NSA Spying Must Stop

So for anyone who is ok with the revelations about the government's universal spying program...let me talk to you for a moment, then ask a question.

I've heard some of the arguments in favor of allowing the NSA to monitor as they please without complaint. They are approximated as follows:

"They're only doing it to keep us safe from terrorists. They're on our side."

"I am not a terrorist, so I don't have anything to hide."

"They only look at metadata, not actual content. We can trust our own government."

"Every government out there is doing this, we have to keep up."

Is that about it?

Quick response: BULLSHIT. I don't care if the intention of these programs is to keep us safe, they are removing the things that are supposed to make America special in the first place. You know, liberty and freedom? The right to privacy in some vestigial sense. All too often it is a focus on an external threat that allows the real danger to grow within like a cancer. Ever heard of COINTELPRO? Hoover was big on surveillance too, and he wasn't on "our" side. If you think it's okay for what's going on to continue, you aren't on my side either. So you're not a terrorist, huh? Well, friend, in a police state, a terrorist is whoever the authorities decide is a terrorist. Maybe they don't like the books you're checking out from the library, maybe they don't think you need to study what you study. What's the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? Depends who you are asking.

As far as metadata vs content, how are we to trust anything we are told? The government didn't trust us enough to tell us ANYTHING, but they expect trust in return? Sounds like a pimp & ho kind of relationship. Not to mention, it is demonstrably false that they can keep this data secure. That goes without saying at this point. Any and everything can and will be eventually hacked. Period.

Every government is doing it? Not to this scale, they don't have the capacity. Besides, didn't we use to oppose regimes that persecuted citizens for knowledge and thought crimes? Weren't they the bad guys?

I don't know about you, but the fact that we are in a totally Orwellian 1984-style Big Brother state does not make me feel safe. At all. That is not my idea of America and, again, if it is yours WE ARE NOT ON THE SAME SIDE.

Lastly, a question: Imagine a technology that allowed a government, or corporate, worker sitting in some room to scan people's thoughts. The actual thoughts inside their heads. Sounds far-fetched, right? So did the Internet 50 years ago. So did space travel a hundred. Would you be ok with governments and corporations rummaging around in people's heads, looking for dirt?

You're still not a terrorist, right? Still have nothing to hide...so would you be ok with that? How is that substantively different from the things we are allowing now? And the things that are surely as the rising sun coming down the pipeline unless we stop it now.

Please think about it.

#todayisareddawn, #weareenemiesofthestate

Black Racists

Here's a quoted reply to a post about Oprah's "old racists just have to die" comment on the Grio

"There are no more racist people than Black people."

...Right. Remember when we exterminated the Indians and forced kidnapped Europeans into centuries of chattel slavery, then ostensibly freed them only to create an apartheid state, then fought their fight for civil rights for decades through legislation and domestic policy strategy, maintaining a wide economic and educational gap that persists to this day?

Do you remember when Blacks did that? Huh?

Then when the oppressed groups participated in a coalition to elect a man who identifies as White to the office of the Presidency (finally!) remember how we obstructed and disrespected him in unprecedented ways? Remember how we called him a Mormon terrorist from Eastern Europe? All the memes on the Internet identifying him as a Gypsy? The knee-jerk reactionary backlash against his judicial nominations and signature legislation?

Do you remember when that happened?

You don't? Because it didn't go down like that? Then what, exactly, makes Blacks the greatest racists in America?

Oh, because we use the word nigger and don't allow Whites to use it? That might, and I don't really believe this but I could at least understand the argument, make us hypocrites. But not racist.

What else? Because we have called Whites pejorative names like "cracker" and "devil"? Not nice terms, to be sure, derogatory and possibly hurtful. But the difference is those terms have never possessed the leverage of law and culture giving them weight; meaning that when Blacks are treated as living icons of epithets, the full power of society acts to ensure that we live down to our reputations, that the hatred behind the words is made known in our lives and on our flesh. Prejudice and racism are not the same, although they may sometimes look alike.

