indefensible in Latin America, in this particular case, Ecuador. Suddenly a woman who became aware of the predominant group in attendance chimed, "I didn't realize there were that many white people in Ecuador."
There was no mistaking the meaning. She meant "white" as in White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, among whose trash she had obviously been reared. Her defense was that her surname, obviously through marriage, was "Ruhmeerezz."
White? "European," one peace-at-any-pricer offered.
Last I checked, however, Spain was in the European Union. Indeed, they went to Ecuador 500 years ago from Europe, long before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock. Indeed, many descendants of Spaniards in the U.S. West and Southwest think, with some historical evidence on their side, that it's really the Anglos who are the illegal immigrants there.
Part of the problem is a subtle change in the way even the most educated and liberal people speak of ethnicity in this allegedly "post-racial" era. I keep hearing at seminars and symposia the phrase "of color," applied to African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, etc. It's the new easy shorthand.
But, folks, white is a color. It's not a color of skin, however. Ever tried to draw white people with crayons as a kid? There used to be a color specifically for that (don't know if there still is) and it was not white.
That's because the people called "white" aren't really white. They come in skins that range from a sickly to mottled pink, to a tan that can be indistinguishable from some of the lighter folks of other "races," to a quite brownish brown.
Indeed, the people who think they are "white" today, weren't always considered "white," as one of my favorite and scholarly blogs notes in the recent post Before I Was White.
Friday, May 14, 2010
The Zone
It's often the small things that make a difference.
Giggling through an otherwise boring transaction in which the bank staff just can't spell your name (three times). Gliding through traffic after a satisfying workday. Finding the perfect parking spot even thought it's 8pm. You feel you have the karma and nothing can touch you.
Sure, having karma is itself a contradiction in terms. Karma just is, like grace. No one owns it.
Like The Zone. Capitalized. Mysterious. Undefinable. Without clear borders. It's a strangely satisfying state of mind that comes from nothing (no drugs, sex or rock and roll), probably doesn't last too long, but what a high when it's there!
Giggling through an otherwise boring transaction in which the bank staff just can't spell your name (three times). Gliding through traffic after a satisfying workday. Finding the perfect parking spot even thought it's 8pm. You feel you have the karma and nothing can touch you.
Sure, having karma is itself a contradiction in terms. Karma just is, like grace. No one owns it.
Like The Zone. Capitalized. Mysterious. Undefinable. Without clear borders. It's a strangely satisfying state of mind that comes from nothing (no drugs, sex or rock and roll), probably doesn't last too long, but what a high when it's there!
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Mosque in NYC: Bushit Still Distorts 9/11
News that a mosque is planned to be built about two and a half blocks from Ground Zero in New York City have fanned the flames of the worst kind of intolerance and misinformation lingering from eight years of Bush propaganda. Even a usually sensible blogger cries foul, arguing that the plan "seems like tasteless nose thumbing at Americans and at worst, an attempt to replace our native cultures."
Lest you be confused, this not an Indian woman writing about "our native cultures." No, this is someone taking the easiest phrase out of the 2001-2008 ersatz thinking manual. Rule 1: when in doubt, trot out nativism. The same nativism used against every immigrant group since the Irish potato famine.
Oversight? Absolutely not. I tried to call the blogger to her senses (see comments here), but she continued to argue insane notions such as "The devastation of 9-11 was not committed in the name of Jesus or Yahweh, but to praise Allah."
That's right, fellow non-Muslims. Let's tar a billion and a half Muslims in the world because of the alleged actions of 18. Let's forbid the building of a mosque just to show them. Right? Wrong!
So little is really known about 9/11 and so much nonsense was justified in the name of that event, that most people forget that
If we are going to decide that all mosques and Muslims are responsible for the crimes of 9/11, then
Let's stop the shouting and start reasoning together.
Lest you be confused, this not an Indian woman writing about "our native cultures." No, this is someone taking the easiest phrase out of the 2001-2008 ersatz thinking manual. Rule 1: when in doubt, trot out nativism. The same nativism used against every immigrant group since the Irish potato famine.
Oversight? Absolutely not. I tried to call the blogger to her senses (see comments here), but she continued to argue insane notions such as "The devastation of 9-11 was not committed in the name of Jesus or Yahweh, but to praise Allah."
That's right, fellow non-Muslims. Let's tar a billion and a half Muslims in the world because of the alleged actions of 18. Let's forbid the building of a mosque just to show them. Right? Wrong!
So little is really known about 9/11 and so much nonsense was justified in the name of that event, that most people forget that
- we never had actual evidence proven in court about who and what brought these events about, nor much less why, having instead to rely on the word of the men who stole the election of 2000;
- there is no "war" on, since a war is a state of belligerency between two nation-states -- those who would like to try every Muslim in a military tribunal ought to ask the same for the Mafia, the KKK, the white-power militias associated with the likes of Timothy McVeigh, since they are equally as criminal and at war with American society and ideals as Al Qaeda; and
- we do have freedom to believe in anything or nothing at all in this country (and I, for one, would like very much to keep it that way).
If we are going to decide that all mosques and Muslims are responsible for the crimes of 9/11, then
- Are all U.S. whites responsible for 300 years of kidnapping, torture and slavery of millions of African Americans?
- Do all Jews and all synagogues stand accused for the Israeli armed forces attacks on civilians during the Sabra-Shatila massacre of the 1980s, or the flattening of Qana just a few years ago or the humanitarian disaster of Gaza that still continues today?
- Is the rape of children by a relatively small proportion of priests irrevocably the fault of all Catholics, including the children, and all Catholic churches?
Let's stop the shouting and start reasoning together.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Are We Breeding Jihadists?
Ever since Hannah Arendt's memorable "banality of evil" concerning Adolf Eichmann, it's been something of a cliché to "discover" that criminals were originally mild-mannered milquetoasts. True to script, the lazier journalists are having a field day with the ordinariness of Faisal Shahzad, the alleged Times Square bomber.
Yet the real news would be discovering what forces combined to change the Eichmanns and the Shahzads from mere mediocrities to criminals. By forces, I mean to include nature, or natural predispositions and personal decisions for which each individual is responsible, and nurture, the external, social influences that might have turned a mediocre nature into something ready to become truly awful.
We can do nothing about the personal decisions the Eichmanns and the Shahzads and the Timothy McVeighs have made. But we can think and act on the cues we get about their social influences.
Indeed, the United States made sure Germany was not penalized in 1945 as it had been under the Versailles Treaty in 1918 so as not to provide Germans disgruntled with the consequences of losing a war the excuse for getting revenge through World War III.
As Shahzad's story beings to be pieced together, it seems pretty clear that he carried a major social grudge. Like so many, he was scammed into a mortgage he really couldn't afford and his employment collapsed with the economy.
Might he have remained happily unknown today with another sequence of events? Might he have avoided seeking comfort in jihadism to assuage his sense of economic failure in the land of alleged plenty?
If Albert Gore had been allowed to be sworn in despite his narrow win in 2000, might the catastrophic greed allowed to run free in the Bush era have been reined in? If, even without Gore, had Bush acted sooner and asked for a stimulus package earlier, wouldn't the Great Recession have been less great?
I realize this is all woulda, coulda, shoulda.
