justkem's blog

I’m putting off a promised rant about the huge event I went to last night in celebration of working women (which included, among other things, a hot legs contest… we’ve come a long way, baby) in order to speak up about something much more near and dear to me.

It’s the National Day of Silence today. A day when everyone, regardless of any personal beliefs about whether or not homosexuality is right or wrong in the eyes of God, is encouraged to consider for one single day what it feels like to be forced not to speak when others are free to do so. I think we all agree that it is simply not tolerable for a society founded on a belief in civil liberty and personal freedoms to selectively practice hatred and dehumanization towards the actions or feelings of a group of people just because they believe that what they do is wrong.

I would hope that we all recognize the simple truth that some people (middle school students, members of the military, etc..) must hide who they are in order to protect their careers and/or their overall ability to live a life free from physical or verbal abuse. And this is wrong.

What are you doing to celebrate this year? I’m blogging, and I’m staying silent at work insofar as I can.  I’m also writing my congressional representatives to let them know how I feel about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  I encourage everyone to do the same.  Today, not tomorrow, because some things just shouldn’t wait. 

Wouldn’t it be great if in 2010, we supported our troops by letting them come home to be greeted by the ones they loved, regardless of gender or sexual orientation?

Respectfully silent, hoping for that day…

I've held back on talking about this for a few days to let this whole thing stew. Sometimes my knee-jerk reaction to political speeches ages over time. I read the people who disagree with me, and I find myself agreeing with them. I wanted to make sure that this wasn't one of those times.

It's not.

What I really think was a well-intentioned attempt to explain just what it means to be down and out when you're not in Beverly Hills or a San Fransisco mansion on Billionaires Row turned into the sort of thing you say at the water cooler, not in the board room. People keep trying to contextualize it, or soften it up, but the simple truth is that being an executive means that you emphasize the best qualities of the people you lead, and are very specific about the bad-- the only reason you mention them is if you see a problem that you are ready to address.

As a candidate in the primaries, this is not his task. This is a job that parents and educators need to address with young people, and that adults who may find themselves falling into the sort of security blanket isolationism Obama is talking about need to figure out for themselves. I have to wonder what the ramifications would be if he said something along similar lines that "everyone knew was true" about Ahmadinejad. After all, he says things about us that I'm sure resonate with Iranians, and even some Americans. Doesn't it make sense for us to be just as honest when we look at the world stage?

As pundits, sure. We can say what we want at the water cooler, and elect leaders who we feel understand what we're saying and can translate our sentiments into strong foreign policy.  As leaders? No. You don't look to the CEO of a large company to say that the problems with the company stem from the ineptitude of the workers. This may be something that everyone in the board room knows is true, but it's *not* the way to move forward and inspire better performance in the future. The correct response to this question should have been, "I like to think that it's a vanishingly small number of American voters who look at race as a deciding factor when they choose their candidate. My campaign is not about racial differences, it's about speaking to the needs of every American." End of story, no thesaurus needed.

I've been asked that a lot lately... I certainly don't fit the model that the GOP traditionally targets when they build their ads. I'm pro-abortion, generally against religion (or at the very least, against the concept of faith in others to define what is inherently unknowable, particularly when that faith in others is used to drive policy or fused in any way with the military), anti-war, and pretty open-minded when it comes to love and the different ways that people choose to express it. Why on Earth would I want to vote for someone who is "strong on terrorism", pro-sanctity-of-marriage, has religious nutjob preachers endorsing him, and who probably sprinkles ground up hippy on his breakfast cereal? Why?!?

Well, for one thing, I'm thoroughly disillusioned with the Democratic nominees. Clinton and Obama both have policies on board that I don't just disagree with, but I think are actually outright *dangerous* in the economic waters we're surfing at the moment. Just because we have computers doesn't mean that we're immune to the possibility that China and India will wreck our economy. They have computers too, now, and they work for much less money. Some of them even speak English. Some of them have Masters degrees. A cheap, bright, and well-educated workforce is damned difficult to compete with, and I don't think that either Obama or Hillary really sees this economic reality for the threat it is. McCain was the only candidate who had the balls to tell the people in Michigan, "Sorry, those jobs aren't coming back." I respect that.

