A Republican Primary Joke

So the RNC decides that they have to do something before the candidates all destroy each other – so they call a special super-secret conclave down in Miami for the four Presidential candidates. They ask each one this question: “If you couldn’t be President, what job would you accept instead?”

Mitt Romney says, “I’d like to be Secretary of the Treasury – then I could use my expertise in business and finance, and be in charge of all that money.”

Rick Santorum says, “I’d like to be Secretary of HHS – then I could do something about contraception and abortion.”

Ron Paul says, “I’d like to be VP – then I could be in charge of the Senate, and make sure that nothing gets done by government.’

Newt Gingrich says, “Emperor.”

THE MCADOOIAD: Book 1

THE MCADOOIAD
or, A Focus Group in Hades

BOOK 1

Sing out, O Kryptolia, O hitherto unknown Muse of hidden things!
Muse of secrets, of furtive plans, of whispers and rumors, sing!
Allow your humble servant to leak the tale of that perilous journey
The vote-gatherers took, the pollsters, the dizzy-spinning men,
To Hades, seeking the counsel of the dead.

It was McAdoo the far-seeing, McAdoo of the silver-templed head
Lobbyist, powerbroker, whose Porsche shone iridescent green,
Who caused the knees of Senators to buckle in fear or gratitude, depending,
Yes, McAdoo it was who rose at lunch, and the PowerPoint preso glowed
Behind him in the warmly paneled conference room.

“Come,” he said, “we who would know the minds of the electorate,
Who with our tools can discern the currents of opinion,
So that we can gain knowledge of interest to the powerhungry
And design for them the magic spells that bind their followers
And cast confusion into the camps of their adversaries…

“We seek to understand the hearts and minds of all who live
But there are others who know more than we ever could
Others no longer hindered by their own biases or interests
Others who vision exceeds that of CNN, or Fox, or al-Jazeera
For they have left this world and watch impassive from below.

“Know that next week shall I set out for the sparkling Aegean
There to conduct certain – shall we say, transactions
Which shall give me safe passage to the banks of the Lethe
There to conduct focus groups among the shades of the departed
And you can go with me – for only ten thousand dollars, double occupancy.”

What hubbub, Kryptolia, what buzzing, what flipping of phones
Did McAdoo’s words among the gathered suits create!
Like that swarm of cicadas, rising from near-score years of slumber,
Their wings darkening skies, their wings beating the air,
So did that conference room hum with the sounds of rearranged schedules.

And so indeed, as the administrative assistants had arranged,
Did private jets, corporate jets, jumbo jets, circling like seagulls,
Flit between the clouds above the Acropolis; and grey-eyed Athena,
Had she bothered to appear, might have smiled – smiled that rueful smile
That the gods put on when confronted with the follies of mortals.

And here now, goddess, show us the names on the passports,
As they are stamped by the customs personnel, watching their watchlists:
crafty Macgillicuddy – stout-voiced Herberts – Chen, of Hong Kong,
Liu who rarely smiled – Delaceur, ambition-driven, heedless of others –
Hendricks and Al-Gabir and Barychnikov, Smith (A.) and Smith (R.).

And behold, the great yacht Gorgon cruising among the Aegean isles
Where once sailed crafty Odysseus, proud Achilles, doomed Agamemnon,
Kings whose ships could serve as mere dinghies for this craft,
Whose banquet halls would perhaps fit upon its foredeck,
And whose fields would be hardpressed to supply its sumptuous buffet.

The Gorgon sought its harbor, a bay along an islet set upon the sea
Like a small emerald displayed on cloth of velvet blue.
Skiffs were launched, each ferrying half the touring band,
To the pier where their host, Stavros of weathered face,
Stood anticipating their arrival, ready to welcome them.

 

The Peace and Justice Files: WORLDS END

(My column for January…)

Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world
It ended when I lost your love
–Sylvia Dee, “End of the World”

Worlds end all the time, you know.

It doesn’t take much. Usually it happens in the briefest of moments: it might be a phone call in the middle of the night – or the sight of a doctor’s face as he comes out of the operating room – or a sudden squeal of brakes – and a world ends. The rules of existence change. The circumstances we had taken for granted cease to exist. Our previous definitions of ourselves become suddenly obsolete. The person that was dies, and we find that we are now someone else, in a place no longer familiar.

