Aardvark

DIRE WARNING

2005-11-30T06:07:00.000-06:00

Posting here at the blog has been pretty sparse lately because I recently began a new job, and I'm still making requested revisions to my dissertation. But this morning, before I head out for the 35 minute drive to work, I wanted to weigh on an impending crisis-cum-tragedy. Seymore Hersch in the New Yorker has already alluded to it, as have a number of bloggers. But because I've followed U.S. military intervention in foreign countries closely since 1980, I wanted to put in my two cents, which comes in the form of a warning.

The situation in Iraq is going to get much much worse in the months ahead. As U.S. ground troops begin withdrawal, the air war will intensify, and this will mean many more Iraqi civilian casualties. Many more. In addition, the volitile situation already unfolding will, in the eyes of the newly minted vanguard, necessitate a severe crackdown on dissidents, jihadists, and other non-Baathists, historically accomplished by roving death squads. The insurgency is not, as the Pentagon and President would have us believe, primarily orchestrated by non-Iraqi terrorists or al-Qaeda operatives, but mostly by Sunni Baathists, those who backed Saddam and who belong to the religious minority of the nation. They quite correctly sense that majority rule will mean not only political and social disenfranchisement but persecution, oppression and most likely death or imprisonment for Sunni leaders.

If you don't think this is the likely course of action, then consider U.S. involvement in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvadore, the Phillipines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, and God knows where else. It is a consistent pattern of U.S. "less is more"--less obvious presence and fewer numbers for more concentrated violence.

RANDOM THATS

2005-11-27T19:25:00.000-06:00

Signs of Intelligence
Whether or not you've been following the debate between evolution and intelligent design, this article by Justic Webb of BBC News is very much worth reading: a short summary and some key questions at the heart of the matter. And in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Kenneth Miller sums up the Catholic position on the weird science.

Burden of Class
Evidently, the upper-classes will also be feeling a pinch in the pocketbook. Seems the supply of caviar is dwindling at an alarming rate because scores of poachers haunting the shores of the Caspian sea are raping the waters for "the briny eggs." I guess I'll have to forego my valet's Christmas bonus. And Jeeves' was so looking forward to that new gold-plated shoehorn.

Up Comes Religious--Again
In Egypt, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood is widely anticipated to come out a winner in upcoming elections. In Malaysia, the war is on between the religious and the secular. And in all of Southeast Asia, religious harmony is unraveling fasting than you can say 'Om'. Something tells me it's not going as planned for BushCo. Now, where do you suppose they went wrong? Was it the invasion of Iraq and the continuing lawless way of life there? The mispoken reference to the Crusades? The fanatical and militant Christian dispensationalism at the core of Bush's base? Or could it be that enormous not-white elephant in the room, the old black leviathan called Oil? I just can't decide. Would you like a congeries with that Martini, sir?

More Deja Vu
Judith Coburn takes us back to Watergate, reminding us that the real scandal was not the third-rate burglary of an office but the covert and illegal carpet bombing of Cambodia. The Nixon administration, and especially Henry Kissinger, deceived the public and Congress about an unwinnable war far from home. Sound familiar? It should, both Cheney and Rumsfeld served President Nixon, and ever since have obssessed over the issue of consolidating power in the execute branch. Perhaps Karl Rove, when leaking it to the press, would call it Double Secret, Super-Duper Executive Privilege. Given my interest in Weimar German philosophy, culture and politics, I prefer the more concise and accurate 'dictatorship.'

*****

Are we living in the End-Times, as Jerry Jenkins and Tim Lahaye keep saying in their Left Behind novels? No. But we're certainly coursing through an auspicious moment in world history. Start keeping a journal today, and remain a devoted scribe of your daily thinking. See if your grandchildren aren't touting it on a future episode of Antiques Roadshow as a "beautiful window into a significant period in history." Cut off your ear or go insane, and it will be worth millions.

DEJA VU

2005-11-16T21:36:00.000-06:00

On November 17, 1973, thirty-two years ago, President Richard M. Nixon told the Associated Press, ""People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook." Nine months later, on August 8, 1974, he resigned in disgrace, having tried in vain to cover up crooked, political trickery.

We know that at about this time, a young George Bush was going into hiding, ducking his reponsibility to the Texas Air National Guard. A sure sign of character.

But where were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld at the time? As it turns out, Rummy was White House counsel, and Cheney his deputy assistant. Corruption of power and complete loss of moral clarity stick on these guys like mud on swine.

So let's fix ourselves a daiquiri, pull up a beanbag chair, put on the Beverley Hillbillies, and reminisce. Think back to a time when the standard was set for poor taste and absense of integrity. When Elvis was king, there was no Prince, and the Jester was you and me. The No.1 song: "Keep on Truckin'" by Eddie Kendricks.

RHETORICAL DEFLECTION

2005-11-13T10:38:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note before I return to the pressing responsibility of revising my (never ending) dissertation.

This week President Bush chose Veterans Day to attack Democrats for saying we were misled into the war in Iraq. Shrub suggested the dissenters were "rewriting history." This Sunday morning, I came across CNN's Howard Kurtz interviewing former CBS producer Mary Mapes about the ill-fated National Guard story, which was based on forged documents. And two weeks ago we were hearing much about special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and his indictment of Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby.

Examine the Republican talking points on all these issues and a clear, discernible pattern emerges: Do not talk about the issue--deceiving the American people into war, shirking responsibility to the Texas Air National Guard, exposing classified information. Instead, derail the debate by attacking those who insist on talking about the issue. In other words, invoke one of the oldest rhetorical and legalistic strategies of debate: attack the character of the person making the charge, rather than discuss the specifics of the charge itself. This, as we all know, was the strategy of O. J. Simpson's defense team, which went after LA police detective Mark Thurman and his racism. But in spite of the jury's verdict, everyone knows who killed Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Moral point: When you see this strategy going into overtime, you can be quite sure that there is some truth to the accusations against the fulminating character assassins. Like the child caught red-handed eating the stolen cookie: "He's lying. I didn't take it."

Mr. President, your approval rating is at 36%. You've been caught. Whine all you want for the next three years. We know you're lying. You're toast. And you know it too.

UP COMES RELIGION

2005-11-07T19:43:00.000-06:00

From time to time, when I'm making my rounds through liberal blogs, I come across the occasional article on religion, be it a glib rant on the ironic evils of fundamentalist Christians or the assurance that genuine Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. While there are a few among the self-decribed liberal or progressive bunch who profess a religious faith, the general tone I sense is one of perfect secularism, and a dismissive if not hostile gesture toward all things religious. Which is why this faction of the body politic is usually at its best when arguing over the separation of church and state.

But, dare I invoke Freudianism, they're in deep denial over the reality that is religion in the age of globalization. I can't help but think that they're either drunk with Enlightenment optimism and the charm of the Peace of Westphalia, or completely taken in by the new electronic media to the point where their way of being, their Dasein, their epistemology, becomes one of mystical or neurological transcendence well beyond the vulgarity of ancient religion. Be it a view of historical and horizonal, or eternal and verticle, too many progessivists are quite convinced we've moved beyond the provincial worlds of theistic Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and so forth. (Some do however revere atheistic Buddhism, or some New Age variation that is somwhat mystical, mildly ritualistic, and certainly not overly textual.) In other words, liberals don't seem to see the significance of religion in the world today. This, unfontunately, is an enormous oversight.

With the notable exception of Jim Wallis in God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, the vast majority of progressives and centrists have failed to draw the obvious conclusion that the so-called Secular Age is little more than a specific worldview which is certainly not the condition of most of the globe, and probably not a fixture of Hegel's historical dialectic inching its way toward full realization in some future Age of Godless Perfection.

On the one hand, we have all the seeds of global class rebellion, much as we did in the mid-1800s, when Karl Marx wrote of an international class of workers. Then, as now, we were on the eve of economic globalization, the shock of which contributed greatly to the Russian Revolution and two World Wars. The wars, in turn, stalled globalization, as the war-torn economies of Europe, Asia, and the Americas necessarily turned inward and centralized. Economic survival mode. But that's all changed now. In the 1980s, Reagan and Thatcher launched the big push for privatization, deregulation, and increased international competition, thus creating transnational economic unions in the Americas, Euope and Asia. And today we routinely talk of the statelessness of multinational corporations and the boundless potential of cyber-economics. Such rapid growth and fragmentation of older ways has a way of intensifying the gap between rich and poor, upper and lower socio-economic classes, and thus bringing about a great deal of anger and violence.

On the other hand, we also see quite a lot of religion in terms of group identity making its way into the news headlines. The street rioters in France are youths both poor and Muslim. In the United States, Bush's base is routinely referred to as the Religious Right, a political euphemism for fundamentalist Christians and scriptural literalists. The war in Afghanistan toppled the ultra-Orthodox Muslim Taliban. In Iraq, religious Shia and Shites are at odds over the fate of the country. Ireland's anguish has been one of both class and religion, middle and lower, Protestant and Catholic. And then there's Israel/Palestine, Jews and Muslims. Today, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the need for increased Catholic-Lutheran relations as we approach the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Revolution in 1517. The Paris riots seem a fitting end to the illusion that we live in an increasingly secular world, for it was in Paris in 1789 that the people threw off the mantle of Church and Crown. And led us all to believe in the hope of Westphalia, that indeed there would be no more religious wars. Such optimism. Such naivete.

