Bishops and Bubbles

Bishop Robert Vasa of the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese (California) has decided that the 200 teachers in his Catholic school system will have to sign an agreement that contraceptives "gravely offend human dignity." About 50 of the teachers involved are not Catholics. 

I doubt if more than 40 of the teachers involved believe that contraceptives are a bad thing. Polls of American Catholic women demonstrate that something like 90% of them have used contraception, following the ancient Catholic dogma that "what the priest doesn't know will not  hurt him." 

As a witness to the 1950s loyalty oath bubble, I advise the teachers to sign the oath immediately. Back in the 1950s the Communists all signed loyalty oaths, of course, and remained employed. Only liberals took the oaths seriously and refused to sign and lost their livelihoods. This brave stand, I am sorry to say, accomplished nothing.

Teachers, do not give up your jobs. Yes, the Bishop, in his staggering foolishness, is forcing the faculty to lie. So much for the person who  might "gravely offend human dignity."  But lying to a dictatorial doofus to keep your family fed is an adult duty, in this country or in China, and one in which you can take pride and even pleasure.

A Dilemma in Afghanistan

 Hamid Karzai, made President of Afghanistan in a rigged election, has barred elite U.S. forces from Maidan Wardak, claiming that they tortured and killed villagers. That leaves us with a difficult decision. If Karzai's charges are true, then American forces should be withdrawn immediately and brought home. Torturers cannot win the hearts and minds of the people. But what if Karzai's charges are false? In that case, we would be insane to put our military at risk to prop up an outrageous liar. Our only course would be to withdraw our forces immediately and bring them home. There you have our dilemma: what to do?

America's Last Newspaper

The Anderson Valley, about 100 miles north of San Francisco as the crow flies, is inhabited sparsely with experts on the Anderson Valley, which I am not. It's 50 miles I storm through on my way to Mendocino. The population is divided between old timers and old hippies, who absolutely hate one another, although I can't tell them apart. The valley is known for several things: marijuana (the cash crop), Boonville (the only town, quite small), and Boontling. Sometime back in the late 1800s, I guess, the inhabitants of Boonville grew so isolated and bored that they invented a new language called Boontling. Some of them still use it. I've heard that the reason it was invented was so that when the young rubes of the Anderson Valley made a trip to a genuine town, Ukiah, for example, they could talk in secret about the physical attributes of the young women they spotted. "Wow, look at the lady. She'd look nice guiding my plow." And so on. But soon the Boonville women caught onto the language and tamed it. Now it gets studied by professors from Berkeley.

More important, Boonville is the home of the ANDERSON VALLEY ADVERTISER, "America's Last Newspaper." And so it is. I suppose the NEW YORK TIMES is a0000 rival, but who would read the Times when he or she could read articles that begin:

1. "Stacey Cryer was swearing her psychic flak jacket as the Supervisors met to discuss the use of the county's veterans' facilities on Novembert 6."  (Followed by a thousand honest words on the heated war between the VFW and Veterans For Peace.)

2. "This I really must respond to you about Mr. Alan Crow. Number one, I am surprised you posted his letter. Alan Crow is 44 years old and just recently my neighbor here in isolation in jail. I shut off all communication back here from him . . . . But he stole money from an old man bank robber. You guessed it--the Point Arena bandit near Caspar, Orlando."  (Followed by a thousand words on what a bottom feeder this fellow is, including, "Mr. Crow has hepatitis C and always asks me if you could feel your liver. Ha ha! Seek a doctor, dude. You are yellow--you look contagious from it and it should be against the law for you to kiss and spread your misery.")

3. "Bones Roadhouse in Gualala is . . .  being bled to death by a vindictive character named Eric Price, who won a fluke judgment against them in the arbitrary courtroom  of Sonoma County  judge  Elliot Daum" (followed by a lengthy and vivid denunciation). 

Imagine an eight-page regular size weekly newspaper, small type, filled with nothing but outrageous indignation, childhood memories, and a scattering of political nuttery. Thrilling reading. America's last newspaper.

