Boy, Are We Dumb!

I guess I am getting old. The main impact the TV arguments about striking Syria with missiles have had on me is astonishment at how dumb we are. I have heard a few intelligent comments on both sides of the issue, but most of the comments have been dumb. Yesterday I watched Amy Goodman and Bill Richardson debate. Dumb and dumber. Goodman argued that we should not go after the Assad regime because 65 years ago our country had used nuclear weapons. I was dumb with admiration at her dumbness. But then Richardson took the other side, making arguments so dumb my mind went blank, overwhelmed. I can't even remember what he said. I do recall he looked shaken by his own lack of conviction. He couldn't convince himself, which is the first step you take before attempting to convince someone else.

The Horror of Memory

 According to the morning newspaper, researchers have discovered a protein people need to keep their memory sound. Eliminating the protein, RbAp48, leads to senior moments. For example, you forget where you left your glasses or forget your own phone number. The good news is that this has nothing to do with Alzheimer's disease. But how do you combat a protein deficiency? Do you eat more steak? Do you buy a protein supplement? Do you avoid vegetarian lunches? Or do you lean back, like Donald Rumsfeld, and enjoy forgetting the horrifying mistakes you made when younger?

Bombing Syria

I might be misreading the comments, but it looks as if Iran and the USA have nudged each other into the position that a minor slap in the face of the Syrian government, which won't change the status quo, is tolerable to both sides. Iran really does not like nerve gas (Iraq used it against them), but Iran will continue to support the Shia side of things in the growing Shia-Sunni conflict. The American government talked itself into a place where now it has to retreat or act in some way. This is a mess on top of the mess we call the Middle East.

Polls show that the American people do not want to intervene in Syria between what amounts to Islamic terrorists on one side and Fascists on the other. Our plan to intervene in a calculated way that has no impact on the status quo is absurd. True enough, our navy has ten times more fire power than all the other navies of the world combined. Our tax dollars paid for that. We have the guns. But we do not want to serve as the world's unauthorized police force. The problems of the Middle East should be settled by the people who live there. Or not. It's on them.

Martin, Bobby and John

As young man at UCLA, walking across campus one day, on a grassy slope I saw MLK addressing a group of about 50 students. I ambled on over. I got within 20 feet of him. He looked compact, smooth as a pebble, well-dressed. I wasn't religious, and he was a preacher, and he preached in a style different from what I was used to. The style struck me, a kind of surfer, as strange--yet of all the American leaders of my youth, King was the one I respected most. 

I'd met JFK, and of course he was a phenomenon. He's the only President I recall who actually interested people. I'm not talking about his major speeches, which had a manufactured craft to them. His press conferences, where he spoke off the cuff, were actually funny. He seemed amused by them.  Bobby Kennedy's rise came later as he learned more empathy; he was crushed by the murder of his brother, which somehow translated into a fresh aware of the economic injustice built into the American system. He would have been President, and then he was murdered, too.

No one doubted the courage of the Kennedys, but King's courage awed me. I didn't understand how he and the people marching with him could risk their lives. They walked peacefully into attack dogs and clubs and shotguns. I still don't know how they did it. The most I ever did was walk into tear gas. They were committed to die, to give up their lives if need be, in the name of nonviolent change. And they did die, and change came. 

King was, among other things, more multidimensional than I could quickly follow. It wasn't hard to see that his position of civil rights was right. But then he added a commitment to economic justice. To some of his followers his support of unions diluted the civil rights push and alienated several of the big shots who had supported civil rights. And then he came out against the Vietnam War, almost the first important figure to do so. He did this too early, so to speak. Most of the country wasn't ready yet. Many liberals asked, "Why doesn't he stick to civil rights?"   And then he was gone.

The Race Card

Many Republicans resent any reference to racism in politics. They do this in the belief that their party supported the Civil Rights Act (true) and that they personally are no more racist than most Democrats (true) and that Martin Luther King's dream of a society where people are judged by their character rather than by their skin color has been achieved (false). They can point to the election of a black President as proof. In short, more than 50% of white Americans think we've reached a colorblind status, more or less like Stephen Colbert's TV character. My guess is that these believers seldom interact with a black person, and the whole question is fairly abstract for them. They get upset at complaints against racism, which they see as "playing the race card" to get votes. (Of course, there is another sort of person who is simply a pro-lynching bigot.)