(But then, I work tech support in a call center, so perhaps I'm a bit over-sensitive to these issues.)

Next, let's talk health care. Hillary and Obama both think that the solution to the problem lies in relying on the government to provide an essential good, and trusting the government to run it efficiently and fairly. I've been on both sides of the fence with this one, as the rising costs of health care for employers do inhibit economic growth and force employers to cut back on their work force, or at the very least, cut back on the benefits that they provide to that work force. When our contract goes up for renegotiation next year, we will very likely be striking over the rising cost of health care and our company's desire to pass it forward... so yeah, I can see the benefit there. I don't particularly like the idea of striking-- it makes those smart, young, desperate Indian job-seekers seem more and more like a better investment than home grown disgruntled wage earners who complain about being paid cushy salaries, relatively speaking.

But then we run into the crucial problems that I simply cannot ignore. The first, and most compelling, is quality. I have a very hard time believing that our federal government will manage health care for the entire nation better than it does for our troops, and the VA's approach to health care does not inspire confidence in me. I could phrase it more strongly than that, and probably should, but I'll be nice out of respect for the underfunded people who work there and try to do their job well. Likewise, I look at our public school system, and I can't help but notice that health care in the ghetto might be a bit... well... I think chaotic is the word I'm looking for here. I seriously doubt that either candidate is prepared to look at the *real* cost of introducing potentially millions of people into a system that currently just tough it out until it gets so bad that they need to go to the hospital, and I'm truly skeptical that the reduction in bad debt at those hospitals would actually result in lower costs to the government. So, we have a sharp increase in demands for services, and a whole lot of new jobs, being paid by the government, who are paid by the taxpayers, and the rise in demand will lead to a rise in costs, which leads to a rise in taxes, which leads to recession...

Not a good recipe, given the current value of the dollar. Wall Street is nervous, and I think we should be. I'm by no means an expert on anything having to do with the economy, but this seems like a no-brainer here. The economy is not doing well, and introducing new stress factors into something that is already a bit cracked is a Bad Idea. And then there's the whole euthenasia arugment... I'm in favor of a person's right to choose death with dignity when they have a debilitating and fatal condition that will end in excrutiating pain. I'm less in favor of it if the government perscribes it as a means of reducing the burden on health care costs. But that's an aside that isn't really my main objection-- it's just an ethical consideration worth noting.

And then, finally, there's the war. Why would I support McCain, when I am-- in all fairness-- a peace loving hippy? Well, partially because I don't trust Obama or Clinton to hire people who plan for worst case scenarios. I expect that they will hire people who do what the people want them to do and sell it well, as indicated by the opinon polls. My general opinion of the American public is not high enough for me to be happy with that option. McCain, on the other hand, seems pretty solid on his foreign policy. He gets it. The world is filled with assholes that do Bad Things, and some of those Bad Things are either potentially dangerous to American interests or so utterly deplorable that we cannot afford to look the other way and still expect to sleep well at night. (Hello, Darfur??) Nothing would please me more than the secure knowledge that we could pull all of our troops out of Iraq today, and wind up with a better situation tomorrow than we have today. The very real possibility that we would wind up with a worse scenario tomorrow than we have today if we followed the opinion polls on our presence there (both at home and in Iraq) makes me want to leave this to experts who have a very nuanced and careful approach to the issue. I trust McCain to look for those individuals carefully, and not give a damn whether or not they look pretty or speak eloquently.

4,000 soldiers, and everyone else who is directly and indirectly impacted by America's approach to the war on terror (roughly 6.6 billion people, in other words) deserve this from our next President. And that's why I'm voting for John McCain.

