I was planning on posting more completely about what's been going on in my life these past two months, but I have to bring to your attention an outrageous and heinous piece of legislation being debated before Congress right now. Write or call your Rep. and tell them you are against OPRA!
Live From Congress: The OPRA
Does he prefer the chicken or the fish? Does he require a low-sodium meal? Does he ask for orange juice, diet soda or a bloody mary? Does he ask for a second bag of nuts? Does he like to sit in a window seat to watch the mountains go by beneath him? Does he try to engage his neighbor, who is obviously trying to read, in conversation? Does he read a Grisham novel or the in-flight magazine? Does he ask the flight attendant for aspirin because of the screaming kid in the row behind him who won't stop kicking his chair? Does he use the air sickness bag? Does he giggle at the stupid Jim Belushi sitcom rerun they show in flight? Does he try to convince his girlfriend to meet him in the lavatory so they can join the "mile-high club"?
The fightening thing is that Homeland Security thinks that questions like these have answers. Worse, they believe they know the answers. They are so confident in their expertise that think they can assign you a score based on, among many other things, which meal you order on the flight and this score tells them whether or not you are a terrorist. Your score is so useful that Homeland Security intends to keep it on file for forty years and so accurate that there is no need to let you know it has ever been assigned to you or to let you challenge it in a courtroom.
Of course, we all know that the middle-aged Caucasian Southern Baptist from Arkansas will never be given a high score, despite his connections with a group responsible for shooting a doctor in Houston because she has performed abortions and burning down a gay bar in Atlanta with many patrons still inside. Instead, an Iranian man, a physician who has been honored for his volunteer work at a pediatric burn unit in his community, a married father of four with pro-Western sympathies, will switch seats on a flight from Paris to Boston because another passenger has had four cocktails and has become obnoxious. This innocent move will cause his arrest and detention by Homeland Security upon arrival at his destination because he just happened to move to a seat above the wing. He will never see an attorney or a judge. He will never know why he is being detained or tortured. He will never see his family again because he thinks the only way to end the torture is to confess to something he never did. They will never know what happened to him. All because he committed the crime of FWM - Flying While Muslim.
I would laugh at the irony of this, except it isn't funny. The real story here isn't the arrogance of federal officials who think they can apply a mathematical formula to expose terrorists; it's the fact that Americans have remained complacent while their nation gradually turned into a fascist state. We were all taught it could never happen here because of our precious Constitution. We have now learned the hard way that our civil rights are like potted plants: they shrivel up and die if they aren't nurtured. After 9/11, we were duped into believing that we needed to temporarily give up some rights so our government could protect us. Then, they said it wasn't enough; we needed to give them more power to protect us. By the time we got wise to the ruse, we had already allowed the passage of the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act. These two laws, more than any other, have gutted the Constitution.
It seems, though, that we may have stopped it in time. We still have the right to vote and we exercised that right a few weeks ago by affecting regime change at home. Had voter turnout been much lower, perhaps we would have lost the power to elect our representatives in government, too. There but for the grace of God, indeed.
Now we, as Americans, have the responsibility of keeping the Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate on their toes. We must remind them frequently that we want our civil rights back. We mustn't get complacent and trust someone blindly just because he or she has a 'D' by their name. After all, many Democrats have been complicit in the attacks on our Constitution over the past five years. Many are already working to reverse the erosion on our civil liberties, but they will need all the help the can get. Help them by writing to commend them when they defend the Constitution and criticize them when they fail to protect it. Help them by calling for the resignation of any Democrat found to be corrupt, even when you have supported them in the past. Help them by making them work for you. Otherwise, the Democratic Party won't be able to improve anything. I don't want to see the country's power divided between two parties that aren't different at all, because that would by the last nail in the coffin.
A Denver HOA has ordered a resident to take down a Christmas wreath in the shape of a peace sign because some of her neighbors have taken offense to it.
