Timeless Speech concerning Peace

New Jersey Ends Death Penalty

Via Vox Nova:

Thanks be to God

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.

-DH Lawrence

"Workers Left Behind"

Yep

The Government

It seems as if many Conservatives can't imagine any use of government that isn't coercive and oppressive. That says more about them than it does about the government, I think. It also explains a lot of what the Bush administration has done.

Government, ideally, serves the interests, the common good, of the people it governs. There is nothing innately oppressive about governments per se.

People oppress, people send others to unjust wars, people neglect the interests of anyone except the already powerful. Governments won't be accountable on Judgement Day: only the people who led them.

Get a Kleenex...

...and then read this

Lyrics

This, from In My Heaven by Mary Chapin Carpenter, struck me as Catholic in its sensibility. I have no idea what her religious affiliation is, if any:

For every soul that's down there waiting,
holding on, still hesitating
We say a prayer of levitating, in my heaven

This is just Depraved

Walmart sued a brain-damaged Gold-Star Mother for almost half a million dollars. Awesome, Walmart.

Note to the Walton Family: Hell is forever, folks. Hell is forever.

Kunstler on "Consumer" vs. "Citizen"

Excerpted from an essay by Jim Kunstler, Author of "The Geography of Nowhere" and other books about urbanism.

Consumers. What a degrading label for people who used to be citizens.

Consumers have no duties, obligations, or responsibilities to anything besides their own desire to eat more Cheez Doodles and drink more beer. Think about yourself that way for twenty or thirty years and it will affect the collective spirit very negatively. And our behavior. The biggest losers, of course, end up being the generations of human beings who will follow us, because in the course of mutating into consumers, preoccupied with our Cheez Doodle consumption, we gave up on the common good, which means that we gave up on the future, and the people who will dwell in it.

Well, exactly. Paris Hilton, Nascar...maybe I'll start a TV Network called the "Bread and Circuses Channel."

Another Plea from a worthy recipient

I linked to the previous fundraiser, and am happy to again. Pretty Bird Woman House is a shelter for battered women in South Dakota. They do great work, and need your help.

Absolutely Pathetic

Schmuer and Feinstein cave on Mukasey. Great. Just great. Time for true Progressives to look for a 3rd Party. (Note to Naderites: Don't even start.)

Conservative Catholic makes an ass of himself...

Henry Karlson sends up a particularly ridiculous defamation of Harry Potter by one Father Euteneuer.

I find myself mystified by "Potter Panic" amongst my co-religionists.

Note to my Right-Wing readers

I’m sorry, but you folks seriously need to get a pair.

Seriously.

Landsakes, have you no courage? What is this desperation for the government to torture the big, bad terrorists before they do something mean to you? You’re giving the terrorists way, WAY more power…more attention, even… than they deserve.

Think about this: Why is it called “TERRORism”?? Forget moral considerations for a moment. Don’t you realize that when you beg the government to stop at no means, no matter how vile and subversive of democracy and human decency, to save your sorry, fear-addled hide - “I’m scared! Trash the constitution! Take away my rights! Do anything, but don’t let them hurt meeee!” - you’re actually doing exactly what the terrorists want you to do? Why are you helping the terrorists?

Quick Story...

During the Civil Rights era, there was an elderly woman who became separated from the March from Selma to Montgomery, and was cornered by a couple of racist thugs in someone's yard. They said they were going to "teach her her place" with a beating.

She told them she could not resist them, but asked if she could pray for them before they began. The two men, somewhat stunned, agreed.

She knelt down, closed her eyes, and prayed that God would "bless these two men, who are so obviously burdened with such terrible pain."

When she opened her eyes, they turned and walked away.

Pacifism

I have very little patience for apologists for war, especially of the weak-kneed, unimaginative, "well, it's a fallen world, and so war is as inevitable as the dawn..." sort. I'm not an absolute pacifist, in the sense that I suppose that I could conjure a situation where war is necessary: I just think of pacifism as far and away the higher, more Godly way if resolving disputes.

Pacifism, to me, does not mean passivity or quietism in the face of evil - it means resisting evil through means other than violence.

The usual example of the "Good War" (despite the record of firestorms, atom bombs and assorted other appalling carnage) is World War II.

Well, WWII did not just "happen". The Nazis didn’t just “arise” in some pre-ordained, law-of-physics sort of way. They worked to gain power, using German’s (somewhat justified) resentment of having been assigned sole blame (and suffering under ruinous reparations) for the carnage of World War I.

European nations failed to recognize the danger posed by the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, and Germans allowed themselves to be seduced by the intoxicating brew of nationalism and self-exhaltation being peddled by Hitler and his minions.

None of that was inevitable: The allies could have been more humble and willing to accept more of the blame for WWI after their victory in 1918, and thus not impose such unfair and one-sided reparations upon Germany.

Germans could have resisted the temptation to give in to the Idolatry and self-glorification of nationalism, and instead worked to convince the victorious nations of the injustice of the Versailles armistice, through the non-violent means of appealing to their consciences.

Alienation

Chris Hedges told the story of a foreign friend of his who remarked, "Americans must be the loneliest people in the world."

There is a good post up at Vox Nova that explores a bit of why this may be so...

How to end the war in Iraq

I'm going to argue this from a purely pragmatic, Machiavellian, morality-shmorality point of view.

End the war on Bush's watch, force him and the Republicans to eat their defeat (and it is their defeat.)

Step one is to outline what it would take for the United States to really, actually win in the way that gave neocons wet-dreams 4 years ago. Step two is, give Bush and the Republicans a clear, honest choice: either

do what it takes to "win" the war

or

"get off the pot": end the occupation.

Let's define "winning" as...

- Violence reduced to Pre-war levels;
- A stable, secular, united central government in Baghdad;
- Infrastructure (power, water, food distribution, sewage treatment, etc.) equal to, or exceeding, standards that obtained in pre-war Iraq.

...thus providing the example of freedom that would be (highly debatably...) attractive to Arab populations living under dictatorships in the region.

How could the United States (and, given the level of support the United States could realistically expect from the rest of the world, it would be virtually the United States alone doing this) get there from here? What would it really, actually take to completely pacify Iraq?

Step one is troops. Lots and lots and LOTS of troops. Bush's "surge" is comically inadequate to the task. You'd have to absolutely flood the non-Kurdish parts of Iraq with American troops, who could clear of insurgents, and then seal off to weapons smuggling, the whole of Iraq, village by village, city by city, region by region. You'd also have to effectively seal off, or at least monitor in fine-grained, very intrusive detail, the borders of the country, especially the ones with Syria and Iran - to the point that a ball-point pen couldn't enter the country without American say-so.

This means anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of combat troops - in each large city in Iraq. Baghdad alone would probably need something in the neighborhood of 200,000 troops, just for the city itself. Plus, every road into Baghdad (and every other city in Iraq) would need to be under 24-hour patrols and surveillance, to prevent insurgents and weapons from moving from place to place. Not to mention saturating every border crossing of any size with American troops, and regular, pervasive patrols of every mile of the border.

The population would need to be disarmed: the military would need to just say, "you have six weeks to turn in any weaponry. Any Iraqi civilian found to be in possesion of a weapon after that time will be presumed to be an insurgent, and will be subject to imprisonment."

In other words, the American Military would need to effectively run Iraq in the short- to mid-term. The total American forces in the country at any moment would probably total somewhere between one and two million troops.

Step two: Once the violence was quelled (and, with sufficient troops, it would be, probably with surprising speed): "turn the lights back on."

Prime targets of insurgents are electrical lines, to keep the population uncomfortable and inconvenienced, and thus resentful. So, rebuilding existing generating capacity, building new capacity as needed, and then putting power stations, and every mile of power line, under 24-hour guard, is essential to undermining support for the insurgents.

Next, restore basic services: Water, sewage, garbage collection.

Garbage collection especially would improve life measurably for the population, in a highly visible way, and would be rewarded with lots of goodwill. Garbage collectors are prime targets of insurgents, because garbage piles by the side of the road make good hiding places for IEDs.