He’s baaaack. He’s run in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004, and his Olympics style effort to be the Energizer campaigner, regardless of whether or not his ideas have any hope of making it to the White House, continues. I confess, I voted for the guy in 2000. A lot of the things he has to say make sense to me. What I like about him is his ability to cut through the crap and say the unpopular thing. It’s unpopular to say that spending 3.8 million dollars in a single month working on your image to get elected to political office is a criminally irresponsible waste of resources, but it’s reality. It’s unpopular to point out that choosing to buy the new gadget with a “stimulus” instead of paying off the old debt is not healthy for the economy, but it’s reality. It’s *exceedingly* unpopular to point out that the Western world is flatly incapable (through force, through occupation, or through spending) of moving Islamist rhetoric to the comfortable middle ground of tolerance for economic practices which *do* threaten the traditional way of life and government that provide fertile ground for raising new generations to believe in enemies of their faith, but it’s reality.

In 2000, I was only barely applying what I had learned in economics and history to the decisions I made in the voting booth. I was six months pregnant, and I was disillusioned with the realities of life five years out of high school… for some reason, I had dropped out of college earnestly believing that just being smart would generate wealth in my life. I knew I would find my niche without tying myself to a curriculum that I didn’t enjoy studying.

What I didn’t see was a job market that reflected those beliefs. I saw a world that, as Hobbes pointed out, was nasty and brutish, and not at all promising. Ralph Nader spoke to the idealist in me that wanted it to be different. Where privilege was not so much a privilege as it was a right. Where the evil capitalists that made life hard were overthrown by the forces of “reason”.

Eight years have changed me a lot more than they have changed him… understandably. When I look at his blog, I see a guy who is still pointing to the right problems. Multi-million dollar silver parachutes for corporate executives when workers on the front lines can’t afford to keep up with the rising cost of living do hurt the economy, and the current political culture is not doing anything to change it. The difference is that I no longer feel that it is government’s responsibility to stop it from happening. It’s on the backs of the people that these changes need to occur, or not at all. If corporations choose to cut wages to the point where workers cannot pay the bills, then those workers will find other jobs. If those jobs aren’t available because corporations have cut the costs in such a way that private industry can’t compete, then the economy will suffer. If corporations don’t realize that loyal and well paid employees produce better work and better profits, then this is ultimately a problem for the business schools to address. They’ll do it effectively, or the economy will collapse, and not an ounce of assistance from the government will change that, either way.

So, Nader, I must respectfully decline your offer to cure all of our social ills. I agree with you on many issues, but I don’t think your solutions are SMART enough. They may be specific. They may be measurable. But they are neither attainable, realistic, nor are they timely… and frankly, I doubt they ever will be. Nasty, brutish, and short, this life is what we make of it. The government can’t solve it for us, and it frequently makes things worse when it tries.

A little background first… (link)

SOLIDARITY APPEAL: Defend Tukwila Teachers Threatened with Termination for Antiwar Student Walkout

Nov 26, 2007
By Tukwila Teachers and Students Solidarity Committee

*Urgent Call for Solidarity*
Defend Teachers Threatened With Termination for Antiwar Student Walkout
BRIEF BACKGROUND:
On November 16th, over 1,000 students in Washington State walked out to protest the war in Iraq and the presence of military recruiters in public schools. Students at Foster High School in Tukwila, Washington organized and 150 walked out, saying “Money for Schools, Not War.”

Foster students rallied at the school flagpole, marched down to the I-5 overpass, and then marched to the Tukwila City Hall. The march and rally were student generated and entirely peaceful.

In reaction the Tukwila School District has done the following:

• Suspended one Social Studies teacher, Brett Rogers, who supported his students in a student generated democratic movement
• Threatened administrative action against five other teachers
• Threatened to discipline students for exercising their First Amendment Right to free speech

And now for a good-old-fashioned rant. Regardless of your position on the Iraq war, I think everyone can agree that high schoolers taking an interest in politics is good. I think we can also agree that educators, particularly educators who teach subjects like… say… social studies should be encouraging their students to form opinions and be passionate about them. Apathy is the greatest enemy of Democracy, and it reigns supreme in our high schools.