For the liberals and progressives who want to talk about the state of the world and what to do with it, but who don't believe in God, they should just adopt the methods of Wissenschaft ("science") and treat religion as an important sociological fact, like preparing food, minding the home, or making tools. You may find it superstitious, anachronistic, or downright stupid, but the simple fact is, the vast majority of the people of the world are religious in some way or another. And this must be taken into account when dicussing the political, social, and economic machinations of the world. It's misguided to contend that the world is becoming less religious when the facts are clearly otherwise.

Rather than indulge in prophecy and preach a coming doom and gloom, I would just point out that whatever comes our way in the weeks, months, and years ahead, in terms of what we might call Big Historical Events, the confluence of factors will most definitely include religion, in a big way. Always has. Always will. Ask yourself, for example, if today the war in Iraq has no significant religious factor? Or whether or not the Marxist challenge to Buddhist tradition in 1970s Cambodia was not a religious conflict? Or if the Holocaust of European Jewry at the hands of an explicitly pagan Nazism was absent of religious symbolism and conviction? Has the religion section at the local bookstore grown larger or smaller in the last ten years? Are more and more politicians not openly invoking religious affiliation? Does the institution of the modern nation-state and its factitious governance not stand like an aging superstructure ready to collapse among a landscape filled with enduring church buildings, eager to take in the disenfranchised of the nation?

God is dead, Nietzsche declared, but went on to point out that his shadow is cast upon the wall of the cave in which we dwell. Which is to say, God is not dead, so long as the people say so.

THE FABLED WAR

2005-11-04T05:51:00.000-06:00

For quite a while I've had my suspicions about the so-called leadership and planning of the insurgency in Iraq, the insurgency that is killing scores of American miltary personel everyday as well as countless innocent Iraqis. The official line is that the endless stream of suicide and roadside bombers is more or less an al-Qaeda operation headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Constant Pentagon and State Department references to his name and face just seem much too convenient as the planned progress for New Iraq ground to a halt--following the ill-timed Mission Accomplished declaration--and everyday conditions descended into bedlam.

This morning, Billmon over at Whiskey Bar has (as usual) a must read post based on a conversation he had with history professor and blogger Juan Cole of Informed Comment.
Cole's hunch, as put forth by Bill, is that Zarqawi is something of a red herring. Instead, the insurgency is mostly a Ba'athist revival, which means that the U.S. is essentially still fighting the war with Saddam Hussein's loyalists and infrastructure even though the Head Honcho is in the dock awaiting his unfree fate.

What this means is that the Pentagon's 'fly paper' strategy of drawing al-Qaeda terrorists to Iraq to fight them there instead of here in the U.S. is completely bogus, in addition to being utterly stupid on every level. Misled to believe they're fighting al-Qaeda, U.S. soldiers are actually at war with an underground network of Ba'athists, who are happily supplied with arms and equipment by neighboring countries Syria and Iran.

Go read Bill's analysis. It's a sobering assessment, and frankly a damning indictment of the Pentagon's complete ineptitude and campaign of disinformation.

As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, the people must be manipulated through lies and deception. And the bigger the lie, the more apt they are to believe it.

THE AGE OF UNREASON

2005-11-03T05:02:00.000-06:00

The Cheney Administration either has a collective pathological deficit of brain functions, or, like the reaction against reason and rationalism in early modern Germany, we are bearing witness to a fundamental shift to unbridled emotionalism. Sturm und Drang, the Germans called it. For Germany, it was a fateful turn of culture and society, eventually taking them right to Auschwitz and their long death march to historical infamy.

It's now a matter of public record that this administration openly advocates and uses Soviet-style torture. Evidently, they weren't listening when Senator Biden openly derided General Gonzales (now Attorney General) for signing off on torture. We don't torture prisoners and other captives so that when our men and women in uniform are captured by our enemies, they will less likely be tortured. It's not a guarantee, but the once agreed-upon strategy does have a reliable historical record of showing it works most of the time. Moreover, time and time again it has been demonstrated that torture does not get reliable information.

Now, however, all bets are off. And through the vengeful short-sighted policies of our now unpopular government, U.S. military personel, as well as all Americans, stand a pretty good chance of suffering a slow, painful, torturous death if and when captured by terrorists. Cheney and friends have uped the ante in the terror gamble because they have no personal stake in it. And no military experience to back up their irrational policy.

So, now that we know Cheney and his buddies are using torture around the world, we have to ask ourselves: what's the difference between this administration and that of Joseph Stalin?

I guess the Age of Reason and the ideals of the Enlightenment are officially dead. I don't know what lies ahead, but if history is any guide, I'd say we're in for not just dishonor and the shame of government scandal, but more and more violence. Let's set our clocks back, not just one hour, but, say, about 150 years. To a time when men were men, the nation-state was young and carefree, and war was a way of life.

Nostalgia 1. the state of being homesick. 2. a wistful or excessively sentimental sometimes abnormal yearning for a return to some past period or irrecoverable condition. From the Greek nostos + algia, to return home. A term coined in 1688 by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer, diagnosing a malaise that affected Swiss mercenaries fighting abroad in the Franco-Prussian war. Also used during the American Civil War, nostalgia was rendered 'shell shock' during the First World War, 'battle fatigue' during World War II, and 'post-traumatic stress disorder' during the Vietnam conflict.

SEE SAW

2005-11-01T19:33:00.000-06:00

Light blogging for the next few days while I settle into my new job as document specialist--basically trying to coordinate dozens of different company procedures from dozens of different people into a single, readable format. Much like trying to teach a band of toothless, drunken paddies how to speak perfect Oxford English.

The good news is I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance.

Tut tut. Cheerio. And all that sort of rot.

IN MEMORIUM

2005-10-27T15:20:00.000-05:00

Teresa Wright (1918-2005). She passed away this past March 6, but I heard nothing of it in the news.

She was one of my favorites from the black and white era, starring perhaps most famously as the outspoken Carol Beldon in the 1942 classic "Mrs. Miniver". My favorite of her performances, though, is in Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt."

Beautiful. Classy. Intelligent. Witty. And a striking contrast to the trash we have today parading around on screen.

LOSING GAMBLE

2005-10-27T11:36:00.000-05:00

Miers withdraws nomination to Supreme Court. Flanigan abandons bid for Deputy Attorney General. Brown gets hounded out of FEMA. Rove and Libby are likely to be indicted for leaking the name of covert CIA agent. And VP Cheney openly advocates torture, laying all his cards on the table regarding human rights and the dignity of human life itself. The house of cards seems a wee bit unstable.

It's a sad day for American political history and the integrity of our democracy.

EXQUISITE TORTURE

2005-10-27T08:22:00.000-05:00

Paul Begala writes at TPM Cafe that the Bush/Cheney cabinet is deep in the throes of painful anticipation--I'm thinking of that stunning scene in Schindler's List when the SS officer attempts to shoot the rabbi in the head, but his pistol repeatedly jams. They are waiting, of course, for Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to announce whether or not his grand jury will issue indictments. While I do admit to feeling a bit of Schadenfreude over the possibility that Karl Rove may be experiencing some much deserved low back pain, I have to agree with the Moose that ultimately the entire Plame Affair and the White House's trickery if and when laid open for all to see will not be a victory for Democrats or liberals, but instead yet another triumph of cynicism and distrust among voting Americans.

We now resume our regularly schedule revision of dissertation.

THURSDAY FUN WITH WORDS

2005-10-27T08:07:00.000-05:00

As predicted here, Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination for the Supreme Court. CNN's John King reports that President Bush is "mad".

Would that be 'mad' as in American English mad, meaning angry or upset?
Or would that be 'mad' in British usage, meaning crazy, insane, mentally unstable?
You decide.

TIPPING POINT

2005-10-26T07:28:00.000-05:00

Back in 2000, author Malcolm Gladwell published a short book entitled Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. The title is self-explanatory. And his theory is applicable to everything from lice to levees. The maddening thing about a tipping point is that one doesn't know he's passed it until after the fact. Thus, critics of the incremental piling on can be and are branded pessimistic naysayers who are all talk and no action, a very effective strategy appealing to core psychological and emotional values about not just accomplishment but remaining in the arena of work and play. In other words, more than winning, we ultimately want just to stay in the game, not kicked out for whining.

With regard to the war in Iraq, advocates for invasion roundly silenced critics with the damning label 'unpatriotic', arguably one of the worst epithets that can be cast around in the public sphere. We've now reached the mark of 2000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, a number that is both arbitrary yet laden with emotional volatility. The patience for sacrifice is wearing thin among more and more Americans each day, and we may indeed be approaching the tipping point, tilting away for support to more and more dissent and perhaps even civil disobedience. But again, we won't know until after we've passed the point of no return.