Step 3: Send the vast, vast majority of the American contractors in Iraq home, and hire Iraqi companies for all future rebuilding projects, and pay them in dollars. Iraqi unemployment is somewhere north of 50%, and unemployed men (especially former Iraqi Army soldiers) are ripe for recruiting by insurgents. Employing them would dry up this particular resource for insurgents, and also give Iraqis a sense of ownership of the projects they would be building. Even people not involved directly in building schools, post offices, etc., would see them being built, and have a clear sense that everyday life is getting incrementally better.

All this would, of course, be hideously expensive - hundreds and hundreds of billion dollars, every year. There would also be a sharp spike in American casualties, but the insurgency would probably melt away in the face of pervasive American troops, so the spike would be significant but temporary.

Also, some of those casualties would be draftees, because summoning the level of troops required for all this would require a draft (and a big one) without question: a level of mobilization not seen since World War II.

Once some semblance of stability was achieved, a scheme for governing Iraq could probably be forged.

So, Democrats could say: "24 years ago, a Marine general in Lebanon put it more eloquently than we ever could:

'If you have sent us here to fight, we are too few; if you have sent us here to die, we are too many.'

Here's a realistic plan for success in Iraq. We'll be sending the President two bills: one to end the occupation over the next six months, the other to do what it takes to succeed in his mission in Iraq, using the metrics that he himself defined."

Distorted Calvinism and America's Predicament

Morning's Minion has a great post up at Vox Nova, where he explores some of the theological underpinnings of American arrogance. Read the whole thing: here's an excerpt:

It ultimately derives from a derivative form of Calvinism whereby the world can be divided into good and evil, the elect and the damned. From its earliest days, America has seen itself as God’s chosen nation, the idea of the Calvinist elect projected onto a country. The role model, of course, was ancient Israel. The early settlers were the “elect”, chosen by God to be saved through no action of their own. And America was their country. This concept resonates deeply among the American evangelical culture today. There was much outcry over Jerry Falwell’s comments after 9/11, when he was accused of blaming abortion, gays etc. for the catastrophe. But what Falwell really said was that God had withdrawn his shroud of protection from America. That presupposes that God was protecting America in a way that other countries could not access.

Two things to make America more just

I'm for de-regulating the border - no more fences, certainly no walls, no patrolling the border (or, let's say, assigning the same number of agents to the Mexican border as the Canadian border).

Make the new rule: "Anyone who wants to come to the United States and be a citizen, can do so." Just live here for 5 years, keep your nose clean and work - don't be a burden on society - and the folks at the INS will swear you in, and congratulate you on becoming a citizen. The Immigration and Naturalization Service's new mission will be solely to Serve the needs of people who want to Immigrate and become Naturalized, absurd as that may sound. Put up signs at the border that say:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

If America is to be a beacon of hope, a place where people can renew themselves and their prospects, then it must act as a beacon of hope.

I think this will spur countries south of the border to reform their systems in order to keep their populations from emigrating en mass. It would renew American life, leavening it with new energy, hybridize its culture for the better, in the same way that African Americans gave our culture the gifts of Jazz, Blues, Gospel, Soul and so on.

Also, it would be just.

Quick story: When I was in the Army and stationed in El Paso, Texas, I took a walk one day to a suburb in the southwestern corner of the city. There, I saw a view I will never forget: I looked through someone's side yard, over their back yard swimming pool, and saw, maybe a mile away, Mexicans living on the opposite slope of the Rio Grande valley, in shacks and cinderblock houses, no electricity, no sewage system...and it occured to me how strange it was. Only a mile or so separated American opulence and Mexican poverty, and all because some people had decided that there was a notional thing called a "border" between the two places. It gave me a distinct feeling of metaphysical dread: here was glaring, concrete injustice, unrepented: unexamined, even.

Taxes:

I'm for a (truly) progressive income tax. "To whom much has been given, much will be required." "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." (Both those quotes are from the Bible. Let the Dominionists chew on those.)The rate on income over a certain amount (to be determined) should be 91%, the same as it was under that fiery Leninist, Eisenhower.

There was once a consensus in this country that we wanted the government we had chartered to help balance society by keeping things fairly equal, at least more equal than they end up being under unfettered capitalism, and thus provide stability. It's worth mentioning that places in the the world where this ethic does not obtain are places that, gee, always seem to be on the verge of armed revolution.

Franklin Roosevelt spoke about this explicitly in his acceptance speech at the 1936 Democratic Convention [hat tip: Sara at Orcinus]:

Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.

An old English judge once said: "Necessitous men are not free men." Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

Hmm, reminds me of a certain regime in Washington...

This is becomeing kind of epic, so I'll quit for now.

Dem Dems...

I find myself pretty unsatisfied by all the Democrats in the Presidential field this cycle, and in the last several.

The missing piece, for me, is Economic Justice.

The income distribution in our society is more skewed towards the rich than at almost any time in our history, and yet, virtually no one is talking about it, at least in any depth.

The Dems seem very, very gun shy about even bringing this up.

There used to be a consensus in this country - a consensus forged by Democrats of the past - that one of the more important functions of government was to help balance society by keeping things more economically equal than they would be under a purely capitalist system (mostly through a progressive income tax, and redistribution), and thus provide soocial stability.

Places where this ethic does not obtain tend to be places constantly on the verge of armed revolution.

The current consensus - the idea that redistribution = communism - is a consensus put in place by Republicans, who are the party of the Rich.

Hurricane Dean gets me thinking...

[Update: This post stared as a comment on this " post at Street Prophets...]

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area as I do, I remember the Lome Prieta Earthquake in '89, and then the Oakland Hills Firestorm a couple years later.

The power being out seems to pull back the electronic veil behind which we hide, and which (I've come to realize) keeps us isolated from one another. Without the constant blaring of television and radio, my city neighborhood seems to revive after a long slumber - suddenly neighbors are talking to each other, learning each others' names (this after living 20 feet away from each other for 10 years).

You can hear the neighborhood - without the immersive electronic din that characterizes life in early 21st Century America, people become the only sound you can hear. Everyone pulls together. The neighborhood suddenly becomes a village, a true community. It is a startling transformation, which happens instantly.

It's always struck me in these situations, "why aren't people doing this all the time? This is actually pretty cool... "

Epitaph for a Reprobate

An excerpt from a post on Daily Kos, which pretty much presents the unvarnished truth about Karl Rove:

Rove's oft-touted "genius" is nothing more than single-minded amorality. In campaigns and in the administration, he was and is unapologetically amoral in service to his own cause or that of his client: his "genius" is that he has consistently been willing to go farther, be meaner, and invent more astonishing lies than would be done by anyone in politics with a thin remaining threads of a conscience. From smearing John McCain's children with race-baiting taunts to attacking the careers and wives of critics to helping corrupt the most basic and foundational premises of the the United States Department of Justice, nothing has ever been considered "out of bounds". If a malevolent action is not taken -- such as ratcheting up the already venomous Republican rhetoric against immigrants -- it is done only in service to calculated poll numbers, never as a nod to basic morality or patriotism or human decency.

Feeling a Draft?

New Business

A friend of mine is opening a store for women (no, not "that" kind of store) called All About Eve, some time this fall. From her description of the store's mission, to be found Here.

Along with creating a marketplace for local women to promote and sell their creations, we will also be providing a community space for women to come together.

I'll keep my SF Bay Area readers posted about the progress of this store.

Republican Surrenders to Reality-Based, um, Reality

This is an excerpt from an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I post it here without further comment or emendation:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging a "phony war" on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001.

A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil and some of the regimes that petro-dollars support.

Anti-immigrant and Anti-Catholic

Fr. Jim points out something I hadn't thought of, namely that Anti-Immigrant agitation often has anti-Catholicism as an ingredient:

I didn't realize that nearly forty percent of Catholics in the United States are Hispanic. It's worth noting that in today's immigration controversies, there are some very real strains of anti-Catholicism (a "foreign religion") mixed in with the other prejudices. This shouldn't be very surprising, inasmuch as the even more frantic agitation against immigration in our grandparents' and great-grandparents' day was a traditional blend of xenophobia and anti-Catholicism, too.

New kind of Troll

This is something that's been bugging me for awhile, and so I wanted to bring it up for discussion. To the list of categories of troll (Concern, etc.) that folks on blogs refer to, I'd like to add a new one: The "Despair Troll." This may seem harsh, but frankly, I've had enough.