Less than 20% of black Americans believe we have achieved MLK's dream. For them--I am guessing--the question is not abstract. Instead people with black or brown skin see bits of racist behavior on a daily basis, maybe noticing that white people avoid sitting next to them on the bus. They know where they are wanted and where they feel out of place. 

When the Feds Took Away Our Arrows

In some of the wild parts of America, usually in a desert, you might be hiking along and come across a large but deteriorating concrete arrow on the ground, maybe 70 feet long, in the middle of nowhere. If you follow the arrows, they will lead you to San Francisco.

In 1920 these arrows ran from New York to the west coast, one arrow every ten miles. Of course many of them are gone now. Question: Who made them and why?

The arrows were built by the federal government to guide early airplanes carrying the mail. They were decommissioned in 1940.

Rinse? Ryence? Rhiennse?

I know I don't have the name of the chairman of the Republican Party right--I remember that his name reminded me of a movie on personal hygiene I once watched in the army. . . .  Anyway, Chairman Rinse Penis has recently declared that NBC and CNN will not be allowed to host Republican Presidential debates because they and Fox News are about to make a film about a woman who may run for President. The Republicans consider the premise absurd, even for TV. No woman will ever be elected President. But given how badly the networks treat Republicans in general, submerging them in a loathsome soup of Marxism, shouldn't Chairman Penis be boycotting all the networks, not just two?  I mean, down with CBS and ABC, with Fox and the Latino networks and all the others and with those who watch them and then attempt to vote.

The Hero

Let us assume that a hero is a person of great courage who is admired for his noble deeds and bravery. Some of my progressive friends consider Private Manning and Edward Snowden heroes.  Other progressives disagree.

Manning is known mainly for two things. He released footage taken from an American helicopter as its gunners shot down innocent people, a genuine atrocity but not news--we'd been talking about this assault for several years. Manning is also known for surviving a remarkably ugly incarceration by the military after they discovered his information dump. Manning apparently released about 700,000 secret documents without reading them first. This act was a crime.  My hope was that Manning would be sentenced to time served and then released, but today he was sentenced to 35 years and made eligible for parole in ten years. During his trial Manning stated that he had done the wrong thing and regretted it. He has my sympathy, but I don't think I'm ready to call him a hero yet. He may become one. He's 25 and facing an ordeal of the sort that makes heroes of some people. 

Edward Snowden dumped a ton of unread information from the NSA's program to spy on Americans. The dump was treated as news, although similar information about the NSA had already been published in books and magazine articles written by investigative reporters. They had been largely ignored by the mainstream media, I guess, but Snowden got media attention because he had broken the law and, even more compelling, because he had run away to China and then to Russia, where he now lives. Running off is not the act of a hero, but Snowden has computer skills, obviously, and he should be able to find civilian work and live well in his new country. I hope that works out.

My view of government leakers is that they become heroic when they commit a crime (for a good reason) and then do the time; doing the time is what proves their seriousness and keeps the lightweights on the sidelines.

 

Support Your Local Council

 Howard Dean, whose national Democratic party chairmanship created the political network that first elected President Obama (for which Dean got no credit), is now trying to get Democrats involved in very local politics. That is where you can take the starch out of the Teabaggers. I just want to add that it can be done. 

About 12 years ago, some of us noticed that our small town had a majority of Democratic voters but a Republican city council that refused to take up any issue that might annoy George W. Bush. We set out to change the situation by finding better candidates and supporting them through volunteers from our peace vigil and the local unofficial Democratic club. The hardest part was getting rational people to run for office. Anyway, 12 years later, last night, the city council voted 4-1 to support a proposed federal bill that will ban guns resembling assault weapons and ban large capacity magazines. The only one to vote against lending support to sanity was Council member Gary Plass, an out-of-touch Republican functionary. He gave his usual reason: "We were hired to keep the water running and the sewer going, and that's what we should do. It (anything of national concern to local citizens) does not belong on this dias."  Somehow he has missed why we elected the other four council members.  Apparently Gary Plass believes he's still surrounded by obedient Bushniks.