So, at a time in my life when I’m feeling personally just a wee bit frustrated by the system, I get a link from a friend of mine who teaches in the Seattle area, and it frankly pisses me off (the teachers involved are his friends from his old school, and he’s not the sort of guy to keep his mouth shut in the face of stupidity– but it would still piss me off even if I had no emotional connection to anyone involved). I remember when L.A. was burning in the wake of the Rodney King trial. Many of us wanted to walk out in support for all of the people who had ever been wrongfully beaten down by the system, whose pleas for a revision in the way that justice is carried out were met with a deafening silence. I remember how mad I was. I suspect that kids today, many of them with fathers and mothers who are out on extended tours, have already come home in a casket, or (more common, certainly) have come home missing crucial parts of their psyche, their body, or c) all of the above, have very strong feelings about Iraq. At least I hope they do. I know I would if I were that age today.

One day, folks. We’re not talking about a massive campaign to shut down the school, we’re talking about one day’s worth of our tax dollars going to help our kids understand that their voices count… that their enthusiasm and desire to make a difference are contagious and important.

If you feel the same way about this, I’d encourage you to drop a line to the school administrators and defend these kids’ right to learn something important about civil disobedience. “We don’t want to hear you, and we don’t want you to teach kids that they should be heard” simply isn’t the message that I feel we should be paying taxes to promote.

Kem's blog

11:16 pm, homework's done.  Time for a good old fashioned throwdown covering everybody's favorite topic, what happened on 9/11 and what we should do about it.  This is bound to be a long one, but that's alright.  I have a fresh cup of coffee, I've done my pilates and my yoga.  I'm loose, and I'm ready to pound at the keyboard mercilessly for a good long while.  Don't expect this to be a pleasant ride, because it won't be.  I expect I'll piss some people off, and that's certainly intentional.  As Maya Angelou put it, "Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean."  Consider this post a cure for bitterness and a call to anger.

But first, a little light entertainment.  It's only 11 minutes long, and it's not safe for work.  It's not actually safe for family, either.  Watch this without the kiddies in the room, please, and prepare to be very, very angry.  Don't worry, the voiceover is in English after the original prayer is done, and the prayer is mostly translated later on.

Submission

So, now that I've got your attention, it's time to talk a little bit about Islam, Christianity, and the dangers of mixing these two cultures that are hell-bent on submission to an utterly ineffable "higher power", and willing to sacrifice their deepest inner needs in order to express their devotion.  Their servitude.  Their "calling".  My calling, for a brief and ever-so-slightly insane period in my life. Ya-Baha'ul-Abha!, I managed to break free!

Our goal of establishing freedom in the Middle East presumes that the freedom we establish will be one which allows for tolerance and social justice.  It presumes that Christians, Jews, Hindus, atheists, and every other brand of heathen out there will be allowed to live, work, and express their beliefs side by side with Muslims.  It presumes both equal respect and equal rights.   It presumes that the warring factions within the Ummah will be able to establish peace and agree to disagree, women will be educated, and society will enter a brighter day.

Very presumptious, really.  It's like assuming that Republicans and Democrats can agree to non-partisan solutions, only exponentailly worse in a way that people who aren't really familiar with Islam can't even begin to imagine.  There is no such thing as separation of Church and State in the Islamic faith.  It's all one.  