I define a Despair Troll as someone who does some version of the following:

To an action diary, they post a comment like:

"Yeah, that'll happen. Americans are too wrapped up in [Paris Hilton/Lindsay Lohan/American Idol/Boy Bands etc etc etc] to pay any attention to your [protest/LTE campaign/boycott etc.].

I understand feeling discouraged at times about the state of American culture and the prevailing state of political...unseriousness, shall we say.

And, don't get me wrong: I'm all for venting and wailing/teeth-gnashing in the face of defeats and set-backs: Liberal Blogs are largely what got me through the '04 presidential and congressional defeats. As a community, Progressive blogs ought to be places to vent these feelings among friends (like I say, I've done a fair amount of this myself, in fact).

I think it is a question of finding the appropriate forum for this. Replying to a proposal for political action with an expression of despair or "good luck with that..." cynicism seems trollish to me; at the very least it is unhelpful.

Also, it must be said that there's a category of reply that, while it may seem disparaging, is intended as reality-testing, and is not what I'm talking about: "While I would applaud organizing, tonight, a million people to march on Congress by tomorrow, I wonder if you've thought through the logistics..."

BUT, if someone posts a comment like, "I say we protest at the Capitol tomorrow! Who's with me?" a reply that Americans are celebrity-obsessed morons and why bother? would certainly qualify as "despair trolling", as would such a response to a proposal to organize such a massive protest, say, a few months out, with concrete proposals in terms of first steps, the scope of the agenda and what it would accomplish, ideas for building buzz within the progressive community, why it is time to consider it, etc.

I don't want to belabor this. I'm just really, REALLY sick of reading cheap, cynical responses to expressions of hope. I want to keep coming here, and I have hopes of my own, and I will not have those hopes disparaged. This about respect.

After all, we are progressives. Progress pre-supposes hope.

Good post over at God's Politics

An Excerpt:

It makes me wonder just who in public life is willing to set an example that imagines simplicity and economic stewardship as an admirable goal. George W. Bush has been no better than Barbara or Posh—indicating long ago that his environmental and foreign policies would be marked by not doing anything that would affect "the American way of life." When even presidents are afraid to suggest that some moral issues require a tightening of our own purse strings, then we have missed the lessons of two world wars, and have failed to understand the responsibilities of living under rapid globalization.

War is Truly Hell

It's awful easy to cheer for war from the safety of your computer keyboard in a nice, safe home, far from the messiness of actual combat. Have you ever actually seen war? I mean real, deafening, violent, bloody, murderous war? Have you ever felt a buddy breathe his last, begging God's forgiveness for the horrors he visited upon his fellow men?

And, it's not ok to kill people just because "well, you know, that's war...and besides, it's a fallen world and war is a consquence of sin blah blah blah..."

You realize that when confronted with the reality of what war actually, really IS. You realize it when you throw a grenade into a bunker, and learn in the next moment that the bunker had both people and cans of gasoline in it: and spend the next few minutes - minutes you spend the rest of your life realizing you'll never, ever forget - listening to "enemy" human beings, guys about your age, in that bunker die in horrific agony, knowing You Did It and you can Never, Ever Take It Back.

War is the most Un-Christian, Un-Catholic, merciless destruction of the possibility of Love that exists in this world.

To all you folks worshiping at the altar of Violence:

There is no "Good War." The Big One, World War II? It is worth remembering that thousands and thousands of "enemy" 3-year-olds burned to death in the wreckage of their homes before they got a chance to learn the name of the country they lived in.

To know of the carnage of the last 100 years, and sneer at "peace" as some hippy-dippy outmoded thing from the sixties, seems, frankly, depraved.

AP: Two more Freidman Units Needed

The AP is reporting that the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, whose troops are deployed south of Baghdad, is saying that he needs until at least spring 2008, and more probably until summer, to ensure success in his area of Iraq:

If the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq is reversed before the the middle of 2008, the military will risk giving up the security gains it has achieved at a cost of hundreds of American lives over the past six months, the commander of U.S. forces south of Baghdad said Friday.

Maj. Gen. Richard Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, mentioned none of the proposals in Congress for beginning to withdraw U.S. troops as soon as September. all. But he made clear in an interview that in his area of responsibility south of Baghdad, it will take many more months to consolidate recent gains.

"It's going to take through (this) summer, into the fall, to defeat the extremists in my battle space, and it's going to take me into next spring and summer to generate this sustained security presence," he said, referring to an Iraqi capability to hold gains made by U.S. forces.

Interesting. So we'll know how things worked out in Iraq right around the time the Democrats and Republicans are holding their respective political conventions to nominate their candidates for president. I'll bet anyone here one million dollars that the story being told by the crooks in the White House will be something resembling this:

"Just at the moment we're finally making progress, and see the Light at The End of the Tunnel, those America-hating Jews--oops, sorry, Democrats-- want to give our troops a Stab in the Back, and force them to abandon the Iraqi people and deny us our Glorious Victory."

Predicted lede in an AP story then:

"President Bush, in a statement given in front of troops in North Carolina [who were ordered on pain of death not to laugh,] said today that he expected his successor to consolidate the self-evident Victory he'd secured after years of sacrifice in Iraq. He reminded the troops that their fallen comrades were counting on his successor to 'ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain.' "

This old guy asked me a bunch of questions...

Successful politics, in a democracy, is not as much about what you stand for, but more who you stand with.

Think about it: who has become the Republican base? What are the economic circumstances of the average, say, Rush Limbaugh listener? Who sends those little checks most faithfully to the various right-wing religious hucksters out there? I'm asking seriously: who are these people?

The somewhat tragic answer is, "lots of former Democrats".

Let me set up a little Socratic thingie to show you what I'm talking about...

Me: But Soc, ol' buddy, you're talking about The Repub's deluded base, here. You know, the people agitating for tax cuts for their boss's boss's boss? What possible use could they be to the Democrats?

Socrates: I can see I'm outmatched here, and must bow to your superior wisdom in this matter. I just have one or two questions, and I was hoping you could enlighten my ignorance.

Me: Sure, Soc. Shoot.

Socrates: Who are these people you call the 'base' of the Republican Party?

Me: Oh, you know...working stiffs...people in our society who are more or less powerless. People with stagnant wages, maybe just a high school education, who have little or no power in the workplace or the rest of society, and feel some vicarious empowerment when they hear Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity "speaking up for them".

Socrates: He speaks for them, does he?

Me: Well, of course. You know, against the dirty, heathen Liberals who want to turn all their wives into hairy-legged, baby-killing lesbians, or something?

Socrates (aghast): The Liberals want to do that?

Me: Are you serious?? No, of course not!

Socrates: Well, that's a relief. I just wonder then: why are they not voting for Democrats? They used to, in huge numbers, as I recall...

Me: I already told you - The Republicans have the wool pulled over their eyes.

Socrates: Ah, exactly so: I can see what you mean now. But I still don't understand: why did they stop voting for Democrats? I remember quite a long period when people like that voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, every single election, starting in 1932.

Me: Well, you know, that was a different time, then...

Socrates: Really? And how was it different?

Me: Well, to begin with, there was the Great Depression, which threw everyone out of work. The Republican response was: let charity take care of the indigent, and let The Market right itself. The Democrats had specific, concrete plans to help the people who were hurting...and so the Republicans just got killed in the '32 elections...

Socrates: Ah, so the Republicans learned their lesson, and sing a different tune, now?

Me: Of couse they...you know, come to think of it, no. They are pretty much saying and doing the same things now as they did then.

Socrates: Then I'm still confused - why are all those poor farmers and minimum-wage earners and economically hurting people now voting for Republicans?

Me: I already told you - the Republicans are appealing to their fears and prejudices!

Socrates: Hmmm...if those folks voted Democratic, do you think the Democrats might do better in elections?

Me: I'm sure we would, but we don't want those people.

Socrates: Because...?

Me: Do I have to tell you again?? The Republicans have them all tied up in fear and prejudice.

Socrates: I see. Let me ask you: Have you ever experienced feelings of fear, and even prejudice, within yourself?

Me (thinking): Oh, sure. It's probably a universal human experience to some extent.

Socrates: Did you enjoy it?

Me: Well, no, it pretty much...sucked. What's your point?

