Tilting at windmills for a better tomorrow.
After my recent spleen vent and the ensuing multi-tentacled fracas, I’m feeling politically spent. Just don’t want to think about politics at all for a while. Don’t know how long that while will last, but don’t be surprised if I appear to have lost interest over the next few weeks. It’s a defense mechanism, not a moratorium. Friends and family, sun and rain, music and food — that’s all I want right now.
Warning: Major spleen vent on deck. Indulge the rantings of a depressed American, or skip this post.
Keep thinking I need — or want — to get everything off my chest at once re: Bush’s 2nd term, to somehow convey all the multiple levels and layers of my incomprehension at the result. But every time I start, the thoughts tumble too quickly to be corralled, and I just don’t have an essay in me tonight.
Seriously, America — How much harm would Bush have to do to our nation for you to evict him from office? Would he have to personally come to your house, open up your septic tank with a Bradley and dump half a ton of uranium into your swimming pool? Would he have to steal directly from your bank account, rather than from your children’s? Condemn your kids to be educated in public schools in the projects? Wiretap every room in your house? Become convinced that you were hiding a secret cache of dangerous weapons, destroy your home over it, then not apologize or even admit wrongdoing (and tell you he’d do the same thing all over again)? Let a bunch of frat boys high on hatred attach electrodes to your father’s testicles? Would he have to assemble an inner cabinet of serial killers, rather than mere criminals? Would he have to corrupt every branch of government (and your city council too) with high-finance cronies? Would he have to drive unemployment to 70%? Eliminate Medicare? Undo the New Deal altogether? Just how many debates would he have to lose before you became convinced he wasn’t the right man for the job? Would he have to amend the Constitution to specify that marriage is only allowed between members of the same sex? Only allowed between armadillos and umbrellas? Would he have to ignore every piece of advice given to him by experts, rather than just most? How absurd does it have to get? How many countries would have to hate us over his policies? How much international good will would he have to squander? Would the U.N. have to kick us out altogether? Would Canada and Europe have to embargo the U.S. before you understood how low our standing is in the world today? What would it take, America? You seem to like being punished by your leaders — just how badly do you want more of this humiliation? Apparently, quite a lot.
Yeah, it’s all radical hyperbole, but seriously. I usually try to maintain some sense of patriotism, even though our administration shames us daily. But an election result like this makes it so much harder to be patriotic. I want to be proud to be an American. I find myself having to look deeper and harder to find things to be proud of. We’re in a bad way.
And then we hear that “moral values” was the highest criteria among voters when making their choice. Moral values? In what universe could Bush be considered a “moral” leader? How can you consider our president, who is opposed to gay marriage, who values American lives higher than Iraqi lives, who steals from the future to give to the rich, etc. to have high moral values? And where exactly are the moral blemishes on Kerry’s record?
Look on the bright side. Air America is just getting good, and a 2nd term guarantees they won’t be running out of material anytime soon. Same for Jon Stewart. More importantly, a 2nd term will allow plenty of time for the full effects of this administration’s policies to take hold. We’ll see whether people are still committed to self-destruction in 2008.
Some inspiring/inspired notes in Boing-Boing’s Kerry Concedes post.
P.S. Why does this map of average education levels look so much like the 2004 electoral college distribution? Draw your own conclusions.
As I walked into the Free Speech Movement Cafe for my coffee today, the usually quiet CNN feed on the wall was turned up, throngs were gathered around in silence. John Kerry was making his concession. I was listening to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer on the iPod, and paused in the middle of a verse:
Were you there to watch the earth be scorched?
Did you stand beside the spectral torch?
Know the leaves of sorrow turned their face,
Scattered on the ashes of disgrace.
From “Tarkus: VI. Battlefield”
Dozens of J-School students are busily covering the 2004 elections as the day unfolds, at both the national and regional levels. Stories will be added and updated as poll results roll in, with further updates planned for the post-election wrap-up.
Update: Next day… was at work until midnight running the MT-based publishing system – almost 60 stories in the end, with dozens of them updated regularly as the results came in and analysis changed. Five people on the web crew, 10 editors and copy editors, three photographers, and dozens of authors. Election night at the J-School is always exciting — a real, throbbing newsroom environment — but this one went more smoothly than elections past. We’re getting this down to a science. Feels good.
I’ve been meditating on this question of whether voting against a candidate, rather than for, is ultimately the right thing to do. I certainly am not much enamored of John Kerry, who wants to send 40,000 more troops to Iraq, who has shown support for the abominable and frightening Patriot Act, who just seems a little bit weasely to me, etc.
I’m registered Green, and I like David Cobb a great deal… though not as much as Dennis Kucinich, who struck me early in the primaries as one of the most articulate, plain-spoken presidential candidates I had ever heard. But I’m a pretty hardcore pragmatist, and know that candidates who actually reflect my views are too “radical” for mainstream America, i.e. don’t stand a chance. Interestingly, the voter’s guide (PDF) put out by the Green Party of Contra Costa County explicitly offers “No recommendation for president” (followed by a brief essay).
