It's ENTERTAINMENT!

Let's remember that, friends. If somebody's making money from you looking at or listening to whatever it is, it isn't NEWS or INFORMATION it's ENTERTAINMENT. No matter how well-intentioned you believe your source to be, it's a commercial enterprise if anybody's paying for you to be delivered to their ads. They want your attention. They are paid to deliver your eyes and/or ears to advertisers. If they can outrage you (Mother) so that you'll stay tuned through the commercials, they've done their job. They don't care if you've pushed "mute" so you can grade papers. Statistically, folks don't check out. I hope they don't believe what they hear, either.

I don't depend on this to pay the rent, either. It's just stuff I'd say if I had anyone around who'd be able to understand it.

"Shameful Act?"

"President Bush offered a vigorous and detailed defense of his previously secret electronic-surveillance program today, calling it a legal and essential tool in the battle against terrorism and saying that whoever disclosed it had committed a 'shameful act.'" (NYT)

Revealing that the government is illegally spying on its citizens is shameful and the actual illegal spying is essential. We really did go through the looking glass on November 7, 2000. Things are just too weird to be true.

Check out Jon Svetkey's song "Not the Hypocrite Rag" which predated this mess by nearly a decade.

Take It Out and Play With It!

One reason evil hacks like the Bushes and Reagan are more popular with True Patriotic Amurcans than thoughtful intelligent leaders like President Clinton is that they are willing, nay, enthusiastic to send in the troops! "We have the most powerful military in history, so why not take it for a spin? Let's see what it can do!" This plays real well with the folk who have difficulty with complexity and ambiguity. "Arabs attacked us, so we gotta get revenge on Arabs!" (Arabs, in this case, refers to all hajis, ragheads, and sand niggers, regardless of actual ethnic affiliation.) "I'm so angry I don't know what to do!" "OK, we'll send a bunch of heavily armed 'volunteers' over there and make 'em pay!" "I feel better, now. I'll put yellow ribbons on the minivan and the truck to show our support."

Oops, they seem to have actually made things worse. More people hate America than ever before. And I don't blame them.

"Freedom isn't free! You gotta round up (what'll we call them? Oh yeah, 'Enemy Combatants') and teach 'em a lesson! It's even better that we can keep 'em in pens outside the US so they don't TECHNICALLY have any rights because the Constitution doesn't apply if we say it doesn't."

Isn't it great to live in the land of the "free" and the home of the "brave?" I feel so much safer with John Bolton at the UN and Donald Rumsfeld running the military, Dark Lord Cheney collecting his Halliburton checks, and the Moron in Chief on vacation 11 months of the first five years in office.

Limbaughfication of Discourse

What has happened to our culture? Once upon a time, there were a few paragons of language, upon which one could count on for high-quality politically-neutrial reportage. Among these was the Wall Street Journal, which, I am dismayed to see has become another victim of the Libaughfication of American Discourse. Instead of simply reporting business news as it had done so well for so long, it now seems to find it necessary to pepper stories with Rushesque touches, slippery, sloppy, slanted language that is difficult to rebut without muddying the issue. Along with Dark Lord Cheney and Chief Puppeteer Rove, the Evil Hero of those who apparently don't have jobs where they need to pay attention (so they can listen to the radio) has taken this once-great land to a sad place, rhetorically; where clarity of thought is eschewed in favor of mindless chants of "ditto!"

It's Soviet! It's Orwellian! None of this is news, of course. I'm putting my head down again. When I start paying attention, I just get angry.

Happy Veterans Day. Freedom Isn't Free.

All veterans are not equal, however. There is a significant difference between the heroes at Yorktown, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima and the cowards abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere).

Most of the folks serving their time in the service of Halliburton ("I have a good idea! Let's go make a big mess and deploy the military so that there will be plenty of opportunities to need support from a large provider of cleanup and military support services!) are there quite involuntarily, and are just trying to stay alive. (I suppose that just trying to stay alive is what soldiers an all deployments are doing.)