Socrates: Do you think the people who now are caught up in the Republicans' fearmongering and pandering to prejudices are deeply enjoying the experience?

Me: Um, probably not...

Socrates: Then why do they allow the Republicans to keep doing it?

Me: You lost me.

Socrates: As we've established already, not only are they powerless, but their prejudices and fears are only adding to their misery. Isn't that true?

Me: I've never thought of it that way, but yes, I guess you're right. What the heck is wrong with them?

Socrates: Do you remember the impassioned speech given at the 2004 Democratic National Convention - the one everyone remembers - where the speaker eloquently called for huge amounts of assistance for struggling family farmers, a living wage for all American workers, card-check legislation to help workers get some power in the workplace, and shooting barbs at the Republican rich, "lolling obscenely in their Opera Boxes"?

Me: Um...(thinking)...No, actually I don't.

Socrates: Neither do I. Do you want to help people who are trapped in economic stagnation, and are being exploited with fear and prejudice?

Me: Well, yeah, that's a large part of the reason I'm a Democrat.

Socrates: Well, how can you help them?

Me: Like I said, they are pretty much beyond help...

Socrates (now genuinely shocked): You don't really believe that, do you?

Me: Well, what can we do for those people?

Socrates: "Those people"? Didn't you describe them yourself as, "Working stiffs...people in our society who are more or less powerless. People with stagnant wages, maybe just a high school education, who have little or no power in the workplace or the rest of society?"

Me: Yes, that's right: the Republican Base.

Socrates: We also went over how the Democrats gained a large and enduring majority in the past by coming up with specific, concrete plans to help people who were hurting, did we not?

Me: Ok, now I'm really lost.

Socrates: How much does gay marriage or the legal status of abortion increase their misery on a daily basis, in the course of living out their daily existence?

Me: Actually, on a day-to-day basis? Probably not much. Not much at all, really.

Socrates: And how much does the fact that they are, in your words, "people in our society who are more or less powerless...with stagnant wages, maybe just a high school education, who have little or no power in the workplace or the rest of society" make their lives harder, on a daily basis?

Me: I imagine it's a constant, grinding bummer...

Socrates: So, if you offered them a whole list of ways to help them out of those concrete, constantly-lived, ever-present miseries - in fact, if you organized your campaign around those issues, and hit the talking points constantly - do you imagine they might just consider voting for your candidates?

Why do they hate us?

Sara over at Orcinus, has a post up where she expands on Glenn Greenwald's discussion of the plummeting support in the rest of the world for not just the policies of the United States, but now even the people of the United States. Her last graf:

Those who remember America The Good are passing, leaving the world in the hands of those who only have memories of America the Evil. Any PR person can tell you that a good reputation lost takes Herculean efforts to regain. Of all the battles that await us, this one may be the hardest -- and, realistically, it's one we probably shouldn't expect to win in our lifetimes.

From Street Prophets...

A diarist named Karmakin over at Street Prophets quotes a bit from the new Michael Moore movie, "Sicko", that neatly summarizes my feelings about America:

It was hard for me to acknowledge that in the end, we truly are in the same boat. And that, no matter what our differences, we sink or swim together. That's how it seems to be everywhere else. They take care of each other - no matter what their disagreements. You know when we see a good idea from another country, we grab it. If they build a better car, we drive it. If they make a better wine, we drink it. So if they have come up with a better way to treat the sick, to teach their kids, to take care of their babies, to simply be good to each other, then what's our problem? Why can't we do that? They live in a world of WE, not ME. We'll never fix anything until we get that one basic thing right. And powerful forces hope that we never do - and that we remain the only country in the western world without free, universal healthcare. You know - if we ever did remove the choke-hold of medical bills, college loans, daycare and everything else that makes us afraid to step out of line, well, watch out...[emphasis mine]

This is right in line with my previous post about the phony populism of Republicans: their only agenda is serving the priorities of their true constituency: the rich. I might add that the Democrats are little better in this regard: they just serve the interests of different rich people than the Republicans do.

"Populism," Republican-Style

American tax rates, by the standards of both history and rates in the rest of the civilized world, are remarkably low.

The top marginal tax rate in 1955 (under that fiery Leninist, Eisenhower) was somewhat north of 90% - and people hardly felt crushed by taxes then, nor oppressed, nor persecuted, nor threatened by tyranny.

I'm amused by the spectacle of "populist" Republicans who've gotten working class people agitating for tax cuts for their boss's boss's boss. I just hope I'm not anywhere near America -say, exploring Mars - when working class folks wake up to the injustice of their situation, because it's probably going to be ugly.

Great post on Economics...

...over at Morning's Minions joint. He takes on the patently mendacious claims of Michael Novak, and pretty much leaves scorched earth in his wake. One key graf:

Let's look deeper into the recent period, 2000-05. This was by no means a recessionary episode; the real economy expanded by 12 percent over this period, and productivity rose by 17 percent. What's going on here? Basically, the middle class stopped participating in the economic expansion. Workers are working harder, and are more productive, but their pay and living standards stagnate. Meanwhile, corporate profits soared. According to research by Robert Gordon and Ian Dew-Becker, the productivity gains went to the top 10 percent. This lies in stark contrast to the 1990s, where the large productivity gains (related in part to the IT boom) were shared more broadly.

The whole thing is worth a read.

The Latin Mass

[Note to my non-Catholic readers: this will probably go straight over your heads...]

Jcecil has a post at Liberal Catholic News discussing the fact that The Latin Mass is about to become more widely available, and I must say I'm excited by the prospect, but also dreading the kooky (there really is no other word for it) people who I imagine will be pamphleting outside afterwards:

I've been to approved Latin Masses, and it is a beautiful way of worshiping, though my preference is for the Post-Vatican II Mass. When done well, I like the Novus Ordo better than the Tridentine rie. My main beef with the SSPX, sedevacantists, and/or other rad-trads and is when they say the Novus Ordo is invalid, Vatican II is heresy, and the current Pope is an anti-pope and the Jews are Christ killers conspiring to take over the world. Some of what these people say is mean and evil and even heretical.

Some of my own feelings about the Latin Mass, per se: I would welcome the opportunity to assist at one. Part of it is the "connection with history" thing, but part of it is also because I love the Mass settings written by a 15th century composer named Palestrina.

His Missa de Beata Virgine is just indescribably beautiful, filled with a tenderness (given the title) and suffused with a spirit of deep, sublime longing, together with a hint of that longing's fulfillment, that just floors me whenever I listen to it.

My own parish can't begin to afford a choir that could really do it justice, but I'd travel quite a distance to immerse myself in an offering of this Mass.

My own wish is that the kooks would take a break from the agitprop, and let the Tridentine Rite be spread by word of mouth. They might be surprised (and I imagine not in a happy way) by the cross-section of people who would make a habit of attending a really well-done version of it.

A Couple Quotes from Cintra Wilson

I just finished Cintra Wilson's book, A Massive Swelling, and thought the following quotes were a good follow-up to my previous post...

Now children barely out of training pants are wearing asymmetrical Victor Costa ball gowns and belting out how Their Man Is Gone in the smoky tones of world-weary, dope-sick B-girls who've been beaten like donkeys for loving too intensely.

No bog-banshee wailing for untimely death in an Irish family [hey!] could send more freon up the spine than a Backstage Mother howling darkly at her toddler in showgirl makeup, "Pretty FEET! Make PRETTY FEET for the agents, Missy!"

Bread and Circuses

I sometimes feel ashamed of this country - and I'm not talking (this diary, anyway...) about the leadership, I'm talking about the masses, and the class of pimps that cater to their basest..."instincts" is the wrong word, because it implies that cheap thrills, vicarious rage-expression masquerading as "justice" (*cough* Nancy Grace cough) and pornographically violent spectacle are intrinsically, deeply human, and not just an abberation that has been nurtured into a thriving, culture-destroying monster by people who worship Power over Goodness.

About 50 years ago, someone way smarter than me described Television as a "vast wasteland" (as I recall it was someone who was fabulously enriched by helping form and create said wasteland, but I digress) but television has moved so far down the depravity slope that people are actually nostalgic for the sentimentality-opium-softened wasteland he was describing.