But we do confront "tea party" folks who demand with protest signs awash in misspellings and solecisms that "furriners lurn" English and old people who wave their medicare cards while they call government health programs "socialism" and we continue to have too many weapons on the streets and in gun stores. Isn't this the kindling for home-grown jihadism of a nut-wing variety?
In brief, there's a lot of anger out there. People continue to experience very bad times, which breed worse people. That's why we need to push to make better times, to curb excess and include every level of society in the nation's bounty, so we can breed more tolerant people of good will and deed.
Yet the real news would be discovering what forces combined to change the Eichmanns and the Shahzads from mere mediocrities to criminals. By forces, I mean to include nature, or natural predispositions and personal decisions for which each individual is responsible, and nurture, the external, social influences that might have turned a mediocre nature into something ready to become truly awful.
We can do nothing about the personal decisions the Eichmanns and the Shahzads and the Timothy McVeighs have made. But we can think and act on the cues we get about their social influences.
Indeed, the United States made sure Germany was not penalized in 1945 as it had been under the Versailles Treaty in 1918 so as not to provide Germans disgruntled with the consequences of losing a war the excuse for getting revenge through World War III.
As Shahzad's story beings to be pieced together, it seems pretty clear that he carried a major social grudge. Like so many, he was scammed into a mortgage he really couldn't afford and his employment collapsed with the economy.
Might he have remained happily unknown today with another sequence of events? Might he have avoided seeking comfort in jihadism to assuage his sense of economic failure in the land of alleged plenty?
If Albert Gore had been allowed to be sworn in despite his narrow win in 2000, might the catastrophic greed allowed to run free in the Bush era have been reined in? If, even without Gore, had Bush acted sooner and asked for a stimulus package earlier, wouldn't the Great Recession have been less great?
I realize this is all woulda, coulda, shoulda.
But we do confront "tea party" folks who demand with protest signs awash in misspellings and solecisms that "furriners lurn" English and old people who wave their medicare cards while they call government health programs "socialism" and we continue to have too many weapons on the streets and in gun stores. Isn't this the kindling for home-grown jihadism of a nut-wing variety?
In brief, there's a lot of anger out there. People continue to experience very bad times, which breed worse people. That's why we need to push to make better times, to curb excess and include every level of society in the nation's bounty, so we can breed more tolerant people of good will and deed.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
"Regime Change" We Don't Want to Believe In
In the past week or so, the talk in Washington among journalists and think tank wonks outside the Obama Administration has been bubbling with the phrase "regime change" in reference to Iran. We've seen that movie before, new euphemism notwithstanding, and it has no happy ending.
As much as I would prefer an Iranian president with a name that was easier on the English-speaking tongue (5 syllables is way too long!), I don't think that a Western-inspired, or much less funded, overthrow or a coup, or any of the names we use for the forcible removal of a ruler, is what we want to do. Here's why:
As much as I would prefer an Iranian president with a name that was easier on the English-speaking tongue (5 syllables is way too long!), I don't think that a Western-inspired, or much less funded, overthrow or a coup, or any of the names we use for the forcible removal of a ruler, is what we want to do. Here's why:
- the coup d'etat is most un-Jeffersonian and never a good path to democracy;
- pushing for "regime change" in another country invites reciprocity and, last I heard, folks in the Middle East would like to turn ours into ... ahem ... an Islamic theocracy; and
- the cure is almost always worse than the disease (think Chile 1973, Brazil 1964, and oh, Iran 1954).
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Whither Romance
Playing with etymology I chanced upon the origin of the English word romance: it comes from the Old French romanz ("verse narrative"), related also to the modern French roman ("novel"), gaining its modern sense only in the 17th century. So is everything romantic at the core a fiction?
Did the relatively modern sense related to matters of the metaphoric heart, come to be accepted just in time for the industrial revolution to turn romance into prosaic mating?
Indeed, it strikes me that the industrial age brought about the most intense denial of such a scientific development in the form of something known as Victorian mores or customs, the Manicheism of the 19th century that survived into the 20th. The major change brought about by the sexual revolution, in whose ramparts I valiantly fought, was the beginning of an admission that a lot that happens with regards to romance is actually biological.
Romance involves a temporary suspension of the brain's critical functions, induced by what must no doubt be a flood of pleasure-inducing chemicals, so that we become convinced that this one other person, suddenly encompassed within our ego's expanding boundary, is astoundingly special and even necessary to our survival.
Thus, I would argue, the claim that certain public figures whose sexuality has become known are "sex addicts" is absurd. Once we have experienced it, we are all to some extent "addicted," or uncommonly willing to seek, the pleasure of romance.
The label gets flung at men -- Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, etc. -- largely because women have different biological goals.
Men are biologically set to impregnate as many women as possible, a goal that is fulfilled in sexual consummation. Women are biologically set to become impregnated, carry the potential human being to birth and then provide at least the indispensable nurture needed for the infant's survival, a goal that is best fulfilled in marriage or some form of long-term commitment.
Such a set of mechanisms explains why men move on quickly and women hang on.
Similarly, the pattern explains why men are eager to call a taxi right after orgasm, while women keep up the romance until they get a ring around their fingers. Biology also explain why the romance ends early in courtship for men and on the honeymoon's first night for women.
Women are just as "addicted" as men. Except ... can one really call what seems to me a natural process an "addiction"?
A therapist I know, who has no direct personal knowledge of either Clinton or Woods, claims that not only is there such a thing, but that the former president and the golfer are prime addicts. Funny, no women ever get mentioned, even though if there were such a thing as sex addiction, I might have postulated my friend, who is of the female persuasion, as an exemplar.
All of which is apropos of nothing more than writing a new post finally giving expression to an idea I have been mulling for some time. You may disagree. Of course, you would be wrong.
Did the relatively modern sense related to matters of the metaphoric heart, come to be accepted just in time for the industrial revolution to turn romance into prosaic mating?
Indeed, it strikes me that the industrial age brought about the most intense denial of such a scientific development in the form of something known as Victorian mores or customs, the Manicheism of the 19th century that survived into the 20th. The major change brought about by the sexual revolution, in whose ramparts I valiantly fought, was the beginning of an admission that a lot that happens with regards to romance is actually biological.
Romance involves a temporary suspension of the brain's critical functions, induced by what must no doubt be a flood of pleasure-inducing chemicals, so that we become convinced that this one other person, suddenly encompassed within our ego's expanding boundary, is astoundingly special and even necessary to our survival.
Thus, I would argue, the claim that certain public figures whose sexuality has become known are "sex addicts" is absurd. Once we have experienced it, we are all to some extent "addicted," or uncommonly willing to seek, the pleasure of romance.
The label gets flung at men -- Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, etc. -- largely because women have different biological goals.
Men are biologically set to impregnate as many women as possible, a goal that is fulfilled in sexual consummation. Women are biologically set to become impregnated, carry the potential human being to birth and then provide at least the indispensable nurture needed for the infant's survival, a goal that is best fulfilled in marriage or some form of long-term commitment.
Such a set of mechanisms explains why men move on quickly and women hang on.
Similarly, the pattern explains why men are eager to call a taxi right after orgasm, while women keep up the romance until they get a ring around their fingers. Biology also explain why the romance ends early in courtship for men and on the honeymoon's first night for women.
