Thursday, November 4, 2010

in my america

There once was a time when I kept my politics close to the vest.


In the pre-Bush days, I described myself (especially in school) as an Independent and strove--each time I accidentally made a liberal argument in any discussion--to take on a devil's advocate counter argument as well. Most of my students in those days probably would have been hard pressed to know exactly which side I favored, and in fact I did vote for many GOP candidates, even for Governor--though I must say that I was always let down after the elections. I have never voted for a GOP presidential or senatorial candidate, though--not that I wouldn't if the right one ever came up, but the GOP simply never nominates anyone who is any good whatsoever. Even when the Dems nominate people who are absurd (think Dukakis), the GOP goes and nominates Bush, Sr, just so I won't feel bad voting for the liberal. (Not that Bush, Sr. was that bad, but honestly: who could really actively and enthusiastically support the guy?)

When W. stole the election (and nothing, any time, as long as I live, will ever convince me that Florida was anything other than a set-up in 2000, or that the Supreme Court had more than zero right to insert itself into a presidential race) and then systematically went about assuring that computerized guarantees were in place for his re-election (a thing I knew as soon as I read, some time in 2002, about Diebold getting no-bid contracts for election machines nationwide, but a thing W. nearly managed to blow anyway against yet another Dem absurdity because he was just that incompetent) and gaming the economy to benefit his Wall St. and Big Oil pals, not to mention driving us inexorably into an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, I could no longer even pretend to be "fair and balanced." It was easy to see the fallacy of Fox's motto: there is NOTHING fair or balanced about giving even weight to a side that is simply WRONG. So I stopped trying and declared myself to be what I had evolved into being: an unabashed liberal.

Hell, I'm more than an unabashed liberal; I'm a fricking socialist. In case you couldn't tell from everything I write. And I am damned proud of it. In my humble opinion, social liberalism is the most noble political persuasion one can have. I believe in the cause of humanity. I believe that it is my job--and thus my government's job, as my representatives--to assure that every soul living in this country is cared for. This is not the Puritan ethic that America was founded upon back on Plymouth Rock but I have a whole lot of bones to pick with Puritans. (I have never forgiven them for that whole Witch Hunt thing, for starters.)  In my America, there are laws in place assuring that 100%--not merely 95%--of all citizens have health care. In my America, social welfare provides a meager but livable wage in exchange for working for the common good in jobs that the government may administrate but that private business creates and oversees. The incentive to find better, higher paying jobs remains, but these people are working, not simply on the public dole, and the government instead of paying them handouts kicks in with benefits like day care (providing yet more jobs) etc. 



In my America, by the way, the jobs that they are working on are part of a great initiative that has everyone in the country performing some kind of national service before going to college.  It might be military, but it does not need to be, and in fact it is not for most people.  Most people take advantage of the myriad job opportunities that are created by private industry (and, yes, subsidized by the government) that are helping to rebuild the country, to teach and care for the children of this great nation, to provide emergency relief to devastated areas of America, etc.  It's Americorps on steroids, and everyone becomes a part of it after high school, delaying the entry into the work force by a year or two and earning money that will help pay for college.


In my America, everyone can afford to go to college without leaving in debt for life.

In my America, the gap between executives and workers is more like what it was before ReaganBushCo altered the entire scheme in the last thirty years. A 10-1 differential makes some sense. A 208-1 differential is completely ridiculous. In my America, no one lives so far removed from real life that they simply "don't get it."

In my America, no one is allowed to work as a lobbyist in Washington if he or she has ever worked in government. And no one is allowed to work in government if he or she has ever worked as a lobbyist. And corporations are NOT people and have NO rights as if they were.

In my America, human rights are sacrosanct. The law of the land says that everyone is equal and that means everyone. Discrimination, hate crimes, and anything else that smacks of a violation of anyone's rights due to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else, are punishable by stiff fines--and these fines grow stiffer with the ability of the offended to pay them, so that corporate offenders are punished far more strongly than individuals.

And the government does NOT go into the business of torture.

Period.

In my America, tax rates are reasonable and people understand them and pay them willingly--if grudgingly--because they know what they are getting for their dollars.  (They know this because each year the government, in its commitment to real transparency, publishes a comprehensive and clear listing of what tax dollars are spent on.)  And the wealthy pay considerably more than the poor, who pay very little, and the impoverished, who pay nothing at all. But it is fair: everyone understands in my America that hoarding money does not make one richer; it just makes the numbers on some computer screen higher. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have figured that out even in the Bizarro America we live in today.

In my America, every political ad is paid for by public funds and must satisfy an objective truth test: no longer is is enough for the candidate merely to "approve this message." Now the message itself is screened for content by a third party whose job is simply to fact-check it. (Thousands of jobs are created in this new media watchdog group, which is paid for by the parties themselves.) Any ad that airs must bear the stamp of the watchdog. Further, the watchdog is empowered by its charter to quantify the objective truth in newscasts and radio and television punditry, the result being even more jobs and far more responsible journalism, for even Fox News dislikes being labeled "Flagrantly Untrue" over and over again by what everyone agrees is an unbiased arbitrator.

In my America, presidential campaigns run for one year. By law. Presidents are elected to a single 8-year term with no re-election. Senators and Congressmen are elected to four year terms. There are no mid-term elections unless leaders are recalled, which by law they can be. Fewer elections equals less expense. It also equals more governing, since the leaders will be concentrating on their jobs instead of election campaigns.

In my America, the Supreme Court serves 20-year appointments, not life terms. 20 years is enough time, I think, for anyone to sit on the nation's highest court and affect the country's course.

In my America, there is no War on Drugs. Abuse of drugs is viewed not as a crime to be prosecuted but as a health problem to be handled with treatment. Most formerly illegal drugs are legally available with prescriptions (the worst of them only from treatment centers) and thus have been brought under the control of the government. Many of them have been carefully, slowly redesigned so that the users gradually have less craving and find themselves needing the drug less. The lesser drugs, like marijuana, have long since been made legal and are sold like tobacco over the counter with huge taxes attached, a new source of revenue for the Fed. The prisons of the nation stand half-empty.