"Future Weapons" is a popular show on the Discovery Channel, during which an ex-navy-seal masturbates all over the latest, shiniest, most advanced ways of killing people (not an exact description, but I think I've captured the gist). Cable TV feeds Americans a steady diet of war-glorifying "documentaries."

"Reality" shows (note the term) celebrate people who will stop at no self-annihilation, no debasement, no whorish defilement for a shot at money or fame or both. The "reality" these shows are selling: "America, this is you; this is the world. This Is Who We Are."

"American Exceptionalism"...Nationalism... is that ancient temptation: Pride, hubris, Idolatry, self-exhaltation, narcissism masquerading as idealism. This kind of thinking killed millions and millions and millions of people in the last hundred years, many of them children, many of them burning to death in the wreckage of their homes before they learned to pronounce the name of the country they lived in. The circumstances that killed them are now sold as the "Noble Cause," the "Good War," of the "Greatest Generation" when really it was just an orgy of killing, an obscene, unrestrained slaughter in scenes beyond the imagination of Dante.

Our American culture is descending into barbarism, which citizens of the wreckage of this country keep at bay in a haze of drugs, video games, and anything else that will keep the wolf of truth from intruding into their consciousness.

Maybe this is my depression talking. Then again, maybe not.

A Minor(?) Quibble with Digby

[ludicrously late update: it turns out Digby is a "she" - oops]

Digby has a great post up at Hullaballoo about the conflict being exposed between the Republicans' [culturally] populist, blog- and talk-radio-fueled base, and their real, actual base, which is millionaires, Wall Street and Big Business.

No wonder Bush is sweating bullets. Aside from the small matter of turning the country into a rogue super power, his lasting political legacy may be overseeing his party's decline to a minority faction of racists and malcontents because they foolishly empowered a bunch of shrieking wingnut gasbags to speak for them in the national media --- and now they can't control them. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Yep, I'm nodding my head and enjoying the spectacle right there with him - but after going back and re-reading this:

This is essentially a made up crisis by people like Lou Dobbs and talk radio show gasbags to exploit the insecurities of certain Americans by creating the illusion that the fact they are losing ground economically is caused as much by illegal immigrants doing day labor as the total abandonment of the manufacturing base by big business.

I thought, I was with you all the way through, Digby, but this just seems obtuse. Here's more how I see it:

"This is essentially a made up crisis by people like Lou Dobbs and talk radio show gasbags to exploit the insecurities of certain Americans by creating the illusion that the fact they are losing ground economically is caused as much by illegal immigrants doing day labor as the total abandonment of Labor by the Democrats."

This is the lesson that Democrat's haven't quite learned yet, in spite of taking back Congress in the '06 elections - successful politics is, at the core, not about what you stand for; it is about who you stand with.

Politics and the Traditional Liturgy

Via Fr. Jim, a discussion of the Traditional Roman Mass, and the fact that it is not exclusively the property of right-wing Catholics.

I love Palestrina Masses, and am glad that they might become more widely available: I also am quite progressive - radical, even - in my politics.

Take that, Ms. Welborn.

The Trouble with the Catholic Right

Morning's Minion has a post up at Reasons and Opinions which explains, better than I could, the trouble with the Catholic right wing.

Now, if Donohue has complained about the unseemly nature of member of the clergy aligning themselves with partisan political campaigns, he has a point. I can't speak for the protestants, but no Catholic priest should do such a thing. But this is not Donohue's point. He appears to have no problem with Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life endorsing Sam Brownback. And on the protestant side, he never complains about the fact that the Falwells and the Dobsons have done their very level best to align Christianity with the Republican party. No, it is the politics that Donohue has a problem with. Aside from the other complaints, to criticize somebody for "blaming 9/11 on American foreign policy" is ludicrous. In fact, only the hyper-nationalist and self-deluded refuse to admit that American foreign policy (especially the lop-sided support for Israel) has no hand whatsoever in promoting a terrorist backlash. Donohue should check what prominant Catholic leaders have to say about such subjects. But there are other religious leaders who blamed Americans for causing 9/11-- Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Where was Donohue then?

Donohue has a self-righteous streak almost as big as the late Jerry Falwell's, and that's saying something.

Everybody Get Together

One of my favorite movies is "The Mission" with Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro.

It is the story of a group of missionaries who establish the titular "Mission" in the Jungles of Paraguay, among the Guarani people.

A notorious Portuguese mercenary and slave-trader, Rodrigo Mendoza, kills his brother early in the film, and feels near-suicidal remorse, and is starving himself in an asylum. He is met there by a Spanish Jesuit priest, Father Gabriel.

Gabriel offers a dubious Mendoza a chance to redeem himself: he must travel with the missionaries up the river to their nascent mission in the jungle, and must drag a heavy bundle containing the armor and weapons he used in his life as a mercenary. There is a scene where one of the missionaries, out of pity, cuts the rope by which Mendoza is dragging his burden, but Mendoza retrieves his bundle, re-ties the rope to it.

Some time later, they finally meet the Guarani, in a scene of remarkable tension. The missionaries exchange joyous greetings with the Guarani, who then see, and recognize, the feared man who has killed and enslaved many of them. Mendoza lies exhausted among them, overwhelmed with weariness, emptied of all pride, prostrate on the ground.

The Guarani go to him, fear mixed with confusion, and some of them have knives. Mendoza looks up at the Guarani leader pitifully, harmless and exhausted. The Guarani leader pauses a moment, looks at the rope attached to the bundle of armor and weapons, and then cuts the rope and pitches the bundle down a high cliff and into the river.

Mendoza feels the burden of the armor lifted, something changes in his expression...and suddenly he's overwhelmed with emotion, crying and laughing at the same time. Father Gabriel goes to him and hugs him, and the Guarani crowd around, and are holding his hands as he weeps, and Mendoza is flooded with humble gratitude and love.

It's a powerful scene.

But this diary is not about the Guarani of 300 years ago; It is about America, today.

There are people in our ghettos and 'hoods who have not had a chance to comfort many of their brothers and sisters in the suburbs in their loneliness and desolation, nor to share their own pain at the violence the plagues their communities. They have not had the chance to share their incredible stories, stories of resilience and hope.

Sometimes the greatest gift you can give someone is to allow them to give to you.

There are people in the poorer parts of our cities, and who have much, so much, to share with their more affluent brothers and sisters.

I would like to see the day when people from the richer parts of this country and the people from the poorer parts realize their common brother- and sister-hood; I imagine warm embraces, with tears - of sorrow for our long separation, and of joy that the gulf has been bridged.

Another Dispatch from an Alternate Universe

In my last dispatch, I told you about the (still continuing) huge Citizens' Action in Washington, DC. In this addtion, I thought I would give you some of the reasons I think the current protests are having such an effect.

Your universe, where the war continues and congress has surrendered and activists hearts feel such despair, is incredibly close to our universe, where the end of the war is in sight, and people are exercising their power. The differences are minor, but we have come to realize that those small differences are the key.

The first difference, and (I cannot state this adequately) most important difference is...HOPE.

HOPE.

We have come to see that Hope, in its purest form, is not an emotion, not a sentiment, not an attitude, even.

It is an action. An ACTION!

It is a choice to perceive the world as being ALREADY better than it appears. If you despair, you make a choice to forget this. This is unworthy of a free people, it is unworthy of America, it is unworthy of our history, it is especially unworthy of Progressives.

There is no immutable law of physics that says the war must continue. There is no ultimate principle of reality that says that 40,000,000 Americans must go without health insurance. There is no hopeless law of economics that dictates that almost all the sweat of our labor goes to about 1000 individuals.

Why do you despair?

There is a woman living in East Oakland, California, who lost both her grandchildren to murder. Sitting with her can be a harrowing experience, feeling the tears pour out of her eyes in a silent, bewildered waterfall, until you hear the Hope. In spite of a grief that all but crushes her heart, that makes even getting out of bed to feed herself a task akin to climbing Everest, she works tirelessly in intervention programs in her neighborhood, because she chooses to believe that Love is why we are here. There are many kids in her neighborhood who rely on her kindness to see them through the day, to give them some small shelter from the violence. She is a treasure, priceless in the lives of so, so many kids, in large part because she hopes. I owe her every help, every word of encouragement I can give her. I need your help, because in some sense, she relies on you, too; to NOT despair, to do what you can to make her priceless work less of a burden. She NEEDS you, more than I can express.