H. Donald Wilson, creator of LexisNexis, one of the most kick-ass research tools used by libraries, passed away November 12th at the age of 82.
If you have never used LexisNexis, you should definitely try it. Unfortunately, I didn't know about it for most of my undergrad. I wish I had because it would have been useful. I went to a staff training for LexisNexis last year and I really enjoyed using it.
LexisNexis provides full-text access to federal court cases, campaign finance contributions, Congressional proceedings, census statistics and many other useful data sources. If you are affiliated with a university, you probably have access to LexisNexis. If not, you can contact public libraries in your area to find out whether they subscribe. Check it out if you get a chance.
...because Dec. 22nd is the first annual Global Orgasm for Peace!
For most of my readers, this won't involve doing anything you don't do everyday anyway. But if an orgasm isn't a normal part of your daily agenda, make sure to reserve adequate time in your Outlook calendar. Don't forget to send invitations to your partner(s) using evite or some other service. More gregarious individuals may want to consider inviting everyone in their Myspace friends list.
When an American citizen commits suicide by self-immolation, a death so slow and agonizing that fewer than ten suicides by this method have ever been recorded in the U.S., in the middle of rush hour on a famous public sculpture in the busy downtown of one of the most populous American cities to protest the most controversial war in which the country has ever been involved only days before the most important midterm election in over a century, shouldn't it make the news?
When Malachi Ritscher burned himself alive on a public works sculpture in a crowded Chicago square on the Friday before the election to protest the U.S.'s involvement in the war in Iraq, not one major news service outside of Chicago covered it. I only found out because of Pitchfork's feature article this morning. If he wasn't prominently involved in Chicago's music scene, they wouldn't have covered it.
When an insignificant celebrity files for dissolution of a brief marriage to an even less significant public figure on the day of any national election, shouldn't it be a mere footnote in the day's news cycle, at the very most?
When Britney Spears filed for divorce from her former backup dancer after two years of marriage on the day of the most important midterm election of my lifetime, it was breaking news on every major television network and news service, overshadowing all of the election-related news that had been reported up to that time.
More evidence that we are living in a society gone mad.
The saddest part of all this is that Ritscher intended to draw attention to the injustice of this war by killing himself in the most spectacular way possible, but he severely overestimated America's capacity to give a flying fuck about anyone who hasn't been on MTV.
America's priorities are fucked up, to say the least.
...on becoming the first nation in Africa to legalize gay marriage.
How many nations will precede the United States, the so-called "land of the free and home of the brave," in this courageous step towards full legal equality?
Last night was clearly the best night for Democrats nationwide for quite a while. There is sure to be lots of analysis of our victory in the House as well as the apparently impending victory in the Senate, so I'm going to confine my discussion to the unexpectedly positive results of last night's election in Arizona.
There has been a lot of excitement in the past 24 hours and thus much to post about. Here is what I hope to accomplish tonight:
Okay, here goes...
I got up about seven this morning only long enough to send an e-mail to my supervisor and coworkers. I went immediately back to bed and slept another five hours.
I didn't get to listen to a whole bunch of music like I had wanted, but I have listened to some. I've been lying on the couch watching reruns on Lifetime and suffering from an awful sinus headache.
I will post one recommendation today. If I feel up to it, I may respond to the ridiculousness in today's news. Better responses already exist than what I could muster, so I may just skip it.
It's difficult not to be angry and/or frightened at much of what's going on in the world. The country is facing its most dire Constitutional crisis since the 1860's. The dominant political party harbors pedophiles while they marginalize gay men and women who want nothing but the freedom to love and/or fuck consenting adults. The nightmare scenarios of human-induced climate change models are coming true. Archaeological data is confirming that we are on the same path of destruction that previous failed societies have followed, but we are moving much faster. Our government is still wasting American money and American lives on fake WMD's, leaving us unable to deal with real WMD's elsewhere.