Earlier tonight, Mark Odell left a comment on an old post (Peace and Love) including a number of links to writers making the case that there is no such thing as a “wasted vote.” Do we (those of us who do not feel that mainstream candidates adequately represent our views) really want to spend the rest of our lives voting against candidates rather than for them? It’s a valid question.
Some say that success in politics is all about knowing how to compromise. I think it’s more like the game of Survivor – vote the weak and the strong players off the island first, leaving only the middle ground as contenders. The need to satisfy the widest possible swath of voters becomes a built-in middling mechanism, which almost guarantees that mediocrity will be rewarded. Every time.
Living in California, I probably have the luxury of voting Cobb without putting my state’s electoral votes at risk. But somehow, with the stakes this high, I think I’d rather wait for Instant Runoff Voting to become a reality before taking that plunge. This is my reality compromise: Register Green, vote Green in the primaries, and then become a begrudging Democrat in the general election. Every time.
In the end, I think that my moral responsibility to defenestrate Bushco trumps my desire to help pave the way for alternative candidates. But only just. And I pray for a future in which the race isn’t so close, the consequences so grave.
Driving through the hills above El Cerrito yesterday, trying to get Miles to fall asleep. Mostly posh neighborhoods up there, great views, but every now and then you hit a trashy patch. Suddenly I found myself stopped in the middle of the street in front of a house with a half-rebuilt Mustang in the driveway, a washing machine rotting in the front yard. Staring at a 4′ x 6′ scrap of plywood propped up in the front yard, on which was painted (in a somewhat shaky hand):
WHOEVER IS THE BITCH OR BASTARD WHO LEFT THE PINK CROSS YOUR HEART BRA IN MY LIVING ROOM, YOU PROBABLY SHOT MY CAT.
One of those moments I curse myself for not keeping a camera on me at all times.
Miles is way into Fisher Price’s “Little People” series — the videos, the garage, the farm, the little figures with big hands holding useful things like wrenches and pitchforks. Amy was looking into the Little People Sweet Sounds Home, and found this in the Amazon customer reviews:
… WHY is the mom of the house holding a baby bottle and has a burp cloth over her shoulder and the dad has a permanent cell phone in his hand?!?!?!!? … Why isn’t the DAD holding a bottle? Is he too busy on the phone with his clients to help with the baby? What happens when mom goes back to work and she has a burp cloth stuck on her shoulder? It might be hard to trade stocks on Wall Street when you have a bottle permanently affixed to your hand. …
Yeah, uh, that would be a problem.
Homeland security is apparently about a lot more than protecting us from terrorists. In St. Helens, Oregon, agents visited a toy store to ask them to remove a Rubik’s Cube knock-off from shelves. Turned out the Rubik’s Cube patent has expired so the “Magic Cube” wasn’t infringing at all. But why did Homeland Security care to begin with?
Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents went to Pufferbelly based on a trademark infringement complaint filed in the agency’s intellectual property rights center in Washington, D.C. “One of the things that our agency’s responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation’s financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications,” she said.
A month ago, I was talking to someone I know well — a family member — about the election. He said he was split in his thinking on some of the major planks of Democratic and Republican platforms – for example, he considered himself to be pro-environment. But he has decided to vote for Bush in the coming election.
Throughout this election cycle, discussion of the war in the Iraq has all but eclipsed discussion of the environment. When you take the long view, the state of our air and water will have a broader- and deeper-reaching effect on the world we live in (and the world our children live in) than the war in Iraq, than Social Security, than outsourcing questions, than whether a few more or a few less taxes will improve or diminish our overall standard of living. Many changes to the environment are irreversible, or at least extremely difficult to reverse. And, forgive me for speaking in cliche’s, but this is as true today as it was on the first Earth Day — until we find a workable replacement planet and master high-speed interstellar travel, we only have one earth. And we are its stewards. No one will take care of it, or clean up our messes, but us.
I don’t think we should shut down all industry and turn America into an agrarian commune. But I do think we need to weigh every action and every industry against its long-term environmental impact. Because after this Iraq thing blows over, after we do or do not fix the health care system, after we do or do not hand out a few more dollars in tax cuts for the rich, we will still be living in our own cesspool, breathing and eating and drinking our own effluent.
Maybe people think talking about the environment is boring, or no longer relevant, or that we’ve made “great strides.” News flash: Our environmental problems have not gone away. Environmental crises are so large, so deeply enmeshed in our world and in our lifestyle, that most people have forgotten how to see them. Smaller concerns fill our heads and our front pages, while species disappear, as forests vanish, record numbers of beaches close, asthma rates skyrocket, coral reefs are decimated, mercury levels balloon, the Union of Concerned Scientists say global warming is real (and caused by humans) and on and on.