In my America, there is no such entity as a for-profit prison.

In my America, the military continues its worldwide philanthropic missions to build peaceful connections between America and other nations by providing help where it is needed. But we stop wasting our money on unnecessary arms that might have been useful fighting the Soviets in an imaginary war back in the 80's. And we most definitely do not get ourselves involved in wars of choice in countries that have never done us any harm.

Sadly, my America lives only in my dreams.  I wake from them and I find myself firmly ensconced on Bizarro America, where corporations have been invested with personhood by a Supreme Court that long ago publicly declared its politic
al partisanship, where oil companies, Big Pharma and Wall Street pay for ads that elect government and then exact strong measures of control over legislation, where people are marginalized still because of skin color or sexual orientation, where candidates for US Congress can openly declare that they will deny a woman the right to an abortion even if she is raped by her father and still manage to get elected, where a large number of relatively uninformed people are manipulated by a media monsoon into voting against their core interests for people who will, if they are left unchecked, turn this country even more into an oligarchy, where those same people are encouraged to call their President Hitler and obliquely threaten him with assault rifles, and where the fight for equal rights for Orange Americans has left reality television and entered the world of the US House of Representatives.


I fought for Barack Obama in 2008 because he was the best hope to move Bizarro America in the direction of my America.  He still is.  We have moved incrementally in the right direction, though not at all as far as we need to or as far as I'd like.  I know that, unlike me, he is no liberal socialist, but that's OK: Bizarro America would never elect a liberal socialist.  I feel fortunate that we managed to elect a left of center moderate.  Obama is someone who bleeds purple, which he told us all in his 2004 Democratic Convention Speech.  Why then should it surprise any of us that his Highest Principle is compromise and bipartisanship?  Why should it shock us that he has and does fight for it again and again like Charlie Brown against a tidal wave of Lucy Van Pelts pulling their Republican footballs out from under him?  It is who he is.  And do you know what?  It is why I like him.


You'll argue that it is the very definition of insanity to expect a different result from the same action, but I don't think so in this case.  Here the variable is not an absolute; it is a human being.  Obama keeps giving his opponents the chance to act according to their better angels.  And they keep failing him and us.  Many of us here on the left want him to stop already, to withdraw from the game, to tell the army of Lucys with their footballs to go home because he is no longer playing.  I cannot deny that I have been among those voices, that I am among them right now.  But I admire Obama still when he does not give in to this chorus, when he lets Lucy play, when he takes that running start.


Of course, just once, I do sort of wish he'd veer off a bit and kick her in the teeth...


But in my America, she'd have full dental.


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Friday, October 29, 2010

future shock! (GOTV!)

>
Please take a moment to indulge me in a tiny mental exercise.
Close your eyes.
Wait. That won't work.  You won't be able to read my next words.  
All right, then: Don't close your eyes.  Just sort of pretend they are closed, for the purposes of this exercise, and join me as we take a journey in our minds.
It will not be a long journey.  And I promise I'll have you back before the commercial ends.  Or before the boss realizes you're surfing on Kos.  Or before the kids wake up from their nap.  Or whatever.
It's a journey in time.  Come on.  It's easy.  Really.  Just take a Leap of Faith with me and you'll be there.
You made it!  Congratulations; that wasn't so hard, was it?  So, let's see now: when have we ended up?  It's always best on these journeys to get one's bearings immediately.  Ah...next Thursday.  One week from today.

One week from today.
Look around you.  It's only a week away, but are you sure you are in the same world?  I know: it does seem familiar.  The banner headlines on Huffpost proclaiming doom for Obama's entire remaining agenda seem a bit excessively ominous, as usual.  But then the cnn.com interview with John Boehner in which he is declaring his intention to stall anything and everything the president wants now that he will be Speaker and to open numerous investigations into Obama's actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and for all I know maybe even into the whole birth certificate thing--all sorts of fishing expeditions designed to take congressional time in random efforts to find some excuse to try to impeach Obama--doesn't exactly make everything sound hunky dory.  
And what in the world are we supposed to do with Senator Angle, who is calling a--WTF? press conference?  We are supposed to put up with her insane ravings for at least six years?  Along with Demint, whom we were already stuck with (and who, thank GOD, is not going to get to be the majority leader--they're saying that will probably be Dick Durbin) and Ensign and other already-ensconced GOP idiots, we have Rubio and Rand and Angle with their lunatic fringe policies and me-first, everyone else be damned right wingers like Ayotte and Toomey and Mukowski as well.  
Look: Olbermann is on TV, saying something about how it looks as if there won't be a need for Second Amendment remedies.  So there's that, anyway.  He says that tomorrow he'll have a Special Comment: The Tea Party Congress--When the Mad Hatter Takes Over the Shop.  It sounds like something that would be interesting, but we can't stick around that long.  Wait: before we head back, though...this looks interesting...
The story is about how this horrific result could possibly have happened.  
You see the gist: the right hated Obama for all of the obvious reasons so they rallied the troops against him from Day One, very successfully as it turned out.  This chart says that GOP turnout was much higher than in normal midterm elections.  But what is this one?  If the Dem turnout had equaled the GOP's in percentage, we'd have swamped them?  All we had to do to avoid Speaker Boehner, Senator Angle, Senator Rand, Senator Mukowski, etc. was to get fellow democrats to cast their ballots????
Just a second: How many of you are going to cast yours next Tuesday?  
WHAT?
EXCUSE ME?
I know you have what you think of as valid reasons.  I know you've been less than perfectly happy with the administration.  I know some of Obama's policies, appointments, etc. have utterly pissed you off.  But FOR CRYING OUT LOUD we're talking about Speaker Freaking Boehner here!  We're talking about Senator Sharron Runs-From-Press No-Abortion-Even-When-Raped Revolution-Every-20-Years I'm-A-Certified-Loony Angle here!  We're talking Rand Paul!  Ken Buck!  We're talking guys who think it's cool to dress up in Nazi uniforms.  We're talking about ceding these nutjobs control of our government!!!
No, no, no, NO!  This is not the election to sit out in protest.  Look around you!  This is NOT the world you left a few moments ago.  It is already beginning to change.  It is already feeling more paranoid, more frightening.  In fact, I'm feeling more frightened just being here.  We have to go back.
Come back.
Open your eyes again.
Oh wait.  Right.  You didn't close them.  Well, then, open them wider.  Look hard.  See the mess that is about to happen.  
And get out and vote on Tuesday.  And get everyone you know to do it too!