All of this, to be sure, is troubling. Nonetheless, a cursory survey of human history shows that the world has always been mad - at least since the advent of agriculture. How, I ask myself, can I maintain my sanity in spite of the insanity surrounding me?
I feel a twitch of revelation/inspiration when I think of someone like Woody Guthrie:
I've always had a fondness for the slogan emblazoned across Woody's guitar: This Machine Kills Fascists. Music has the power to defeat fascism because it can open people's minds and persuade them to consider things from another perspective. Fascists seek to silence all viewpoints but their own, so music - all art, really - is the natural enemy of fascism.
Woody's simple but revolutionary message was that one cannot afford to stop having or expressing unpopular opinions if one is to have any hope of retaining the right to opinions at all. Your machine can kill fascists, too. All you have to do is use it to communicate with someone. I think this is the key to holding onto your wits while trapped in the nut house that we call Earth.
This is what I've been listening to the past few days:
Much has been said about the Mark Foley scandal in recent days. Much of it has been said more insightfully and eloquently than I possibly could. However, a crucial perspective seems to be missing from the dialogue. I feel I am qualified to provide such a perspective.
I'm usually pretty open about myself on this blog. I feel comfortable blogging about pretty much anything as long as I'm not revealing personal information about anyone else or saying anything that would otherwise be harmful. Nevertheless, I'm a little uncomfortable being so open regarding what I'm about to reveal, but I feel it will serve a constructive purpose.
The missing perspective is that of someone who was exploited while still a teenager by an older man. In my case, it was several older men.
I came out at the age of sixteen. At this time in my life, my mother was barely present. My step-father was in prison. I was almost entirely without guidance at a time when I was especially vulnerable. I began hanging out at bars that had a reputation of never asking for identification in order to reach out to other gay men. I found some new friends, some of whom are my closest friends even today, but I also found some older men who had anything but my best interests in mind. They found it fairly easy to convince me to do things I didn't want to do, or sometimes things I thought I wanted to do at the time. Either way, I didn't have the maturity or life experience to anticipate the consequences.
I found myself repeating a destructive pattern. I would start hanging out with an older man I met at the bar. He would first offer conversation, friendship and understanding. He would tell me that I was more mature and interesting than most men his own age. Then, while we hung out some night at his place, he would offer me beer or pot. Shortly thereafter we would be in bed. After one or two nights like this, I would find myself discarded. I would beat myself up for thinking he liked or even loved me and letting him take advantage. My already low self-esteem continued to decline. This left me even more vulnerable for the next one.
Predators of this variety exploit the insecurities of young men and women to get sexual satisfaction. It best, it's morally reprehensible. At worst, when the prey is below the age of consent, it's a crime.
The real story is not that Foley tried to lure (or perhaps succeeded at luring) sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys into sex, but that some in the Republican leadership knew it was happening and did nothing. How can anyone with a conscience fail to intervene when a colleague is hurting children? This is exactly the problem with today's Republican Party: those in charge think that they are exempt from the moral pronouncements they try to force on everyone else.
I used to believe that one's party affiliation said more about one's beliefs on government spending than the quality of one's character. Perhaps it was true at one time. Today, however, it is increasingly difficult to be a Republican and have any moral credibility, just as one cannot credibly claim to be a decent, upstanding Nazi. Sooner or later, every Republican with a shred of decency will leave the party out of disgust for what it has become.
I am more resilient now and I know how to take care of myself. However, I will never forget the pain that was inflicted on me by men like Foley. I feel deep compassion for every page that Foley exploited or tried to exploit. I am glad that this is beginning to come to light, not because it will give my party a political advantage, but because it will remove from power some of those who are willing to let children be harmed for personal gain.
Now that the United States of America is gone, what should we name the new country?
I think Dubyastan has a nice ring to it. My roommate thinks Bushistan is more to the point. The problem with that, I think, is that there is still at least one person with the name of Bush that is worthy of respect, though she's not a relation. I wouldn't want people to begin to associate her with the name of a dictatorship.