It bears asking, though, how many young men and women have to die or be badly wounded before the Cheney Administration comes to the realization that we are indeed embroiled in an incremental war of attrition in Iraq? We now know that both President Johnson and his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara kept ramping up American involvement in Vietnam for the sake of political image: Johnson did not want to appear weak in the Cold War or ambiguous on the question of communist aggression. At the same time, however, the limits of Johnson's commitment to the war--brought about by Republican isolationism, antiwar dissent, and simple economics--paved the way for a North Vietnamese victory. American involvement (timeline here), which began in 1961 and concluded with the inglorious departure of U.S. Marines from the rooftop of the U.S. embassy in 1975, reached its tipping point with the Tet Offensive in 1968. That's a sad and sobering seven years of costly descent down the mountain path of defeat.

Hawkish historians and political analysts like Michael Lind (who I often agree with on domestic issues), in his Vietnam: The Necessary War, have argued that U.S. involvement in Vietnam was a necessary and even vital aspect of the Cold War; it was a conflict that ultimately halted the spread of communism throughout much of Southeast Asia through the psychology of horror. I find this argument unconvincing. But even if this were accurate, had communism continued its relentless spread across Asia and South Pacific island nations, would such countries today still be communist? It's doubtful, as the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as the reversal of socialism in India and other countries, demonstrates the unsustainable dynamics of a tightly centralized economy, to say nothing of the unscrupulous cronyism of a party of ideologues.

Is the war in Iraq winnable? If the U.S. were to commit more resources and implement real-world strategies instead scaling back troop numbers and continuing the short-sighted policies of political expediency, could we actually secure peace and leave Iraq a working representative republic with a healthy economy? (I'm not considering the possibility of simply nuking Iraq because it's much too extreme, impractical, and unconscionable and obviously would create far more disastrous consequences than imaginable.) Can the U.S. win the war in Iraq. I'm skeptical. Let's be realists on this issue. What democracy--or more accurately republic--was not established over centuries of gradual settlement and jolting civil war until reaching an acceptable measure of compromise tempered by oftentimes exploitative economics? The concept of representative democracy may be ancient, but the institution of the nation-state is young, a product of 18th-century liberalism throwing off the mantle of monarchy and over-privileged aristocracy. This was a gradual, violent process of reactionary and revolutionary extremes, well-illustrated by the American and French Revolutions and laying the ground for both World Wars.

The U.S. involvement in Iraq is an instance of imperialism, no matter how well one dresses it up in talk about freedom, democracy, elections or record-setting voter turn-out. The reality is that the term "Iraq" signifies not a viable nation-state enjoying political sovereignty and a working economy. Rather, it is little more than a U.S. colony currently under military occupation for the purposes of controlling its oil resources and for hawkish idealists like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle implementing a regional experiment in Middle East democracy. The ultimate intentions of such idealists must, however, be framed within the wider context of American global hegemony and domination of the Middle East.

If the long-term goal for "Iraq" is indeed objectively the realization of a Middle East democracy with a strong economy, then it will take the hard work of the Iraqi people, without U.S. policy manipulation and especially foreign control of its natural resources. The problem, obvious to all, is defining and ultimately establishing a national identity regarding "the Iraqi people," in the broadest sense comprised ethnically of Arabs, Kurds, and Persians and religiously of Sunni and Shia Muslims.

Much like France's colonial rule over and rather ignoble departure from Algeria, the United States will most likely conclude its involvement with Iraq years from now, long after the tipping point, when the number of dead is so high a painful silence will weigh heavily on our collective conscience, the planners of the disaster will have amassed billions in wealth and vanished from the public stage, and more importantly, the reigns of power in Iraq will have been gathered up by a mighty few and the people--that boundless entity of national identity--will have grown so weary of death and destruction that they will resign themselves to just about any form of government so long as it succeeds in stamping out dissent and halting the senseless carnage.

The irony--as there always is in these matters--is that in Iraq's long struggle to re-establish all the trappings of a sovereign nation-state, the institution of the nation-state itself will already be in decline, as it is today, to be superceded by the power and prestige of multinational corporations and economic blocs like the EU and ASEAN. And we who love freedom and democracy so much will be drawn down the winding road to feudalism.

NEW OLD CLICHE

2005-10-24T23:27:00.000-05:00

In the United States, we basically have only two political parties running the show. Cheap Labor Republicans and Tax and Spend Democrats...er...ah...I mean Republicans.

What this country needs is a third party: Backbone Democrats.

I can wish, can't I?

MORAL OUTRAGE OF THE WEEK

2005-10-23T11:36:00.000-05:00

Here's the headline at Columbia Christians for Life website:
"Christians: Pray God's Hurricane helps save America, and destroys Florida abortion centers."

As Bruce Lincoln alluded to in his important Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion after September II, what's the difference between the rhetoric of Muslim terrorists and that of rightwing Christian militants?

Very little.

QUINDLIN GETS IT

2005-10-23T11:14:00.000-05:00

Writer Anna Quindlin, always insightful, spells out the message, perhaps clearly enough so even the Jugheads of Hubris get it.

At least Johnson had the good sense to be heartbroken by the body bags. Bush appears merely peevish at being criticized. Someone with a trumpet should play taps outside the White House for the edification of a president who has not attended a single funeral for the Iraqi war dead.

Having barely graduated from Yale, legacied through Harvard Business school, bankrupted his oil venture, run the Texas Rangers into the ground, and rendered the Oval Office little more than fodder for parody, isn't it time for Dubya to strut off to fail at something else?

PRIVILEGES

2005-10-22T19:19:00.000-05:00

Cost of war in Iraq?
--202 billion dollars.
Current federal budget deficit?
--8 trillion.
Having a President who doesn't destroy the economy, wage needless war, appoint incompetent cronies to vital government posts, and pronounce the word 'nuclear' incorrectly?
--Priceless.

I SAY ESSAY

2005-10-22T10:53:00.000-05:00

I'm in the process of revising my dissertation, which is essentially a comparative analysis of indigenousness and promised land in ancient Greek philosophy and Hebrew scripture, as well as German and Jewish philosophy in modern Germany. Now, as you might expect, I have to do a lot of reading and research to support my obscure theory, and most of the...ahem..."scholarship" isn't well written. In fact, I think it safe to say that the bulk of academic writing is badly written. Very badly written. The tortured syntacs, heavy use of jargon and all around lack of style make reading it frustrating and even downright painful, engendering a kind of migraine that no amount of caffeine or aspirin can diffuse.

So, when reading academic "scholarship," I have to balance my mind's diet with good reading, either rich fiction or concise non-fiction, like histories or essays. I try to resist the temptation to watch much TV because when I do so I can actually feel huge sections of my brain shutting down, like factory lights turning off one stage at a time following the closing bell.

Yesterday I dropped by the local Barnes & Noble in search of good essays and a cup of coffee. I found one small set of shelves under the rubric 'Essays', which contained mostly names I didn't recognize (that's OK) and volumes filled cover-to-cover with book and theatre reviews (not OK). I don't know if the goateed floorwalkers who clerk the store know that a book review is not an essay or not, but I did point out to one several months ago that displaying the Koran on the bottom shelf is a big no-no, and that Houston does indeed have a very sizeable Muslim community, some of whom might take offense. He didn't heed my advice, and to this day Islamic scripture remains on the lowest shelf. They've been warned.

Now, when I want to read an essay, I want a sharp witted, thought experiment based on personal experience. It must be written by someone who has actually lived life, and not some idle bibliophile or armchair critic trapped in the mechanics of plot, character and narrative. What I don't want is a long-winded rant on the problems with "Gone with the Wind" or the accuracy of John Updike's characterization of middle class boredom. When I want to read a book or movie review, I'll turn to that section in the newspaper.

It seems, however, that my preference is not the prevailing view. And that what passes for personal experience these days is unimaginative encounters with characters in print and film media. Not passing references mind you, like when I say here we have a perfect illustration of Nietzsche's insightful passage entitled 'How the World Became a Fable.' Rather, these non-essays constitute a kind of enclosed textual world, where one writer drools incessantly on the work of another writer, stretching analysis well beyond the breaking point.

Herein lies the difference between a good writer and bad writer. The bad writer is something of a poser, either echoing the experiences of another writer or, worse, laboring over another writer's fictional characters as if he grew up next door to Lewis' Babbit or dated Tolstoy's Anna Karinina. This is the high-brow version of being a Trekkie. Like the Tolkiener, he is forever ensnarled in a neurotic world of make-believe, unable to grasp the grit and delicacy of the real world and make it his own. A rather sad, pathetic existence, in my humble opinion.

The good writer soaks up real life like a sponge, and when melancholy, sexual addiction or alcohol doesn't interfere, he hides away on occasion to put into words the follies and failures of his world. In other words, the experiences replay themselves, and he just writes them down.

Someday I'll draw up a list of good essays and post it. But until then, the search continues.