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Monday, October 25, 2010

cutting off our noses


I click on the Huffington Post front page this evening and am treated to the following banner headline:
'DON'T TAKE US FOR GRANTED'  Will It Get Better? Gay Voters Consider Staying Home...Alan Cumming: Obama Has Done 'Diddly Squat' For Gay Rights
And my first thought is this: Sure.  Why not?  Why should gay people be the sole members of this American society who are immune from the current rampant epidemic of Teh Stupid?
Honestly, people, when it is nine days in front of a midterm election and it is possible that the complete imbeciles and jerks who led this country to the brink of a second great depression and would gladly wipe out every single social advance of the 20th and 21st Centuries will be swept back into power by a public voting against their own economic interests in an election fueled by anger at the economy, I freaking give up.
Has this entire country lost its collective mind?
    This election should have been a total cakewalk.
    We have a president elected on a populist platform who immediately set out to do--guess what?--pretty much what he was elected to do!  In fact, according to politifact.com, of 506 campaign promises, he has already kept 122 with another 236 "in the works."  41 others have been compromised on, 82 have been stalled, and only 22 have been "broken," but most of these are items with first year time limits that still are likely to be completed in the first term.  AsSteve Benen pointed out in his Washington Monthly column back in June--long before the Consumer Protection Agency was founded as a part of the administration's latest achievement in financial reform--"President Obama's record of accomplishments, after just 17 month in office, is as impressive as anything we've seen in generations."  
To this we add a GOP in such disarray that it has managed to nominate a host of candidates who are, by any objective standards, simply the worst slate ever produced by any major party in history.  To call them fanatical and lunatic is to risk libel suits by representatives of fanatical loonies.  And this batch of insane chowderheads has continued to make one crazy statement after another after another throughout the entire cycle.  Further, even the actual GOP leadership is joining in the fun, with Boehner and McConnell and Ensign and others competing against each other in a game of Which Republican Can Say the Dumbest Things?  I won't bother to recount them here, though I'm sure that a diary of GOP Greatest Hits of Stupid would go straight to the Rec List (and I do want a call-out, whoever writes it), but honestly: when Orrin Hatch has become the voice of reason for your party, something has gone seriously wrong.
And this absurd Bizarro-World version of the GOP campaigned from the very beginning on two basic premises: first, that it would block Obama from doing anything that it could succeed in blocking him from doing, and second, that--if sent back into power--it would do the exact same things that it did before, when it had power.  You know: the things that drove us to the edge of destruction.
I mean, there is No Way On Earth this should even be close!
But three factors, I think, have mitigated things.
First, there is the incredible power of the only 24/7 political megaphone, Fox Noise, as it bleats its non-stop GOP infomercials to the masses, twisting stories until they are unrecognizable under layers of lies, making things up completely, and ultimately doing even more damage than the utterly unprovoked assault on the Constitution that the Supreme Court made in its Citizens United decision.  And let's face it: any network that is responsible for unleashing both Hannity and Beck on the world deserves a special place in the Broadcasting Hall of Shame.
The second factor is the Democrats themselves, who have behaved like morons during this campaign season, listening to the beltway pundits and the Fox talking heads instead of the people who elected them in the first place and running away from their very strong record of legislative achievement.  Sure, the legislature has been watered down because of the need to appease Blue Dogs and enough GOP senators to pass cloture, but the point is that Obama and this Congress achieved what few--if any--others ever had.  Yet they hide from their achievements and allow the other side to define them as poor.  
The final factor are the American people, who a mere two years ago proclaimed that they understood that the economy was a disaster that had taken eight years to create and that Obama could not possibly solve it in two years or even a single term.  A Wall Street Journal polljust before his inauguration showed 71% approval of the efforts of the incoming executive in readying his economic team, yet 57% believed that the recession could go on for 1-3 years at that point, and another 17% believed it would go on much longer.  We "got it" back then, until the GOP and Fox started their nonstop bleating, and we kept hearing them say it should be over even though it was partly their insistence on tax breaks in the stimulus that slowed recovery down, and we didn't have jobs, so we listened.  Like sheep we followed.  And those who knew nothing or a tiny bit about politics decided to follow their Fearless Leader into Glennbeckistan and Teapartistan and proved once mroe that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.  
But it is not only them.  It is us, too.  The Left.  The educated.  The liberals.  Even those of us who allegedly understand how politics works.  We became lost in the starlight that reflected Hope at us, and we Believed that it would all happen at once because we wanted it so badly after eight years in the dark.  And maybe without Boehner's artificial orange glow it might have worked, but he did his job well.  The man is a wart on humanity, but give him that much credit.  And we saw that Obama was being forced to compromise, and that in fact his default game plan was to compromise, and we disliked that after years of a GOP who neer once thought to compromise with us.  But that's just it: they should have.  THEY SHOULD HAVE.  So we are.  And the game plan, if given time to work, will eventually pay dividends.
But...In our annoyance, we are hurt.  Justifiably.  We expected more, and it was a reasonable expectation.  But the man we put into the White House has been making decisions about how to prioritize, what order to do things in, and how to do them.  Some of these decisions piss me off too.  I'm transgendered; I'd like him to be doing more right now for LGBT folks, but still...   We have been hearing it for months now:
Obama has not done enough for {fill in name of liberal interest group du jour}.  We don't think we will be supporting him this November.  That will show him to take us for granted.
No. It won't. There is an old expression for this insane action: cutting off your nose to spite your face. It will solve absolutely nothing.  Do you think for one second that the GOP will care more for your liberal special interest than even the bluest of blue dogs?  THIS GOP?  Because you are wrong.  They won't.  And they not only will not help your cause; they very likely will fight tooth and nail against it.
So go ahead, gay people and all other disaffected left wingers everywhere.  Sit it out.  Or, hey, what the heck: vote for the GOP candidate in your state.  What the heck: if you're going to vote against your own interests, you might as well go nuts.  Then, as you watch the government completely go to hell and your civil rights get legally stomped upon and, should there be another Supreme Court justice to name, yet another conservative added to the mix, you can just smile and say to yourself:
It didn't matter anyway.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