What does all of this have to do with the coming election? Simply put, George W. Bush not only has the worst environmental record of any president we’ve ever had, but he has actively worked against environmental protections in favor of profit for industry. And that, I believe, has greater ramifications for humanity than Iraq or any other issue that has consumed this campaign cycle. If there is any doubt whatsoever in your mind about whom to vote for, just forget everything else for a moment — Bush’s environmental record alone is reason enough to remove him from office.
I’m going to quote at length from a recent interview with Robert F. Kennedy, talking to Mother Jones about Bush’s environmental record.
Under [Bush’s] leadership, Texas became the most polluted state in the country, with the highest levels of air pollution, the highest levels of water pollution, and the highest level of toxic waste and toxic releases. And it was 49th among 50 states in per-capita environmental spending.
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The Bush administration consistently favored corporate interests over the environment and public health, assaulting the very idea of a common good.
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… the right wing, who claim to be on the side of property rights, but really only favor property rights when they’re talking about the right of a polluter to use his property to destroy his neighbor’s property or the public property.
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He did it on the campaign trail by simply saying that he was going to support initiatives to control global warming. But once he got into office, he immediately reversed that and abandoned that promise, and began dismantling our environmental infrastructure.
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When they want to destroy the forests, they call it the Healthy Forest Act; when they want to destroy the air, they call it the Clear Skies bill. The head of the air division of the EPA was Marianne Horinko, whose former job had been advising corporate polluters on how to evade Superfund. The second in command of EPA was a Monsanto lobbyist. If you look at virtually all of the sub-secretariats and agency heads in the Departments of Agriculture, Energy and Interior and EPA, the same pattern holds. Polluters have been put in charge of the agencies that are supposed to protect Americans from pollution.
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… one out of every four black kids in New York City now has asthma. Asthma attacks are triggered primarily by ozone and particulates, and the major sources of those materials in our atmosphere are 1,100 coal-burning power plants that are burning coal illegally. The Clinton administration had initiated investigations and prosecutions against 70 of the worst of those. But this is an industry that donated $48 million to President Bush and the Republican Party in the 2000 cycle and has given $58 million since. One of the first things that Bush did when he came into office was to order the Justice Department to drop those lawsuits.
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The Clinton administration had classified mercury as a hazardous pollutant under the Clean Air Act, which triggered a requirement that those utilities remove 90 percent of the mercury within three and a half years. It would have cost less than 1 percent of plant revenue, and the great thing about it is that it works; we now know that when the utilities stop discharging mercury, that the fish downstream clean up almost immediately. … But this is an industry that gave all that money, over $100 million, to the president. A few months ago, the Bush administration announced that it was scrapping the Clinton-era regulations and substituting instead regulations that were written by utility lawyers, from the law firm of Latham and Watkins. Under the new rules, the utilities will effectively never have to clean up their mercury.
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At this point, Congress is controlled by anti-environmental Republicans like Tom DeLay. Tom DeLay is a former Houston bug killer who entered politics because he was angry that his extermination business had been impacted by the ban on DDT and other pesticides, and he’s out to destroy America’s environmental laws.
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What [Bush has] done already would have been unimaginable five years ago. He is the number-one threat to the global environment. And the disastrous impacts of this administration don’t just go to the environment, but also to our democracy.
From Salon.com, on our failure to develop alternative energy sources:
The U.S. has fallen behind other nations in development of solar power, sacrificing tremendous potential revenue opportunities while simultaneously cultivating continued dependence on foreign and domestic oil sources (remember that Bush has a lot of buddies in the oil industry).
Read much, much more at BushGreenWatch, Mother Jones’ special report The Ungreening of America, Common Dreams… or hell, just google it.
This election cycle, please take the long view.
Update: Even as I write, today’s papers underline the point. In the Chronicle, Bush would give dam owners special access (Proposed Interior Dept. rule could mean millions for industry). And at Contra Costa Times, Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped from the environmental honor roll, scoring a 58 out of 100 — more than most Republicans, but far below the 100/100 Gray Davis scored in 2003.
File under “Your body is your temple” :
Maybe it’s not news to anyone but me (this apparently hit in April), but it’s now possible to have tiny platinum hearts, stars, moons, circles and other Lucky Charms embedded directly in your eyeball, in case it turns out that that tongue piercing isn’t turning out to be the babe magnet you thought it would be. 15 minutes and 500 euros later, you’re the belle of the Face Sculpture Ball.
In 2002 the Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery developed an implant that can be implanted within the superficial, interpalpebral conjunctiva. The implant does not interfere with the ocular functions, ie the visual performance and motility. The implant is made of a specially designed material that can be molded in all kinds of desired shapes and sizes.
Fine print: Only visible when you’re looking to the side. So you could, in theory, get all the way through a job interview without the CEO noticing… if you remember to maintain direct eye contact.