HIGH FRY

2005-10-22T07:46:00.000-05:00

This post was originally going to be about the frustrations of finding enjoyable essays to read, but before I move on to that topic I want to put in a good word about local restaurant critic Rob Walsh.

Rob writes for the weekly Houston Press, and is always a fun read. Now, on the face of it, reading restaurant reviews may not strike you as particularly entertaining reading; I don't seek them out. And because I almost never eat out, the information they impart is hardly useful to me. Dining out is more the habit of the childless upper-middle class who want to see and be seen in the city's socialite circles and those not inclined to cook.

But Walsh's style and content is such a pleasure to read that with his first-hand experience and turn-of-phrase, he renders words into something like h'orderves, bite-size morsels of witty and tasty consumption. And even though he writes about restaurant food, he reminds me that no matter what I'm eating it should taste good--not simply be momentary filler to stave off a base biological impulse.

I'm reminded here of a roommate I had the displeasure of living with some years ago in Austin. I'll call him Fry Boy, to avoid any hint of libel. Now Fry Boy was a rich kid who rarely held gainful employment, preferring to live off his mother's fortune, play his electric guitar loudly in his bedroom, and stay high as a kite all day. When it came time to eat, he usually opted for the colon cork of burger and fries. But often, when the trust fund check was yet to arrive and he had already spent the month's monies on beer, burgers and pot, he was forced to improvise in the kitchen. He was a tall, big-boned lad who required above-average caloric intake.

Spaghetti was one of his 'specialties', the preparation of which goes like this: boil water in a medium-sized sauce pan, preferrably an old, not-so-clean piece of Revereware missing the Bakelite handle and coated on the inside with water-spotted lime residue. In the boiling water drop a bundle of the cheapest spaghetti, snapped in half so as to fit completely in the pan. While the pasta boils down to a sticky mass, place an empty frying pan--yet another piece of weathered Revereware--on a high-flaming burner. When the frying pan's copper bottom begins to glow faintly orange, pour in half a bottle of Hunt's Ketchup. For a slightly thinner 'sauce' add water as needed. You'll want this pasty concoction to sizzle and spit all over the stove, evidently a sign that the necessary fission of tomato molecules is taking place. Now drain off the excess water from the pasta, then dump it into the frying pan with the special sauce. Stir the molten mass around for about one minute. Remove from stove and plop it on a cold plate. Best served while standing and shoveled into the mouth in four to five large bites. Bon appetite.

It's only fitting that Fry Boy had and proudly displayed a plastic 12-inch replica of Kip's Big Boy, complete with pompidou hair and that recognizable tray hoisted overhead, reaching not for the stars but...what else, a greasy cheeseburger. Icon of days-gone-by.

JONAH'S WAR

2005-10-21T06:23:00.000-05:00

Obviously, Jonah Goldberg has joined the rank and file of so many academics of our great nation, arguing that abstraction trumps empirical reality. Calling attention to political correctness and suppressed language on college campuses, the National Review writer spins a causal narrative from Adolf Hitler to Hillary Clinton, from Nazism to welfare entitlement, from totalitarianism to liberal social justice.

Now, I'm no big fan of Hillary, largely because she didn't speak out against the completely unnecessary and increasingly catastropic war in Iraq. But I have to say that the conspiratorial vitriol foisted upon her name and persona by the right isn't just bordering on delusional paranoia, it is delusional paranoia. Is this because they need a scapegoat for the failures of a Republican-controled Congress during the Clinton years?

Historically, there is, of course, a connection between working class socialism and Nazism, but not one of cause and effect. If Jonah had done his homework--instead of political handiwork--he would have learned that the Nazis exploited the ire of disenfranchised workers and rural farmers for the purposes of political gain, turning them against the middle class and in particular Jews.

That he argues this when there are thousands of neo-Nazis and White Supremists in the U.S. who are by any measure on the far right of the political and social spectrum makes his argument all the more tortured and just plain idiotic.

HURRICANE WILMA

2005-10-21T06:15:00.000-05:00

(Thanks to Bob O)

BAIT AND SWITCH

2005-10-19T09:52:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note before I get back to the business of revising my dissertation and negotiating my salary for a technical writing position--both very laborious endeavors.

It appears the Pentagon, in another Orwellian move to 'support' the troops, has suddenly decided not to honor its earlier promise of paying $15,000 bonuses to national guard soldiers who return to active duty. After hundreds return to active duty with the promise of this money, having been sent back to Iraq they've been informed that the bonuses will not be forthcoming.

Trust the government? Yeah, right.

WHOPPER AND SHAKE, PLEASE

2005-10-18T06:49:00.000-05:00

According to this AP story, 78-year-old Rouland Steppert of Wisconsin crashed his car into the front of a Burger King restaurant, backed up, parked, went inside, and ordered a meal. When police arrived, he was seated at a table eating lunch, with broken glass all over the floor. No charges were filed.

No word yet if Steppert was heard humming the old jingle, "Have it Your Way."

BOYHOOD AND TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS

2005-10-17T18:36:00.000-05:00

My son and I just returned from the hobby shop with a model airplane, specifically a P-51A Mustang, the real one of which was arguably one of the best World War II fighter plane on the Allied side. (The P-51D was a vast improvement.) The model was priced at $27.99. Fortunately, we were able to appeal to the cashier's inner child and buy it for half off, taking advantage of a sale that actually ended last week. But the money was his, not mine.

As you may know, plastics are made from petroleum, meaning the price of crude oil affects the price of plastics, thus leading to higher prices for model planes, cars, ships, etc. Now, I'm just as annoyed at the recent hike in gas prices as anyone else, but I also know that we Americans are still paying much less than our European counterparts, who average about $5.00 per gallon. But $30.00 for a 1/48 scale model airplane is pretty ridiculous, no matter how accurate the replica may be. It's not as if this particular model comes complete with glue, paint, and a brush. That's extra. So, it looks as though not only are we parents being hit at the gas pump by the diminishing supply of oil and the greed of the industy, so are the kids. A dose of hard realism for the young.

REVOLUTION 101

2005-10-17T08:19:00.000-05:00

In the conservative movement's ongoing process of dismantling all the entitlements and reforms of the New Deal and Great Society, the future of the United States seems to me to be growing more and more bleak by the day. (Please pardon my pessimism; I'm tracking a certain political logic here.)

The powers that be in D.C. are slow to respond to natural disasters affecting the poor and the newly-made homeless.

They want to pay for hurricane relief by rolling back aid to the poor.

They want to dismantle Social Security.

They want to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid.

They want to impose a disproportionate flat tax on the underclass.

They continue to negotiate trade agreements that transfer jobs overseas.

They refuse to mandate a working wage that is in step with the rate of inflation.

Their short-sighted economic policies are further antagonizing the already eroding race relations between black and white.

And they continue to refuse to legislate gun control or even modestly regulate the arms industry.

It seems to be that the powers that be in D.C. actually want to bring about a bloody revolution in the streets of America.

In 1989, much of the world championed the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the end to communism. Perhaps I'm wrong, but given the logic I've outlined above, we may not have seen the last of class warfare and the seduction of Marxism on the global stage. Such idealism, despite its past failures and misapplications, has a way of making a forceful comeback. Like the revolutions of 1789, 1848, 1905, 1917, and 1918, all that's needed is an economic crisis, and the rest, as the old saying goes, is history. Class not dismissed.

JUDY GATE

2005-10-16T06:51:00.000-05:00

In light of the buzz and flurry in the blogosphere about NY Times reporter Judy Miller, I feel the need to weigh in. On this issue, Occam's Razor is surely most applicable.

Fire Judy Miller. Fire Bill Keller. Send Judy to Iraq to find the WMD she so enthusiastically claimed were there. Send Keller to Gitmo to 'edit' inmate mail--which is to say, nothing, not a word, is excised from letters.

Use all the money that Miller gets for her speaking engagements to launch a government assistance program constructing and distributing port-a-potties for hurricane relief workers. Call it the Judy Miller Doodoo Tiller. Hopefully, within about two years, a new phrase will enter popular discourse: when one has to take a crap, he or she will say "Judy calls." Eventually, a virtual laxative will be marketed. Simply look at a picture of Judy Miller, and one's bowels will quickly release the unwanted blockage.

Perhaps, over time, the New York Times will once again become a respectable newspaper, instead of the Stalinist propaganda party rag it is today.

FRITZ

2005-10-15T06:31:00.000-05:00

Born in 1844, today is the birthday of German philologist and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Today also happens to be the birthday of my daughter Talya, born in 2002. Happy Birthday Talya!

There is an odd synchronicity to this coincidence, as Nietzsche is the figure who moved me to return from Italy and go to university to study philosophy and religious studies. More than any other philosophic works, his are the writings that I have studied the most. His critique of Western morality and theism lays the ground for much of what follows in the twentieth century, for good or bad.

Because Nietzsche went "insane" in 1889 and was beridden for most of the time leading up to his death in 1900, the prevailing view is that he contracted syphillus as a young man working in the medical corp during the Franco-Prussian war. Others contend he contracted the disease from a prostitute, as he neither had a long-term relationship nor married. There is no physiological evidence to prove Nietzsche suffered from syphillus, only speculation given his deteriorating mental and physical condition.