Mark Sanford's Sense of Place

I see that former governor Mark Sanford is attempting a comeback. He's running for congress in one of the Carolinas, if he can find his way back to the States. Location is a general concern voters have about Sanford. If you recall, there was a time he believed that he was hiking along the Appalachian Trail when he was actually walking the most elegant streets of Argentina with a high-toned lady. Sanford has attempted to pass this event off as a mistake, but that is not what the term "mistake" means. Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out once that if you gave a man 100 problems in addition and he got all the answers wrong, you would not conclude that he made mistakes. You would conclude that he did not grasp how to add. Sanford is challenged that way--he has no idea which continent he's on or if he is in a city or a wilderness. He might be anywhere. Electing Sanford as your congressional representative would be as unwise as electing an actor as the leader of the Free World.

Counterinsurgency

I'm reading Maddow's book DRIFT, which I assume will be the topic she discusses tonight. Good book on how the Constitution gets ignored and Presidents start wars without Congress. One thing really struck me. She commented on the brilliant Gen. Petraeus's counterinsurgency program. 

"There are no examples in modern history in which a counterinsurgency in a foreign country has been successful." Oops, Gen Petraeus. But never mind. . . .

Post;Racial America

A man named Joe Rickey Hundley from Idaho has been charged in federal court with assault for slapping a 2-year-old boy. It happened on an airplane. As the plane was landing, the change in air pressure made the child cry out in pain. Joe Rickey told the boy's mother to "Shut that (N word) baby up." He then apparently slapped the baby, scratching him below the eye. I don't want to judge Joe Rickey before the trial--I just want to say how gratified I am that America has become post-racial.

The Richard Cohen Solution: MORE WAR!

This morning I opened my paper and saw that columnist Richard Cohen was calling on us to join the civil revolt in Syria. He condemned President Obama for keeping us out of a war.  Cohen was incensed at this slighting of the military-industrial complex, which requires endless and multiple wars. Obama very slowly ended our role in the moronic war in Iraq, and by the end of this year only about 32,000 troops will remain in Afghanistan. Cohen understands that we need new wars to fill the gap. Where, Cohen asks, is our "moral urgency"? Without it, how will we conquer the world? And after we conquer the human world, perhaps we can force a republic on the chimpanzees, and after them, crows in trees can be divided into states with two senators each, and then. . . .

We Used To Be Smarter

We used to be smarter.

Rachel Maddow's book DRIFT begins with a quotation from James Madison.

"Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies and debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could reserve its freedom in the midst of continual war."

From "Political Observations," April 20, 1795

No Exit

Many of the concerns I've seen expressed about drones--now in use by 70 nations--don't hold up when you think about them for a few months. Pacifists, who oppose drones, tanks, and aircraft carriers, have a consistent position. Others, not so. Those who believe that we should send a policeman to arrest al Qaida and bring people back for a fair trial would be consistent if they also held that when Hitler declared war on us in 1941 we should have sent a policeman to Berlin to arrest Hitler and bring him back for a fair trial. Those who argue that the President has suddenly acquired too much lethal power might want to consider the special telephone an aide carries beside the President, who can pick up the phone and nuke an entire nation. We might as well face the likelihood that some wars in this century will be fought with robots and fought in any section of the world the two sides can reach. Times change. Methods change. We will need new rules. But in the current predator drone war against al Qaida and the Taliban lurks a huge problem. How will we know if we've won or lost? Will this war continue for 200 years? What is the exit strategy?

The Mission of the Predator Drones

Probably everyone understands that the CIA, which flies our drones, is not a police force that we send out to arrest people for the crimes they might have committed in the past.  That is a strange thought--that we would send out the CIA to arrest criminals and bring them back for trial. That is a job for the police, right?

After 9/11 we did not send the police to arrest bin Laden. No one even suggested it.  You don't send the police to fight a war, not even this new odd kind of war.

When our government sends out CIA drones, the  mission is to stop an attack on the the United States or its allies. This claim came up in the recent Senate hearings. In a conflict with al Qaida or the Taliban,  to talk about police, arrests and trials puts you (as Wittgenstein might say) in the wrong language game or discourse. 

Progressives can still oppose the drone method of stopping attacks, of course.  But stopping al Qaida attacks is apt to remain politically popular.  

Woody Guthrie Sings

"As through your life you travel and through your life you roam, you will never see an outlaw drive a family from its home."

