Don't grasp, don't swish

"I do have serious concerns about the impact of repeal of [Don't Ask, Don't Tell] on a force that's fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for 8-1/2 years. We just don't know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness." Thus spoke Gen. George Casey, Jr., Army Chief of Staff, while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

What Gen. Casey fails to mention is that his "force" includes men and women who happen to be gay or lesbian. They, too, have been risking life and limb on behalf of the security of our nation. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifying before the same committee on February 2nd, said, "I have served with homosexuals since 1968. Everybody in the military has, and we understand that." Truth be told, "homosexuals" have been fighting America's battles since the Revolutionary War. They weren't knows as "homosexuals" then, because humanity didn't have the understanding of primate sexuality to thus label them. Nevertheless, they were there, taking the same risks and paying the same price as anyone else. There was no law like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 1776. Not when "coming out" at that time might well mean a bullet in your head--not from a Redcoat but from a fellow Patriot.

Similarly, there were gay soldiers at the Alamo, at Bull Run and San Juan Hill, in the fields at3 Flanders, on the beaches of Normandy and Incheon, and at Hue. They fought and died not because they were gay soldiers but because they were there to do a job. The germane difference for them was that they did so while being forced to conform to a heterosexual culture that was as alien to them as the Viet Cong with whom they were locked in a life-and-death struggle. As the 21st Century approached, some of these gay men and women may have found the confidence to reveal their sexual orientation to their comrades on the battlefield...and lived. Life went on, the effectiveness of our fighting forces was not compromised, and morale did not suffer.

So, my question for Gen. Casey would be, "How, exactly, would our military effectiveness and readiness be compromised if our fighting men and women who are gay--and are right now every day doing their job effectively and on command--were simply allowed to talk about their loved one in the same chummy and casual manner as the person sleeping in the next bedroll or eating rations on the adjacent rock?" Unless you assume that the person on the receiving end of that information is a homophobe, incapable of doing his or her duty after knowing that an individual with whom they have almost literally walked through the gates of hell is gay, I can think of no reason at all. And, even if your dark suspicions should turn out to be justified, it seems to me that the only acceptable remedy would be to discharge the straight soldier who is terrified that that gay soldier might give them a wolf whistle, a pinch on the behind, or a wiggle of their booty. If they can't deal with that, how much less will they be stalwart when faced with an adversary that would love nothing better than to see them blown to little bits?

How to Get Our Democracy Back [linked]

This piece by Lawrence Lessig from The Nation gets to the root problem--the last and most elusive dot in the matrix--without a remedy for which we as a free and democratic nation are doomed. I couldn't possibly have said it better if I tried for a year.

What Dots, You Say?

My blog is titled 'What Dots?' for a simple reason--failure to do so can be extremely inefficient, in terms of time, lives, and money. Wars have been fought for the lack of looking at the big picture--seven generations down the road, in Native American tradition--usually due to the perceived need to save face or preserve individual or national power.

A case in point is the inaptly-named "War on Terror".

I'm not going to enumerate the cost of this war in terms of time, tragedy, or treasure. We're all quite familiar with those details, even if not personally stricken by the physical or emotional pain. What strikes me is the deliberate--it can only be intentional and strategic--failure on the part of our national leadership over the past eight years to acknowledge that our foreign policy actions have real consequences.

The latest and, perhaps, most graphic evidence for this proposition came yesterday, when it became known that Osama bin Laden had released an audio tape addressed to President Obama on which bin Laden said, "America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine. God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue."

How did the administration respond to this statement? According to the story from the New York Times [linked above], David Axelrod, White House senior advisor, appearing on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, said, "that whatever the source [there is some question as to the identity of the voice on the tape-ed.], the message 'contains the same hollow justification for the mass slaughter of innocents'".

Hollow justification? For the mass rage felt by the Muslim world at the "mass slaughter" of Palestinians in Gaza during the Israeli offensive of December and January a year ago?

It seems that the U.S. is joined to Israel at the head. Neither of us can survive without the other. Israel is free to do whatever they deem necessary--out of a raging paranoia festering since the Holocaust--for the preservation of their security and restoration of their "God-given" territory--no matter how heinous, and we, as Americans, must not only provide the materiel but also the moral support.

Also in yesterday's news was a story about Israel's reaffirming its claim to land also claimed by Palestinians. In it, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quoted as saying, "Our message is clear: We are planting [trees--a symbolic act of ownership] here [in the West Bank], we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of the state of Israel for eternity".