One day I awoke to find myself in a strange country. I had not emigrated. While I slept, my country disappeared. In its place was an altogether different nation. It shared the same flag and anthem of the country of my birth, but it lacked a soul and a moral compass.
I was born in the United States of America. As a child I was taught to love my country and to cherish all that made it great. Above all, I was taught to revere its Constitution, the document upon which our government was founded and which gave every citizen the power to influence destiny of their country.
In the United States of America, elected leaders held many different ideologies, but they all loved the Constitution. They argued over how to interpret it and even whether to change it, but they governed in accordance with our Constitution and its Amendments. Even when it hindered their plans, our leaders respected the Constitution as the final word on what laws they could create and enforce.
The Constitution of the strange country in which I now find myself is feeble and frequently disregarded. Leaders evoke the Constitution when it serves their agendas but dismiss it when it supports an opponent's argument. They enact laws without regard for its content. There is no longer any guiding principle for the creation of new laws except for their thirst for power.
In the United States of America, the most valuable right granted to its citizenry by its Constitution was the liberty to say or write anything. Citizens were free to criticize the government without fear of punishment. One could express any opinion, no matter how offensive or erroneous others may have found it, and expect nothing worse than criticism in return.
In this new, foreign nation, leaders condemn dissenters in limitless ways. One who criticizes the government is branded a traitor. At best, careers and lives are ruined. At worst, those who dare to oppose the government's policies are incarcerated and tortured.
In the United States of America, the Constitution guaranteed a suite of rights under the umbrella of due process. One's privacy could only be breached if a judge believed there was credible evidence of a crime. One had the right to legal representation and to refrain from self-incrimination. If accused of a crime, a citizen was arraigned and tried. The accused was convicted or acquitted by a jury based on the absence or presence of reasonable doubt. The defendant always had the right to ask a judge for release from incarceration of his or her due process had been abridged.
In the new country, due process is abridged on a whim. If a citizen is suspected of opposing the government, he or she is held without access to an attorney, without arraignment, without hope of ever seeing a judge. The government can hold the suspect forever. Those suspected of being the enemy are tortured and forced to incriminate themselves and others. The veracity of confessions obtained in this manner is irrelevant. One is guilty if the government says so. There is no other standard of justice.
In the United States of America, various mechanisms existed to balance power between branches of the government, between the states and the federal government, between political parties, between the government and its people. No one person or entity could become too powerful due to the circumscription of the Constitution. In this way, everyone had reason to defend the Constitution and hence their own small share of the power.
There is no balance in this terrible place. The judiciary has been castrated. Legislators line up to fawn over a despot who claims to be God's representative on Earth. The opposition party is unable to effectively oppose the dictator for fear of losing what little power they have left. When states pass laws that conflict with the dominant party's agenda, the tyrant commands his minions in the national legislative body to nullify it. The citizenry has no rights except to bow down.
The United States of America is but a memory now. I do not know what to call this abominable country, but I will never call it The United States of America.
So now Jerusalem, you know that it's not right
After all you've been through, you should know better than
To become the wicked ones almighty G-d once saved you from
- Mirah, "Jerusalem", from the album C'mon Miracle
I am a Jew, at least by the Orthodox genealogical standard. My great-great-grandmother along my maternal line was born in a Polish shtetl. She arrived in Oswego County, Michigan in the early 20th century, along with thousands of other Polish Jews seeking to escape persecution.
This knowledge was concealed to me until fairly recently. I grew up thinking my heritage was as white-bread-and-mayo as you could get. German, Irish, Swedish was what I was told - with a tiny splash of Cherokee on my father's side.
That was until my sister, who had been given up for adoption at birth, did some research into our heritage. She found the 1920 census records that proved that we were not merely German, Irish, Swedish and Cherokee, but Polish Jews as well. I no longer have contact with my mother and only sporadic contact with my grandmother, but I suspect that they both know more than they have been willing to reveal. Our great-grandmother died in 2000, so we can't ask her anything.