Factions are far more attractive to the humble masses than heretical leaders who challenge people to think new thoughts about very old and sacred ideas.   Humble obedience to God's Word is not necessarily compatible with a spirit of inquiry and a willingness to accept that the other party may be right.  People, by and large, simply do not want to be troubled with thoughts that disturb their view of right and wrong, good and evil.   They are trained from birth to not ask questions, and such has been the way of life for the followers of the Prophet, Peace Be Unto Him, for roughly 1400 years.  Are we going to undo that all in a single generation?  Bloody unlikely.  The ailment is common enough in our own culture, despite centuries of vigorous innoculations by the likes of Voltaire, Twain, Vonnegut, and many, many others

The idea of "Judeo-Christian" respect took several hundred years to develop in this nation, and only happened grudgingly in response to the horrors of the Holocaust, with the help of some very liberal Protestant theologians.  The religious freedom that let those liberal Protestant theologians thrive in this country, founded by zealots in an attempt to create a City upon a Hill, and still overflowing in the twentieth century with puritanical Acres of Diamonds, is predicated upon the heretical impulse expressed by seventeenth century theists like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, and continued by the likes of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson.  The concept of Ummah, or the entire Muslim community of believers, contains the foundation for this sort of pluralism between Sunni Muslims and Shi'a Muslims in theory, but practice in the streets is quite a different thing from the lofty ideals that look good on paper.  Put mildly, the same heretical impulse that allowed us to develop a society that is at the very least nominally tolerant of diverse religious views is simply not sanctioned in the Qu'ran.  Quite the opposite!

One of my favorite quotes from a religious leader comes from Gandhi, in his essay Experiments with Truth, "those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means."  Pair that with one of my favorite quotes from Thus Spake Zarathustra:

"I know these Godlike people all too well: they want to be believed in, and doubt to be a sin.  I also know all too well what it is they themselves most firmly believe in.  Truly not in afterworlds and redeeming drops of blood:  they believe most firmly in the body, and their own body is for them their thing-in-itself.  But it is a sickly thing to them:  and they would dearly like to get out of their skins.  That is why they hearken to preachers of death and themselves preach afterworlds."

I trust, dear reader, that you now have some idea where I'm going with all of this.  It's not a happy little place with flowers on the nightstand and a cool breeze coming in off the ocean.  It's the nuclear wasteland of our future if these lunatics are allowed to continue this pissing contest of whose Sky-Daddy is the most powerful and most merciful Sky-Daddy.

So let's return to that video for a moment, and the very important messages contained in it.  How many women and men have the courage (or the cause!) to do as this brave woman did?  Or, for that matter, what the brave man who created this masterpiece did.  It was certainly a risky topic to film, as evidenced by the fact that the director and co-author Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death a few short months after its release. 

I chuckled at a cartoon that proposed a memorial to 9/11 in the form of a gravestone with Osama bin Laden's name on it, standing on a lonely hillside with a baren tree, presumedly with its occupant sleeping The Long Sleep from which we do not Wake below.  But I think the gravestones of Salmon Rushdie and Theo van Gogh are more significant symbols in this war.  The lesson they bring to us is profound, shocking, and highly relevant; any man (or woman) sufficiently skilled in the art of rhetoric can exploit a people who are yearning to submit.  Kill Osama, and another glorious leader will rise up to lead the fearful and the devout, crying for the blood of the infidels and praising the holy martyr who has ascended to Paradise.  Indeed, these sheep are programmed by centuries of selective breeding and environmental conditioning.  All you need to do is convince them that God is on your side, and you have a following.

So what do we do?

We dismantle submission by holding a mirror up to the sheep and forcing them to see what they are.  Pure and simple.  We expose the impulse to "patiently endure hardship" for the toxic behavior that it is and demand that the global community stands up and thinks on its own two feet.  Nothing else can save us from the impulse to fall to our knees and wait silently for the axe to fall, trusting in God to make sure that it is "one of our guys" who holds the handle in his hand.  1/3 of the world are Christians, 1/3 of the world are Muslims.  Guess which 1/3 is more likely to pray devoutly five times a day?  Guess which  1/3 is more likely to be in the majority fifty years from now.  A hundred years?  Both sides are on a mission to convert the other side, and this is something that those of us who consider ourselves "moderates" cannot afford to ignore.  Those with heretical impulses are just as likely to be subjected to the witch hunts of the next century as every other brand of non-believer. 