It’s not always a tragedy that ends a world, of course. As any parent knows, an old world ends when a new child is born. A wedding, a graduation, a move to a new city – in each case, we leave an old world behind, shifting into a new one with eagerness and anticipation.

In the late 70′s, I first encountered (thanks to Robert Anton Wilson’s book COSMIC TRIGGER) the notion that Something Big might be afoot for the year 2012. Wilson cited the work of the McKenna brothers, Dennis and Terence, who looked at the cycles of history (admittedly, under the influence of some pretty high-powered psychedelic drugs), and surmised that several of those cycles might peak at the same time, leading to rapid technological and evolutionary changes. Then the McKennas found out about the Mayan calendar… and well, you’ve probably heard at least some of the fallout. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Wikipedia’s page on the “2012 Phenomenon” gives a good overview.)

The whole notion struck the twenty-something me as – well, pretty cool. (“Hey, man, wait a minute – I was born in ’56 – and, like, in 2012, I will turn 56! Whoa! Is that, like, synchronicity or what??”) I couldn’t wait to see how the prophecy would play out.

So: here we are.

It seems fairly obvious that we are indeed standing at the threshold of something – but as Stephen Stills might say, “what it is ain’t exactly clear.” As I write, President Obama has just announced his intentions to scale back the size and scope of our military – but the possibility of war with Iran, which would have wide-ranging implications, seems to be increasing. Dictators have fallen – but others stand ready to take their places, and it is not at all assured that the “Arab Spring” will fully succeed. The threats to our environment are increasing, but so are awareness and resistance. The “Occupy” movement is growing, but the financial interests it opposes are retrenching. The 2012 elections in the United States might usher in a period of progressive dominance – or a reactionary backlash of a kind that has not been seen since the McCarthy Era, or perhaps even the Spanish Inquisition. Without question, in a year the world will be a radically different place, for good or for ill.

Let me ask you, then: which world, exactly, might be ending in 2012? And what kind of world will take its place? What will you do, this year, towards tipping this precarious balance in favor of justice, community, sustainability, and peace?

Mortality

No matter how hard you work
Or how hard you try
You gonna die
We all gotta die

No matter how much you shout
Or how loud you cry
You gonna die
We all gotta die

Mortality
Just the way it’s gotta be
Reality
Ain’t no tragedy if you let it set you free

All the losers and winners
The saints and the sinners
They gonna die
We all gotta die

In the dark or the light
The wrong or the right
They gonna die
We all gotta die

Mortality
Only way we get to see
Eternity
Here in this moment with me

(instrumental to fade)

 

SHOE DAY 2011

Just a reminder from your friends at the Bush Regime Memorial Society: December 14 is SHOE DAY! Yes, for the third year running we will commemorate the shameful legacy of the Bushies by sending worn-out footwear to the George W. Bush Library and other key locations.  Details here. And if you’re wondering “Why shoes?” the answer is here.

THE PEACE AND JUSTICE FILES: HARK OUR BETTER ANGELS SING

(My column for December…)

Writing here in 2006, I suggested this possible definition of “civilization”:

“…we can be said to be more or less ‘civilized’ as a society, culture, or species to the extent that intentional acts of violence are unnecessary.”

Dr. Steven Pinker, I suspect, would not only agree with that definition, he would say that as a species, we have made significant progress towards its fulfillment. Pinker, a cognitive neuroscientist and Harvard professor, recently published (to near-universal praise, by the way) a book entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined.

Did that subtitle make you do a double-take? “Declined?” you may well say.  ”What the heck is he talking about? Doesn’t he watch the NEWS??” Pinker’s thesis, which he backs up with extensive historical data and statistical analysis, is that despite what we might gather from modern-day media, the level of violence in human society has decreased dramatically over time. This decline, in Pinker’s view, has been spurred by many trends (the “better angels” of the title), including greater education, intercultural awareness, trade, and empathy. In fact, Pinker suggests the present day may be the most peaceful period in the history of our species.

(You can read excerpts of the book via Google Books, and a lecture by Pinker summarizing his findings can be found on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgNsmW_bAKI.)

