ad astra!

That last post got me wondering about what’s happening to our country, and if this next election is really going to make any difference at all. My contention when people start up with me about politics is both a great cop-out and a call to arms. Essentially it’s time for all of us, as a nation, to choose the path of our destiny to come in this new century. We need to decide if we’re all in this together or if we’re going to go it alone. The current administration is demonstrably all about going it alone. Welfare’s been cut, we start wars essentially by ourselves in favor of our own interests, taxes for the wealthy decreased. “You’re on your own,” Bush and Cheney say. And maybe that’s okay. This nation was founded on the principles of liberty and independence. 1776 was all about going it alone. But something happened seven score and thirteen years after that: we started to decide that we all might need some help every now and then. And maybe that’s okay, too. But the mix just isn’t working out.

That’s the battle line that was clearly drawn 70 years ago. The New Deal brought us Social Security, the WPA, and helped get us out of the Great Depression. FDR’s New Deal noted a shift in American thinking. Some of us began to move away from rugged individualism and self-reliance. The Great Depression and the laissez-faire policies that bred it had begun to teach us that maybe we couldn’t just go it alone, maybe we did need a little help from our friends. Not a handout, not a free ride—we all wanted to work, make an honest living, be self reliant and individuals, but some Americans agreed that it wasn’t always possible to do so. Thus an America was born that believed both in the individual and the community. The greatest outcome of this was our entry into World War II: we were no longer an isolated country going it alone—the world needed us. We in turn needed it.

But the world has changed so much since then, and the system we set up is on the verge of collapse. The socio-economic safety net is no longer as strong as it used to be, and it’s straining under the weight of so many disadvantaged Americans. And maybe that’s okay. Capitalism is still up and running—the economy is in fact growing. So maybe it’s okay to say “Sorry you can’t make it, but you’re on your own.” I personally think that would be okay, but only if that meant everyone truly had every opportunity. If we’re going to chose that path, we need to make sure there’s a job for everyone to do, a way for everyone to go their own way. Otherwise as a nation we’re doomed. There isn’t anything wrong with wanting to make your own way in life, but if there’s nowhere to go then our society simply won’t function. We’ll buckle under the weight of our own poor. Capitalism won’t work if just a few have money to spend.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not okay. We’re the richest country in the world but still only 1% of the population controls 99% of the wealth. The other 99% of people are left fighting over that 1%, and without a way to even the odds I fail to see how we all could possibly go it alone. Besides, in the long view we’re all horribly dependent on each other, and we are too great a nation to be so simple and short sighted. Disasters like 9/11 and Katrina are supposed to show us how much we need each other. Sometime after the rubble stopped smoking and the mud dried we forgot that. Instead of rebuilding together we looted the cities and rioted in the Superdome. Instead of finding hope and togetherness were told to go shopping. Katrina even split apart an entire region of our country. Somehow, in the span of 70 years we became a weaker nation. We cannot allow the worst of us to get the best of us.

Forget about jobs and education, immigration and gay marriage; how can we even begin to come together when we let something as simple and commonplace as wind and rain drive us apart?

Most of all, things like excellent public education, accessible (and affordable) public health, and support for the arts as well as private enterprise are all public goods that help us balance our moral budget. We near the brink when there are more people in prison than in college, when we spend more on war than peace, when more of us are hungry than fed, when we’re afraid when we should be hopeful.

Something happened in 1929 that forced us to do so. Our nation’s finest hours came in the nearly twenty years after The Crash when we were able to take a great loss and turn it into a great victory. We’ve had that chance this century and thus far we’ve squandered it. So maybe this next election will be our chance to transform our defeat and despair into the triumph that makes America unique in the history of nations.

Ken Burns, when interviewed in USA Today about his new documentary, said eight words that describe modern America’s problem better than anything I’ve ever read anywhere. He said “There’s too much Pluribus and not enough Unum.” I’ll sure second that! I’ll even say when it starts: it starts when we begin teaching our children (in public and in private) that we’re all in this together. We are one nation, regardless of whether or not you want to believe it’s “Under God,” we need to find a way to be indivisible again.

Here’s my two cents on the Rudy Giuliani $9.11 controversy.

Mostly, my sentiment about this are as follows: sure, his people didn’t plan the event, but they haven’t cancelled or at least apologized for this blunder. I think it’s because Rudy is content to ride the horse of his hero status because it gives him cred that no other candidate could possibly have. But when this cred is deeply examined it doesn’t really amount to much. The most mileage Rudy should get out of his “America’s Mayor” moments after 9/11 is his KBE and the fact that he made his moment when it was his time to. Is he a hero of 9/11? I wouldn’t say so. Rudy did what leaders (even mediocre leaders) do in time of crisis—he led. He was the face of calm, of courage, of hope in the shadow of the burning towers and for that he deserves our thanks. But there are thousands more people who did more than Rudy did, and those people are the true heroes of 9/11. He didn’t dig out ground zero, he didn’t help take down flight 93, he didn’t rush into the first tower moments after it was struck. He was just a face on television assuring us that everything would be okay. Does that make a president? Probably. He certainly wouldn’t be any worse than a Nixon or a Bush (or, arguably, a Clinton) but I don’t think he has the greatness of an FDR (or, arguably, a Clinton).