Don't call them heroes. There's nothing particularly heroic about why they're there or what they're doing.

Freedom Isn't Free! Right, you pay for it with your freedom. At least in this regime. It has nothing to do with Saddam or Osama. They posed no threat to American freedom. Imagine the Gore Administration's response to 9/11. There probably wouldn't be any secret prisons.

Why is it that only during Bush Administrations that Mobius rhetoric like "Freedom Isn't Free" and rhetorically unassailable "Support Our Troops"? Could it have anything to do with the fundamental fallaciousness of their policies?

Confederate Anti-Terrorists?

Last night, on Main Street USA in Walt Disney World, I saw a man wearing a t-shirt with a confederate flag on the back--with the caption "Fighting Terrorism Since 1861." I found the phrase on merchandise from a cafepress shop (click image to go there). Different image, though. I suspect somebody said it on talk radio, and it got into a lexicon of catchphrases.

Are they implying that "The War of Northern Aggression" was a terrorist action?

I'm becoming more and more afraid. Then again "The Happiest Place on Earth" is in Florida, where people who feel threatened have the right to use force, including firearms, to protect themselves.

Yikes. When I lived in Japan, a co-worker asked me for a character reference for an application he was making to get a permit to use an air rifle in an indoor shooting range. The most common question I was asked there (after "Can you use chopsticks?") was, "Is it true all Americans carry guns?"

Please Don't Beat Me Up for My Opinion

We're off to Disneyworld soon, and I'd like to wear this shirt, but Americans frighten me.

Republicans and Dementors

If they could get them, I'm confident that the Republicans would enlist Dementors to aid their nefarious work. Imagine Guantánamo Bay or Abu Graib. But that wouldn't be as much fun for America's finest Haji-bashing former weekend warriors and would-otherwise-be-working-at-Wal-Mart-if-the-military-hadn't-lowered-its-standards "volunteer" solders. Never mind. The ironically-named Departments of "Justice" and "Homeland Security" could keep as many as they could get quite busy with enemies of the Reich, er, Freedom.

The religious right, the defiant ignorant, NASCAR fans, NRA members, anti-choiceers, gay-bashers, border-patrolling-Minutemen, chickenhawks, and Yellow Elephant college Republicans (imagine that Venn Diagram--probably quite a lot of overlap) would stand on the sidelines and cheer when the Dementors would come to visit folks like me.

Actually, I suspect the government would lease the Dementors from Halliburton. Let us not forget that every opportunity should be taken to enrich those who hold the strings. Or contribute to the cause.

Pejoratives R Us

When I heard a fellow take umbrage at the use of the word Fundamentalist as a pejorative, I wondered why so many folks who consider themselves in that category use "feminist" or "environmentalism" as negative terms. I'm still waiting for somebody to explain to me why believing that the natural world should be protected or that women should be treated equally is a bad thing. I guess the same could be said of any number of terms that are used negatively. I've heard my mother rant too often about "them."

I think justice is easier when we recognize that we're all just us.

Fundamentalism and Fear of Complexity

It has occurred to me that fundamentalism, whether Christian, Islamic, Jewish,. or whatever, may have its roots in people's inability or unwillingness to cope with increasing complexity. When the simplistic worldviews encoded long ago are challenged by advances in science or thought, it seems to be the fundamentalist's response is to resist progress and hold fast to positions and superstitions written in times when religion provided the only available answer to great questions of life, the universe, and everything.

The more comfortable an individual is with ambiguity, the less likely he or she is to take a fundamentalist position on anything. Or, for that matter, try to hurt somebody who disagrees.

Counterdemonstrators Beware, Unless...

Freedom is a messy thing. Really.

Just recently there was an extremely orchestrated demonstration in support of the war on Iraq, sponsored by the Pentagon, at which dissent was prohibited under threat of arrest. Yet, anti-war demonstrations let anybody in, even those who disagree.