Women are just as "addicted" as men. Except ... can one really call what seems to me a natural process an "addiction"?
A therapist I know, who has no direct personal knowledge of either Clinton or Woods, claims that not only is there such a thing, but that the former president and the golfer are prime addicts. Funny, no women ever get mentioned, even though if there were such a thing as sex addiction, I might have postulated my friend, who is of the female persuasion, as an exemplar.
All of which is apropos of nothing more than writing a new post finally giving expression to an idea I have been mulling for some time. You may disagree. Of course, you would be wrong.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Argentina, Land of Insanity
I have closed the associated Ñoñario blog (all visitors are blocked) at the request of the author, who no longer wishes an Internet presence. He has concluded that Argentines -- his prime audience -- are so insane that even trying to comment on current events and history on a factual basis is an Augean task not worth the time and effort.
Let Argentina sink to yet new astounding new levels, through the ever inventive self-destructiveness of Argentines. I am not kidding.
This is a country that, around 1910, was still had one of the top ten economies in the world. Today it is probably the 150th or so.
In the 1920s and 30s the Argentine elite fought tooth and nail to keep its feudal and largely agricultural society intact and its economy a net exporter of cheap commodities and a net importer of expensive manufactured goods.
In the late 1940s and 50s, Perón turned needed attention to the nascent industrial union movement, but he misspent the nation's then-vast gold reserves on patronage pet projects.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the country was split between Peronists fighting for the return of their exiled leader and the middle class and oligarchy, ushering in military coup after military coup to prevent the return. Meanwhile, the peso lost value and the economy began to go to hell.
Unsatisfied with chaos, Argentines once again welcomed military rule in 1976. This time, the generals weren't kidding around: they made a proven 9,000 people disappear, kidnapped and tortured thousands of others, led the country to a disastrous war with a NATO member (the UK) and helped raise annual inflation to above 1,000 percent (that's thousand, not a typo).
By 1983, tired of military disasters, Argentines chose civilian ones instead. After the Mexican peso effect collapsed the Argentine economy briefly, a charlatan offered a supposed dollar-parity of the peso.
How was this illusion maintained? By selling off the state-owned airline, merchant marine, telephone company, oil company, etc., until all the family jewels were gone.
In 2001, the spell vanished and peso went from 1=1 peso to dollar to 3 pesos per dollar. One day you had a dollar, the next you had 33 cents. That's what Buenos Aires taxi drivers mean when they mention "the events of 2001" -- not 9/11.
So, having kept the country backward, devalued its currency and destroyed its economy and taken the country to a disastrous war, not to mention egregious human rights violations, what did Argentines elect new leaders to do? Of course, to incur an unpayable foreign debt in the billions!
Every time I've thought, "well, now, they've learned their lesson," they manage to surprise me by sinking to new and unsurpassed depths. They sank below hell decades ago!
Of course, try to tell that to an Argentine ... in Spanish. So now you know why my associate and I are sticking to English. The hell with them!
Let Argentina sink to yet new astounding new levels, through the ever inventive self-destructiveness of Argentines. I am not kidding.
This is a country that, around 1910, was still had one of the top ten economies in the world. Today it is probably the 150th or so.
In the 1920s and 30s the Argentine elite fought tooth and nail to keep its feudal and largely agricultural society intact and its economy a net exporter of cheap commodities and a net importer of expensive manufactured goods.
In the late 1940s and 50s, Perón turned needed attention to the nascent industrial union movement, but he misspent the nation's then-vast gold reserves on patronage pet projects.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the country was split between Peronists fighting for the return of their exiled leader and the middle class and oligarchy, ushering in military coup after military coup to prevent the return. Meanwhile, the peso lost value and the economy began to go to hell.
Unsatisfied with chaos, Argentines once again welcomed military rule in 1976. This time, the generals weren't kidding around: they made a proven 9,000 people disappear, kidnapped and tortured thousands of others, led the country to a disastrous war with a NATO member (the UK) and helped raise annual inflation to above 1,000 percent (that's thousand, not a typo).
By 1983, tired of military disasters, Argentines chose civilian ones instead. After the Mexican peso effect collapsed the Argentine economy briefly, a charlatan offered a supposed dollar-parity of the peso.
How was this illusion maintained? By selling off the state-owned airline, merchant marine, telephone company, oil company, etc., until all the family jewels were gone.
In 2001, the spell vanished and peso went from 1=1 peso to dollar to 3 pesos per dollar. One day you had a dollar, the next you had 33 cents. That's what Buenos Aires taxi drivers mean when they mention "the events of 2001" -- not 9/11.
So, having kept the country backward, devalued its currency and destroyed its economy and taken the country to a disastrous war, not to mention egregious human rights violations, what did Argentines elect new leaders to do? Of course, to incur an unpayable foreign debt in the billions!
Every time I've thought, "well, now, they've learned their lesson," they manage to surprise me by sinking to new and unsurpassed depths. They sank below hell decades ago!
Of course, try to tell that to an Argentine ... in Spanish. So now you know why my associate and I are sticking to English. The hell with them!
Monday, April 19, 2010
Operation Eyes
[Editor's note: By popular demand, here is a translation of a recent post from Desde Yanquilandia from the Spanish.]
A week or so ago, I finished reading two books I brought back from Argentina in January. The first was a "The Question in Their Eyes," a novel, and the second "Operación Traviata," a jourmalist's investigative account of the 1973 murder of Argentine unionist José Ignacio Rucci.
Both books fascinated me by their common underlying themes, justice and injustice in Argentina, violence and dark, the "decensus in averno" the country experienced in the seventies. The authors of both books, oddly enough, belong to the that generation was too young to have really experienced all that and they have in common an oblique approach to the era, yet one that in my opinion is reliable.
The facts in question in the novel (which I understand differs from the Oscar-winning adaptation to film, "The Secret in Their Eyes") occurs in the late sixties, mostly in the central courts building I passed by every school day on the 102 bus. There are references to things I remember and also details of adult life that I did not experience in the flesh while in Buenos Aires.
As for Rucci's murder, it was a fleeting memory of a news story that flashed briefly when I lived in Canada. Despite my ideological and moral sympathies toward the labor movement and collective bargaining, to me Argentine union leaders who always seemed to be thugs, having workers shut off electricity whenever they wanted to pressure the government, which for many years was the largest employer.
But all that, in the novel and journalist's account, came before military repression, the Montonero and the ERP guerrillas, and eventually the disappeared and Weimar-like inflation in Argentina. No to mention other things.
Neither author expends effort attempting to debate whether the military really were "gorillas," as Argentine opponents called them, or which faction of Peronism was right. Everybody knows that the conclusion to such debates might be yes, no, and none of them.
Both authors treat that tragic and hair-raising recent history as background noise. Their stories, far from ignoring the noise, end up explaining and conveying the everyman experience of those years in Argentina, without getting into polemics.
A common crime becomes a reflection on violence, the shortcuts that sometimes one has to take to see justice served and the ultimate probability that there is no solution to such conundrums, apart from love. Similarly, premeditated murder and treachery become the excuse to examine the evolution of political and paramilitary forces in 1973 as they were heading for disaster, with the lone and persistent reporter cleverly avoiding the argument traps to present a credible version of what actually happened.