He makes a convincing case. I’ve found it hard to find commentators who dispute his conclusions (though he overlooks such factors as the effects of environmental degradation, or the “violence” represented by structural economic injustice, in his analysis). That’s not to say that everyone will find comfort in his version of events. Despite the old cliches that “no one wants war,” there are many who, for philosophical reasons, seem to think that war is not only an inevitable part of the human condition but actually salutary. Such people trumpet the superiority of the “martial virtues,” such as courage and sacrifice, and fear the possibility of America “going soft.” One cannot help noticing, though, that many of these commentators (I call them “belligerists” – the opposite of “pacifists”) have never spent time on a battlefield or even in uniform.

And there are others – defense contractors and arms manufacturers, for example – who would find it much harder to make a buck in a more peaceful world. You can hear those people squawking even now, since the failure of the “Supercommittee” has brought about the heretofore-unthinkable possibility of an actual cut in defense spending.

Pinker’s book makes an interesting prism through which to view current events. Even as our troops are about to be withdrawn (finally!) from our misadventure in Iraq, the global chess game (or is it a game of “Risk”?) is becoming more intense. We remain enmeshed in Afghanistan, and the possibility of major conflicts arising with Iran and even China is growing. Will the near-irresistible force of our “Better Angels,” these massive historical trends towards true civilization, overcome our “inner demons” and prevail over the nearly-immovable status quo?

Cue Longfellow, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”:

…And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Happy Holidays to all of us – whether Ashura or Christmas or Hanukkah or Solstice or Kwanzaa. See you in 2012.

THE PEACE AND JUSTICE FILES: WE ARE STILL HERE

It didn’t take long at all. The rubble of the World Trade Center had hardly stopped smoldering before the most feared enemy, the force that posed the greatest immediate danger to America, was identified — and the counterattack began. Well-coordinated, massive in scope, this campaign struck at its target repeatedly, brutally, with relentless force, and neutralized it before anyone realized what had happened.

Who was this enemy? Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida? Mullah Omar and the Taliban?

Don’t be silly. Those were mere external threats. No, this threat of which I speak was far more insidious, far more capable of crippling America, of putting glorious victory out of reach. If the response plans of the neoconservatives and the Bush Regime were to proceed, that force first had to be eliminated, swiftly, immediately, and decisively – the other threats could then be dealt with in turn.

I am speaking, of course, of that dreaded scourge: pacifism.

In the days after 9/11, I was astonished – devastated would be a better word – at the speed and ferocity with which commentators attacked any suggestions beyond the kneejerk desire for war, and castigated the very ideal of pacifism itself. Michael Kelly, editor of The Atlantic magazine, led the charge: “The American pacifists,” he wrote, “… are on the side of future mass murders of Americans. They are objectively pro-terrorist.”

(Kelly, ironically enough, would later be killed in the opening weeks of the invasion of Iraq – the first journalist to die in that invasion, which he had wholeheartedly endorsed and encouraged.)

Pacifists were effectively routed from the field. Ridiculed and reviled, they were left out of any major media discussion of the attacks, their causes, or possible responses. (Except on shows such as Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!”, of course.) And so, bereft of any meaningful alternatives to consider (much less the opportunity to consider them), we waved our flags, chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and sang Toby Keith songs as the US-led coalition removed the Taliban from power.

(By the way, does anyone remember how in the months before 9/11, how many warnings there were regarding the dangers the Taliban – but since they were coming from the women’s rights community, they were largely ignored?)

But then (as ever) the militarists and belligerists overplayed their hand. Heady with victory, the neoconservatives fantasized a triumphal march of “permanent war”, establishing free-market ideology from Pakistan to the Mediterranean.

But the switch of attention from Afghanistan to Iraq, and the blatant nature of the campaign to justify the Iraq invasion, reawakened the pacifist spirit. Our local anti-war group, Waynepeace, was founded in the fall of 2002, when a call for an anti-war vigil lead not to the half-dozen folks sitting quietly in the park that I had expected, but rather to an angry crowd of 75 activists that was willing, ready, and eager to march down the middle of Main Street.

And slowly, slowly, disillusion grew – disillusionment with cowboy diplomacy, disillusionment with “peace through strength” rhetoric, disillusionment with the ballooning expenses of war, both financial and personal. The “new normal” that the neocons tried to graft onto our psyches, the notion that war would be permanent, that we would always face enemies everywhere, and that the national security state was inevitable, failed to take root.