Why does the Right fear dissent? I think it goes back to the think/believe spectrum. If pepole are exposed to alternative ideas they might start thinking and perhaps stop believing what they're told.

Shut Up and Get Back in Line!

Why have Bill Frist's HCA deals gotten such attention and the benefits Dick Cheney continues to receive from his Halliburton ties are left largely ignored, even in the face of obvious direct government support in the form of no-bid contracts, etc? Could it have anything to do with Dr. Frist's recent break with the administration over stem cell research?

Then again, he's being treated quite differently from Martha Stewart for much the same activity.

Resist Deliberate Ignorance

I went to the fair last week and saw America. Yikes!

The most dangerous thing about the USA is the overwhelming number of folk who are proud to be ignorant.

"I don't know and I don't care!" seems to be the prevaling sentiment. That explains the ribbon magnets. They're also the ones who send their people to fight (when you can't make the rent, join the Guard!). Cannon fodder. Thinning the ranks of the breeding stock won't help. Their kin still shop at Wal-Mart.

Groundlings. Give them bread and circuses. McDonalds and television. Keep them fat and stupid. Ain't that America?

I'm happily living in the top 5%. Frightened. I'd move to France if I could.

Judges are SUPPOSED to be Active!

What's all the fuss about judicial activism? Checks and balances, America! Judges are, by definition in our ostensible democracy, charged with the obligation to defy the executive and legislative branches in the single-minded pursuit of JUSTICE.

Justice, apparently, is a partisan concept. Just like freedom. They both seem to mean what Republicans want them to mean.

It's about looking at laws and determining whether they are (no irony intended) Fair and Balanced.

United Who Stands?

What unity? Standing for what?

They popped up after 9/11, and, like most of the other ribbon magnets, seem to imply support for what's being done by the election-thief-in-chief.

I'm not standing with anyone I've seen proclaiming this fiction. NASCAR, Jesus, Iraq, firearms, Republicans, choice, Homeland Security, choose your issue--we probably disagree.

Insurgency or Resistance

Insurgency: An organized rebellion aimed at overthrowing a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict.

Resistance: An underground organization engaged in a struggle for national liberation in a country under military or totalitarian occupation.

I think it's the latter.

Operation Yellow Elephant

In case you haven't already discovered it:

"The objective of OPERATION YELLOW ELEPHANT is to recruit College Republicans and Young Republicans to serve as infantry. They demanded this war and now viciously support it. It's only right that they also experience it."

We have chicken hawks running the country, and their offspring (literal and ideological) avoiding the oil and defense industry enrichment program currently being played out in the Middle East (just like their leaders avoided going to Vietnam).

Support Out Troops

The best typo I've seen in a while came from the Operation Yellow Elephant site...

"I hope that there are more folks out there showing up the Yellow Elephants. Yesterday, while travelling through an airport, there was a fat college boy with a "Support Out Troops" T-shirt on, and on the back was a picture of a squad in Iraq holding up a Texas A&M sign. Amazingly he was not in the picture...I guess he couldn't get away from his XBox fast enough to make it to the recruiter before they closed the office for the week."

Does this imply that Texas A&M has sent an all-gay unit to fight this Bush's war? There are all sorts of gay folk out there, so it does stand to reason...

In any case, maybe there is a place for that line of merchandise. Somebody's already selling Cafe Press "Support Out Troops" yellow ribbon stuff. Their take is "if you want our troops home." Mine goes back to the intention that got bastardised with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Click on the ribbon and you can get it on stuff, too!

Ministry of Homeland Security at Hogwarts

In the course of rereading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix I felt compelled to write something. I've also submitted this as a review to Amazon.com

This is a very difficult book for me to read. While it does advance the story arc and realistically presents the 15-year-olds, the introduction of the political aspects of society too closely parallels the United States in the early 21st Century. The nightmare of the government manipulating the press and education is all too real already. Ms. Rowling does her Swiftian best holding up the mirror while remaining true to the context in which she's writing.