For 200 years, ever since the populace first demanded open proceedings in the discussion of breaking with Spain, the Argentine people have been demanding to know what is going in the spheres of power and institutionalized violence that the state assumes in name of society. These books bring that demand a step closer to becoming reality.
A week or so ago, I finished reading two books I brought back from Argentina in January. The first was a "The Question in Their Eyes," a novel, and the second "Operación Traviata," a jourmalist's investigative account of the 1973 murder of Argentine unionist José Ignacio Rucci.
Both books fascinated me by their common underlying themes, justice and injustice in Argentina, violence and dark, the "decensus in averno" the country experienced in the seventies. The authors of both books, oddly enough, belong to the that generation was too young to have really experienced all that and they have in common an oblique approach to the era, yet one that in my opinion is reliable.
The facts in question in the novel (which I understand differs from the Oscar-winning adaptation to film, "The Secret in Their Eyes") occurs in the late sixties, mostly in the central courts building I passed by every school day on the 102 bus. There are references to things I remember and also details of adult life that I did not experience in the flesh while in Buenos Aires.
As for Rucci's murder, it was a fleeting memory of a news story that flashed briefly when I lived in Canada. Despite my ideological and moral sympathies toward the labor movement and collective bargaining, to me Argentine union leaders who always seemed to be thugs, having workers shut off electricity whenever they wanted to pressure the government, which for many years was the largest employer.
But all that, in the novel and journalist's account, came before military repression, the Montonero and the ERP guerrillas, and eventually the disappeared and Weimar-like inflation in Argentina. No to mention other things.
Neither author expends effort attempting to debate whether the military really were "gorillas," as Argentine opponents called them, or which faction of Peronism was right. Everybody knows that the conclusion to such debates might be yes, no, and none of them.
Both authors treat that tragic and hair-raising recent history as background noise. Their stories, far from ignoring the noise, end up explaining and conveying the everyman experience of those years in Argentina, without getting into polemics.
A common crime becomes a reflection on violence, the shortcuts that sometimes one has to take to see justice served and the ultimate probability that there is no solution to such conundrums, apart from love. Similarly, premeditated murder and treachery become the excuse to examine the evolution of political and paramilitary forces in 1973 as they were heading for disaster, with the lone and persistent reporter cleverly avoiding the argument traps to present a credible version of what actually happened.
For 200 years, ever since the populace first demanded open proceedings in the discussion of breaking with Spain, the Argentine people have been demanding to know what is going in the spheres of power and institutionalized violence that the state assumes in name of society. These books bring that demand a step closer to becoming reality.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Anti-Religionism vs. Agnosticism
Lately I've cyberfallen in with a crowd that is all too suspiciously eager to proclaim what a crock religion is in order to fly the flag of atheism, which even Richard Dawkins notes can only really be agnosticism. While I am an agnostic, I see no reason for triumphalism or hatred of religion, merely to proclaim one's position.
To be agnostic one need not replicate churches, crusades or -- Universe's Echo help us! -- an inquisition, with the variable "God" merely assigned a negative value. Nor need one feel too superior to religious people who, after all, put on their pants one leg at a time just like everyone else.
Yet this is what I often find.
In "real time," of course, plenty of agnostics go to Unitarian churches, Ethical societies and the like, which have bake sales and bazaars just like Our Lady of Mercedes or St. Elfric the Tasteful, only they don't have crosses anywhere. And they don't dare even whisper G-o-d.
Online, life is more polemical -- this is mostly about words, after all -- and it takes the form of ye olde high schoole "hate" clubs. We Hate Unfair Criticism has evolved into We Don't Thank Deities for the Deeds of Humans.
My suspicion is that these agnostics are just as religious (and illiterate about religion) as most religious people. They're just religious about their agnosticism. This is not to say that religion "wins" or religionists are better. Far from it.
My only contention, as someone who knows a thing or three about the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition and its foundational books and thinkers, is that it is not necessarily unreasonable to believe, and most real believers should experience doubts every now and then, just as it is not unreasonable not to believe.
Not believing is not a new thing to be, it's merely little more than simply not managing to wrap one's mind around notions such as a man-god, prayer, not to mention an invisible being of whom there is no direct evidence.
When one doesn't believe, one still is left with doubt, inquiry, tentativeness and the uncertainties of real science. Trust me. I know about this.
To be agnostic one need not replicate churches, crusades or -- Universe's Echo help us! -- an inquisition, with the variable "God" merely assigned a negative value. Nor need one feel too superior to religious people who, after all, put on their pants one leg at a time just like everyone else.
Yet this is what I often find.
In "real time," of course, plenty of agnostics go to Unitarian churches, Ethical societies and the like, which have bake sales and bazaars just like Our Lady of Mercedes or St. Elfric the Tasteful, only they don't have crosses anywhere. And they don't dare even whisper G-o-d.
Online, life is more polemical -- this is mostly about words, after all -- and it takes the form of ye olde high schoole "hate" clubs. We Hate Unfair Criticism has evolved into We Don't Thank Deities for the Deeds of Humans.
My suspicion is that these agnostics are just as religious (and illiterate about religion) as most religious people. They're just religious about their agnosticism. This is not to say that religion "wins" or religionists are better. Far from it.
My only contention, as someone who knows a thing or three about the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition and its foundational books and thinkers, is that it is not necessarily unreasonable to believe, and most real believers should experience doubts every now and then, just as it is not unreasonable not to believe.
Not believing is not a new thing to be, it's merely little more than simply not managing to wrap one's mind around notions such as a man-god, prayer, not to mention an invisible being of whom there is no direct evidence.
When one doesn't believe, one still is left with doubt, inquiry, tentativeness and the uncertainties of real science. Trust me. I know about this.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Why can't "VIPs" be regular people?
The heads of state and senior officials of 46 nations gathered here in Washington to discuss nukes turned up to be a major traffic and aural nuisance, not to mention hazardous to the woman cyclist who was killed by a Humvee in one of the 46 motorcades. Why can't VIPs travel like regular guys and gals?
Very Important People? In this day and age? When the only absolute monarch in the world resides in the Vatican and not even he is immune from well-deserved criticism? Pull-ease!
If these guys (and they are guys) were to get on the subway, who the hell would know who they are? Would you recognize Jans Balkende or Syed Yousuf Raza Gilan, let alone which countries they are from? Guys in suits, like every other man in Washington.
It would really be so much safer for these folks to travel like regular guys.
Suppose some deadly Canadian "terrorist" is following Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Isn't Harper much more of a target in a motorcade than, say, traveling in a beat-up Toyota? Who's going to believe such a car is carrying Canada's top elected official?
They could even wear typical American tourist gear as disguises. Imagine Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi wearing a National's cap, a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and sneakers. What Abu Dhabian (is that how they are called?) is going to recognize his excellency in that get up?
They could even have a private moment of fun at the summit: a contest to see who's getup is the funniest, the sharpest, the most unexpected. "Hey, isn't that Lee Myung-bak in that joggers outfit?" "Wow, Nursultan, you can really carry cameras, can't you?"