There used to be a saying: "'American' ends in 'I CAN'"

What can you and I do to end the war? What can you and I do to help everyone people get health insurance? What can you and I do to end the Scandal of grinding poverty? What can do to show kids in East Oakland, in South Central, in the South Bronx, that there is hope for them? They need you more than I can say. Please, do not despair: do not retreat into a comforting, cheap "cynicism" that is just despair masquerading as sophistication. Because what hope has taught me is that despair is unworthy of us, it is selling ourselves ludicrously cheaply, and most importantly, it is abandoning those who desperately need our help. Do we want to end the war, or do the other things, because of some abstract, intellectualized moral principle, or because we want to end the indescribable suffering and desolation that seeps from every pore of warfare, destroying not just bodies, but souls? Do we want to get health insurance for everyone because it is "right" in some obscure, platonian way, or because the inherent dignity of our brothers and sisters DEMANDS it? Do we want to restore justice to our system of economic rewards because it is politically advantageous, or because living in a society where a few revel in lucred ease while many feel the pains and indignities and appalling prejudice that go with poverty, fills us with unspeakable shame?

We must hope. The times demand it. Hope. HOPE.

A Dispatch from an Alternate Universe

Hello, residents of Universe 15g-55891. We have just invented technology to peer into your universe, which, like all the other universes, closely parallels our own. Like us, you too will soon discover this capability - after all, our universes are parallel.

Yes, you will soon have this capability yourselves - even now, there is a graduate student working diligently at the University of California, Berkeley, and I can tell you that, as I write, he is about 6 months behind the corresponding researcher in our universe.

We have also discovered something intriguing: we and you were in the same universe up until mid-November of last year, but then our Universe split from yours.

I thought I would begin this first dispatch by bringing you up to date on recent events here.

Obviously, since the May 10th Demonstrations - ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Our Democratic Party is as timid as yours, and we too lost patience with our leadership and appeasers in the congress.

On May 10th, in an event that was reported with something approaching stunned,, rapturous awe by the European press, the National Mall in Washington DC was flooded with a million and a half protesters (some estimates ranged to 2 million), and the protesters were determined citizens from all walks of life - veterans, mothers with babies in strollers, Wal-Mart greeters, florists, call-center employees, old black ladies in their Sunday Best - who came to our capital and demanded an end to the war in Iraq. This protest was paralleled by protests outside of every congress member’s local office, and the downtown of every major city was the scene of large protests. The crowd count in Cincinnati was officially 120,000; the local consensus is that this is ludicrously undercounted. Atlanta had 80,000 (give or take), and even Omaha Nebraska could muster 12,000 people.

The Progressive blogosphere had a major presence in most of the gatherings, especially the colossal one in DC. Booths -- live blogging, many diaries on Daily Kos, interviews with some of the speakers, etc.

That protest proved to be the beginning of an intoxicating hope that has informed our actions since. After the conclusion of the formal rally, several hundred thousand people decided to stay in DC. They are now in an enormous encampment on the Mall, and a huge effort is currently supporting them there: People come in from the surrounding suburbs every day and bring a steady stream of food to the "Peace Army" as they have come to be known. There are still long lines at the port-potties, but more are coming, thanks in no small part to the bloggers, who took up a collection to finance their installation. The National Park Police had been ordered to prevent their installation; when word of this got to the protesters, a party of 50,000 marched to the headquarters of the national Park Service, surrounded it, linked arms and sat down. After 2 days, and realizing their position was untenable (there are not 50,000 jail cells within 100 miles of DC), the Park Service relented and allowed the porta-potties to be placed along the edge of the Mall.

There is an air of deep, deep crisis at every level of government here in DC. Many members of Congress are sleeping in their offices along with their staffs. White House staffers, and even the President, are looking a bit haggard.

In the streets of America, there is a sense of watchful hope. I will tell you about some of the May 10th speeches I heard in the next dispatch.

Resurrection

This is not going to be very eloquent, because it is raw.

Last Friday evening, I left therapy, having talked about my childhood friend Ray, who I heard a couple years ago had been murdered, and on impulse I went back to my old neighborhood in Richmond. I had driven through a bunch of times, but had never stopped.

Driving in, I felt the old Fear stirring up, and that fear is something that defies description. It is a fear that surrounds your mind with darkness. When you feel this fear, your mind is in a state of expecting annihilation, a feeling that you can at any moment be killed, and that your killer will feel no pity at all, no empathy.

PTSD is, to be blunt, a B*tch and a half.

I was going there because I had never heard the whole story of the circumstances of Ray's death, and I needed to know. I felt I owed it to him somehow.

Driving through the old 'hood, I saw people walking in a daze, shellshocked, numb with grief and rage. I saw a man standing in his yard, his face so haunted by grief and loss that he could no longer process the pain.

I pulled up in front of Ray's old house, not sure of what I was going to do - Do I ask around and see if anyone knows about Ray? I thought - and there in his driveway, sitting in a car talking with a friend who had given her a ride home, was his mother.

I had not seen her in 30 years, but I knew it was her.

I walked up, and told her who I was, and after a moment of suspicion by her, she recognized me. I had come to ask about Ray, but suddenly it seemed crude to do so directly, so I told her about my family ("Dad passed back in '96...oh, and remember how John always wanted to work for the phone company? Yeah, he's working for them now..."). I was creating a space where she could tell me about her own family.

She said, "Ray is working at Sears now..." and the next few sentences were lost to my hearing. Then she said, "Yeah, his brother's passing has been hard on him..." and I knew that the person who had told me about the murder had gotten a critical detail wrong: which brother had been murdered.

I have been thinking of Ray lately, remembering his smile, all the trouble we caused our parents, how he was probably the best friend I had back in the day; how, of all the people I knew in the old 'hood, he deserved to be murdered even less than everyone else.

And now I have him back. I have some sense of how the disciples felt at the resurrection. Thanks be to God.

Random Thought...

I remember watching the coverage on 9/11, and there was an interview with a woman pedestrian where the reporter asked her if she wanted "revenge" for what had happened that morning. She replied, quoting scripture, "vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. I will repay."

Why is it that so many people imagine themselves as God's helper in this particular matter - is it lack of true Faith and Trust that God, in His love and wisdom, will work things out for our best interest?

For My Catholic Readers...

There is a new blog I have high hopes for, called Vox Nova. A lot of the reason I am progressive is due to my Catholicism: Vox Nova is a gathering place for Catholics of every political stripe to talk things out.

Jerry Falwell is Dead

The AP has just confirmed that the Rev. Jerry Falwell has passed away. I think we should pray for his family, and that God be merciful to a man who seemed (to me) to be stubborn in his near-idolatrous nationalism.

I was not (obviously) a fan of the man; I do wish for the salvation of all, including those who have inflicted wounds upon my brothers and sisters.

[UPDATE: From the AP...]

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. "CPR efforts were unsuccessful," he said.

Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell "has a history of heart challenges."

Right to the Heart of It

Joe over at Liberal Catholic News gets, as usual, right to the heart of the matter:

I honestly believe with all my heart that if America spent $717 billion on effective global poverty reduction, and a mere $10.8 Billion on military defense, we would be at peace and terrorism would be permanentaly irradicated. It is my prayer that we will move in this direction.

The whole thing is worth a read.

For Jeremy, and for Ruth

About 15 years ago, I lived on the northern border of Oakland, in the Rockridge district. There was a place there called the Buttercup Cafe, which had food that was both pretty good and reasonably priced. I had very little money then, so I usually stopped in for a cup of soup (all I could usually afford) after work.

I was something of a regular there, and got to know the waitresses pretty well. There was one waitress named Ruth, and on rainy winter evenings when it was slow we'd talk for hours about where we'd grown up and what we thought of the world.

She'd grown up hard and close to the bone, in a hard-scrabble little iron range town somewhere in Minnesota. Her dad was a Jim Beam aficionado, and I got the sense that there was some darkness there. She never talked about it, and I respected her too much to pry, but it was there in her eyes sometimes when she talked about back home.

She was talking one night about Northern California, and some of the differences from back home that she'd noticed since she moved.