High Inquisitor Umbridge, the microcosm's John Ashcroft, Tom Ridge, and Alberto Gonzales, frightens and appalls me. Classic Aristotelian Pathos. Brilliant engaging of our emotions.

May we learn something from it.

There's a Lot of Money To Be Made Scaring People

The Department of Homeland Security is the greatest boondoggle in recent American history. Think up something plausible that scares people and they're all over it. It doesn't have to work, necessarily. Get the money up front for development. Go through several design revisions. Keep it in testing. Wait for them to change the requirements. Repeat.

This is a mighty big udder. During the Civil War President Lincoln was confronted with hordes of office seekers and had just so many offices available, "There are too many pigs for the tits." There are plenty of tits when you don't have to really pay for anything. Later generations will take care of it. Or Iraqi oil money.

At the airport we see the "yellow jackets" at the curb, chasing away cars. Inside we see the reason there are so many Help Wanted signs at the mall. Look at the people wearing TSA uniforms. Do you feel safer?

Thinking > Believing

It’s time to start thinking, and cut back on the believing. The country was misled and bullied into an unnecessary war and the party behind it needs to be sent home. Replace the Republicans who would have us believe that the only Freedom that matters is Freedom as they define it (freedom to carry any kind of gun, freedom to pollute, freedom to torture, freedom to bully, freedom to exclude, freedom to suppress dissent in the name of freedom, freedom to divert education spending to the military, you get the picture) with folks who might be a little more thoughtful. Let’s have a congress that stands up to Karl Rove and the rest of those who have been systematically destroying the my America.

Then again, there are a lot of people who believed the President Clinton was destroying their America.

Why it stands to reason that Bush is the Devil (using a definition from Broadcast News):
“He'll get a job where he'll influence a great and god-fearing nation. He'll never do an evil thing. He'll never deliberately hurt a living thing. He'll just, bit by little bit, lower our standards where they're important.”

Keep Your Superstitions to Yourself, Please

Enough with the God stuff.

I'm including "one nation, under God" and "in God we trust." I'd like to be rid of it. It has gotten out of hand.

Keep it to yourself, Church Lady.

You (and my mother, for that matter) can revel in being outraged by people who understand (and accept) that there are many kinds of families, including some with two mommies or two daddies.

It's so easy to adopt the "they're picking on us" position when someone points out that you've overstepped the bounds by demanding pseudo-science be taught in public schools. I do pity the kids whose parents send them to schools with curricula that simply reinforces their prejudices and superstitions.

Religion does provide some value. Asking questions like, "How should we live?" and "How should we treat each other?" is a good idea. Gloating about going to heaven while all who disagree with you are eternally punished is unseemly.

FreedomWorks? For Whom?

The universe's sense of humor has revealed itself once again, and the NeoCon movement is at the forefront with its ongoing and relentless use of the word "freedom" without the slightest acknowledgement of its irony.

They've goose-stepped into Vermont with flags flying, setting up an outpost of an organization that calls itself (with a straight, very straight, face) "FreedomWorks." Declaring its intention to fight for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom, one might guess that these folks are yellow-ribbon-magnet-affixing supporters of the current administration. That's the one that has made significantly higher taxes inevitable with unprecedented deficit spending. The one that has expanded the government's size and power, especially with the ironically named PATRIOT act and Department of Homeland Security.

Freedom means permission to abuse public land and water with ATVs and PWCs, pollute with impunity, and carry any gun one wants. Not, however, to make personal health or marriage decisions if the church ladies can get riled about them. Right?

Yikes. This isn't my America.

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

Extreme? I'll give you extreme!

I hope Dr. Dean puts some fire in the Democratic party. Somebody's gotta take a swing at the NeoCon Mullahs and their minions. Controlling the conversation by branding those who disagree with your position as extremists and bullying thoughtful press into not daring to question any position, however far-fetched (let the Iraqi oil revenue pay for the "liberation"? Somebody said this with a straight face!) for fear of being labeled liberal media elite.