And what a relief to drivers and pedestrians with hearing! Just a thought.
Very Important People? In this day and age? When the only absolute monarch in the world resides in the Vatican and not even he is immune from well-deserved criticism? Pull-ease!
If these guys (and they are guys) were to get on the subway, who the hell would know who they are? Would you recognize Jans Balkende or Syed Yousuf Raza Gilan, let alone which countries they are from? Guys in suits, like every other man in Washington.
It would really be so much safer for these folks to travel like regular guys.
Suppose some deadly Canadian "terrorist" is following Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Isn't Harper much more of a target in a motorcade than, say, traveling in a beat-up Toyota? Who's going to believe such a car is carrying Canada's top elected official?
They could even wear typical American tourist gear as disguises. Imagine Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi wearing a National's cap, a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and sneakers. What Abu Dhabian (is that how they are called?) is going to recognize his excellency in that get up?
They could even have a private moment of fun at the summit: a contest to see who's getup is the funniest, the sharpest, the most unexpected. "Hey, isn't that Lee Myung-bak in that joggers outfit?" "Wow, Nursultan, you can really carry cameras, can't you?"
And what a relief to drivers and pedestrians with hearing! Just a thought.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Smallest, easiest writing tool in the world
While I don't usually post about computers and software, since there are gazillions of techie blogs, I really want to plug the software adaptation by my good cyberfriend Little Girl, called Book on a Stick.
It's a tiny file you can run on any operating system on any computer capable of connecting to the Internet with a browser. If you're reading this, you can use it. What's it for? Writing.
Why get it?
"I liked the program so much that I wanted to get inside it and mess with its nuts and bolts to customize it," she wrote me. "After fiddling with it and changing some things, I liked my version(s) of it better."
It's your choice. I'm just passing this on.
UPDATE: Little Girl informs me that Book on a Stick now lives here:
http://bookonastick.wordpress.
It's a tiny file you can run on any operating system on any computer capable of connecting to the Internet with a browser. If you're reading this, you can use it. What's it for? Writing.
Why get it?
- It's totally free.
- It runs very simply on your browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.) in any operating system (Linux, OS X or other Mac systems, Windows and more ...).
- The files it produces can be read in any computer with any system.
"I liked the program so much that I wanted to get inside it and mess with its nuts and bolts to customize it," she wrote me. "After fiddling with it and changing some things, I liked my version(s) of it better."
It's your choice. I'm just passing this on.
UPDATE: Little Girl informs me that Book on a Stick now lives here:
http://bookonastick.wordpress.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Death (and Resurrection?) of the Catholic Church
The Vatican's Holy Week of spin notwithstanding, public regard for the Catholic clergy, from the pope on down, has never been lower in the lifespan of anyone alive today. Yet the child molestation debacle could yet be an opportunity to remake the Church into something more in consonance with the gospel.
Once there remains no Catholic who attributes absurd powers to men who put on their pants one leg at a time like everyone else, it might be possible to suggest that the clergy is the least significant part of Catholicism or Christianity -- just as the "good story" of one Galilean woodworker says.
Keep in mind that in the gospel, Jesus' main response to religion is frustration and outrage with the legalism and hypocrisy of the religious professionals of his time and his religion. There is no command from Jesus to go to church. Pray in secret, do good without claiming credit, Jesus advises.
The one clear set of gospel commands that have unmistakable moral consequences are those concerning feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the sick and those in prison and so forth.
While the gospel story includes delegation of moral authority to the apostles, there is no incontrovertible establishment of a human organization resembling any of today's churches. Indeed, even in Catholic Christian teaching, the society of forgiven sinners who believe in Jesus Christ is an invisible entity of those imbued with the life-changing gift of faith.
In fact, there is already a vast army of people who do not bother paying attention to the latest papal utterance or Vatican decree. People who don't think they're smart enough to understand theology or interpret writings penned thousands of years ago. People who go about their prayers, their assistance to the needy and their struggles with faith quietly and without seeking the attention of others.
Aren't they the real Church, according to the gospels? According to the gospel, the heavens rejoice more over the repentance of one miserable wrongdoer than over the everyday lives of church-going popes, priests or deacons.
Now granted, those who follow this blog know perfectly well that I, personally, don't even believe here was a historical Galilean woodworker named Yeshua bar Yosif who walked on water and was crucified. However, if there are people who believe not merely the historical facts, but the theological claims it would behoove them collectively to act and to be, as a group and as individuals, like a people who really believe.
If the pope really believed, wouldn't he be mortified at the thought that, because of his own personal error or omission or whatever, hundreds of boys were raped, some in the confessional? Wouldn't he and his minions be ashamed? Perhaps even fearful of the judgment to come?
Or do they really think that anyone wearing the priestly flea collar gets a Get Out of Hell Free card, valid no matter what they do, say or think? Or do they think that their God is intimidated by the harrumphs of the Vatican's cardinals, just as they assume ordinary mortals will be?
If people in the pews really believed, wouldn't they cease supporting the rotting and scandalous structure built in their name and with their money to the greater glory of the clergy? Just ignore it?
Perhaps, then the Catholic Church as we know it could die and rise in three days, as believers claim happened to someone long ago.
Once there remains no Catholic who attributes absurd powers to men who put on their pants one leg at a time like everyone else, it might be possible to suggest that the clergy is the least significant part of Catholicism or Christianity -- just as the "good story" of one Galilean woodworker says.
Keep in mind that in the gospel, Jesus' main response to religion is frustration and outrage with the legalism and hypocrisy of the religious professionals of his time and his religion. There is no command from Jesus to go to church. Pray in secret, do good without claiming credit, Jesus advises.
The one clear set of gospel commands that have unmistakable moral consequences are those concerning feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the sick and those in prison and so forth.
While the gospel story includes delegation of moral authority to the apostles, there is no incontrovertible establishment of a human organization resembling any of today's churches. Indeed, even in Catholic Christian teaching, the society of forgiven sinners who believe in Jesus Christ is an invisible entity of those imbued with the life-changing gift of faith.
In fact, there is already a vast army of people who do not bother paying attention to the latest papal utterance or Vatican decree. People who don't think they're smart enough to understand theology or interpret writings penned thousands of years ago. People who go about their prayers, their assistance to the needy and their struggles with faith quietly and without seeking the attention of others.
Aren't they the real Church, according to the gospels? According to the gospel, the heavens rejoice more over the repentance of one miserable wrongdoer than over the everyday lives of church-going popes, priests or deacons.
Now granted, those who follow this blog know perfectly well that I, personally, don't even believe here was a historical Galilean woodworker named Yeshua bar Yosif who walked on water and was crucified. However, if there are people who believe not merely the historical facts, but the theological claims it would behoove them collectively to act and to be, as a group and as individuals, like a people who really believe.
If the pope really believed, wouldn't he be mortified at the thought that, because of his own personal error or omission or whatever, hundreds of boys were raped, some in the confessional? Wouldn't he and his minions be ashamed? Perhaps even fearful of the judgment to come?
Or do they really think that anyone wearing the priestly flea collar gets a Get Out of Hell Free card, valid no matter what they do, say or think? Or do they think that their God is intimidated by the harrumphs of the Vatican's cardinals, just as they assume ordinary mortals will be?