truth and other trivial pursuits

So the folks at my church  gave me this column in our monthly publication and they said: do whatever you want, and I thought: cool, maybe I’ll spend several hundred words placing complicated clues in my article that seem to point to something Really Important if you take the time to figure them out so that people will spend days and days puzzling over them, tearing hair from distended follicles and rubbing already dry skin until it peels off like old cracked corn husks.  I mean, what the heck: people love that kind of crap!

But the thing is that I really didn’t have anything Really Important to reveal, so I was just about ready to give up on the whole thing when I saw a campaign commercial and it occurred to me that it really didn’t matter whether I did or didn’t: no one actually cares in the long run whether you speak the truth; they only care that they think you do.  Or anyway they only care that they can act in a way that makes them believe they think you do.  And that is usually good enough.

Being deep is not a human characteristic.  Neither is making sense.

Too many people spend too much time fighting over which version of The Truth is Really The Truth and they forget that most versions include some kind of message about being kind to each other.  It would all be pretty funny if they were fighting over, say, whether it is ever permissible to eat pastrami on dark rye.  (Absolutely.)  Or whether sea foam green is the new fuchsia. (I’m not quite sure that fuchsia was ever the new fuchsia.)  But fighting over whether it makes more sense that Ultimate Truth was handed down on a bunch of stone tablets or a burning bush or a carpenter who liked to hang around with beggars and hookers or a prophet who was, by all accounts, seriously image-shy, seems rather a waste of good television time.

I mean really: we might have just as easily been handed “The Truth” by a rainbow colored sandpiper or a free-floating chalk drawing or some guy named Bob who lives in a cardboard box near the train station.  Walk around in a dark room with a flashlight.  Every once in a while, randomly point it somewhere and turn it on.  Then think this about whatever you see: that’s The Truth.  Because it will probably make just as much sense as most stories. 

As UU’s, of course, we’re not all that into “The Truth.”  We’re more into the search for it.  Which is sort of cool.   It’s always more fun to look for something than to think you know the answer.  Life is not about the finding; it’s about the searching.  

Harry Chapin said it best:
 “It’s got to be the going, not the getting there, that’s good.”  
And that’s The Truth.

At least that’s what Bob told me when I visited his box last week.

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Saturday, September 11, 2010

9/11 through poetry

I had not intended to publish these here.  I had not intended to publish them anywhere, really.  But I was reading some others' reactions to 9/11 and I was suddenly compelled to talk about my own. I could discuss in great detail the deep depression that came over me for perhaps a month, despite knowing no one directly affected by the event.  I could talk about my sister's getting a flag tattooed on her previously unmarked arm, a seemingly extreme but I think, now, emotionally understandable response to the trauma.  I could talk about remaining glued to the TV despite the pain it caused me to watch those pictures and videos over and over and over and over...or the abject horror of sitting through the raw footage shot by that documentary filmmaker embedded with the firemen who were in the Towers.  I did watch.  I forced myself to.  I felt I had to.  But, far simpler, I decided to share three brief poems that, in three different ways, get at the ways I have reacted to this seminal event in American--and my--history.
Photos hidden away

i still can’t look at the pictures.
so many years later,
the thick white ash
a fragment of a
bad dream,
the reams of papers
raining
from the smoky sky
in a nightmare hurricane
just an image from
some long past mirage,
and the headlines—
the headlines—
called up in the animated
dust
of no-longer buildings
and used-to-be people—
the headlines
i read then, and
folded away
carefully
to keep for
someone else’s posterity and
never have seen again
and never will
bring the surreal
vision to the too real
world
where the pictures
of flames shooting from
buildings
of buildings collapsing
into smoke
are not magicians’ illusions
as they should be
as they would be if
the world were
sane.

Stumbling upon ground zero

driving one day through
lower manhattan
i was struck
by the sudden increase
in security.
the u.n. i said to my daughter,
and then,
realizing,
oh god,
do you know where we are?
her face shifted for
one moment and she knew:
i don’t want to see it,
she said,
and i understood,
but we have to,
i said, we have to,
so we drove around the block
where a giant hole still sat
in the ground
so many years later
and there we stood,
while hawkers
sold souvenirs on
the walk behind us
and someone literally
on a soap box
blathered about blame,
staring in absolute
silence
at crossed
twisted
metal bars
at an american flag
at a vast expanse
of still-nothing
at the price
of freedom.

Strength

I’m not proud of this:
When it happened, I was teaching.
It was a sophomore class, just a normal
Tuesday morning.
When a colleague alerted me,
I turned on the radio
And sat.
Just sat.
The newscaster spoke of the confusion,
Of the plane striking,
Of the second plane and
The news from Washington,
And I simply sat.
When the period ended
I suppose the students assumed
That they should leave
And just moved on,
For the next class took their places.
And we all just sat,
Listening.
Catatonic.
When the buildings fell, we sat.
Small cries escaped us.
But we did not move.
I heard later that some of my colleagues
Taught their lessons that day,
Kept their heads together
And bulled ahead.
I was not among them.
I was unable to function for days.
Weeks, really.
I’m not proud of this.
I’m not.
I wish I were stronger.
I wish we all were.