Throughout his life, Nietzsche suffered from severe migraine headaches and daily bouts of nausea--which he frequently tried to alleviate through the use of chloroform (popular in the 19th century). Nevertheless, he wrote feverishly and prolifically, in spite of his pain. (I find this particularly fascinating because I have difficulty composing a single sentence when I have so much as a head cold.)

My own theory is that Nietzsche did not have syphillus. Rather, I believe he suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, a rare disorder that causes severe headaches and trance-like siezures that move the afflicted to obssesively ponder philosophical and religious phenomena and engage in hypergraphia, the insatiable need to write in a speculative manner and court an overinflated sense of self-importance.

For the record, as much as I find Nietzsche's philosophy and life engaging, beyond the coincidence of the same birthday there is no related life-path or fateful connection between him and Talya. If as she grows older she finds Nietzsche as engaging as I have, that's fine by me. But I shall continually counsel her that his philosophy is not without risks. He questions all values, all foundations, and all boundaries. To read him is both exilarating yet dangerous; he inspires but also engenders cynicism and despair. In this regard, Nietzsche is a sober yet painful realist. Echoing the infamous Delphic oracle of ancient Greece, Freud said, no other human being knew as much about himself than Nietzsche--no small compliment from the father of psychoanalysis. Introspection is surely the engine of authenticity and integrity, but it can also lead to self-doubt. Yes, know thyself. But know the world around you too, and especially the others of your world.

Thus spoke the Aardvark.

WHAT HE SAID

2005-10-15T06:01:00.000-05:00

Billmon over at Whiskey Bar has a thoughful post this morning, speculating on the consequences of Bush's hubris. In short, the U.S. has isolated itself from the international community to such an extent that potential regional threats (e.g. Iran, Syria, Venezuela) can act badly with impunity because Bush has squandered the capital of influence and bargaining. In other words, the arogance of the current administration has made the world far more unstable with little chance of achieving strategic balance via global leadership or intimidation.

Thinking this over, it occurs to me that the Bush loyalists (growing fewer by the hour) probably don't care what the international community thinks, given their barroom bully posturing masking deep insecurity and ignorance. Some years ago I had the pleasure of hearing Kurt Vonegut speak at a commencement at Rice University. One line of his stuck in my head, and I think of it often: "Only a fool says he doesn't care what his neighbor thinks." Indeed.

POTEMKIN PR

2005-10-14T13:27:00.000-05:00

It appears the Washington Post is finally declaring Emperor George's new clothes are...well, not so regal. (internet subscription required)

Turns out the President's video press conference with G.I.s in Iraq was not only scripted, but also rehearsed. All while cameras were rolling. Whoops.

Could this signal the return of the repressed (media)? Just asking.

WONDER IN EXILE-LAND

2005-10-14T12:52:00.000-05:00

The inimitable Eric Hobsbawm has a really interesting article entitled "Benefits of Diaspora" over at this month's London Review of Books. For those of you with computer screen dyslexia (like me), save yourself a headache and print it--it comes to about 9 pages. (Eric Alterman gets credit for finding it.)

I KNOW THIS GUY

2005-10-12T14:14:00.000-05:00

My professor and member of my dissertation committee, Shaul Magid, has an excellent article in this month's Cross Currents about war and non-violence. One thing you should know about Shaul, substantially different than most academics and scholars of religion, he has a brain AND and a heart. Go read.

BERTIE'S BIG IDEA

2005-10-12T14:07:00.000-05:00

I'm a sucker for all things Einsteinian. For those of you likeminded and hungry for yet another tale about the most famous equation of all, take a look at professor Brian Greene's clear-headed explanation over at Edge, surely one of the best science websites around.

HONEY GLAZED

2005-10-12T13:47:00.000-05:00

Red Rover
Red Rover,
Roll Karl Rove Over.

CRYSTAL BALL IMAGE OF THE DAY

2005-10-12T13:35:00.000-05:00

One way or another, Miers' nomination to SCOTUS will be nixed. Democrats are not doing the country a service by signing off on her bid. I'm sure she's a nice person, but geez people, this is a woman who has no experience with constitutional matters whatsoever. Zero. Zip. Zilch. And whose praise for her Dear Leader includes the juvenile, "You're the greatest president ever..."

Like, you know, it's totally awesome bein' a supremo justice. I mean, like, I get to wear this cool robe and stuff, and, like, sit way up high.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

2005-10-12T12:20:00.000-05:00

Via Josh Marshall at TPM, this is funny. Yet tragic. And accurate. Yet pathetic. I could go on.

TALES FROM THE BROOM CLOSET

2005-10-12T11:52:00.000-05:00

Just when you thought it was safe for trick-or-treating once again...

In India, a suspected witch was burned to death.
In London, a schoolgirl was assaulted because she was thought to be a witch.
And elsewhere in London, an 8-year-old orphan girl was tortured by adults for, again, being a witch.

Thank God we live in the Age of Reason. I hate to think of what the American Puritans would be doing with Supreme Court justices. Come to think of it...

BOOT SCOOT

2005-10-12T11:35:00.000-05:00

Looks like VP Cheney's chief of staff 'Scooter' Libby is taking the fall in the never-ending Plame affair.

Timid prediction: W's chief of staff Andrew Card will roll over on Rove, who will go down kicking and screaming. Watch for it.

Karma.

EARTHQUAKE RELIEF

2005-10-12T11:18:00.000-05:00

For those among my readers who can afford it, here's a link to organizations accepting donations for the earthquake victims in Southeast Asia.

Compared to the Katrina hurricane victims, the folks in Asia have it much, much worse. Literally millions are without shelter, in the dead of winter, in the Himalayans, without food or drink.

For some perspective, strip naked, whack on your skull with a ballpeen hammer three or four times, then lie down in a bathtub filled with ice and clorox.

IS IT CLOUDY OR BRIGHT?

2005-10-12T10:48:00.000-05:00

Beyond UFOs, subsonic sounds, blackhawk helicopters and pretty much every word out of the mouths of G. Gordan Liddy and Oliver North, what would be the granddaddy of conspiracy theories? How about the KGB and the Japanese controling the weather.

Weatherman Scott Stevens, who describes himself as "just the first of a group of very bright individuals," claims he has proof that the Japanese, in retaliation for the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, created the hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast. The Russians developed the technology, then handed it off to the Japanese--because as we all know, these two countries love each other and have consistently shared top-secret knowledge throughout the ages. My favorite tidbit? Ivan and Katrina are, after all, very Russian-sounding names.

Does this mean hurricane Rita was named after a Tokyo meter-maid?

HI HO STEVERINO

2005-10-11T16:11:00.000-05:00

Comic Louis Nye, who coined the salutation "Hi Ho Steverino" on the Steve Allen Show has checked out.

With Don Adams (Agent 86) gone, that makes two.

Hollywood deaths seem to always come in 3s. So, who's next?

GOT BALLS?

2005-10-11T15:48:00.000-05:00

What every neutered K-9 needs, a set of artificial dog testicles. Proving once again that there really is a sucker born every minute.

THE COMING STORM

2005-10-11T12:08:00.000-05:00

Or, HOW TO SAVE YOURSELF FROM THE COMING ECONOMIC DISASTER THAT IS AS INEVITABLE AS A BOMB ON AN ISRAELI BUS.

I'm not too keen on giving advice, except to my own kids. I generally subscribe to the wisdom proffered by Henry David Thoreau, that if I knew someone was on his way to my doorstep with the intention of doing me some good, I'd run for my life. We, however, are not living in ordinary times, but rather extraordinary, perhaps even surreal times.

Let me take this opportunity to suggest to all my family and friends that they read this sage economic advice, and heed it well.

QUESTION OF THE DAY #2

2005-10-11T12:03:00.000-05:00

The Bush Administration articulates its conservative compassion once again. As we pour billions of dollars a day into Iraq (for the nation-building that W. campaigned he'd never do), federal relief for Gulf Coast hurricane victims eventually much be paid back by the recipients.

Where is the compassion among these conservatives?

Or, why aren't fiscal conservatives expressing outrage over Bush's irresponsible and unprecedented spending?

QUESTION OF THE DAY #1

2005-10-11T07:33:00.000-05:00

In popular and civic discourse, why is Christianity reduced to vitriol over homosexuality and abortion?

Or, we could rephrase this question thusly: Where is the moral outrage among authentic Christians that their religion has been hijacked by the right wing political establishment?

RELATIVE KNOWLEDGE

2005-10-09T05:52:00.000-05:00

My brother-in-law offers a thoughtful speculation.

Historians and archaeologists often wonder, "What happened to Mayan civilization? It seems to have simply faded away for no apparent reason."

And then there's this: hurricanes kill and displace thousands along the Gulf Coast, in Mexico, and in Central America. Mudslides bury entire villages. Flood waters wash away every vestige of human existence in their path.