If people in the pews really believed, wouldn't they cease supporting the rotting and scandalous structure built in their name and with their money to the greater glory of the clergy? Just ignore it?
Perhaps, then the Catholic Church as we know it could die and rise in three days, as believers claim happened to someone long ago.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Nixon Time for Pope Nazinger
The smoking gun from Munich has now been published in The New York Times and not even the Catholic League, which has bought a space ad to defend the pope in a different case, dares challenge the finding against "the holy father."
What did Joseph Razinger (aka formerly a Hitler Youth, archbishop of Munich and chief inquisitor at the Vatican and currently pope) know and when did he know it?
So here are the values Ratzinger enforced: child rape, yes; peace, no.
How long before a John Dean rats him out on his other misdeeds? Stay tuned. Tempted as I am to picket the Vatican and chant "Ratzinger resign," it would be far better for him to hang on and take the whole circus down with him.
What did Joseph Razinger (aka formerly a Hitler Youth, archbishop of Munich and chief inquisitor at the Vatican and currently pope) know and when did he know it?
- Written evidence shows that Ratzinger led the Jan. 15, 1980, diocesan weekly council meeting that decided to transfer Rev. Peter Hullemann, a priest sent from Essen to Munich for therapy to overcome pedophilia, to pastoral duties, meaning regular parish work. Hullemann was later sent to prison for what he did after that transfer in duties.
- Munich archdiocesan personnel chief Rev. Friedrich Fahr, reputedly "very close" to the then-archbishop Ratzinger, had received oral and written warning concerning the "danger" posed by Hullemann between Dec. 20, 1979, and Jan 3., 1980.
- Ratzinger received written notification that the transfer of Hullemann had taken place on Jan. 20, 1980, showing that he was kept informed.
So here are the values Ratzinger enforced: child rape, yes; peace, no.
How long before a John Dean rats him out on his other misdeeds? Stay tuned. Tempted as I am to picket the Vatican and chant "Ratzinger resign," it would be far better for him to hang on and take the whole circus down with him.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
"Why should I pay for you when you get sick?"
The heading of this post* is the summation of all objections to any public social insurance program, be it unemployment compensation, social security, day care supports, family leave and even education. Now that the congressional debate over health insurance reform has ended, perhaps we ought to ask, why indeed should I pay for you?
The first answer, of course, is that if a law says I must pay for you, surely it also means you must pay for me. That's what social insurance means, joining forces as a society to share the essential risks and challenges in human life, such as illness, unemployment, bearing and rearing children, acquiring necessary knowledge and old age.
They've been doing that for 60 years or more in the part of Europe that was never Communist.
Secondly, and seldom acknowledged, because someone has already paid for you. When you were 3 years old, say, even if you were born wealthy on paper, were you handling your investments, let alone buying and preparing all the food you ate, the clothing you wore, the housing you had? Weren't you a net recipient of everything until, at a minimum, your adolescence?
If you started your own business, did you build the transportation infrastructure that allows you to ship goods to customers? If you are now retired, do you think for a moment that you contributed every last penny that is being spent on you while you produce nothing at all?
There are no utterly self-sufficient individuals. Not even you. That's why you should pay for me when I get sick, in fairness, to make up for my paying for you when you get sick.
* A phrase stolen from Kel, the blogger of the Osterley Times.
The first answer, of course, is that if a law says I must pay for you, surely it also means you must pay for me. That's what social insurance means, joining forces as a society to share the essential risks and challenges in human life, such as illness, unemployment, bearing and rearing children, acquiring necessary knowledge and old age.
They've been doing that for 60 years or more in the part of Europe that was never Communist.
Secondly, and seldom acknowledged, because someone has already paid for you. When you were 3 years old, say, even if you were born wealthy on paper, were you handling your investments, let alone buying and preparing all the food you ate, the clothing you wore, the housing you had? Weren't you a net recipient of everything until, at a minimum, your adolescence?
If you started your own business, did you build the transportation infrastructure that allows you to ship goods to customers? If you are now retired, do you think for a moment that you contributed every last penny that is being spent on you while you produce nothing at all?
There are no utterly self-sufficient individuals. Not even you. That's why you should pay for me when I get sick, in fairness, to make up for my paying for you when you get sick.
* A phrase stolen from Kel, the blogger of the Osterley Times.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Tonto TV on Mundovision
My recent encounter with an NPR reporter's misuse of the image of a telenovela made me think of the shudders U.S. Spanish TV in general induces in me, given its obsessive pandering to the lowest common denominator among the least educated rural immigrants in this country. Bad enough that they have that crap in "Latin" America!
Telemundo and Univision, two Spanish-language television networks in the United States, broadcast South American telenovelas to distract their mostly female, low-skilled, low-wage daytime audience from the notion of being accorded respect with better pay and a healthier balancing of work and family demands -- and immigration reform.
Their other shows feature Chaliapin-bass announcers that scream out "SAAAAAAAAAbado!" like late-night Anglo TV fire sales and fake blondes in bikinis coochy cooing their buttocks and breasts at the audience. Ay, mamita!
Mama eu queiro, mama eu queiro, mama eu queiro mamar ...
And when it's not year-round carnival, there's always sports: GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!
The world of Spanish-language mass media entertainment rarely departs from swimsuits, "fútbol," and absurdly maudlin dramas with romance and a pastiche of superstitions and magical thinking. It's the equivalent of the minstrel show, only put on by Hispanics with no shame.
Every once in a while I stop while channel surfing, try to give it the umpteenth chance, but my brain explodes inside my head within three minutes.
Forget religion. Tonto* TV is the modern opium of the masses.
*Tonto: Spanish for "stupid" or "dumb," hence the insult that The Lone Ranger represented to American Indians. (Yes, they prefer "Indians" these days.)
Telemundo and Univision, two Spanish-language television networks in the United States, broadcast South American telenovelas to distract their mostly female, low-skilled, low-wage daytime audience from the notion of being accorded respect with better pay and a healthier balancing of work and family demands -- and immigration reform.
Their other shows feature Chaliapin-bass announcers that scream out "SAAAAAAAAAbado!" like late-night Anglo TV fire sales and fake blondes in bikinis coochy cooing their buttocks and breasts at the audience. Ay, mamita!
Mama eu queiro, mama eu queiro, mama eu queiro mamar ...
And when it's not year-round carnival, there's always sports: GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!
The world of Spanish-language mass media entertainment rarely departs from swimsuits, "fútbol," and absurdly maudlin dramas with romance and a pastiche of superstitions and magical thinking. It's the equivalent of the minstrel show, only put on by Hispanics with no shame.
Every once in a while I stop while channel surfing, try to give it the umpteenth chance, but my brain explodes inside my head within three minutes.
Forget religion. Tonto* TV is the modern opium of the masses.
*Tonto: Spanish for "stupid" or "dumb," hence the insult that The Lone Ranger represented to American Indians. (Yes, they prefer "Indians" these days.)
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Pedophilia Spatters the Pope
They couldn't get Karol Wojtyla (aka John Paul II), but reporters of the Süddeutsche Zeitung have finally nailed Joseph Ratzinger (aka the sitting pope) with conspiring to hide sadistic child rape when he was in the Archdiocese of Munich.