What else you got? Affirmative Action? That's helped more White woman than Black men; and they needed the help. Still do, if you look at corporate America and dollars earned versus men. And it is not as if we have a preponderance of Blacks earning PhDs on the public dime. In fact, considering the number of Blacks incarcerated by the criminal prison-industrial complex, it can be argued that Blacks, and to a lesser degree Latinos, still form the unpaid labor core of an industry designed and maintained by whites for financial gain and social control, operating under the guise of law and order.

It is not the fault of Black America that the white-middle class has crumbled apart like a rotten tooth; we have been gumming our food for years. If the blue-collar Whites don't stop the manipulation that the power elite exerts over them like a vampire's glamor and start seeing the lessons of history and the realities of politics and economics, we will continue to see natural allies played against one another and that same power elite diminish in number and increase in obscene wealth and disproportionate influence over our republic.

Now, call me a reverse racist. Whatever in blue blazes that is means.

Gun Culture

The "American" experience of gun culture is not monolithic. Rural and sub-rural hunting culture, militia culture, self-defense culture and crime culture all represent distinct cultural interactions with firearms.

People often don't understand when I start a conversation by saying that I grew up around guns and a gun culture, then respond to their question "Oh, you hunt?" with - "No, I'm from New York City".

"Oh, " they reply uncomfortably.

The difference between gun racks on the back of a pickup and metal detectors in public high schools is a wide one. Experience shapes thought, thought shapes reality.

I am torn on the gun debate in this sense; I know firsthand the devastation caused by the presence of firearms in the Black communities of America. I also comprehend, intellectually and instinctively, that guns change the course of history, and a world where only state security agents possess the rights, and means, to utilize firearms is not a world I want to live in.

So I guess I'll continue as a gun owner who criticizes gun culture and live with the dichotomy. Or the hypocrisy. Whichever.

What needs to be done

 History certainly is a blueprint of change, but it is also documentation of how some things have not changed as much as we would like to think. In the post-Reconstruction period, during the establishment of the First Jim Crow period, it was deemed a social necessity by Whites to use violence and socioeconomic pressure to "teach niggers their place", and during the height of the nascent revolution that was the Civil Rights Movement, television allowed us to document the violence used by police and others against us and our allies. We find ourselves at yet another moment in history, so I humbly suggest we learn from the path behind us, so as to walk a different path forward. We need to educate OURSELVES, as the American Educational system falls further from relevance. We need to work together and EMPLOY EACH OTHER, as the larger economy demonstrates it only exists as a tool for capital accumulation for a few, not a "rising tide" lifting all ships. We need to ACTIVATE POLITICAL POWER. as politics is a game of power, and there is no way to win begging for mercy from those who don't value compassion. This will also force the national discourse BACK TO THE CENTER LEFT, and away from the right-wing edge of xenophobic, misogynistic, tribalized oligarchy and neoconservatism. Lastly, we need to arm ourselves, both literally and metaphorically, with the tools necessary to engage in a long, vicious fight with a remorseless enemy. WE NEED TO BE A COMMUNITY AGAIN. If we can do that, there are those who will flock to our cause as naturally as birds migrating towards warmer, more hospitable climes. The lines are being drawn, the drums of war are beating in the streets of America again...

For the record: Modern progressives do not want to take what "rightfully belongs" to the haves and give it to the have-nots. That is what plantation owners did during the several hundred years of American chattel slavery. That is what payday and title loan sharks do to financially unstable people today. That is what funds and banks who gamble their constituents funds in markets and inscrutable financial instruments do. That is what purveyors of cheap "non-insurance" insurance plans do.

Progressives want structural changes in a system designed to keep the rich filthy and the rest of the pyramid clean as vulture-picked bone. Progressives want to create an environment of opportunity and egalitarianism under tax policy and enforcement of the law.

Nobody (read reasonable and intelligent person) believes government can solve ALL problems, just as nobody believes government cannot solve ANY problems.

I worry about spending (we spend too much, let's invade less), government overreach (thank you for your service to the private citizenry of the world, Edward Snowden, damn these so-called-liberal-media shills who take every opportunity to defend Big Brother aka the NSA), and inefficient bureaucracy as much as the next guy. Probably more, actually.

However, I am a fan of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. I am a fan of the Civil Rights Act, and of federal intervention into states that had every intention of making Jim Crow into a new slave code for the nation. It took Federal power to make things happen on that level.