Still, it’s no surprise that his supporters are playing the 9/11 card as much as they can. The only other thing he has going for him is his experience of running the nation’s largest economy and most diverse city. If it weren’t for that he would be a pretty mediocre candidate. But the 9/11 thing can go a long way in distracting us from the things that make him a rather disagreeable candidate to both mainstream Democrats and the conservative Republican base. He’s not very religious. He’s divorced. His (lukewarm) sentiments on gay rights are both cozy for Democrats and devastating for most Republicans. He wore a dress. But the rug of 9/11 is big enough to sweep all of this under. He saved a city. He brought us all together. Just based off some of the hype you’d think he was rescuing babies from The Towers on 9/11 and then let half the city crash on his couch afterwards. Never mind that he “believes in a woman’s right to choose.”

As long as I’m talking about Rudy, let me touch on some other reasons I was dissapointed in him. When he first threw his hat in the ring he sounded like a Republican I might (were I extraordinarily drunk at the time) vote for next November. But then I looked up his stance on some issues important to me.

1. Abortion. He says he hates abortion but believes in a woman’s right to choose. I pretty much feel the same way, so ok there. I also admire the spirit of Federalism in his stance on abortion, saying it’d be okay if Roe was overturned so the states would be able to decide. But also women. Just not if you live in a state that’s decided it’s not okay. Um. Sure, yeah.
2. Gay rights. In my opinion this is the area where Rudy is his most hypocritical. He believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, but then he went and got divorced. Twice. And is Catholic. You can’t really talk about “the sanctity of marriage” without noting that divorce is very legal in this country. If you really want to preserve marriage, you should outlaw divorce. And adultery. And probably pornography and birth control while you’re at it, too. All of these things chip away at what’s supposed to be a permanent bond between one man and one woman (and are forbidden to Catholics), for life, in sickness and in health, etc. etc. But how strong can marriage be when it’s so easily broken? You don’t need gay people to destroy marriage—the straights do quite a fine job of it already. So go ahead and keep your marriage, Rudy, but just remember how precious it was to you. Especially the first two.
3. Education. Rudy is fine with allowing school vouchers drain away public funded education. If you don’t know what a school voucher is here’s a nutshell: It’s basically a refund of the taxes you pay that go towards public schools for your kids. If your district spends $87.95 per child per year you’d then get a voucher for $87.95 to put towards private or home schooling. The problem being that you don’t pay taxes for your kid specifically, you put your money in the pot to share because Americans are supposed to believe in equal opportunity for all, at least at the K-12 level. It’s basically a back door route to segregation (based on race, class, religion, etc.) that would leave poorer students in even more underfunded public schools while allowing the more fortunate (read: mid-to-upper class whites) students to pursue a private education. I’m very much in favor of free universal public education from kindergarten through the Baccalaureate level. If we spent as much money on education as we do on war we could have a society as smart as our bombs.

Those three things are what disappointed me the most with Rudy, and most of the other Republican candidates have commonalities along those same lines. Which I suppose is why I’m a fierce, red-nosed Ted Kennedy Democrat most of the time.

If you need more proof that Our Leader is a buffoon, take a look at his speech to the United Nations. The speech itself isn’t all that bad, but the fact that he needs phonetic pronunciations of exotic places and world leaders is rather telling. Take a look at the speech and find your favorite. Mine is “French President Sarkozy [sar-KOzee].”

Today i was told that we should have a little bowl in the pharmacy drive thru drawer for people to put their change in. This particular customer gave me six ones, two quarters, four dimes, and two nickels. So I had to dig it all out of the box-like drawer. The lady said she suggests a bowl every time she comes in, so we don’t have to dig out the change.

I had to bite my tongue really hard to not tell her that if she wouldn’t keep putting fucking change in there we wouldn’t need a god damned bowl.

wireless:
a full forty feet above
the cirruses and cumulonimbuses
I soar swiftly through the stratosphere

         thoughts are my feathers
         synapses my eddies

being not Icarus—I will touch the Sun
being not Peter Pan—you can’t see the wires

Ken Burns’ latest project, titled The War, is being released on September 23, 2007 on PBS. From NPR:

“You begin to understand that this is a far different war that we’ve sort of in the last decades been led to believe,” he says.

With the World War II veterans dying, it was time to “honor what they did when they were teenagers,” Burns says. “We asked them to become professional killers. They did their job very well. They saw bad things, they did bad things, they lost good friends.

“And they came back and they put a lot of that information in deepest, darkest recesses of their souls and it has been our privilege in recent years that some of those folks have now begun to speak.”

From the viewers guide(pdf) it looks to be an immensely powerful and revealing film that will bring a new perspective to the plethora of media about World War II.

Official site here.

Russia has a new bomb. And it’ll take your breath away. (“The weapons create a huge pressure wave which effectively sucks the air out of the lungs of anyone unfortunate enough to be within range.”)

The good news is “it’s environmentally friendly, compared to a nuclear bomb…” but it’s also “four times more powerful than the Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb tested by the U.S. military.”

cuz who needs democracy when you can blow shit up?

here’s a video from moveon.org about “Progress”

If you’re of the mind to, you can tell Congress to bring them home here.

And here’s a real treat: Dick Cheney talks about why we didn’t invade Iraq in 1994. It’s amazing that in nine years Saddam became worth many more American lives.

One should take note that this was the “canned response” from the (first) Bush administration in response to calls that we should (at that time) invade Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein. GHW Bush didn’t want to take on the liability, didn’t want to get into the quagmire. Nine years later Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz were able to convince his son that invading Iraq was the right thing to do…