I wonder if the Prime Minister would be so brazenly defiant if he did not know that the U.S. would use its full might to back him up, no matter how many American lives were thereby put at risk? I wonder if an American president would dare to admit to the American people that the real reason we have expended so many thousands of lives and a trillion dollars on two wars on the other side of the world is not to make us secure from terrorism (the acts of terrorism on U.S. soil would stop the day that we suspended our financial aid to Israel) but to pimp for Zionist fanatics?

Axelrod's statement was a cover-up. It was a likely successful ploy to preempt the connection in the American mind of the dots that link Israel with al-Qaeda. Until that line is drawn, we in the U.S. will have to put up with living in constant fear and state of alertness. Our soldiers will continue to die in the Middle East. Our deficit will continue to rise until our economy collapses. Unfortunately, we've never been good at looking at our own motives in relation to the motives of others.

A Liberal Response to Justice Kennedy's Folly

All may not be lost. As Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said last night on the Rachel Maddow Show, [at approx. 8:00 min.] Congress has the constitutional power to regulate corporations as legal creations of the state. (Unlike people, corporations are not "natural-born" citizens, but must be chartered by a state of the union and are, thus, subject to regulation. This fact, obviously, was not pressing on the minds of Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito when they arrived at their decision in this case.)

Although he wasn't specific last night as to possible remedies, I have a few of my own. One would be for Congress to pass a constitutional amendment kicking corporations out of the human race and send it on to the states for ratification. (Several NGOs are currently working on petitions to Congress to do just this.) Another would be for Congress to limit a corporation's expenditures in support of any one candidate in an election cycle to the same amount of money per employee that an individual could contribute to that or any other candidate. The last would be to pass an updated version of the Fairness Doctrine, stating that any media organization--print, TV, or radio--must devote the same amount of "air time" to each of the opposing candidates from the two major political parties, within reason. This would stop the fat cat corporations from buying up ALL the available advertising time during prime time, which they could easily do, otherwise.

Is Massachusetts Mad?

So, the good voters of Massachusetts--arguably the "bluest" in the country--have decided to send to the U.S. Senate as their representative a man "who has said he supports waterboarding as an interrogation technique, opposes a federal cap-and-trade program to cut carbon emissions and opposes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants unless they leave the country". This surprising development, according to common wisdom, "represented an unexpected reproach to President Barack Obama after his first year in office", as well as "independents[' anxiety] about the economy and [concern] about the direction taken by Democrats." [Ibid.] According to one lifelong Massachusetts Democrat who cast her first vote for a Republican in this election, "I think if Massachusetts puts Brown in, it's a message of 'That's enough.' Let's stop the giveaways and let's get jobs going." [Ibid.]

Interestingly, on that very same day, "the Dow Jones industrial average rose 116 points, and analysts attributed the increase to hopes the election would make it harder for Obama to make his changes to health care. That eased investor concerns that profits at companies such as insurers and drugmakers would suffer." [Ibid.]

Let me see if I've got this right. The voters who pulled the lever for Brown were so disgusted with how the Democrats have played favorites with Wall Street bankers, insurance company CEOs, and big pharma that they called for the change that they could REALLY believe in--more profits for Wall Street bankers, insurance company CEOs, and big pharma. Hmmmm. There must be some subtle innuendo here that I'm missing. [Readers: if you would care to clue me in, I would welcome it, because right now I'm about to declare myself a complete dunce when it comes to social psychology.]

It seems to me that there are only a few explanations for this phenomenon:

1) The voters are bonkers;
2) The voters are so blazing mad that they are like the father who's pissed off at the wife or kids and, finding that they aren't available, kicks the dog;
3) That the voters don't have much time for politics, so they only know what they see on TV between segments of American Idol (whereby they thought that Senator-elect Brown's daughter, Ayla, a former American Idol contestant, was cute); or
4) Like Frankenstein's monster, they can only repeat by rote, "Democrats bad; Republicans good".

I don't truly believe that Massachusetts' voters (or any other voters) are stupid, crazy, mad dogs, or monsters. They are, however, as I've said here before, dumbed-down, distracted, delusional, and in denial.

• Dumbed-down because their parents were too distracted or delusional to stress the value of discipline and a good education; and because our school systems are underfunded and unreformed, its teachers overburdened, and its administrators intimidated by a system that favors parents/taxpayers over public servants.
  