Now we know what happened to Mayan civilization. Kudos to brother Rolando.

PUNCH AND JUDY

2005-10-01T12:49:00.000-05:00

NYT reporter Judith Miller, jailed apparently because she refused to give up her source on the Valerie Plame case, has been release. The official story is that she finally received a waiver from her source, VP Cheney's aid "Scooter" Libby. But Libby's lawyer claims they provided Miller with a waiver almost a year ago. Those of us following the story from day one already knew it was Libby.

So, was Judy sitting in jail because of bureaucratic foul-up? Not likely. The emerging concensus among those following this story, notable Arianna Huffington, is that the meglomaniac Judy was simply posturing for a bit of First Amendment fame, hoping to surpass the record of Venessa Leggett as a journalist bravely refusing to expose her source. How noble!

"Excuse, Mr. Wells, may we borrow your time machine? Thank you."
"Right this way Ms. Miller, watch your head."
"Do I still have to serve time in jail for not revealing my source?"
"Oh, yes, absolutely. But not in Virginia or Maryland."
"No?"
"No."
"Mr. Wells, could you take us to the Guatanamo Bay Prison camp? We have a new inmate."

THE LITTLE GUY

2005-10-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

So cute, unspoiled and irrepressible. Long before misguided but egotistical liberals and right-wing religious wingnuts fill his head with stupid notions of "salvation", "social utopia", and "a better tomorrow."

"I'm an earth-pig, people. Don't talk to me about heaven, hell, or the price of time-shares in Cancun."

GINGERALE AND CRACKERS

2005-09-28T14:16:00.000-05:00

...instead of champagne and cavier.

I'm now a doctor of philosophy. The successful and enlightening oral defense of thesis was quickly followed by a rapid descent into the bedlam of gastro-intestinal infection, be it virule of parasitic.

In other words, I got stressed out. Spoke with committee members about necessary revisions. Passed. Came home. And fell ill to some germ making the usual rounds.

Funny thing about this germ. The absolute need to vomit is followed by...not vomiting. Thus, one's stomach remains for, say, all day and night twisted up in the gut.

Torture, from the Latin Torquere, to twist.

I'm now on day five of this trial by intestinal fire, toasting Schwepp's in small sips. And I've spoken with friends and family who have also experienced this unique variation on the usual gut wrenchers of a bug, stomach flu, food poisoning, falling in love, pregnancy, and waking up to a mortgage, mounting debt, and no paycheck. No, this new twist, so to speak, on intestinal malaise (the source of all social prejudice, Nietzsche said), is far more cunning and wicked.

The pain at first seems endless. Then a gradual relaxing of the stomach muscles. And then...a rapid contracting and cramping of the stomach. Still, you are unable to vomit. Back and forth you go. No relief. I imagine this is how a Raid-ed tree roach feels as its gritty six legs wind down and his overturn body ceases to squirm on the kitchen floor.

PRESS HERE FOR BLOOD AND MONEY

2005-09-19T07:52:00.000-05:00

The belief that in the United States we enjoy "freedom of the press" is so pervasive, that few of us are willing to question the specifics of that belief. As it turns out, this so-called 'freedom' is more myth than reality.

Hunter over at Daily Kos has an informative post about this enormous problem. The conflicts of interest between news media conglomerates and parent companies securing high-dollar construction contracts is so blatant it amounts to a sort of corporate "Piss off!" aimed squarely at the citizenry.

One example: Cable news outlet MSNBC was one of the more enthusiastic cheerleaders for bloodshed in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. MSNBC is owned by General Electric. G.E. secured billions of dollars worth of reconstruction contracts for the power grid in Iraq before the war. In other words, MSNBC did not function as a new media outlet questioning government motives and questioning the party line; rather MSNBC was little more than a glitzy PR firm doing advance work for G.E. in its bid to set up shop in the Middle East.

One could conceivably argue that there might ultimately be some poetic justice to MSNBC's sycophantic role in the quest for blood and money. The situation in Iraq is increasingly dire, something news watchers may be unaware of given the round-the-clock coverage of Katrina and its aftermath. In fact, while the camera lens has been redirected to the Gulf Coast, the death toll in Iraq has reached staggering levels--over a thousand deaths attributed to 'insurgent attacks' in the last month alone. So, one might conclude, when all is said and done the corporate 'investment' in Iraq may prove a bust, as it looks increasingly likely the U.S. will have to withdraw and leave the Iraqis to rape, maim and murder each other in the civil war that is perfectly inevitable.

However, the unprincipled profiteers who sit at the helm of G.E., Halliburton, Brown & Root, Fluor, Bechtel, et al, have already amassed billions from Uncle Sam, padding their Swiss bank accounts and furnishing their island getaways. Those who will lose are the workers hired for these war-zone boondoggles: those who haven't been kidnapped or killed will just be out of a job.
Some in the blogosphere seem to think that the news media coverage of Katrina's aftermath represents a return to good, old fashioned hard-nosed journalism. CNNs Anderson Cooper and NBCs Brian Williams have ripped into the Bush Administration again and again in front of the camera. And Bush's approval rating has plummeted. But while the news media has been rightly criticizing Bush and his political cronies over the mishandling of the hurricane rescue and relief operations, no mention has been made of the countless reconstruction contracts secured by the Friends of Cheney for rebuilding the Gulf Coast infrastructure. In fact, Halliburton lobbyist Joe Allbaugh was on the ground in the disaster zone on Wednesday, August 31, securing contracts before FEMA even knew about the deplorable conditions in the Super Dome and Convention Center.

The priorities of the Bush Administration are sorely lacking in ethical clarity and principle. This unsettling fact, however, throws the spotlight off the equally unpricipled and morally evil motives of our civil engineering construction industry. Build bigger roads; lobby to kill mass transit projects. Drill for more oil; lobby to kill environmental causes. Build more levees; lobby to kill wetlands protection. Hire illegal foreign workers; damn the American working class.

It's a sad state of affairs that, dare I say it, only a full-scale revolution in the streets could change.

JUST DESERTS

2005-09-17T11:27:00.000-05:00

Or should I say, "Just Desserts", suggesting the barren wasteland of the American political landscape?

"People get the government they deserve." This oft-quoted bit of cynical wisdom could be attributed to one of the American founding fathers, or even an ancient Chinese philosopher. I don't know what the origin is. But it does seem a fitting epitaph to the United States as it stumbles into social and political decline, burden by unprecedented levels of government corruption and cronyism, bankrupting our finances as well as our national intellectual curiosity.

The relationship between the current White House Administration and corporate construction firms is obvious, insidious, and yet largely unexamined in the national news media. One has to ask: Just what is it about this relationship that newsroom editors and producers refuse to uncover for the American people to see? Surely there is no shortage of intrepid reporters eager to expose Halliburton as the corrupt, unpatriotic company that it is. Money before country every time.

To the people who voted for George W. Bush, it's not enough to ask them, as Michael Moore has, if they feel better now that thousands of troops in Iraq or hurrican victims along the Gulf Coast have died because of poor planning, federal incompetence, and inadequate support. Most of the Bush-supporters I know would angrily tell you Bush is their man no matter how abysmal certain situations are. They simply can't accept the fact that he has anything to do with failure. He's tough, conservative, Christian, and he's not a Clinton.

The mention of Clinton--always inevitable when debating the failures of Republicans--raises an interesting issue. When Clinton was president, everything that went wrong was his fault, despite the fact the Republicans held a majority in the Senate, derailed government, and themselves voted the infamous tax hike.

But when Bush is the leader, nothing is his fault. Not the soaring budget deficit. Not the increasingly disastrous war in Iraq. Not the escalating setbacks in Afghanistan. Not the freedom of Osama bin Laden. Nothing. He can do no wrong. All problems are the result of other, extenuating circumstances. A truly impressive instance of compartmentalization.

Now we read that the same construction companies with contracts in Iraq have secured no-bid contracts to rebuild the infrastructure along the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Bush's unprincipled political strategist Karl Rove has been appointed to oversee the reconstruction. What could be a more obvious example of corrupt cronyism than this? And yet, the Bush-supporters defiantly exclaim, "So what!" Or "Who cares?"

Saddest of all are the parents who have lost children to the war in Iraq, convinced that their loss must serve some higher purpose. That Bush would not deceive the nation--not like Clinton. That the U.S. is better off for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein. That talk of corrupt no-bid reconstruction contracts are just the Bush-haters making noise. That it's better to fight the terrorists on their turf rather than here on American soil.

One can't argue with the logic behind this viewpoint. It's immutable and not open to any change of course. Some people call this attitude steadfast resolve and strength of character. Actually, it's more akin to stubborn ignorance tempered with cynicism. Even when confronted with the facts of failure and misguided decision-making, they are unable to change course. They are so proud of their single-minded clarity, their perceived courage, their resolve. History, they say, proves again and again that persistence pays off.

Persistence does pay off. But only when guided by reason, facts, and imagination. Bush is not persistent. He's just repetitious. And therefore stupid.

