Soccer Distopia

America's sports writers seem upset with our country's failure to win soccer's World Cup--as if that had been an option. Soccer, of course, is our country's most popular youth sport; about half the fathers I know have served as soccer coaches in recreational leagues. Our sports talkers and writers respond to these facts by mocking the sport mercilessly, taking time out every fourth year to demand victory at the World Cup

Perhaps victory for the United States had been an option, because in soccer, as in baseball, the worse team often wins. This tendency gets exaggerated in soccer; the refereeing is often absurdly incompetent. In this tournament I saw (on television) three goals disallowed for no reason.

The teams from Mexico and the United States did well. Both made it through the preliminary groups into the final round of 16. That's not bad for North America, a continent with only three teams to start with. Landon Donovan demonstrated high competence, as did the American goal keeper. As I see it, the USA and Mexico made it into the top 16, and maybe next time they'll make it into the top eight.

Three Reasons Why the Left Seldom Wins

1. I was watching Amy Goodman a few days ago. She is almost the only source of genuine world news on TV. She's the best source of bad news. But when Amy runs out of bad news to report, she fills in her free time by recalling atrocities that occurred ten years before.

I wonder how many of her followers have become totally discouraged? (There's one in my house.)

2. The moratorium on whaling is ending. Time is running out. It wasn't a total moratorium--it had loopholes, and the Japanese and two other nations continue to kill whales and munch on them. Recently representatives of the human world met and attempted to set up up a new plan. Japan, backed by the African nations it supplies with foreign aid, blocked a moratorium. The USA offered a compromise that allowed some whaling (but less whaling than the current loopholed moratorium). The American Left cried out at their own wretched compromising government. But no worries--the whaling commission rejected the pragmatic compromise so condemned by people like me. We have a different kind of compromise: Japan is free to kill whales at will, while I retain my moral purity.

3. The leaders of the Left in Sonoma County seem in some cases to be Truthers who get their information about 9/11 from a source that broadcasts through their dental fillings. Yet to succeed we need able leaders who can communicate with centrists.

So it goes.

--Gary Goss

Tea Party Madness

We live in strange times with Birthers to the right of us and Truthers to the Left, but little seems as odd to me as a state government, that of Arizona, taken over by teabaggers. The Tea Party is mad, a topic taken up by J. M. Birnstein, a philosophy professor writing for the NY Times Opinionator (called to my attention by John Cascone). Birnstein's conclusion is that teabaggers are enraged because they dearly love the ancient American myth of individual autonomy. Arizona's Tea Party activists are rightwing anarchists, a "libertarian mob." They want to deny vaccination, school their children at home, treat emotional problems with beer, and treat medical problems with water and chanting. They want to be left alone, yet they find themselves dependent on government for road maintenance, fire safety, social security checks, Medicare, etc. And government is tottering, calling attention to itself.

Arizona is short of everything but retired Republicans. The state lacks industry. Liquid life, sucked from ground wells, is running out--which why some cities are cutting down their woods. As State Senator Sylvia Allen put it, trees were "stealing Arizona's water supply." Madness.

Birnstein's hypothesis is that events have demonstrated to teabaggers the absolute dependence of everyone on government action, and this is exactly what the teabaggers do not want to know. Social Security was fine as long as we ignored it and pretended to be autonomous. That was the social bargain: pretending to be independent of others. Today the teabaggers cannot ignore the role of government, and like the rest of us they can't control Washington. Hence we see rage and madness produced, Birnstein writes, not by politics but metaphysics. The Tea Party, he points out, "wants nothing." It expresses a nihilistic fury of destruction. At its peak, it breaks up meetings.

As apt as Birnstein's analysis is, it's obviously incomplete. The July Harper's published an article by Ken Silverstein that helps fill in the picture. Arizona's legislature, he points out, is composed almost entirely of dimwits, racists and cranks. They have to respond to the country's worst budget crisis. Naturally, they fired hundreds of state auditors and tax collectors, saving $25 million and costing $174 million in lost revenue. They sold their capitol building and then rented it back. Madness.

Arizona is the first (and one hopes the only) state actually taken over by tea party activists, who dominate the local Republican Party. These people (mostly old white people) are, Silverstein writes, fixated on taxes and immigration; and they control the Republican primaries. They believe that government exists to help the undeserving. Funding for GED programs "has been reduced to zero."

Much of the anger, of course, has been directed at Latinos. Some of this is racism. Some of it is a hatred of diversity--which is why it is now illegal to teach Latino children about their heritage in the public schools. Teabaggers want their (imaginary) country back. They feel the rage of betrayal. They hope they can stop change and live in an unchanging world.

The BP Gusher

I like to think that my undistinguished working class family does have one claim to fame. My ancestors labored in the industries most responsible for California's environmental disasters. When ridding the Sierras of redwoods was the main thing, my people were lumberjacks. In fact one great-grandfather, a master carpenter, designed and built the world's longest wooden flume (later used as a thrill ride) to bring lumber 60 miles down from Hume Lake to Sanger. When the redwoods gave out, my forebears moved into the oil fields of the Big Valley in time for the Lakeview Gusher, which blew oil a hundred feet into the air for 540 days, which brings me to this.

The BP "oil spill" in the Gulf is not an oil spill. That's BP rubbish. An oil spill takes place when a tanker springs a leak. What BP did, in the name of greed, was bring in a gusher in water so deep the well couldn't be capped. They killed nine workers. All of that should be a crime.

--Gary Goss

McGuire and Fudge: Good People

As some of you recall, I supported both Debora Fudge and Mike McGuire for supervisor in the 4th district, where I live. Both are excellent people and strong progressive candidates. McGuire won by a twenty point margin--which I had predicted--and some people are asking why.

Several factors were involved, but the crucial factor was that Paul Kelley, the incumbent Republican, decided not to run for re-election. McGuire, as he has done in other races, campaigned for every vote in the district, including the Republicans. Fudge made his effort to gain Republican support a campaign issue. When votes were counted, Fudge and McGuire had split the progressive vote (I'm guessing), and McGuire took everyone else.

I note that McGuire won despite the endorsement of Fudge by the Press Corporate Democrat's rather dim editorial board.

We owe Debora Fudge and Mike McGuire our thanks for the efforts they put in representing progressive causes in a demanding campaign. I can't recall another election in which I had the luxury of admiring both candidates.

A really big oil spill

It's no consolation, but the Gulf Oil Spill is not the largest in our nation's history. I come from a family of oil workers who were drilling in Kern County in 1910 when the Lakeview gusher exploded into the sky. It was five times the size of the Gulf Oil Spill and lasted 544 days. Berms were built and a lot of the oil was contained. About half the oil made it to market. The rest soaked into the near desert, where you can find it today in the form of asphalt. There is a small monument there, too.

If faced with a choice between greed and common sense, well, common sense isn't much of a motivator. Greed is powerful.

Al and Tipper

I can't tell you how many times I said through the years that Al and Tipper's marriage wouldn't last.

When a long marriage fails at the end, which happens more often than you might expect, consider the investment in time and emotion. You can find a new partner, but you usually can't turn to her or to him and say, "Remember the time when the Saint Bernard ran between Aunt Helen's legs?" Your new partner never met Aunt Helen or your father and mother. So much gets lost.