Protecting Daisy

Yesterday's poll shows that 83% of Americans support the targeted drone strikes on members of al Qaida. What will happen to a political party that opposes drone strikes? What will happen to a political party that opposes targeted drone strikes against Americans who have joined al Qaida? (Surely no-one thinks that drone strikes should be untargeted.)

I understand pacifists. They oppose drone strikes, tank battles, nukes, ICBMs, etc. They have a consistent, positive position, and I have always been willing to put my own life on the line to protect their right to be pacifists. That's why I joined the army many years ago. I respect pacifism.

Not everyone currently opposed to targeted drone strikes is a pacifist. Some seem to occupy a kind of ahistorical no-man's-land in which the American government has not routinely killed, say,  Americans who joined enemy forces we opposed in war. 

I've asked myself why 83% of Americans take the position they do. My position is that we should get out of the Middle East and stay out of Africa and let them evolve at their own pace (or devolve). Let China deal with them. In the meantime we are in a new kind of war with al Qaida, and the new war and new technology have outrun the international laws of war, which no nation obeyed in the first place. 

My conclusion is that 83% of us support having al Qaida targeted and crippled for selfish reasons.  We want our children to live. Al Qaida has made it clear that it hopes to kill my six-year-old granddaughter and her peers. Al Qaida wants to kill Daisy. The duty of our government is to protect Daisy and her peers. Failure to do so will erase a political party from the scene. The Democrats and Republicans understand the bottom line. How best to protect Daisy is open to discussion. New rules are open to discussion. But let's keep it realistic.
 

Chris Christie will never be President

The news faces on TV are talking again about Chris Christie's weight. They ask, "Can a fat man be elected President?" Of course he can. See President Taft. 

We have already answered related questions. "Can a man with polio be elected?" or "Can a Catholic be elected?" or "Can a black man be President?"or "Can a man with Alzheimer's be re-elected?" The question the news faces should be asking is "Can a dead man be elected President?" 

My best guess is that like John Candy and others, Chris Christie will die young. That bothers me, because Christie at work is a pleasure to watch compared to, say, tepid floating scum like Lindsey Graham. It comes down to this. Can a dead Chris Christie be elected President? I say, No. He won't even run. But I have been wrong before.

  

Attack of the Drones

Perhaps the discussion of spy and predator drones is about to begin. An administration white paper has reached reporters, and that paper provides a starting point. I believe it is clear that the 50 nations that employ drones should meet and set international standards for their use. At the moment drone warfare seems to be a free-for-all. 

I also believe we should leave the Middle East to evolve at its own pace and solve its own cultural problems.  Nevertheless. . . .  At the moment there are enemies out there determined  to murder my granddaughter. I want her protected.

According to Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, the administration paper "summarizes in cold legal terms a stunning overreach of executive authority--the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement before or after the fact." Shamsi's statement raises some questions. None of this is simple.

Are we concerned with drones killing human beings in general or merely the rare killing of Americans? How do these killings compare to the killings of young black men without trial by the police every day in this country? What is a "recognized battlefield" in a guerrilla war? When an American joined the enemy in past wars, the Civil War or World War II, were they granted counsel and trials before we shot at them or bombed them?

Are we in a war with al Qaida? Wars have been defined as armed conflicts between two nations. Is this a new kind of war with new rules?  If so, what are the rules?

Latinos and Whites

In my morning paper today I read a report by two Associated Press writers named Juliet Williams and Elliot Spagat. They claimed that "Whites and Latinos each currently represent 39 percent of the state's (California's) population."  I will start by saying that I deeply appreciate their correct use of "currently" instead of the incorrect use of "presently." But I have a problem. I know three Latino neighbors living on my block. All of them are white. Their children are white. They speak English. I have known Latinos of African descent and of Asian descent. I met Jews in Mexico City. Argentina has many citizens with Irish ancestors.  I used to know a black man from Central America who had a British accent--he asked me what "black culture" meant. I responded by looking confused. I suppose what we have here is a form of category error, in this case the contrasting of categories that are not mutually exclusive. Maybe William Faulkner was right: he thought that racism might eventually be eliminated by intermarriages.