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9/11 through poetry

I had not intended to publish these here.  I had not intended to publish them anywhere, really.  But I was reading some others' reactions to 9/11 and I was suddenly compelled to talk about my own. I could discuss in great detail the deep depression that came over me for perhaps a month, despite knowing no one directly affected by the event.  I could talk about my sister's getting a flag tattooed on her previously unmarked arm, a seemingly extreme but I think, now, emotionally understandable response to the trauma.  I could talk about remaining glued to the TV despite the pain it caused me to watch those pictures and videos over and over and over and over...or the abject horror of sitting through the raw footage shot by that documentary filmmaker embedded with the firemen who were in the Towers.  I did watch.  I forced myself to.  I felt I had to.  But, far simpler, I decided to share three brief poems that, in three different ways, get at the ways I have reacted to this seminal event in American--and my--history.
Photos hidden away

i still can’t look at the pictures.
so many years later,
the thick white ash
a fragment of a
bad dream,
the reams of papers
raining
from the smoky sky
in a nightmare hurricane
just an image from
some long past mirage,
and the headlines—
the headlines—
called up in the animated
dust
of no-longer buildings
and used-to-be people—
the headlines
i read then, and
folded away
carefully
to keep for
someone else’s posterity and
never have seen again
and never will
bring the surreal
vision to the too real
world
where the pictures
of flames shooting from
buildings
of buildings collapsing
into smoke
are not magicians’ illusions
as they should be
as they would be if
the world were
sane.

Stumbling upon ground zero

driving one day through
lower manhattan
i was struck
by the sudden increase
in security.
the u.n. i said to my daughter,
and then,
realizing,
oh god,
do you know where we are?
her face shifted for
one moment and she knew:
i don’t want to see it,
she said,
and i understood,
but we have to,
i said, we have to,
so we drove around the block
where a giant hole still sat
in the ground
so many years later
and there we stood,
while hawkers
sold souvenirs on
the walk behind us
and someone literally
on a soap box
blathered about blame,
staring in absolute
silence
at crossed
twisted
metal bars
at an american flag
at a vast expanse
of still-nothing
at the price
of freedom.

Strength

I’m not proud of this:
When it happened, I was teaching.
It was a sophomore class, just a normal
Tuesday morning.
When a colleague alerted me,
I turned on the radio
And sat.
Just sat.
The newscaster spoke of the confusion,
Of the plane striking,
Of the second plane and
The news from Washington,
And I simply sat.
When the period ended
I suppose the students assumed
That they should leave
And just moved on,
For the next class took their places.
And we all just sat,
Listening.
Catatonic.
When the buildings fell, we sat.
Small cries escaped us.
But we did not move.
I heard later that some of my colleagues
Taught their lessons that day,
Kept their heads together
And bulled ahead.
I was not among them.
I was unable to function for days.
Weeks, really.
I’m not proud of this.
I’m not.
I wish I were stronger.
I wish we all were.

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Friday, August 20, 2010

Tea Party Contract

This is not mine.  I did not create it.  I do not know who did.  But I like it.  It's been kicking around for awhile, but in case you have not seen it...

THE ANTI-SOCIALIST/TEA BAGGER CONTRACT 

I, ________________________, do solemnly swear to uphold the principles of a socialism-free society and heretofore pledge my word that I shall strictly adhere to the following: 

I will complain about the destruction of 1st Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 1st Amendment Rights.

I will complain about the destruction of my 2nd Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights by legally but brazenly brandishing unconcealed firearms in public.
 
I will foreswear the time-honored principles of fairness, decency, and respect by screaming unintelligible platitudes regarding tyranny, Nazi-ism, and socialism at public town halls.


I pledge to eliminate all government intervention in my life. I will abstain from the use of and participation in any socialist goods and services including but not limited to the following: 

  • Social Security 
  • Medicare/Medicaid 
  • State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP) 
  • Police, fire, and emergency services 
  • US Postal Service 
  • Roads and highways 
  • Air travel (regulated by the socialist FAA) 
  • The US railway system 
  • Public subways and metro systems 
  • Public bus and light rail systems 
  • Rest areas on highways 
  • Sidewalks 
  • All government-funded local/state projects (e.g., see Iowa 2009 federal senate appropriations) 
  • Public water and sewer services (goodbye socialist toilet, shower, dishwasher, kitchen sink, outdoor hose!) 
  • Public and state universities and colleges 
  • Public primary and secondary schools 
  • Sesame Street 
  • Publicly funded anti-drug use education for children 
  • Public museums 
  • Libraries 
  • Public parks and beaches 
  • State and national parks 
  • Public zoos 
  • Unemployment insurance 
  • Municipal garbage and recycling services 
  • Treatment at any hospital or clinic that ever received funding from local, state or federal government (pretty much all of them) 
  • Medical services and medications that were created or derived from any government grant or research funding (again, pretty much all of them) 
  • Socialist byproducts of government investment such as duct tape and velcro (Nazi-NASA inventions) 
  • Use of the internet, email, and networked computers, as the DoD's ARPANET was the basis for subsequent computer networking 
  • Foodstuffs, meats, produce and crops that were grown with, fed with, raised with or that contain inputs from crops grown with government subsidies, or which were subsequently inspected by any branch of the government 
  • Clothing made from crops (e.g. cotton) that were grown with or that contain inputs from government subsidies 
If a veteran of the government-run socialist US military, I will forego my VA benefits and insist on paying for my own medical care.
 
I will not tour socialist government buildings like the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
 
I pledge to never take myself, my family, or my children on a tour of the following types of socialist locations, including but not limited to: 

  • Smithsonian Museums such as the Air and Space Museum or Museum of American History 
  • The socialist Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson Monuments 
  • The government-operated Statue of Liberty 
  • The Grand Canyon 
  • The socialist World War II and Vietnam Veterans Memorials 
  • The government-run socialist-propaganda location known as Arlington National Cemetery 
  • All other public-funded socialist sites, whether it be in my state or in Washington, DC 
I will urge my member of Congress and Senators to forego their government salary and government-provided healthcare.
 
I will oppose and condemn the government-funded and therefore socialist military of the United States of America. 

I will boycott the products of socialist defense contractors such as GE, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Humana, FedEx, General Motors, Honeywell, and hundreds of others that are paid by our socialist government to produce goods for our socialist army. 