So please, stop using "progressive" and "liberal" as if they are inherently pejorative terms. In return, I will stop praying to your Big Kahuna (read The God of Abraham, Yahweh, J. Hova - whatever he calls himself on his next album) to remove you from this earth before you complete the damage your political and social forerunners began.

Validation is requisite for normative psychic functioning. Too many people internalize their marginalization and the stigma attached to them by society, making them unable to view themselves as fully operative human beings. They come to believe that the things they cherish don't matter, that the people and things they love have no value.

Do the economic injustices inflicted by the world make you angry? You don't have the right to be angry, especially if you are Black in America. Others have that right, but not you.

Do you smoke pot? Sorry, this is not California or Colorado, and that is not an acceptable alternative. Have a Newport and a shot of Ciroc. Then piss in this cup, let's see if you get this cubicle job.

Do you perceive misogyny, homophobia, racism and class discrimination. You should not be seeing those things, because they don't really exist in America anymore. And if you talk about the privileges associated with being a financially secure, educated, heterosexual White male of Christian faith, you are a reverse racist and your perceptions are not relevant.

Why do you think people join street gangs, fraternities and legislative bodies? To be a part of something, to belong to something, to have their thoughts, feelings and perceptions validated.

Why do you think unstable individuals pick up firearms and open fire on strangers? They are disconnected, internally stigmatized and feel invalidated by the societies that created them.

Namaste means "I bow to your form", it is a traditional greeting derived from Sanskrit widely used throughout India and certain spiritual communities. It is similar to the Navi (yes, from Avatar) "I see you"; it is a recognition of the valid existence of the person you are talking to.

Ralph Ellison wrote of the opposite phenomenon, the utter lack of recognition and validation experienced by an ethnic minority surrounded by casually accepted structural racism and prejudice, in his classic "Invisible Man".

If we want to solve the problems facing us as individuals, as families, as congregations of faith, as citizens of this country and denizens of this planet...we must learn to see each other.

The alternative is simple disintegration of human progress.

Namaste. I see you, my friends. And to those who disagree with everything I say and count me among their enemies...

I see you too.

Election Day

As I read about the armed robbery of a fast food spot in Portsmouth last night, a crime that resulted in a female employee being shot, I wanted to make a relevant comment. You know, something insightful about the relationship between prolonged economic depression, the perennial lack of opportunity perceived by so many in the hood, and the psychological reality experienced by street youth in general - and how all of this ties into occurrences of violence and crime.

Instead, I find myself thinking of my youth in New York City, and especially of my mother, a Black woman herself widowed by street crime, who slogged through all kinds of weather and personal ailments to make it to the post office job she held my entire life. The streets were still reeling from the nuclear-level impact of crack cocaine and the fast money it injected into the hood, not to mention the rapid militarization of the police force and attendant targeting of black and brown boys. Her desire to get my grandparents out of the daily pressures of that life is what eventually led her to move them to Virginia Beach during the 1990's.

I think about how street crime is an ever-present reality in poor neighborhoods, like a damned Uroboros, the snake eating itself which symbolizes eternity, in this case symbolic of a community devouring itself. The perpetrators and victims of street crime are usually from the same community, creating a sort of predatory microcosm in which certain citizens are forced to form the buffer between street-level criminality and the rest of the society.

These are the same neighborhoods populated with check cashing spots, payday loan storefronts, greasy-spoon Chinese food joints and neighborhood stores that exist mostly to sell blunts, beer and lottery tickets. Rarely is there a real supermarket in walking distance, and eating anything other than garbage requires a deliberate effort.

It is not easy being poor in America. It is not easy being a single mother. It is not fun being Black, and it is no joy to live in a concrete jungle filled with all manner of hungry creatures. Put all this together and then add atop it a bureaucratic system seemingly designed to extort money from the poorest among us by any means possible. Add a vicious political current that attacks the poor for the crime of poverty and seeks to gut the social safety net whose tenuous strands keep so many from falling completely through the growing cracks in our social foundation. Do the math when you add a society that sees the victims and criminals as part and parcel of the same problem, and treats the entire community accordingly (stop and frisk, driving while black, sentencing disparities, et al and ad infinitum), and a popular culture so bleached of soul that it becomes a delivery vehicle for nihilism and self-degradation.