Even after the election of Obama – an election that was in large part a repudiation of Republican militarism and its consequences – opposition to war, both specifically and in general, has continued to grow. Repeated deployments, repeated setbacks, and repeated scandals have taken their toll on the faith that many had had in the supremacy of purely military solutions.

Thousands of lives and billions of dollars later, the belligerists have failed. We are still here. The hope of pacifism – the hope that peace can be made – is still alive.

——

Some useful links that I found while researching this article:

“Peace Theology: Defining Pacifism”

http://peacetheology.net/pacifism/1-introduction-defining-pacifism/

“Cliches of Antipacifism”

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/11/cliches_of_anti.html

“Amplifying Officials, Squelching Dissent”

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1145

rabbit hole

how far down does the rabbit hole go (3x)
it goes all the way the way down
all the way down
all the way down, as you can see

how far round has the contagion spread (3x)
it’s gone all the way around
all the way round
left no one untouched that I can see

and how high up will the coming tide rise (3x)
only so far
only so far
as far as I can see

how far down does the rabbit hole go (3x)
it goes all the way the way down
all the way down
all the way down to me

THE PEACE AND JUSTICE FILES: QUOTE, UNQUOTE (part 1)

(Here’s my River Reporter column for July, posted here a bit late…)

“The problem with quotes on the Internet is that you can’t always be sure of their authenticity.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt

Have you ever heard any of the following quotes?

• “That government is best that governs least.” – Thomas Jefferson
• “You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “Wear sunscreen.” – Kurt Vonnegut

These are just three out of the blizzard of quotes that show up in emails forwarded by your cousin in Arizona, or pepper Web pages across the Internet, or that pop up in conversations around barstools and water fountains. People use quotes like these to amuse each other, to show their erudition, or to reinforce their political arguments.

The problem, of course, is that they’re spurious. The people to whom they are attributed never said or wrote any such things.

The last one, for example, supposedly came from a commencement speech given at MIT by author Kurt Vonnegut – actually, the “speech” was an essay by a Chicago columnist named Mary Schmich. But with Vonnegut’s name attached, the text spread quickly. You may have seen commentaries supposedly penned by other celebrities – George Carlin and Bill Cosby are among the most common names used. (You can find plenty of examples at snopes.com.)

Such misattributions are mostly harmless. But the second quote – not so much. That comes from a set of dicta called the “Ten Cannots,” attributed to Abraham Lincoln, that includes items like “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong” and “You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.” Apparently, they were written by a Presbyterian minister Rev. William John Henry Boetcker in 1916 or so, one assumes in response to the rise of Marxist thought and labor activism. (Hence the bit about “class hatred” – a concept that I’m not sure Lincoln would have ben familiar with.) Somewhere along the line, possibly because of a printer’s error, Lincoln’s name got associated with the list, and it stuck. Ronald Reagan – or rather, his speechwriters – saw fit to include some of these items, complete with the misattribution to Lincoln, in a speech he gave to the Republican National Convention in 1992. Since then, this erroneous information has been repeated thousands of times – creating an impression of Lincoln that is unfounded and false. I’m willing to bet that in our current discussion of whether or not the wealthy should pay more taxes, those words will be cited more than once, loaded with the weight of both Reagan’s and Lincoln’s reputations.

By the way, I don’t think that Reagan did this maliciously – he and his speechwriters probably believed the Lincoln attribution themselves, and didn’t see the need to do any fact-checking. Why do folks take such things for granted, and fail to question them? Clearly, part of the reason has to do with whether or not the quote reinforces one’s “preferred narrative.” To see that a celebrity or historical figure saw things the way you do – that’s powerful stuff, and awfully appetizing. It provides strong ammunition; you might not agree with me, by golly, but you’re not going to argue with Ben Franklin or Mark Twain.

I’ll talk more about this, and about that first quote, in next month’s column – but in the meantime, here, let me throw a few into the mix. What do you think: real, or spurious?