You cannot tame one brand of submission with another brand.  There is no such thing as the "Judeo-Christo-Islamic" faith in the mind of the Muslim (or the Christian who believes in Christ and understands the Qu'ran, for that matter).  One all-merciful and all-encompassing ocean of faith mixed with another all-merciful and all-encompassing ocean of a different brand of faith simply means that the tsunami that results when the next fascist preachers (or secular leaders) come around to exploit them will simply be more destructive.  Civil War, religious tension, and economic instability are exactly the sorts of conditions that give rise to those sorts of leaders.  

We need to dry this impulse up.  We need to replace it with good solid stone that allows us to build a foundation for peace, resting not upon some notion of a "higher power" that demands us to turn to Him for guidance, but based instead upon the certain knowledge that human beings are fragile and error prone animals who will often resort to mean behavior and horde mentality.  The Sky Daddy is not going to save us from ourselves, nor is he going to clean up after our collective messes left over by a few millenia of sloppy logic.

A couple of articles for quiet contemplation while that flood of rage washes away the bitterness, and I promise to quit overextending the metaphor now:

Feds Train Clergy To "Quell Dissent" During Martial Law

<snip>It was stressed that the Pastors needed to preach subservience to the authorities ahead of time in preparation for the round-ups and to make it clear to the congregation that "this is for their own good."</snip>

And, on a somewhat more encouraging note, a German campaign to put the focus where it needs to be:

Ex-Muslims Demand Right to Renounce Islamic Faith

<snip>Controversially, 9/11 was chosen as the date to sign the "European Declaration for Tolerance." It aims to draw attention to what the former Muslims see as the lack of freedom of religion within Islam."</snip>

Nothing to see here... move along...

Or don't. Alternately you could get very worried. I'm sitting here this morning watching the recall of 9,000,000 toys and the moral outrage of consumer advocates who are very concerned about the way corporate America has "outsourced their responsibility to American consumers" with poor manufacturing standards in sweatshops. It's amazing how all the major news networks pick this up, but conveniently miss the piece of investigative journalism done by Dan Rather last night. (Which is not to say that they've been oblivious... but it's not getting the attention it deserves.) 45 parrots stolen from a store get a spot on the teaser, and I want to know why nobody cares about the theft of our right to have our voices heard. And this on the "liberal" news station?

I wonder if Fox will cover it.

This is frightening stuff. I've looked over some of the documents available on hd.net, and we've got all the classic signs of corporate negligence and quiet cover-ups here. (linkity, linkity) Are we really going into the 2008 election season with these problems unaddressed? Are we going to go after the people responsible for rubberstamping this project with no quality control? Negligence would involve stretching the metaphor of a living democracy a little too far for my comfort, and poor craftsmanship isn't something you can put someone behind bars for. Treason, though... that's an angle I think we could work with.

Sadly, I really don't think we care enough about our democracy to put the money into fixing the problem. I don't even think we care enough to go after the people responsible for this. Like the proverbial ostrich, we'll head off to the polls and vote like we think it counts. We'll pretend those machines work, because darnit, at $3,000 a pop, they ought to. A recall on a defective product? Nah. Just work with it.

The revolution may not be televised; apathy may already have taken root in a silent coup. Am I alone in thinking that a democracy with no reliable mechanism for counting the vote is something not-altogether-democratic? While I may not always be happy with the choices presented to me in the voting booth, I'm still old fashioned enough to be very angry at the thought that my time spent considering my choices will be randomized by the fruits of incompetence and corruption.

ETA: Full story available here.

Edit to add: after a few weeks of consideration here, I’m withholding judgment. It’s perfectly plausible that the Mr. Rather is 100% correct in his sinister assertions, but I’m not comfortable with a few things that he left out. I’d like to know more about how the other machines performed. I want to know about the financial state of the Sequoia plant prior to the decision to switch to cheaper materials. I feel vaguely resentful about the style of documentary at work here, and I wish that his investigative journalism had taken a more neutral approach. He got the reaction he wanted out of me, no question about it. It was an effective piece. I just resent his unwillingness to give me the whole picture in the process.