Then I think about the other side of criminality - the fat cat hedge fund managers, the bank execs with their multi-million dollar golden parachutes, the predator capitalists who would sell gasoline undies to their auntie in Hell if it would help their margins, the corrupt and for-sale professional politicians who exist to serve the oligarchs and assist in sucking the lifeblood from the poor.

I think of all these things, and then remember that today is election day, albeit an off-year contest, which ostensibly idealizes the bloodless change of power in this country...and I wonder...how would we be different, as a nation, if there was no buffer...if more people were forced to live the life of a second-class citizen, if the illusion was more fully ripped away.

As above,
so below.

I see the agenda being pushed by political elites in this country, the future being engineered, the dog-tiredness of the lower classes and gadget-induced apathy of the diminishing middle. There is a vastness to our capacity for violence as a nation, a military, a police force, and individuals.
And I cannot help but think...

Soon we will find out.

I'm so glad to live in a nation founded on the principles of social equality and judeochristian values. As I read about the push to develop smart body armor for our soldiers, I think about the parallel push to cut food stamps and SNAP benefits, and I think, thank god! What we need is the capacity to wage global war at a moment's notice, not children with full bellies. Why can't liberals understand this?

Similarly, as we allow our public education infrastructure to erode, while simultaneously hanging a debtor's noose around those lucky, determined and talented enough to make it through higher education, I think - yes, this is what Jesus would do! If God wanted poor brown children to read, he would have made them rich and white!

As for the push to prevent millions of Americans from having access to health insurance for the first time, this is so obviously based in scripture that I don't even need to defend it. Blessed are the meek, it is said. The economic and social pressures being applied to the lives of most Americans are simply designed to ensure their meekness until the Lord returns.

If people could stop trying to eek out a meager existence in this world and just focus on their reward in the kingdom which is to follow, things would be much easier for the corrupt politicians and Objectivist billionaires to finish the establishment of dystopia.

Get with the program people. Stop telling people to read, vote and think. Allow them to sink further into economic quicksand. Ignore the cries of your neighbor's children. Attack the poor for the crime of their poverty. Close your eyes, throw a dart at a map of the Middle East, and prepare to invade randomly.

You know, learn to be a 'Murican.

Treason is like a box of chocolates.

To Cable News Hosts:

Stop calling Edward Snowden a traitor. Treason is a crime defined in Article III of the U.S. Constitution and Snowden's actions have not been judged to meet that standard. While you are at it, stop defending America's "need" to illegally spy on THE ENTIRE WORLD in order to be "safe"...whatever that even means. Stop calling yourself a journalist when all you are doing is repeating the crap the political elites spout as gospel and helping to brain-scrub the masses into unwitting complicity. Stop selling out the free press so damned hard for your comfortable cable news seat. Take the member of corporate America from your lips long enough breathe the free air while it is still free, then use that breath to speak something closer to the truth of lived reality. 

 Stop hurting America.

On the Supposed Freedoms We Enjoy

So the supposedly liberal hosts of a supposedly liberal cable news show on a supposedly liberal network just finished what amounted to a near-blanket defense of the rights of the United States government to commit espionage trumping anything like transparency and privacy rights. One of the hosts did make a distinction between domestic spying on Americans and foreign espionage. I am not taking a specific stance on the Edward Snowden leaks at this time, but I will take a swing at answering the question "Who have these leaks benefited besides Edward Snowden?" that was posed by one of the hosts.

My answer as to "who benefited" is simple: the fundamental concept of free information in a free society benefited; every American benefited by the NSA being scrutinized under the rule of law we purport to cherish; the global community benefited by being brought into the loop on American activity that is antithetical to the idea of us being a fair player on the global stage.

 You know who has not benefited tremendously? One Edward Snowden. He is an exile, a fugitive, a man without a country, held at the mercy of nations with a human rights record we decry...and all this instead of the benefits he could have garnered from anonymous sale of the information. Shame on the supposedly liberal media for their supposed journalism on the actions of this supposed traitor.

Expecting anything less than functional support of the Big Brother State by commercial media was, I suppose, foolish on my part.