I will protest socialist security departments such as the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, TSA, Department of Justice and their socialist employees. 

Upon reaching eligible retirement age, I will tear up my socialist Social Security checks. 

Upon reaching age 65, I will forego Medicare and pay for my own private health insurance until I die. 

SWORN ON A BIBLE AND SIGNED THIS DAY OF __________ IN THE YEAR ___. 

_____________ _________________________ 
Signed Printed Name/Town and State

Saturday, August 14, 2010

the antiheroes of voteblue flight 2010


VoteBlue Flight 2010 from Washington DC had arrived at its destination safely on Wednesday, having yet again successfully carried its passengers through a serious storm, this time the unexpected but dangerous Hurricane Stateaid.  As usual, of course, no one credited the captain and the crew, whose expertise had weathered the buffeting blowhard winds and nasty deceiving tricks of the storm; rather, this was one more success added to a seemingly endless pile of such successes that had been building for the eighteen months the crew had worked together, a pile that--no matter how mountainous--remained oddly invisible to the masses.
VoteBlue's captain remained imperturbable in the face of this idiosyncratic behavior.  He knew that, if the previous captain had had a tenth of the success in his eight years of piloting the craft as he'd already garnered in eighteen months, he'd have been hailed a hero, bigger than Sully (who after all had only managed not to crash one plane, whereas he--the captain--had managed not to crash not only his own plane but the entire interconnected network of aviation, despite the mess his predecessor had left it in).  Instead, though, everyone only looked at the flaws in his accomplishments.
    And there were flaws, to be sure.  To do what he had already done, he had to ease off on some of his key principles.  Some of the things that he had told the airline and its shareholders were most near and dear to him were things he had placed on hold; with others he had achieved success where no one ever had before but at the price of key aspects of his goals, as in when he made the first successful nonstop HealthCare flight, but only after having jettisoned the Public Option from the cargo hold over the Pacific Ocean.  Still, he felt, this was a thing he could recover later, now that he had achieved what some had believed to be impossible.  
    "Do something impossible every day"; that was his motto.  And the captain tried to accomplish it.  And if that meant a bit of compromise, or even a bit of delay, so be it.  And though it did bother him that people seemed oblivious to his great achievements, he still showed nothing but his trademark outward calm.
    It was the crew that cracked first.
First Officer Rahm, who frankly had never seemed all that stable to begin with and, some felt, should never have been promoted above beverage boy, began to show the fault lines early on.  But it wasn't until a full meltdown by the generally reliable Senior Flight Attendant Gibbs that the captain--and everyone else--began to understand that the crew had begun to lose it.
Maybe it was the fact that the flights were getting longer and harder.  The competition had upped the ante early in their run by introducing the Filly Booster Engine, a frightening and powerful new power source that allowed only a few of the competitor's airplanes to wipe out entire routes planned by VoteBlue.  Far too much time and energy had to be devoted to "breaking" the Filly Booster, an action that involved high levels of negotiation with officers on opposing crews, bargaining with them so they would not use their weapon.  Often it left the VoteBlue crew broken and exhausted, yet they battled on.  
They got through the HealthCare run.  They unloaded the outrageously expensive TARP routes that BushCo, their predecessor, had left them with when they had bought them out.  They managed to stop what might have become The Great Crash, though things were still far from normal.  Somehow they had even managed to do some good for other unrelated people, as if the old discredited Trickle Down theory actually worked, but not in economics--no--rather, in sheer good will.  And Detroit was coming back.  And, though it was indeed a slow process, lost rights were being restored.  And though the rest of the world saw this and credited the captain and the crew and felt good about VoteBlue and about America for the first time in the new century, the people here couldn't see it.
They saw only the dilapidated Gitmo Airport that was still open despite a promise to close it.  They saw the discrimination still unresolved against gays--left over, to be sure, from previous crews--and blamed the captain for not waving a magic wand and making it go away.  They saw the wealthiest stockholders continue to grow wealthier and the poorer ones still struggling to get by and wondered why the captain couldn't find a way to resolve that horrific discrepancy in his first eighteen months on the job.  They saw far too many of the company's employees deployed overseas in dangerous engagements begun by BushCo and wondered why the captain had not brought them home.  
Senior Flight Attendant Gibbs made a point each day to give passengers a recap of the great things the captain had done, but more and more all he heard were the complaints.  And finally, on Wednesday, he snapped.  He had been struck in the head once too often by stray insinuations that some traveler tossed around like so much loose luggage from an overhead bin.  Gibbs demanded an apology from the passenger, but the passenger refused and they began to argue.  Suddenly, the passenger told a stunned Gibbs to “f— off."
At this point, according to virtually all who were in attendance, Gibbs took the flight microphone and started talking to all of the passengers, beginning by directing that same insult directly at the passenger: "To the person who just told me to f--- off, F--- OFF!"  
Gibbs continued speaking on the PA system, saying that he could not understand why "all of you m--f--s on the professional left" couldn't understand that the captain had been doing his very best and couldn't see what he had already accomplished.  He opined that they "must all be on drugs or something."   The people on the right side of the plane, it was later reported, were very confused.  A couple of hippie types sitting on the left side applauded.
Saying "I've been in this business 28 years.  I've had it.  That's it," Gibbs then activated the plane’s inflatable emergency slide, grabbed two beers from the galley, slid down the chute, and disappeared into the terminal.
A spokesman for VoteBlue later indicated that Gibbs had never before had any instance of such behavior.  However, the spokesman said, "Perhaps it might be indicative of the pent-up frustration Mr. Gibbs might have felt knowing that, in a few short months, the captain could be taking orders from John Boehner and no one really seems to get it."


Tuesday, August 10, 2010

vulnerability

This one is very personal.


I don't really know why I am writing it.


On the rec list of a blog I read regularly, a diary has been listed for the past day or so called "I was raped and it doesn't matter."  It is a political diary, and it deals with the politics behind rape.  In response to that diary, I considered titling this "I wasn't raped, but it does matter." But I am not really writing about the same subject, so this is not really a reply to that one and the title isn't quite right anyway.