"One thing," she said, "is how parents treat their kids out here - they just let them run wild! No discipline at all. Back home, if you did wrong you got a beating - none of this 'time out' stuff. You've gotta keep kids in line." I got the feeling she'd read a lot of James Dobson's books, where he talks about, among other things, parents' obligation to beat the (literal) hell out of their children.

I stared out the window for a moment at the rain dripping off the awning, and then turned back to her and told her about this kid I remembered from my last year going to the Day Camp I went to for disadvantaged kids, named Jeremy.

Jeremy was about 7 years old, and he would always ride at the very back of the bus on the way to camp, and sit in the middle of the long bench seat so he could see everything going on in the bus during the daily ride up to Wildcat Canyon - like he was afraid of missing something. He had striking eyes - light brown, and filled with wonder. The world appeared to be endlessly fascinating to him, and he radiated a simple joy that was touching to see. I would look back at this kid whenever I got on the bus - I felt a little protective of him.

One day toward the end of the summer, I looked back and was immediately struck by a change in him. He looked weary, and the light in his eyes had gone out - like something important inside had broken.

I gave one of the counselors, a pretty blond teenager, a look and motioned with my head toward the back of the bus. We walked back together and sat accross the aisle from each other, one row in front of Jeremy.

"What's wrong, Jer'?"

He paused a moment, and then pulled up the hem of the right leg of his short pants. On the front of his thigh was an angry, purple bruise.

"What happened, Jeremy? Who did that to you?"

He looked up at us, his eyes filled with bewilderment and hurt, and said, "My daddy."
.
.
.
I looked at Ruth when I finished the story, and saw an ocean of sadness behind her eyes, a sadness with which I have some personal experience.

"That's...really sad," she finally said.

"Yeah, it is."

I moved to another town a short while later, but I hope Ruth is married to a nice, sober guy, and giving her kids time-outs when they mis-behave.

Haloscan seems to be up and running

I have re-posted some comments from prior threads - I will recover them where I can...

Comments change...

I have just installed Haloscan comments - unfortunately, any previous comments have been deleted in the process. If anyone knows how to retrieve them, I'd be much obliged...

Here's the thing

Here's the thing.

I live in Berkeley, California. Every single day, as I walk to the Bus stop (corner of University and Shattuck) I pass a guy that is usually deeply engrossed in conversation with a companion or companions he is hallucinating are there with him. His hair is long, ragged, and sort of in a dirt-imposed dreadlock style. He appears not to have bathed in quite awhile. He is dressed in rags, his eyes alternate between vacant and haunted. He eats McDonald's leftovers out of the Garbage Can, and rolls cigarettes from butts he collects.

I wouldn't say he is an immediate threat to himself or others: he does feed himself, as I said, and he does not do things (at least that I've seen) that represent a threat of serious, acute (as opposed to chronic, cumulative) harm to himself or others.

I was driving by one day, and was suddenly sick at heart at the thought, "Tonight, he will sleep out in the rain. Huddled in some doorway, miserable and shivering."

What could I do? It was 8 days til payday, and the balance in my bank account was 50 bucks and I was low on food, so I couldn't get him a room, even if I'd stopped and convinced him somehow to accept it, and convinced a motel manager to let him stay.

Civil rights aside, his condition and circumstances demand attention. Lots of it.

He suffers terribly, every single day, because no one does anything for him, or at least no one does enough.

In my imagination, I can summon a very different world.

I can imagine a world where everyone in the neighborhood knows his name. I can imagine a world where lots of people greet him by name throughout the day. I can imagine a world where a steady stream of people say to him, gently and kindly, "Hey, Pete, how ya doin'? Man, you need to take your meds. What's your doctor's name again?"

I can imagine a world where his doctor gets a steady stream of calls, the gist of which is, "Doc, a bunch of us are concerned about Pete. He hasn't been taking care of himself. What can we do to help?"

I can imagine a world that contains a place for him to live, that demands that he be provided a place to live, a place where kindly people will get after him about his meds, bathe him, give him loving kindness.

But that world has yet to be built. The carpenters that need to build it, you and I, are not busy enough.

"Productivity"

Over at TPM Cafe, Jared Berstein has a great post basically putting the lie to the notion that productivity growth leads, by definition, to rising standards of living.

Growing productivity is only half the requirement: the other half is a workforce empowered to wring higher pay from management. No empowered workers leads to a situation where all, or most of, the benefit going to the top of the income scale.

Worth a read

Intersting discussion over at TPM Muckraker

We truly are just one [non-forthcoming] signature away from ending the Iraq war. Worth a look. http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/may/01/pelosi_signs_iraq_withdrawal_bill

Neat Site

Via Fr. Jim, a site that tracks the "history" of "the future" - lots of it is probably deeply embarassing to surviving prognosticators from the 1950s and 60s. http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/

Journeys with Jood: Tuesday Topics - 50 Ways

Journeys with Jood: Tuesday Topics - 50 Ways is a post from a delightful blog I've just discovered - worth a look.

Speaking of Light Shining in the Darkness...

There is a shelter that serves battered women in North and South Dakota called Pretty Bird Woman House. They are a "Light Shining in the Darkness," and they need your help to stay open - they are down to their last few dollars. If you possibly can, please give.

Light amid the darkness

I have a rather unusual background. My father was an Irish immigrant and mom was raised in a rural part of central California - that's not the unusual part.

My father was an engineer at Chevron for thirty years, and mom was what they used to call a "homemaker." That also is not unusual, at least for my generation (I was born in 1962.)

What is unusual, at least for white Americans, is where I was raised: in Richmond, California, in a neighborhood that was situated between two housing projects (Kennedy Manor and the Easthill projects, for those who know the area.)

I will talk in a bit about some of the dark events that haunt me from that time and place: that is not the theme of this Post, though. The theme is actually a favorite passage of scripture:

"A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

I want to tell you what it is like in some of the poorer and more violent parts of this country, but I want you to remember:

"A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

I grew up watching television that had a mysterious lack, to my naive young eyes, of people that looked like my neighbors. Adam 12. Bewitched. Ed Sullivan. The Andy Williams Show. Or if they did appear, they were in either stereotypical roles like the Buffoon (Flip Wilson) or the Token (Mannix's black secretary).

I was perplexed by this omission. Everyone I knew - friends, enemies, the fathers and mothers in the neighborhood - was black. My teachers were black (mostly). All of my classmates were black. We were Catholic, and went to Mass in Berkeley (at St. Joseph the Worker parish). There, there were a mix of '60s Catholic radicals (think Dorothy Day), and recent Mexican immigrants. Again, minority white.

Life in my neighborhood could be quite rough - rough enough that I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, from some of the incidents there. Ray, my best friend, was murdered. When I was 9 years old, I was taken into a backyard and (literally) whipped. I was good friends with a couple of kids down the block, whose father was a boxer. I endured some absolutely savage beatings (many) by his sons in their garage. My youngest brother, when he was about 4, was grabbed in an alley by some high-school-aged boys, and dangled screaming over a fence, on the other side of which was a German Shepard snarling and salivating.

Please, I beg you, do not look away.

Because "A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

When I was 12, my father threw me across the room, and my head smacked the corner post of my bed. I bled for a few minutes, ran my head under the bathroom sink to wash the blood out of my hair, and went to my sixth grade class. There, for one of the few times in my life, it got to be too much, and I suddenly wept in great gusting sobs. Some of my classmates laughed, but I realize now that by doing so they were running away from the pain we all shared, the pain that I was unable to keep myself from openly expressing.

"Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

That afternoon, I walked across Richmond (there is a God...) to the police station. I'd watched Dragnet, so I knew the police would be interested in child abuse. So I marched in, and prepared to give a sober, just-the-facts-ma'am report in my best Jack Webb imitation. Behind the counter was a pretty police woman, and her smiling eyes were the kindest I had ever seen, eyes that said, "I'm here for you." Jack Webb was suddenly forgotten, and she was confronted by a 12 year old who was crying so hard he was unable to speak.

She took me into the back, and handed me off to a policewoman who worked with CPS (Child Protective Services) cases. The woman took my report, and afterward, when I mentioned that I liked Dragnet, she gave me a tour of the police station: introduced me to some of the other officers, took me by the watch commander's desk, showed me the holding cells, etc.