• Distracted because of a corporatocracy that plies them with endless branding, commercialism, and mind-numbing forms of "entertainment" that fill their precious and few free hours with so-called 'reality shows' and sports.
• Delusional to believe that all democracy requires is to "throw the bums out" in a recessional election year and maintain the status quo in seemingly prosperous times, no matter how inept or dishonest are those in power.
• In denial of the fact that, in a democracy, you tend to get the public servants you deserve; if you're not keeping up with developments because you're dumbed-down, distracted, and delusional, you're going to make a lot of mistakes in your choices.

So, I would maintain that, no, Massachusetts is not "mad", only maddening. To vote against a candidate because he or she may have offended one of your sports heroes (Curt Schilling, former Boston Red Sox pitcher) by saying that he was a "Yankees fan"--as some reportedly did--is to treat American governance like a petty disagreement between two sixth graders. Politics should not be a spectator sport. In fact, it's a lot more like choosing a life partner--one that you're about to share with 300 million others who are counting on your good judgment. You have to give it at least as much attention as bingo, beer, or baseball.

An Open Letter to President Obama

Dear Mr. President:

I thought you might use some advice from someone who is neither a right-wing-nut nor a true-believer in your status as a knight-in-shining-armor who was going to make every boo-boo on our nation's psyche heal within the very first year of your term of office. Oh, yes, I willingly voted for you and cried when I watched you and your beautiful family stand before a crowd of a hundred thousand in Grant Park in Chicago that night to declare victory. I did not work for nor donate to your campaign because it became evident to me early on that, while you were not prone to sudden outbursts of emotion while over-amplified (as another promising candidate did not so long ago), neither were you the type to rock the boat by making the kind of drastic turnaround that the country so desperately needed. Now that your public approval rating has slipped into George W. Bush territory, I thought you might be looking beyond the usual advisory insiders for some clues as to how to get back in the good graces of Mr. and Ms. America.

First, Mr. President, short of a personality transplant, you need to ditch the entire Mr. Cool routine, assuming that you can still muster up true-blue, honest-to-God feelings and a congruent affect to go with it. (Your predecessor had an embarrassing tendency to display facial expressions one would more expect to see on a preschooler while delivering the most sobering news.) When everything you say emanates from a visage that never changes, you are sending the message that either everything matters equally or nothing matters at all. "Is he lying or telling the truth? What does he really care about? Does he know that I exist?"

Second, Mr. President, and concurrently with the above, you need to talk less like a contracts lawyer and more like a trial lawyer. Talk like your audience is a jury in a murder trial and not the judge sitting on the bench. (Note: this is not "talking-down", it is "talking to.") People want to hear words that stir their hearts and imaginations. They do not want you to "win them over". Most voters in the middle, independent, or undecided columns do not really know how they feel about the complex issues that you deal with day-in and day-out. What they want to hear from you is that you have a sincere conviction as to the right course and are willing to explain to them why in your gut you know you are right.

Last night, my husband and I attended a concert by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. On the program were two highly contrasting works: Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs and Peter Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture. One hundred and thirty-five years separated the creation of these two works about romantic love. The first was receiving it's premier performance by the CSO. The latter can only be described as a workhouse, it has been performed so often. The first had Spanish lyrics, the English translation of which was written in the program, sung by a very talented mezzo-soprano. Lieberson had written his piece out of love for his wife, herself a first-rate mezzo-soprano, who he knew was dying of breast cancer. She lived long enough to sing his work at its world premier.

Lieberson's musical setting of five poems, written by Chilean Pablo Neruda in the late 1950's, might have been as stirring as Tchaikovsky's earlier fantasy on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, given its context within Lieberson's life. Both stories involve incipient love needlessly and far too early lost. Yet, the audience's reaction to the two pieces was starkly contrasted. Lieberson's music was like Obama's speeches--fresh, sonorous, and melodious, in a 21st century kind of way. When it finished, the audience applauded politely, some even stood. There was no doubt that the rendition they had heard was exemplary. But the music and poetry plucked the strings of the mind more than the heart.

Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, cares little for plucking strings that aren't connected to emotions, as I'm sure you are aware, Mr. President. His Romeo and Juliet Fantasy, with its love theme that has been on every best-love-songs-of-all-time album since the days of wax cylinders, blasts out "try to top this, Mantovani" from every measure. Predictably, when it ended, the crowd "went wild", standing, clapping, and hooting en masse.