According to traditional Jewish standards, one is either a Jew or a non-Jew - there is no gray area. One's Jewishness depends on his or her mother's status only. This is in contrast to the typically European idea that one can be half German and a sixteenth Swedish. This means that my sister and I are just as Jewish as, say, Adam Sandler.
Ironically, only non-Jews have tried to argue that I'm not really a Jew. All the Jews I have spoken to about my heritage not only agree that I am indeed a Jew, but welcome me into the community. Regardless of my beliefs or what I look like or whether I have had a bar mitzvah, I am a Jew by Jewish standards. They just say, "Er ken ongeyn far a goy," meaning that I can pass for a goy.
Since learning about this aspect of our heritage, my sister and I have both embraced it to varying degrees. Sarah has chosen the path of conversion - though it's not really necessary - to Orthodox Judaism. After months of reading and study, I determined that the spiritual beliefs that I already had are very close to those of Reform Judaism. I occasionally attend a synagogue and I read voraciously. I may or may not choose to become a member of the temple, but this does not limit my exploration of spiritual ideas outside of Judaism. I am what I am - including but not limited to a German Irish Swedish Cherokee Polish Jewish gay liberal intellectual audiophile anthropologist future-librarian pet-parent blogger podcaster with a craving for pepper jack cheese.
Having explained my fairly unique perspective, I must discuss my feelings about the situation about the escalating conflict between Israel and Lebanon. The words of Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn above are very similar to my own opinion. I think that the Orthodox-dominated government of Israel has become an oppressive power, treating Palestinians as sub-human and acting in ways that are contrary to the ideal of compassion that is at the center of Judaism.
Certainly Hezbollah is not blameless. Obviously, their actions in the past few weeks (and indeed their whole history) are despicable. However, by unleashing such an overwhelming attack on Lebanon, Israel is causing death and harm to more innocent civilians than to Hezbollah militants. It is also weaking political parties in Lebanon than can oppose Hezbollah.
There are no 'good guys' here, but lots of innocents in the crossfire. The fact that Bush supports one of the aggressors in this conflict rather than caring about the safety of civilians on both sides is disgusting - but hardly a surprise. Support for the actions of Israel's government is morally equivalent to supporting Hezbollah as far as I'm concerned. I applaud nations that have come out and publicly condemned both Israel and Hezbollah. This is what the U.S. should do as well.
I hope that there will be an end to this conflict very soon, but I'm not very optimistic about it.
"'I refuse to allow liberal Democrats an opportunity to steal this seat with a negative personal campaign,' DeLay said in a video announcement Tuesday, a few hours after news broke of his decision [to resign]." - from CNN.com.
Translation: "I refuse to allow my Democratic challenger to win my seat by using my own statements and actions to demonstrate what a douchebag I am. Instead, I will just hand my seat over to the Democratic Party and allow my constituents to be represented my someone who isn't a douchebag."**
*Not intended to degrade pagans by any association with Tom DeLay.
**To be fair, I know nothing about Nick Lampson, so I can't promise that he won't be a douchebag. However, there is a 99.99% chance that he would be either a non-douchebag or much less of a douchebag than DeLay.
I wish I had been at Kurt Vonnegut's final paid speaking engagement at OSU.
Even more, I wish I could have heard Sandra Day O'Connor skewer the "religious right" and their attacks on the courts' Constitutionally-vested authority. Snap!
I am alarmed the recent news that only 0.1% of Americans could name all five freedoms granted by Amendment I of the U.S. Constitution in a recent survey.
I was always raised to believe that the Constution is the United States. I think that not only should we revere it, we should memorize it verbatim and understand every Section and Article.
So here it is - the Amendment that so few know but so many disdain (emphasis added by me):
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