•  “When the foxes cry for the chickens to be freed from their bondage, believe me, it ain’t because they have the welfare of the chickens at heart.” – Will Rogers
• “I want to shrink government until it is small enough to drown in a bathtub.” – Grover Norquist
• “If we knew the true costs of things, we would realize that ‘profit’ is an illusion – there is only balance or imbalance.” – Rousseau
• “When you aim at the big guy, you hit the little guy.” – George H. W. Bush

(FOLLOW-UP: If my column of a couple of months ago called “Nasrudin’s Donkey” struck a chord with you, then you should check out the recent set of articles from Mother Jones on “The Great Speedup” – see http://motherjones.com/special-reports/2011/06/speedup.)

PEACE AND JUSTICE FILES: DIE EARLY

THE PEACE AND JUSTICE FILES: DIE EARLY (A MODEST PROPOSAL)
By Skip Mendler

In the battle of words and legislation presently raging in Washington over the problems of the national debt, Federal spending, Medicare, Social Security, many questions are being asked – except for the most important one.

If I understand the Republicans correctly, a new set of Divine ordinances has been handed down via Grover Norquist and other for-profit prophets. According to these immutable edicts, our options going forward are strictly circumscribed: on the one hand, taxes must never be raised again, on anything or anyone; on the other, the military budget must remain sacrosanct and allowed to expand as much as it damn well pleases. Progressive alternatives such as the “People’s Budget” (see http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov) dare not be exposed to the light of day, much less the lights of a major TV news studio or the floors of Congress.

In such circumstances, there’s really only one question to ask:

How many Baby Boomers like myself will have to die early – that is, before beginning to draw benefits at age 63 or so – to make the books finally balance and save our economy for our kids, their kids, and, oh yeah, those other kids down the block?

Simple enough question, don’t you think? It’s just a number, after all – somewhere between zero and (according to www.boomerdeathcounter.com) 76 million or so. Clearly, if all of us Boomers were to survive into the triple digits (and hey, given advances in medical technology, it could happen) the system couldn’t support us all – even if we were still earning money from our hospital beds by fielding customer service requests from Mumbai or operating audioanimatronic greeter robots at the doors of the Kinshasa Ultra-WalMart. And if we were all to disappear tomorrow – well, many folks would breathe a sigh of relief at that, wouldn’t they? Somewhere between those extremes is the right number.

Please note that I am not talking about any kind of fascistic “culling” protocol, active euthanasia, or even “Soylent Green”-style protein recycling. My Modest Proposal is this: we should volunteer. And I shall be happy to be the first to do so.

After all, we’ve had a good run of it, haven’t we? Folks of my g-g-g-generation have been blessed by a succession of technological and cultural innovations previously undreamed of in human history, from Twinkies and Rock’em-Sock’em Robots to the Bay City Rollers and “Three’s Company.”

How good did we have it? Two words: Count Chocula.

I rest my case.

And frankly, the future’s looking less attractive by the moment. There are pharmaceutical sales reps and insurance executives out there who are literally drooling right now over the money to be made from us Boomers as we drift into dotage. (Yes, you know who you are, don’t look so innocent. Wipe off your chin, it’s disgusting, really.) I am not sure that I really want to be their cash cow – even if it did mean I could watch reruns of “Three’s Company” on a wall-sized 3D screen while munching on Count Chocula to my stented and pacemaker-stimulated heart’s content.

Due to the timing of my birth, I had the completely unmerited good fortune to go through college during that brief, magical time AW/BA – after Woodstock, but before AIDS – and by the same accident of timing, I missed the draft, which ended shortly before I became eligible for service. (Darn good thing, too; my random sequence number was 012, and I had many years to go before I would join the Quakers.) This is just to say that I have had more than my share of fun, and given somewhat less than my share of sacrifice. So if leaving early means that my daughter’s future could be a bit less insecure, well, then it’s worthwhile.

So how will I do this? I lack the intestinal fortitude to commit seppuku, and I’m too acrophobic for jumping off bridges – but I most certainly can up my indulgence in certain high-risk behaviors. And I will (seriously, now) be sure that I have all the advance directives in place to ensure that, at the first occurrence of anything even remotely fatal, I shall allowed to go quietly – and quickly – into that good night. When the party’s over, it’s time to leave – particularly if your ride is waiting.

Pete Townshend, of course, famously wrote “Hope I die before I get old,” and then forgot to do just that. Wouldn’t it be ironic if doing just that turned out to be our generation’s greatest legacy.