Everybody is guilty of something, Joseph Stalin was wont to say when the arrest of someone without evidence of a misdeed troubled the top dogs at the NKVD -- a rare event, to be sure.
But how many people knowingly accept the transfer of a now-imprisoned priest from another diocese (Essen), where he had raped an 11-year-old boy? The priest in question was no misdirected man: he engaged in rank acts of sadism to compel the boy to perform sexual acts. This is proven as a matter of law.
Then there is the question of the stormclouds gathering over the pope's brother, also a priest. The role of Msgr. Georg Ratzinger in allegations of abuse when he was master of the boys' choir at Regenburg, which ran from 1964 to 1994, is currently under investigation in Germany.
But the Vatican already claims to know that nothing happened there under the sibling Ratzinger. How does the Vatican know for sure before the investigation has been completed?
Perhaps this is a case similar to that of Wojtyla who, when similar allegations arose about his tenure as Archbishop of Krakow, dispatched a Rasputin-like figure who controlled all of Wojtyla's papers, to gather up whatever had been left behind in Krakow. A Polish reporter who had begun to ask questions on this matter was then roughed up, according to a Washington Post report in the late 1990s, and nothing more was ever heard on the subject.
Everybody is guilty of something, Joseph Stalin was wont to say when the arrest of someone without evidence of a misdeed troubled the top dogs at the NKVD -- a rare event, to be sure.
But how many people knowingly accept the transfer of a now-imprisoned priest from another diocese (Essen), where he had raped an 11-year-old boy? The priest in question was no misdirected man: he engaged in rank acts of sadism to compel the boy to perform sexual acts. This is proven as a matter of law.
Then there is the question of the stormclouds gathering over the pope's brother, also a priest. The role of Msgr. Georg Ratzinger in allegations of abuse when he was master of the boys' choir at Regenburg, which ran from 1964 to 1994, is currently under investigation in Germany.
But the Vatican already claims to know that nothing happened there under the sibling Ratzinger. How does the Vatican know for sure before the investigation has been completed?
Perhaps this is a case similar to that of Wojtyla who, when similar allegations arose about his tenure as Archbishop of Krakow, dispatched a Rasputin-like figure who controlled all of Wojtyla's papers, to gather up whatever had been left behind in Krakow. A Polish reporter who had begun to ask questions on this matter was then roughed up, according to a Washington Post report in the late 1990s, and nothing more was ever heard on the subject.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Take the Responsibility and the Blame
I was very tempted to go to hear Diane Ravitch speak at an event here in Washington, so I could ask her what we, as a society, get now that she has seen the light. Public figures love to "take full responsibility" for misdeeds (when they get caught doing them), but accept none of the blame. Punishment? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Ravitch, a former assistant secretary of education in the Bush (pére) Administration, was by her own admission a "
A bit too late, she has discovered that the policies she shoved down everyone's throat haven't suceeded at anything good. In the interim, from the 1980s to today, millions of children were subjected to aggressive teach-to-the-test instruction and a corresponding number of teachers were forced to become automatons in the service of some wonk's slash and burn approach.
I myself discarded the briefly held idea of becoming a teacher once I was confronted with one public school system's "competency-based curriculum." This was essentially one of those unreadable educratic policy tomes in which everything is a three-word something (pencil = paper-oriented wordprocessor) and single syllable, Anglo-Saxon words are never used if a longer, Latinate one can be had.
So, yes, Ms. Ravitch, you and your fellow edufascists-in-arms chased me away, even though I could have made learning something so enjoyable students might pursue it on their own, outside school.
Worse, still, the kids didn't get any smarter under the No Child Left Behind regime your propaganda inspired. Even you admit it now. What was the ditty? Ah, yes: those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, teach education.
In Ravitch's case, she's out to make money confessing her error in a new book. Borrow it from a library, if you must; just don't give her a dime she doesn't deserve.
How is it that all sorts of people can not only start wars, dumb-down schools, steal from the poor and give to the rich, steal from the rich and keep it, and -- only if caught! -- appear in public with crocodile tears about how terrible and wrong they were. They can even non-apologize "if" someone suffered as a result.
Then they get to rake in the real publicity and dough.
What ever happened to scarlet letters, stocks, public humiliation and taunting, drawing and quartering? Weren't these the preferred social catharses the uberconservatives loved? Or were those only for Galileo, English Jesuits and the victims of the unruly teenage girls of Salem?
I'd like to see some real, unremunerated effort to compensate society. Barring that, a good whipping would do.
Ravitch, a former assistant secretary of education in the Bush (pére) Administration, was by her own admission a "
A bit too late, she has discovered that the policies she shoved down everyone's throat haven't suceeded at anything good. In the interim, from the 1980s to today, millions of children were subjected to aggressive teach-to-the-test instruction and a corresponding number of teachers were forced to become automatons in the service of some wonk's slash and burn approach.
I myself discarded the briefly held idea of becoming a teacher once I was confronted with one public school system's "competency-based curriculum." This was essentially one of those unreadable educratic policy tomes in which everything is a three-word something (pencil = paper-oriented wordprocessor) and single syllable, Anglo-Saxon words are never used if a longer, Latinate one can be had.
So, yes, Ms. Ravitch, you and your fellow edufascists-in-arms chased me away, even though I could have made learning something so enjoyable students might pursue it on their own, outside school.
Worse, still, the kids didn't get any smarter under the No Child Left Behind regime your propaganda inspired. Even you admit it now. What was the ditty? Ah, yes: those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, teach education.
In Ravitch's case, she's out to make money confessing her error in a new book. Borrow it from a library, if you must; just don't give her a dime she doesn't deserve.
How is it that all sorts of people can not only start wars, dumb-down schools, steal from the poor and give to the rich, steal from the rich and keep it, and -- only if caught! -- appear in public with crocodile tears about how terrible and wrong they were. They can even non-apologize "if" someone suffered as a result.
Then they get to rake in the real publicity and dough.
What ever happened to scarlet letters, stocks, public humiliation and taunting, drawing and quartering? Weren't these the preferred social catharses the uberconservatives loved? Or were those only for Galileo, English Jesuits and the victims of the unruly teenage girls of Salem?
I'd like to see some real, unremunerated effort to compensate society. Barring that, a good whipping would do.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
GOP BS about Reconciliation
Let's retire the notion being pushed like crack that using "reconciliation" to get what's been watered down to health care consumer protection passed through the U.S. Senate is something terribly, terribly unusual and sinister. The pushers, Republicans such as Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), should be ashamed of themselves for this naked effort to throw pixie dust at the public to protect their insurance industry patrons.
The facts of the matter are that reconciliation, a procedure created to bypass an arcane Senate practice to make sure, among other things, that the federal government has funds on which to legally operate, was first used in 1981 by the ... wait for it ... Republicans!
Let's consider what 59% means.
Remember Ronald Reagan's 1980 "landslide" electoral victory that made him president? He only got 50.7% of the votes cast. In contrast, Lyndon B. Johnson won 61% of the votes cast 1964 -- that was a real landslide.
Under the Senate's 60% supermajority rule needed to defeat a filibuster, neither Abraham Lincoln nor John F. Kennedy would have been elected. Nor would any president since Lyndon Johnson, including Barack Obama and both Bushes.