It's not really necessary to shout back, but perhaps calmly calling this stuff rubbish out loud might help.

Pundit for Sale

These little posts are absolutely extemporaneous, with barely a spell check before publishing.

That could change, if the price were right. I could be a very disciplined pundit, thoughtful, well-edited, and articulate (even erudite) with regard to whatever position the gang with the right amount of cash cares to have me pimp.

So, like Armstrong Williams and so many others have already done, and Maureen Dowd has offered, I join the ranks of the available for a price.

Look me up. I'm ready!

Christian Republic of America?

On the Champs Elysees in Paris I walked passed the offices of Iran Air "The official airline of The Islamic Republic of Iran." I don't think I'm alone in my fear of theocracy, yet I see it creeping onto this continent. It started with the addition of "In God We Trust" to the currency and continued with amending the Pledge of Allegiance to include "under God." The latest affronts to the separation of Church and State include the introduction of "Faith Based Initiatives" to the public sphere.

I stand in mute outrage at these affronts to our Constitution.

Here's something interesting:
http://www.perrspectives.com/features/Taliban.htm

Triumph of the Believers over the Thinkers?

I've been worried for quite some time about rampand aggressive defiant ignorance. I'm even related to some people who are proud of the fact that they haven't actually read or seen some of the things they're indignant or outraged about--they've heard about it on talk radio or read it in the newspapers and magazines they read to have their prejudices reinforced.

Liberal elite media are blamed for so much that is evil, yet I've never gotten any indication from any of the sources I respect that they want to do anything other than inform me. Even The Daily Show with Jon Stewart gets most of their stuff direct. You can't make up stuff that's more absurd than what happens in real life.

Never stop thinking. Please.

Never Surrender!

I just found this:
http://www.neversurrender.org/
Very interesting approach. I liked the black wristbands but thought they weren't positive enough.

I like the contrast to the rhetorically meaningless "Support Our Troops" garbage that gets trotted out everytime a Bush goes to war on Iraq.

There are any number of things that I would like to display, but fear reprisal, vandalism, or harassment (see http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/cda/article_print/0,1983,DRMN_15_3495709_ARTICLE-DETAIL-PRINT,00.html). Even living is a fairly blue state, I know that there are more than enough yahoos around who seem to believe what's going on is a good thing and would take umbrage at my disagreement.

Once upon a time there was a movement to "Take Back Vermont" from the people who thought protecting the environment and equal rights for all citizens (especially with regard to GBLT folk) had gone too far. America has been hijacked by church ladies and the greedy. Dr. Dean spoke of Taking Back America, I don't think that's it, either.

I don't happen to believe that intellectual is a bad thing to be. Having knowlege is a virtue. And that's another post.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Freedom

Just another word for nothin' left to lose?

Something that isn't free and needs spreading around the world by well-armed working-class kids and very surprised formerly only weekend warriors?

Not, however, having to do reproductive choice or same-gender marriage.

Including, though, loud toys (ATVs/PWCs/snowmobiles, etc) and the right to have motorized fun regardless of the effect on the environment. And guns.

embarrassed again

I have had it with American Pride. Pride is, after all, a deadly sin. The reputed punishment is to be broken on the wheel. I'm just waiting for a whimpering return from Iraq with the metaphorical tail between the legs.

When I work in Europe people ask, "What is going on in your country?" They've been asking this for several years. Begining with the persecution of President Clinton through the war on Iraq. I wish I had a good answer.

I have had it with rampant arrogant ignorance. From the churches to Fox News and talk radio, some folks seem to only want their prejudices reinforced.

I believe that one reason Republicans get elected is because they like to take the armed forces out and play with them instead of just using them for sissified things like UN peacekeeping missions.

At the rate this gang is spending, there won't be any money available for war toys and expensive revenge and crony-enrichment adventures for much longer.

anomalink - the blog

It's been a long time coming. Now there's a place to put it all. I only hope to have time to write.