Civil War Part Two: This Time It's Personal

Perhaps we should just skip the sociopolitical evolution (or devolution) of the next 20 to 40 years and just set off Civil War Part II: This Time It's Personal immediately.

I'm only half-way joking.

We have a situation where there are 312 million Americans split nearly down the middle by politics and worldview, and the more I hear from both sides, the more I get the sense that neither wants to be countrymen to the other. So why keep up the charade? America is large enough to split in two. I'm not advocating sedition here, I am asking an honest question.

What is the point of an America that doesn't want half of it's citizens to vote? I say it may be time to cut the umbilical and see if the half that doesn't believe in science, government, public education, immigration and social mobility can fend for itself...

This Gerry Mander is one shady character.

So, have you heard the scoop on who is really running things over in the House of Representatives? As we all know, it's not the Speaker. No, the truth is much worse, much more insidious, and I'm afraid that the influence over the House is thoroughly unwholesome. I'm talking about that ultimate good ole boy, Gerry Mander. Do you want to know the worst part of this sad little comedy? Gerry Mander isn't even a person.

Gerrymandering is the process of redrawing electoral districts for purposes of partisan advantage. The resultant shapes can be quite convoluted, as they aren't being designed according to any natural geographic requirements, but rather strictly according to political strategy to increase leverage for certain voters and decrease it for others.

The practice is used by incumbents, as they have both the authority to change district boundaries and the motivation to do so, and generally involves a combination of two strategies - packing & cracking. Packing involves concentrating particular voters into certain districts to deny them influence in others, while cracking involves spreading the target voters out among several districts to deny them influence in particular areas.

Another nifty effect of the practice in some cases is the insulation of elected officials from the force of mainstream opinions by allowing them to remain safe in their own gerrymandered district, regardless of the opinion of the majority. We are seeing this effect operate in dramatic fashion in the House of Representatives right now, with a minority of radical Tea Party Congressman holding the entire democratic process hostage with a virtual assurance of immunity from repercussion. This situation makes it more than difficult for the compromises that are required for government to function rationally.

So as we enjoy the spectacle of the current government shutdown, as well as the daily media cycle of recrimination and accusation, and await the coming debt ceiling debacle, we should remember who we really have to thank for this most recent manifestation of the degeneration of the American Republic. After all, the most basic premise of our system is that when you lose an election, when your opponent's legislation has been vetted by two branches of government, when a law is passed...you back down. You regroup for the next election cycle. You follow the process. Anything less, and you invite the kind of lawless sentiment and eventual impetus to radical thought and action that is the stuff of history.

You know, like the Fall of the Roman Empire?

You get the government that you allow.

Stay Strapped for the Shutdown - Welcome to the New Age

As I write this, the United States Congress has less than three hours to do its duty, as defined in the Constitution, and pass a continuing resolution to fund the government for a little while longer. The consensus opinion is that they will fail miserably and that at the stroke of midnight the government of the most powerful nation in the world will slow to a halt. Again. This curious phenomenon has not been observed since 1995, when it happened twice under President Clinton after he vetoed the budget the Republican-dominated Congress passed (Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House at the time).

This is not a particularly novel phenomenon; according to the Congressional Research Service the government has shutdown 17 times since 1977. Some lasted less than a day, and almost all lasted less than 3 days. The longest shutdown on record is also the most recent, lasting 21 days from December 16, 1995 to early January 6, 1996. There are, however, differences between the looming shutdown and the 1995 event. By the time the 1995 shutdown occurred, Congress had passed a baker's dozen of appropriation bills to allow for continued funding of certain activities. This time around they have only approved a military pay bill to allow payroll for the armed forces and certain Department of Defense personnel.

The effects of a shutdown have been described along a sliding scale ranging from a literally negligible effect to loss of livelihood, income and security, depending on who is doing the describing.
National parks, museums and other attractions will be closed down. Veterans will begin losing benefits fairly quickly, affecting over 3 and a half million veterans, according to the Department of Veteran Affairs. Nearly a million government workers who are deemed non-essential could be furloughed. Economists expect a short shutdown to have only a moderate negative effect on the economy, but a longer term event could have significant implications on economic growth, at a time when the real-world effects of the economic slowdown are still reverberating through vulnerable communities. 