I wasn't raped. What I did, I did of my own volition. But I did it because I felt trapped, felt that in my stupidity I had backed myself into a corner and lost control, had given control to a man I did not know who now had me in a vulnerable position. I was terrified and I made one stupid decision after another. And the result was...what happened.


It happened seven years ago. In Paris. I thought I was long over it. I mean it was so long ago and so stupid. And it was not rape. But with my 18-year-old daughter in Paris this week, these memories have come flooding back and I cringe involuntarily as flashes of his apartment, of his face, of my own absolutely foolish behavior slap at me and overwhelm me at odd moments.


First you must remember that I am a transsexual woman. In 2003, when this happened, I was only four years post-op, and frankly I was overwhelmingly naïve. I understood that a woman alone was easily victimized, yes: I felt that the first time I walked alone as a woman in downtown Chicago in the evening, across streets I had walked countless times in a former life, dressed as a man, with little or no thought to personal safety. That very first time as a woman, however, I became acutely aware of just how vulnerable I was, how suddenly I was viewed as potential prey by people who had not taken notice of me before. It was unnerving.


So I knew this. Still, the European trip was my vacation of a lifetime. It was a whirlwind journey through several countries, staying with old friends, culminating with three weeks in Scotland where I would be taking a class. Paris was my final stop before flying to Glasgow, and I only had a single day there; it was a transfer point and I was by myself that day.


I had had a wonderful time everywhere I'd been and had been welcomed as a woman by my old friends and their families. Still, of course, everyone along the way had known me before, had understood my past, and somehow that altered things a bit. I could not tell if they truly saw me as a woman or not. I had not yet developed that kind of self-confidence. Nor had I developed any kind of social understanding of male/female relationships, since I had not even dated as a man particularly and, as a woman, well, that was a new pond where wanted to wade but into which I had only made a few forays.


So I made it to Paris, City of Lovers, City of Lights, and I bought a guidebook and I took the metro to Notre Dame and then wandered back up the Champs-Elysees. I did not have all that much time, certainly not enough to see Paris really, but I figured I'd be back some day and wanted to get at least a kind of overview. It was not perfect, but whatever. Que sera sera and all that.


So I'm wandering up the grand boulevard, enjoying an absolutely perfect summer afternoon, trying to make sense of the map I was reading, when suddenly I hear myself addressed by a man nearby, who had been walking in the other direction. In French, he called out to me, asked if I needed help with the map. My French is not anywhere near perfect, but I definitely grasped his meaning. I smiled and tried to say I was OK, but he came over to me. He was flirting, calling me lovely, offering advice, telling me he'd be happy to walk awhile with me if I'd like. He was about my height, Arabic, nice looking, and gentle, and it was a bright sunny day, and I thought it might be nice to have company and besides, a chance to speak French to a real Frenchman? Hard to pass up considering how weak my own command of the language was. And besides, he kept saying how pretty I was, which was something I still had a hard time believing.


So we walked, and he made jokes, and he showed me things that were outside of the normal "touristy" parts of the city centre, and shortcuts to see places like L'Hotel Des Invalides and Le Tour D'Eiffel. It was interesting and fun, for the most part, but I kept thinking I should stop this, I should say thank you very much and goodbye, I should get out before I was in too deep. And I tried on several occasions, but each time I started he professed not to be able to understand me, and I thought it likely that he could not; my own French construction being so very poor.


So we came to the Eiffel Tower at dusk, and I loved the sight of it but I was starting to feel a bit leery.  We had been walking together several hours, and he had even kissed me on a couple of occasions.  He had made several highly suggestive comments that I had shrugged off, but I was unnerved and was beginning to feel ill at ease.  Yet it was his city, and I was not on solid ground on several levels: the language, at which I was at best a journeyman; the territory, at which I was unfamiliar; my gender, with which I was certainly not used to this type of interaction; my emotions, which kept liking the fact that he liked me even while I was frightened of what I was getting into.  And it grew darker.  And my hotel was out near the DeGaulle Airport.


I finally got him to take me to the Metro, but to my chagrin discovered that the whole system had closed for the night. I was stuck. It would reopen at 5 AM. I did not have enough money for taxi fare; I didn't know what to do. "Pas de problem," he said. "Venir chez moi." Come home with me. And I said no, no, I didn't think that would be a good idea. But it grew later and later and he said it would be just to sleep and I had to sleep somewhere and he'd get me to the Metro for the first train.


I told myself it was a horrible idea. I told myself I had no choice.


We walked along side streets that no tourist ever sees to a tiny apartment in some tiny section of town. And he pulled out a futon for me to sleep, and then I realized that this was also where he slept. Oh no, he assured me: he would sleep on the floor.


I tried to get to sleep. And I almost did. But an hour or so after he had turned out the lights he crawled into the bed, curling his arm around me. On such a tiny surface I could not successfully pretend to be sleeping. I tried to turn his advances away--I most definitely did not want them--but his hands were busy and he was hard and pressing against me. And I was completely terrified. He was strong. Not overly muscular, but strong. And he obviously felt we had "connected" or something, and I was not managing to communicate with him that I did not want this, even if I had not objected earlier in the night when he had taken the liberty of kissing me. But what worried me most was the thought of what might happen if he tried to force himself on me and it didn't work.


I could see what he was working with, and I sincerely worried it simply would not fit. I'm not built to stretch the way genetic girls are. And if he figured out I was TS somehow, how would he react? Would he hurt me? Would he kill me?


I panicked. I stopped him finally by doing the only thing I could think of that I pretty much could guarantee no man would ever turn down. And as I did it, desperately trying not to gag and praying that I could hold on long enough to satisfy him, I prayed it would be enough and he'd roll over and go back on the floor.


He didn't. But he did go to sleep, which proved to be enough. In the morning, he walked me to the train and put me on it. In truth, I do not believe that he had any clue that, in my memory, he lives as a monster. His version of the evening might be that there was this American girl he picked up, showed a bit of the town to, brought home when she missed her train, and got some from. But there in my mind he lingers: soft laughter, flirtatious smile, complimenting me at a point in my life when I happened to be most vulnerable to compliments, preying on the lone American redhead with the unfolded map who only had wanted to take in as much of Paris as her single day could offer.