THE ROVE STOVE

2005-09-16T12:55:00.000-05:00

So, what's cookin' on the ol' Rove Stove these days? Bush announced last night in New Orleans that his top political strategist Karl Rove will head up the reconstruction of Jazz City and the Gulf Coast. Josh Marshall has an excellent post about this high-level graft.

The brazen, in-your-face cronyism of the reconstruction is truly astounding. Having made billions in Iraq (but with no success in actually restoring order to the country), the Bush-Cheney machine which includes Halliburton, Bechtel, and Kellogg Brown & Root, have been granted no-bid contracts to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Why is the news media not harping on this?

In addition, Bush suspended the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act guaranteeing fair pay for workers who labor in the reconstruction projects. That means that the poor who had no means to evacuate Katrina will be paid substandard salaries, apparently so the overclass Republicans can ensure that the workers remain poor. This is called compassionate conservatism.

CAN I GO PEE PEE?

2005-09-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

A quick thinking Reuters photographer snapped this little gem at the recent UN conference in which Emperor George explained to the world the vital necessity of combatting terrorism. While it's true there is considerable hypocrisy at the UN regarding human rights and terrorism, with countries like Syria chairing human rights commisions, the idea of Emperor George II lecturing the world about the need to combat terrorism is another instance of the pot calling the kettle black.

Dear George: Know anything about U.S.-sponsored terrorism in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Cambodia, Indonesia...?

The note was penciled for Secretary of State Condi Rice. It reads: "I think I may need a bathroom break."

Evidently, George is suffering from some cogntive dissonance regarding bodily functions: He thinks he may need a bathroom break.

Till now, I thought the various tasks of the Secretary of State were limited to matters of national interest in the international sphere and shopping for expensive shoes while the poor in New Orleans drown. Now we know: She's George's nanny.

AMERICAN PLATO

2005-09-14T20:30:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite themes in Plato's philosophy is Socrates' distinction between myth and reality. Of course, Plato didn't mean by this distinction that myth is 'what you think' while reality is 'what you see', the intellect versus the senses. Quite the contrary. Plato favored the world of thinking, wisdom, and memory over the deceptive world of the senses. The intellect was literally 'in-formed' by the unchanging, absolute truth residing somewhere 'out there' in the heavenly cosmos. The perfect triangle, for example, does not and could never exist in the material world, no matter how accurate your protractor and straight edge; it can exist only in its transcendent Form.

Myth presented something of a problem for Plato. Here were stories of ancient Greece handed down orally and eventually recorded with the burgeoning technology known as writing. They weren't factual accounts, so they didn't really fall within the fallible realm of the material-sense world. And yet, they clearly weren't rational stories revealing an abiding logic or intelligent design, so to speak. But these stories were very effective with the masses.

In fact, Plato realizes that in drawing a blueprint for the ideal city-state in the Republic, myths would serve an invaluable purpose keeping the masses in line, what Socrates calls the iron and bronze class of farmers, artisans, and other producers and practitioners, who he considers incapable of comprehending the more complicated logic of philosophy.

It's no accident that Leo Strauss, who many believe to be the intellectual father of neoconservatism, was an avid admirer of Plato, and in particular his class-based design of the perfect republic. Strauss in fact draws a direct line from Plato to Machiavelli to himself as vanguards of the best form of realpolitik.

As much as I dislike Strauss and his neoconservative progeny who now dictate policy in Washington, it should now be obvious that he was on to a universal truth about the masses. That truth, which both Plato and Machiavelli knew so well, is that the people, a nation's masses, prefer myth over reality. That is, they will always choose the comfort and assurance of a myth rather than a complicated, gritty truth.

Examples:
1) Most Americans prefer the myth that we live in a democracy; rather than the complicated, gritty truth that we live in a constitutional republic with the levers of power controled by big corporate interests.

2) Most Americans prefer the myth that going to war will unite the nation, vanquish our enemies and eliminate the 'evil doers'; rather than the complicated, gritty truth that going to war will cost thousands of lives, cost billions of dollars, traumatize an entire generation of soldiers' families, create more enemies abroad, divide the nation, and invite more terrorism.

3) Most Americans prefer the myth that they are middle class; rather than the complicated, gritty truth that they are working class, and that no matter how shiny the new kitchen, no matter how fancy the car, no matter how stylish the dress, no matter how articulate when speaking and writing, no matter how high the college education, they will forever remain working class.

4) Most Americans pefer the myth that the United States represents freedom and human rights to the rest of the world and that our government would never do anything morally wrong or evil or irreligious in the world; rather than the complicated, gritty truth that the U.S. government is an agressive, greedy imperial power that cares very little about human rights in the many regions it has invaded to protect coporate interests or shore up political image; places like Nicaragua, El Salvador, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Haiti, Angola, Guatemala, and Liberia, just to name a few.

There are many others; too many to recount here. The point is, from a political and sociological viewpoint, Plato was right: the masses do prefer myth over reality. It looks, smells, tastes, sounds, and feels so much better. And why should anyone want to not believe in these myths, dismantle them and confront the complicated, gritty truths of the human condition and respond to the call of conscience to make the world a better place?

"Would you hand me the remote. I want to see what's on TV."

RADICAL CHANGE OF HEART

2005-09-08T14:27:00.000-05:00

Halliburton reconstruction contracts along the Gulf Coast brokered before the search and rescue was complete.
FEMA funding to a predominantly Republican Florida county far south of hurricane destruction.
Staged presidential photo-ops with firefighters which halt rescue operations.
A press corp with little integrity not agressive enough in challenging White House comments.
Classism and racism among adminstration officials and conservative commentators so blatant one wonders just what it would take to rouse popular conscience.

Until now I've held out for positive political change in the United States, hoping that the Democrats would miraculously show some backbone and challenge the enormously corrupt Republicans as well as the pernicious ties between corporate influence and government. Today we learn that Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) chaired Michael Brown's confirmation hearing. Nice goin', Joe.

I had hoped for the mainstream news media (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS) to report the facts and and stop accepting verbatim adminstration talking points and counter-factuals, that, for example, Governor Blanco didn't call out the National Guard in time. She issued a state of emergency and alerted the Guard on Friday before the Hurricane hit.

I had hoped that working people who voted for Bush would finally snap out of the trance induced by conservative dogma and Rovian propaganda and see the truth of this adminstration's corruption, graft, greed, political cronyism, and all around inhumanity.

My hope for positive political change however is melting away. I'm beginning to think that the only path toward real change, absent greedy and inhumane corporate influence, absent phoney patriotism and outright lies from the White House, absent a party-line news media, with real men and women of integrity and moral conscience sitting in Congress and a President who isn't bone-deep stupid and led by the nose, necessitates something close to the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France.

I suspect, however, that if a revolution were to come, afterwards we would find that a Halliburton subsidiary constructed the guillotines, and is over-billing the new government.

INVENTING TRADITION

2005-09-08T05:28:00.000-05:00

What do you do when you're the nation's leader but it's obvious to most everyone you failed miserably at leading in a time of crisis? Well, you can flee the country and seek asylum on some far away island. Or you can tap Karl Rove and create an image counter to your obvious failure; you produce propaganda that, dare I say it, Joseph Goebbels would be proud of.

In the photo above, members of the New York Fire Department were ordered to appear next to the President in a contrived photo-op manufactured by the White House, obviously seeking to conjure up memories of Bush's (phoney and contrived) heroism in the wake of 9/11--a recreation of the famed 'bullhorn moment'. In fact, rescue operations had to cease during Bush's little stroll through the debris. Helicopter rescues especially were put on hold, as the airspace was cleared for the super-duper important guy.

Hey, what's more important? Saving lives or making the Emperor look good?

I've long been intrigued and bothered by the popular preference for myth over reality: the myth of popular democracy when what we really have is a constitutional republic guided by corporate interests; the myth of equal justice for all when what we have is a judicial system guided by racism, cronyism, and careerism; the myth of a government morally superior to the rest of the world when it invades foreign lands to protect or further corporate interest, slaughtering countless civilians (Iraqis, Vietnamese, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Afghanis, etc).

So you thought in the wake of Katrina the dogged persistence and heroism of a few journalists signaled the end of the constant media parroting of White House lies, that we were bearing witness to a much needed and overdue sea change in reporting about American politics and the thoroughly unprofessional repetition of Rovian propaganda without responsible, journalistic fact-checking.

You'd be wrong. Myth over reality. Sadly, it seems to be the most popular course for this or any society. Reality, after all, is so gritty, complicated, unpromising, unpredictable, and uncompromising.

Update: it's worth noting that the U.S. government has barred journalists from accompanying search and rescue operations in New Orleans, or from photographing any of the retrieved corpses. Let's see how long it takes for journalists to dutifully oblige, tuck their tails, and say, "OK, Uncle Sam. You're the boss." After all, such journalism would be dirty, complicated and unpatriotic.

Double Not-So-Secret Update: Josh Marshall writes that CNN has filed a lawsuit against government agencies barring press coverage of victim retrieval.