Then, she took me by the criminal files, and showed me a few of them. "Here's one. He was first arrested for burglary when he was 14, then...let's see...stole a car when he was 16...now he's waiting trial for Armed Robbery. Oh, and this other file...really sad...guy had a breaking and entering charge when he was just 13 - imagine that - and now is in San Quentin for manslaughter..."

What she was doing was showing me in the most vivid way she could, "I know your life is hard, but don't go this way. Don't end up like these boys." I got the message.

"A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

I attend a Survivors of Urban Violence group, and have heard many stories similar to mine. One woman lost both of her grandchildren to murder. Despite, or maybe because of, the pain, she spends every free moment doing her best to mentor the kids in her neighborhood, working her tail off in diversion programs etc. Like me, she has refused to believe that murder, that hatred, that retaliation is all we can expect in this world.

"A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

Hers is in many ways a lonely and thankless quest, and yet she works, even though her soul is all but crushed by grief. She works because she hopes, in spite of all the evidence that confronts her every day. She deserves every bit of help she can get, every word of encouragement I can give her.

My life could have gone in many directions, mostly bad. That I did not is evidence that there is a God, and as a result of a few people who lit the darkness, like the police women, like the camp counselors at the day camp I went to for urban kids, like the kindly, elderly neighbor lady next door who took me in sometimes and told me what a wonderful young man I was, and how she knew I would grow into someone really special. (To this day I have a special place in my heart for old black ladies. They rock!)

The wounds I describe still bleed (I cried a bit writing this diary) but I survived. I am here, and getting more whole by the day (though sometimes I wish life had a fast-forward button). And hear this: I forgive the ones who caused me pain. I love them unconditionally, I pray that they may find wholeness, despite their own darkness. They were in worse pain than me.

I'll close with a quote from Martin Luther King which seems apropos. I think especially of the woman I described who is working in the ghetto, despite her weariness, to be a light shining in the darkness.

“Then the Greek language comes out with the word, “agape.” Agape is more than romantic or aesthetic love. Agape is more than friendship. Agape is creative, understanding, redemptive good will for all men. It is an overflowing love that seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that this is the love of God operating in the human heart. When one rises to love on this level, he loves every man. He rises to the point of loving the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. I believe that this is the kind of love that can carry us through this period of transition. This is what we’ve tried to teach through this nonviolent discipline.

So in many instances, we have been able to stand before the most violent opponents and say in substance, we will meet your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because non-cooperation with evil is just as much moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Threaten our children and bomb our homes and our churches and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hours and drag us out on some wayside road and beat us and leave us half-dead, and as difficult as that is, we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.”

Dr King is almost 40 years in the grave, but it is truer than my own existence:

"A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

DLC Dems and Big Business

A post by Andrew Golis over at Josh Marshall's TPM, or more exactly the update with the comment from "Reader RA" is exactly what bugs me about the DLC approach to policy that has so harmed the Democrats with their working-class base that needs to be urgently remedied.

"Progressive" Part I

I'd like to write today about the very definition of the words, "Liberal" "Progressive" and "Left." There are lots of people who would describe themselves as one or more of these. Obviously, people can define themselves however they want; I think a better definition of Liberal or Progressive might help us to tell our story more clearly.

In this Post, I would like to define what I mean by "Left" or "Progressive." In Part II, I will, in light of that definition, offer some policy proposals.

The left in the United States has deep roots; I will define Progressives as:

"Those who stand with the weak in our society, and defend them from the strong."

There has been a streak of leftism thus defined, throughout American history. Abolitionists stood with fellow Americans who were held as slaves in the southern United States, and against their power-sickened masters who presumed the right to enslave their fellow Americans on the basis of their separate ancestries.

The Temperance movement stood with women who were impoverished by the inability of alcoholic men to earn steady, reliable wages to feed their families. I think it's fair to say that having a heavy drinker in the family has always been harder on women, especially in terms of domestic violence, than it has been on men.

The Progressives and the Labor movement stood with child workers and immigrants toiling in the early factories of the Industrial Revolution, and against the "Malefactors of Great Wealth," Railroad Barons and Industrialists, who heartlessly exploited them.

The New-Dealers stood with millions of frightened Americans who were "one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished..." and against the do-nothing Republicans who wanted to "Let the Market" provide for these citizens (sound familiar?).

What do we stand for? Or, much better put: Who do we stand With?

Who I stand with:

The millions of my fellow citizens who, to be blunt, live in neighborhoods where the possibility of being murdered is an ever-present, commonly-experienced reality.

The millions of my fellow citizens who are one paycheck away from homelessness, one illness away from bankruptcy.

The millions of my fellow citizens who are enslaved and exploited by pay-day lenders, rent-to-own joints, and more.

The many, many millions of my fellow Americans who have worked harder and more productively, and made their companies' stockholders and executives richer and richer over the last 30 years, and have received, not a "thank you" and a raise, but cut benefits, stagnant wages, retaliation for trying to unionize their workplaces, and more.

Eugene Debs once said: "Years ago I recognised my kinship with living things, and made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that where there is a lower class, I am in it; where there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Time to Pull the Plug

Devilstower, in his excellent front-page item at Daily Kos today, expressed clearly what situation we are in this weekend: a fundamental threat to our democracy. An un-accountable executive is called a "dictatorship." If congress will not hold them accountable, the we the people need to hold the executive and the legislative branches accountable to us.

Devilstower finished by saying:

In a high school history book, the fall of the Roman Republic is usually dated to the point were Julius Caesar, in defiance of Senate "micromanagement," ordered his legions across the Rubicon to end effective representative oversight. However, at the time, the Romans didn't see it that way. They continued to call themselves a republic for years. Decades. Long after Caesar, they kept up the hollow pretense of a senate, marching in each day to pass laws that the executive of their day did not follow, and direct armies that moved only at the emperor's command.

The Bush administration is, as Devilstower said, waist deep in the Rubicon. The only question now is whether we the citizens will drive them back to the bank, or else decide by our inaction that we are only play-acting at democracy, the the great American Experiment in self-government is a failure and a lie.

The administration is "crossing the Rubicon." We need to be on the other side of the river, calling out in a firm, united voiice, "Yeah. Go ahead - cross this river and see what happens." And by "we," I mean We the People. It really is up to us. Do we want to live in a nominal democracy, or a real one? The next election is in two years. We don't have anywhere near that long. We have mere days, or weeks at the very least, to make them stop this.

I've written a few meta-type diaries, and a few more personal ones. This is my first action diary, and I'm jumping in with both feet.

The American people, united in purpose, have more power than any of the three branches of Government. I've heard a lot of noise in the Administration about how various people "serve at the pleasure of the President." Well, guess what, talking-point-spewing proto-fascists? The president and congress serve at My and My Fellow Citizens' pleasure. All of you folks are accountable to US.

What I propose is this: begin emergancy planning for implementing the following two national actions by April 10th at the latest:

1. A General Strike (work stoppage). A rent strike. A mortgage-payment strike. No buying anything beyond what is absolutely necessary to survive. No sending children to school, and no teachers teaching them. No university student attending classes, and no professors or TAs teaching them. This will require an absolutely massive coordination effort, and I think websites like this can play a critical role.

The main effort must be on a more "personal contact" level, however. Each of us must take responsibility for our citizenship by talking to our co-workers, friends, small-business owners, members of our congregations in our churches, synagogues and mosques, classmates in our college classrooms, fellow union members in our local, PTA members - any place where we gather and talk to fellow citizens. Our democracy is in critical danger. We must defend it.

2. The largest mass-demonstrations in history. We citizens must gather in Washington, and other major cities, and demonstrate in truly massive numbers. Anyone whose freedom is in danger (all citizens) should go to Washington to say, "No." Congress needs to be unequivocal that they damn well DO have the power to hold the Executive accountable, any son of a bitch in the administration or anywhere else that expresses ambivalence on the point needs to be out on his ass right now. Not "after consultation" with his boss, but right. freaking. NOW. And we, the citizens, need to insist in an undeniable way that congress do just that - with the understanding that if they don't, we will peacefully and non-violently deprive both branches of their legitimacy and then do it ourselves.

This Is That Serious.