As it turned out, I took in far too much.

city of shattered lights


from notre dame up to champs elysees
i saw the paris all were meant to see
awestruck i walked the glorious golden way
with multitudes who wandered there with me


the tower lit with firework sparkling lights
exploded summer song into the air
and brilliantly shone out into the night
to call the souls of all who gathered there


to lift into the evening and to fly
to drift into the softly flowing breeze
and join the spirit of the city’s sky
in swirling soaring flight above the trees


and my soul, too, as if within a dream,
became ungrounded by that siren’s call
and later in the streets beyond the gleam
i wondered if it still was there at all


for in the smallest hours of the dark
too earthbound then to stay above my tears
far from the tower, nowhere near the park,
another paris, haunted by its fears


of never being part of all that breathes
the life into the place beside the seine,
pulls silence as a blanket round its eaves
not knowing when its sun will shine again


in some small dismal room in some small street
that second paris stabbed me in the heart
by morning’s light it managed to defeat
the concorde i’d imagined at the start


when dreary sunlight once more filtered down
and morning sounded its discordant song
my broken weary soul slipped from the town
i’d dreamed of being part of for so long


how fitting that i got no final taste
of daylight dappled on that golden mile
the second paris laid that dream to waste
its golden lights replaced by shadowed guile


perhaps someday i might at last forget
perhaps someday i might at last return
for now, the darkness isn’t over yet:
we only keep the memories that we earn

UPDATE:


In the comments I received after posting this on the aforementioned blog, 100% of respondents said that, yes, I had indeed been raped.


Among the comments:
He might be surprised you remember him as a monster, or he might not -- he would have known when the Metro stopped running and how expensive cab fare would be -- sounds like he may have done this before . . . 
so sorry you had this experience, but please do not blame yourself for being vulnerable 
there are men like that out there 
and


What you did was a survival mechanism in the midst of a rape.  You were most definitely vulnerable, not just to your own emotions but my guess is that he would not have responded well to learning you were TS and you could have been in more danger.  Thank you for sharing this story - it's chilling to think just how many small decisions can lead to something so frightening.  We've all done it - there but for the grace of God...
and


Regardless of how or why you got into the situation, you did what you had to do to keep yourself relatively safe.  I was raped when I was 15, and for too many years I second-guessed myself, believing I could have fought harder. But the truth is I didn't want to die, so at some point I did what I had to do to survive. Just like what you did.  
and also





After all, women are told from birth that rape prevention falls on our shoulders. Somehow, the message never gets ingrained in the same way in men to not rape, to leave us alone, to stop touching, to stop pushing our boundaries to see how far they can go, to just stop.
You were raped, sunspark. Coercion is a form of rape. You were alone in a strange city, with no transportation, with a language barrier, in a new body with a very real and valid fear of worse things happening to you if you did not "perform." That's coercion, and it's rape.
And you are not to blame for it.
I've been telling myself for years that I brought this on myself, that yes, he was a monster, but I was stupid and naïve.  I should have known better, should have done anything other than what I did.  I still think that.  It's an easy and obvious thing to think.  But there is no denying that he was a kind of monster, and maybe that ought to have more weight in assessing blame for the incident.  I don't know how to let myself off the hook.  But I know I do need to try.

sunsparks

it's your hair that i notice first
streaked with morning
it frames your face
you lying there eyes closed
soft breath not quite there
unmoving
i follow its path as it bends the sheet
and i can touch you there
touch what i feel is you
in the spark of daylight
you'll rise
pull on the wrinkled shirt from last night
say something you think is beautiful
drink some coffee
from behind my paper
and drive away,
leaving a kiss on my lips
and a hole in my heart
where a fire ought to be


Favorite Films

  • The Wizard Of Oz
  • Amelie
  • The Princess Bride
  • Casablanca
  • Annie Hall
  • The Lord of the Rings
  • All That Jazz
  • Citizen Kane
  • Love Actually
  • Moulin Rouge
  • Big Fish
  • When Harry Met Sally
  • Almost Famous
  • Bull Durham
  • Notting Hill
  • Apocalypse Now (Redux)
  • Magnolia

All-Time Favorite TV Shows

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Gilmore Girls
  • M*A*S*H
  • The West Wing
  • The X-Files
  • The Daily Show
  • Ally McBeal
  • Picket Fences
  • All In The Family
  • Seinfeld
  • The Mary Tyler Moore Show
  • Star Trek
  • Firefly
  • Wonderfalls
  • Northern Exposure
  • Get Smart
  • The Dick Van Dyke Show
  • Twin Peaks
  • The Larry Sanders Show
  • Monk
  • Felicity
  • St. Elsewhere

Current TV Shows I Enjoy (in no particular order)

  • Perception
  • Major Crimes
  • American Horror Story
  • Louie
  • Suits
  • The Newsroom
  • Falling Skies
  • Franklin and Bash
  • Veep
  • Scandal
  • Fairly Legal
  • Girls
  • Don't Trust the B---
  • Justified
  • Portlandia
  • Psych
  • The Middle
  • Person of Interest
  • Happy Endings
  • Hart of Dixie
  • Real Time with Bill Maher
  • Nikita
  • Raising Hope
  • Castle
  • Drop Dead Diva
  • Covert Affairs
  • Elementary
  • Rizzoli and Isles
  • Revolution
  • The Last Resort
  • Alphas
  • SNL
  • Revenge
  • Community
  • Suburgatory
  • New Girl
  • Once Upon a Time
  • Grimm
  • Nashville
  • Downton Abbey
  • Smash
  • Homeland
  • Fringe
  • Glee
  • Haven
  • Community
  • Warehouse 13
  • Modern Family
  • Vampire Diaries
  • The Daily Show
  • How I Met Your Mother
  • The Colbert Report
  • Parks and Recreation
  • Leverage
  • Rachel Maddow Show

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and