KATRINA TIMELINE

2005-09-07T11:53:00.000-05:00

"Think Progress" has posted an excellent timeline of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans, beginning Friday, August 26, the day Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco declared a state of emergency. Evidently, Bush returned to Ranch Crawford on Tuesday evening, August 30. Secretary of State Condi Rice took in the U.S. Open and shopped for shoes in New York on Thursday, September 1. By Friday, Karl Rove's 'blame everyone else' strategy went into operation. In the meantime, hundreds if not thousands were stilled trapped without food, water, vital medicines, and safe refuge. Curiously, as Josh Marshall informs us at Talking Points Memo, Halliburton lobbyist Joe Allbaugh was already on the ground in Louisiana by September 1, coordinating private-sector reconstruction contracts.

Republican Priorities: First-Profit...Last-Human Life.

BUSH SPEAK WITH FORKED TONGUE

2005-09-07T10:33:00.000-05:00

Chris Floyd over at Empire Burlesque has an excellent post which--if this were a sane, rational world--would put to rest once and for all the Bush team's spin and dodge of responsiblity regarding Katrina disaster response and relief efforts.

Snippet: "On Saturday, August 27, 2005--two days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall--President George W. Bush assumed responsibility for the coordination of 'all disaster relief efforts' in the State of Louisiana. This is the specific, undisputed language of Bush's declaration of a State of Emergency, issued that day by the White House, and still available for viewing on the White House website. The responsibility for coordinating all disaster relief efforts in New Orleans clearly rested with the White House."

Now what we need--again, if this were a sane, rational world--is one of the White House press corp to muster all of his or her intestinal fortitude, stand, and ask Scott McClelland why after the President's announcement he failed to show real leadership, rally the various aid organizations and the National Guard, and lead the emergency response and relief effort in New Orleans. It would, of course, be something of a rhetorical question because those of us who are in fact reality based know the answer: George W. Bush cannot lead. He is mentally, emotionally, and intellectually incapable of leading. He is, however, very good at mismanagement, lack of foresight, irresponsibility, myopic 'staying the course', and generalized failure.

WELCOME TO THE BOOMTOWN

2005-09-06T08:01:00.000-05:00

Ever the spectacle, the U.S.'s Queen Mum, Barbara Bush, toured the Astrodome yesterday amid the sea of Katrina disaster victims. In an interview on APM's "Marketplace", she described the situation as " kind of scary" that "they all want to stay in Texas." Indeed, from the vantage point of American aristocracy, thousands of poor, displaced, homeless people who are very pissed off at the dubious 'Crown Prince' make a frightening constituency.

Do you hear that George II? Be afraid. Be very afraid. Because the rabble are not please. Not please at all.

The hurricane victims, who she described as "underprivileged anyway," have traded up from the squalid living conditions in New Orleans to cots and crowds in a sports arena, "so this is working very well for them."

Perhaps we could invite them all down to Galveston this December for the annual Dickens on the Strand. What with all the horse-drawn buggies, top hats, and velvet apparel, we simply don't have enough poor folk to really set the mood.

2005-09-05T14:44:00.000-05:00

Just ask the Aardvark. He knows everything.
(About 26% of the time.)

GODSPEED

2005-09-05T07:18:00.000-05:00

Given the horror literally bubbling up in New Orleans, I was bracing for the inevitable fundamentalist Christian response that Mardi Gras headquarters is the new Sodom, a city of sin so despicable that God had brought his wrath down upon the evil-doers.

On cue, as noted by Max Blumental over at the Huffington Post, Rick Scarborough of Vision America and the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration has declared--evidently with divine insight--that the catastrophe is the result of homosexuality, bestiality, and the withdrawal of Israelis from Gaza.

See how cleverly these evils dovetail. This step from conjuries (a grouping of unrelated phenomena) to correlation and conceptual theme is, of course, a hallmark of the biblical text itself, but the myopia of right-wing "Christians" has perfected it to chilling inelegance. The contrast to a Joel Olsteen who speaks only of optimism, hopefulness, and respect for one's fellow man is remarkable and significant.

RESPONSE-ABILITY

2005-09-05T05:42:00.000-05:00

With Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett feeding the NY Times the usual spin and outright falsehoods (for example: Governor Blanco didn't declare a state-of-emergency to allow federal assistance sooner--false), we can see that all the fine talk among conservatives about personal accountability and responsibility are...well, just fine talk. Shrub the Puppet obviously has no moral compass: his staff directs him to do this and say that about Iraq and New Orleans, scores of people die, and yet he never once has owned up to his own or his administration's responsibility in making costly mistakes.

I wonder if there might be a tipping point in popular opinion about Bush. His supporters seem incapable of recognizing his mistakes, his inability to resolve crises (energy in California, war in Iraq, flooding in New Orleans), or his astonishing lack of real leadership. Poll numbers seem to be approaching some sort of watershed, but the spin machine has been pretty successful to date in reversing any defeating tides.

A note to conservatives: The Bush administration has not declared homosexuality illegal. It has not caught Osama bin Laden. It has not succeeded in dismantling Social Security. It has not addressed the problems of a failing nation-wide power grid. It has not secured the border with Mexico. And it has little control over the escalating cost of gasoline. What do you see in this guy? Are you really seduced by that phoney country lawyer routine?

Bush and his buddies have, however, run the national deficit up to its highest level ever. They've gotten the U.S embroiled in a very dire, entractable conflict in the Middle East. They've stood by while both North Korea and Iran develop nuclear capabilities. And they've done nothing to slow the one-way trade deficit with China. And yet, no one in this administration is capability--dare I say man enough--to admit to mistakes, and take responsibility for failures. A sign of cowardice and lack of character.

CLUELESS ABOUT POVERTY

2005-09-04T19:47:00.000-05:00

I've spoken with a lot of people who keep asking the same question: "Why didn't the people of New Orleans just leave before the hurricane hit?" Everyone asking this question is either a solid member of the overclass, or one of those deluded proles who really and truly believes he or she is part of the A-crowd, even though they work 24/7 with only 1 week of vacation per year, have no country-club memberships, have neither academic of vocational tenure, and earn well-below $100,000 annually. This inquisitive crowd has no idea whatsoever about the realities, the day-to-day brutalities and even trauma, of the working poor in this country.

Yes, believe it or not, poor folk can't simply load up the SUV with a pullman filled with clean clothes and fine toiletries, and head out for an extended weekend at the Holiday Inn or Aunt Sally's ranch house in the country. In a phrase: they simply don't have the money or the resources.

Wake up! people. And smell the flood water.

CLASS CONFLICT

2005-09-04T07:37:00.000-05:00

Two major stories now dominate the news media: the wrath of Huricane Katrina and the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The two vying for air time exemplify perfectly the conflict of underclass versus overclass in America. There can be little doubt that the incompetence of government officials in responding to the catastrophe was nourished by an overclass contempt for the poor and destitute. And one wonders to what extent a huricane surivor stretched out on a cot in the Astrodome can impact the shape of the balance of the Supreme Court.

REHNQUIST IS DEAD

2005-09-03T23:26:00.000-05:00

The ailing Supreme Courst Chief Justic William Rehnquist has died. He was surely the most conservative member of the court.

Update: Bush is 'amending' his selection of John Roberts from Associate Justice (to replace Sandra Day O'Connor) to Chief Justice (to replace Rehnquist). The confirmation hearings have been postponed until after WR's funeral. This change of course alters the landscape of nomination, confimation and selection enormously. With Roberts being tapped to replace Rehnquist, Democrats could conceivably argue that the selection to replace O'Connor be far more moderate, and a woman. Blatantly obvious is that the aristocrats in the White House are making up their strategy as they go along. Let's remember that Roberts was considered to be on an ideological par with O'Connor, but now he's said to be right to fill Rehnquist's shoes. Ad hoc Supreme Court justice--just like the 2000 election.

DC SHUFFLE

2005-09-03T22:52:00.000-05:00

It truly is astounding, the political merry-go-round blame game spinning at the speed of sound following the recent visit by one Katrina, possibly the worst huricane catastrophe to ever strike the United States.

There appear to be two dominant views of the human catastrophe in New Orleans: the personal and the bureaucratic. The victims and those who empathize with them are expressing a collective outrage at the powers-that-be for the appallingly belated response to the many-sided crisis. The Bush cronies at the helms of FEMA and Homeland Security, rather predictably, are unable to accept responsibility for their complete lack of leadership; they talk about the weather.

What will be the long-term effects of this disaster on American politics? It might seem that ineptitude among Republican leaders at the federal level might lead to Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008. Or possibly that the mistakes of Democratic leaders might lead to Republican victories.

The problem, as I see it, is one of class and race, underclass and overclass, and not left and right. Thus, what will be debated will be irreconcilable views of left and right, instead of the injustice and trauma of overclass indifference to the plight of the expanding underclass.

The Republicans have not succeeded so far in dismantling all of the New Deal, but they are at the helm and steering us into the flood waters of late nineteenth-century oligarchy. The catastrophe in New Orleans is analogous to a garment factory fire, with doors locked and windows barred.