The famously portrayed filibuster by actor Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 film "Mr. Smith Comes to Washington" isn't even how filibusters occur today at all. There's no continuous talkathon, no drama at all and really no effort.
Last week, by one vote upholding a filibuster, that of Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky), the unemployment benefits of millions of people came to a crashing halt this past Sunday, just when the duration of joblessness is at an all-time-record.
The facts of the matter are that reconciliation, a procedure created to bypass an arcane Senate practice to make sure, among other things, that the federal government has funds on which to legally operate, was first used in 1981 by the ... wait for it ... Republicans!
- 17 of the 23 reconciliation bills signed into law, were enacted by Republican presidents;
- If you have ever continued under your employer's health plan after you were laid off under "COBRA" benefits, that's due to the 1974 Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act;
- Welfare reforms were passed in 1996 thanks to one Newton Leroy Gingrich (then R-Ga), in the the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
Let's consider what 59% means.
Remember Ronald Reagan's 1980 "landslide" electoral victory that made him president? He only got 50.7% of the votes cast. In contrast, Lyndon B. Johnson won 61% of the votes cast 1964 -- that was a real landslide.
Under the Senate's 60% supermajority rule needed to defeat a filibuster, neither Abraham Lincoln nor John F. Kennedy would have been elected. Nor would any president since Lyndon Johnson, including Barack Obama and both Bushes.
The famously portrayed filibuster by actor Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 film "Mr. Smith Comes to Washington" isn't even how filibusters occur today at all. There's no continuous talkathon, no drama at all and really no effort.
Last week, by one vote upholding a filibuster, that of Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky), the unemployment benefits of millions of people came to a crashing halt this past Sunday, just when the duration of joblessness is at an all-time-record.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Telenovelas and the NPR Reporter
Just Thursday morning, I heard a reporter on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" comparing the then-upcoming conference between President Obama and the Republicans on health reform to a "Latin telenovela." In case listeners didn't know what a telenovela is, he added, "you know, one of Latin American those soap operas that go on for hours and hours."
I get it. We're all supposed to laugh. Imagine Barack Obama and John Boehner (R-Ohio) going on like those crazy "Latins" sitting in the shade in their Mexican "sombreros" and going on endlessly about nothing while sipping their tequila! Ha, ha, ha!
You know, of course, that all Hispanics wear mariachi band outfits, right? In addition, they have no sense of time -- not like punctual, lickety-spit Anglos -- and can't use a pithy Anglo-Saxon phrase where a guitar-accompanied serenade can be had.
Right, Mr. NPR reporter? Ha, ha, ha!!!
Oh, but wait! I am no fan of telenovelas, yet even I know that they keep to their appointed half-hour or hour schedules. They don't go on continuously for "hours and hours" like the debatefest at the White House on health reform.
That's Anglo politicians, Mr. NPR reporter. Not Hispanics in telenovelas.
What's long about telenovelas and Anglo soap-operas alike is that they have interminable, implausible plots that go on for years over thousands of episodes.
The NPR reporter obviously merged in his mind the long plots with the stereotypes about Hispanics -- not "Latins," unless you want to count Andrew Cuomo as one. Doesn't NPR have editors capable of deleting a simile that not only runs against the facts, but is subtly racist?
I understand you didn't mean to offend anyone, Mr. NPR reporter. You wanted to show off that you are so culturally broadminded that you know the word "telenovela."
I get it. We're all supposed to laugh. Imagine Barack Obama and John Boehner (R-Ohio) going on like those crazy "Latins" sitting in the shade in their Mexican "sombreros" and going on endlessly about nothing while sipping their tequila! Ha, ha, ha!
You know, of course, that all Hispanics wear mariachi band outfits, right? In addition, they have no sense of time -- not like punctual, lickety-spit Anglos -- and can't use a pithy Anglo-Saxon phrase where a guitar-accompanied serenade can be had.
Right, Mr. NPR reporter? Ha, ha, ha!!!
Oh, but wait! I am no fan of telenovelas, yet even I know that they keep to their appointed half-hour or hour schedules. They don't go on continuously for "hours and hours" like the debatefest at the White House on health reform.
That's Anglo politicians, Mr. NPR reporter. Not Hispanics in telenovelas.
What's long about telenovelas and Anglo soap-operas alike is that they have interminable, implausible plots that go on for years over thousands of episodes.
The NPR reporter obviously merged in his mind the long plots with the stereotypes about Hispanics -- not "Latins," unless you want to count Andrew Cuomo as one. Doesn't NPR have editors capable of deleting a simile that not only runs against the facts, but is subtly racist?
I understand you didn't mean to offend anyone, Mr. NPR reporter. You wanted to show off that you are so culturally broadminded that you know the word "telenovela."
Friday, February 19, 2010
Piling on Muslims
At the risk of sticking my nose where it doesn't belong, I would like to raise my voice against the denial of French citizenship to a man accused of forcing his wife to wear a veil. According to The New York Times and Le Monde, Prime Minister François Fillon announced on Feb. 3 that he would sign a decree denying French nationality to the man.
We don't know the man's name nor the evidence that he forced his wife to wear a veil. Nor do we know under what law it is illegal to do so. Most importantly, we don't know how the man allegedly forced his wife to wear a veil.
Just think. How does one person force another person to wear something? Did he tie her down and put it on her? Did he watch her every moment to make sure she didn't take it off? Did he beat her and terrorize her?
If the alleged forcing involved assault it is some kind of crime in France, no? Why wasn't he arrested? Why wasn't he deported? How come he is allowed to walk freely and merely denied the "honor" of a French passport?
And don't they have shelters for battered women in France to which she could have fled and been helped to remake her life without the abusive husband?
Given the absence of evidence, why does this allegation warrant a prejudicial, but merely administrative, government action? Why isn't the citizenry of the country that gave us the cry of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" rising up in outrage against an arbitrary government that denies citizen to a man without showing legal cause?
Who's next? Jews for wearing yarmulkes? Americans for wearing shorts in summer? Peruvians for wearing ponchos?
All I see here is a Muslim couple in which the woman apparently happens to wear a veil.
We don't know the man's name nor the evidence that he forced his wife to wear a veil. Nor do we know under what law it is illegal to do so. Most importantly, we don't know how the man allegedly forced his wife to wear a veil.
Just think. How does one person force another person to wear something? Did he tie her down and put it on her? Did he watch her every moment to make sure she didn't take it off? Did he beat her and terrorize her?
If the alleged forcing involved assault it is some kind of crime in France, no? Why wasn't he arrested? Why wasn't he deported? How come he is allowed to walk freely and merely denied the "honor" of a French passport?
And don't they have shelters for battered women in France to which she could have fled and been helped to remake her life without the abusive husband?
Given the absence of evidence, why does this allegation warrant a prejudicial, but merely administrative, government action? Why isn't the citizenry of the country that gave us the cry of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" rising up in outrage against an arbitrary government that denies citizen to a man without showing legal cause?
Who's next? Jews for wearing yarmulkes? Americans for wearing shorts in summer? Peruvians for wearing ponchos?
All I see here is a Muslim couple in which the woman apparently happens to wear a veil.
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