Why the difference? Was it purely a matter of familiarity? Doesn't familiarity breed contempt? I think the answer holds a secret to your success, Mr. President. Here it is: whether listening to you or a symphony orchestra, people want to be reminded what it is they care about. What they care about isn't mind games, elegance, or eloquence. It's about heart-to-heart human connection. What they care about is knowing that the person or persons they are listening to care about those things too. This is especially true of their president. They don't care how many times they've heard it said (played) by someone else; they want to hear it from you. You are America's lover. When we are hurting, we need to know that you feel our pain. (Clinton said it but didn't prove it.) Not only feel our pain but will continue to feel it until its gone.

Great conductors make you believe that the music comes from inside them. If the "Great Health Care Symphony" is programmed, they don't hand the baton over to the Principle Guest Conductor or the Principle Pops Conductor. Great trial lawyers take classes in acting, just as some football players take ballet. It's time to get a little theatrical, Mr. President. The jury is still in the box and they're getting restless.

The Compassionate Conservative Unmasked

It's time we held a moment of silence for the mythological "compassionate conservative". Only a moment, because the corpse has long-since ossified. It doesn't even stink anymore.

Perhaps George W. Bush was the last conservative to dabble in compassion. He played it up pretty large in the 2000 campaign, before he became America's "Great Protector". The cornerstone of this era was No Child Left Behind, perhaps the most compassionate title ever inscribe upon the title page of a piece of legislation; enough so, to rope Sen. Ted Kennedy in, anyway.

That done, Bush's reputation as a compassionate conservative was secured and he could turn his attention to abstaining from nation-building. Other conservatives could feel free to return to their first love, bloating the Defense budget with new weapons systems and fighting multiple wars against people obviously not suited for displays of compassion.

Of course, ever since President Reagan's era, the standard mantra of their party was "low taxes, small government, and individual liberty". Sounds pretty appealing to many people. Just keep the government off my back and I'll do just fine. Problem is, it's not easy to constantly battle against higher taxes while still maintaining the infrastructure that keeps commerce flowing, neighborhoods safe, and the workforce well-educated with a growing and aging population and the tendency of things to wear out.

Conservatives don't seem to grasp the concept of wear out. They never stay in one house or drive one car long enough to have to maintain them. As George Lakoff inveighs, when their children reach the age of majority, they're expected to be fully independent and never trouble their parents for anything again. The same goes for roads and bridges. The neglect of our interstate highway and electrical distribution system during the Reagan Era led to the current crumbling crisis. Now, of course, conservatives' cash cow, business, is starting to complain loudly about the condition of the roads. It's taking workers too long to get to the job. Sometimes, they have blowouts from potholes. Call it "concrete compassion".

When it comes to compassion for real flesh-and-blood people, however, the conservatives' empathy seems to be in rather short supply. In quiet, private moments they may say a little prayer for those in need but don't bother asking them to pony up. That would be too much of an infringement upon their personal liberty.

Two recent examples come almost as emotional aftershocks of the terrible tragedy in Haiti. The first came from none other than a man who, if not the prophet of parsimony, is certainly the creative force behind the college of conservative orthodoxy, Regent University, alma mater of the man who has just been elected Virginia's new governor, Bob McDonnell. His name is Pat Robertson. Here's what Rev. Robertson had to say about the misfortunes that have befallen Haiti in recent years:

“They (Haitians) were under the heel of the French…and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you’…and so, the devil said ‘Okay, it’s a deal’ and kicked the French out....They need to have…a great turning to God.”

I guess, for conservatives like Robertson, compassion is caring enough to send the very best wishes for a spiritual revival, led, no doubt, by "the Man" himself.

Then, there was this gem from the most-influential conservative in the U.S., Rush Limbaugh:

“We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

Limbaugh was upset that President Obama--a moderate and, thus, not of the belief that government is not the solution but rather the problem--was so quick to send aid to those people, of whatever nationality, who might have had the bad taste to get themselves buried under tons of wrecked buildings. No doubt, it was a fiscal conservative who wrote the building code that saved all the tax dollars that can now be used for reconstruction.

So, the next time you hear a conservative effuse the standard talking points of "low taxes, small government, and individual liberty", remember that policies just like those produce the offspring of societal decline and death. Offspring that can only be aborted by politicians who understand history, think outside their own skin, and give a hoot for the other--politicians who don't just pay lip service to Jesus but actually try to live as he did.