More troubling still is the impending debt ceiling fight promised by Speaker Boehner. The United States has never defaulted on its debts, and the consequences would be global in impact. Raising the debt limit is necessary to provide funding to pay debts that the government has already incurred, and failing to do so would leave the government high and dry with respect to paying its bills.

Polls suggest that the public will lay more blame at the feet of the Republicans than the Democrats, but that hardly seems a fitting gauge for the measure of disappoint, disenchantment and disgust felt by so many Americans for the actions of their government. It seems that this iteration of the American government, in all its tripartite glory, seems hellbent on riding the republic directly into the abyss.  This Congress is completely dysfunctional and its shortcomings are so well documented in all forms of media as to need no mention here. The Executive Branch has seen fit to wage a quiet electronic war against the privacy rights of its own citizens of such scope and breadth that we are still uncovering the intimacies of its violations. The Supreme Court has become a partisan creature, and its Citizens United decision is an abomination and an affront to common sense notions of fairness and democracy.

The cyclical dance performed by the two dominant political parties in America presently amounts to little more than puppet theater, the candidates thin shadows cast on a wall, childish, false and devoid of substance. Neither party seems able to generate ideas powerful enough to muscle us out of the quagmire we find ourselves floundering in, and neither is independent of the will of the puppetmaster - the rich and affluent corporations and individuals who wield disproportionate influence in our society.

A third political party may be the only option for those citizens more interested in solving problems and seeking solutions than promoting ideology and catering to plutocrats. Third parties have not fared particularly well recently, but they can have an effect on the overall atmosphere of political discourse. The obstacles erected to prevent easy ballot access for third-party candidates are formidable and require strong political organization. We saw the the potential raw material for such a movement in the chaos of the Occupy movement that temporarily captivated the public space. The question now becomes  - Is there anyone that can harness that raw material, organize it intelligently and efficiently into an electoral missile and launch it into the heart of the two-headed corporate behemoth that sits astride the republic?

Until then, I humbly suggest everyone strap in and keep trays in an upright position. It looks like this is going to be a bumpy ride into the holiday season.

The Speed of Life

Usain Bolt is the fastest human on record, with a foot speed of almost 28 mph. The speed of sound is about 770 mph in dry air. The circumference of the earth that we whip about on is about 25,000 miles. An object that wants to leave earth must achieve escape velocity, around 25,000 mph. The speed of light in a vacuum is about 187,000 miles per SECOND. According to relativity, this is the ultimate speed limit of this universe; nothing can actually achieve it, except light.

The sun is 96 million miles from all us, which means that it takes a ray of sunlight about 8 minutes to travel through space to poke you in the eye on the drive home. A light year is actually a measure of distance, it is the distance that light travels in a year, or 5.87849981 × 1012 miles.

Big number, huh?

But not really. In astronomy, distances are measured in parsecs, equal to about 3.25 light-years, kiloparsecs, megaparsecs (1 million parsecs) and gigaparsecs, which represent a billion.

Sounds like a lot of Han Solo talk, right? This is the basic language needed to describe the largest scale structures of our home, this universe - filaments, sheets and walls, formed by patterns in gigantic clusters of BILLIONS OF GALAXIES, which are separated by mind-bogglingly immense voids, creating a web or sponge-like structure...made of stars. We could reverse the process and visit the molecular, atomic and quantum worlds.

I went through all of that as sort of an exercise for all of us to appreciate a few things. The first is the idea that structure and symmetry exist on the most immense scales imaginable – look at some of the images of the galactic superstructures, they are quite beautiful. The second thing it brings to mind is the immensity of this place, this ever expanding universe that we share, and the tremendous capacity for knowledge and understanding we acquire through the instruments and techniques of reason. We should never surrender the capacity for investigation and the right to question traditional explanations.

We have the power to solve our problems.  We have the capacity to understand them and the power to resolve them. Perhaps we can look to our children for the wisdom to not repeat them. But it is up to us to deal with those hostile, nihilistic voices in our global community who do not seek solutions, those who profit from problems and treat our one and only spaceship as their private property, with no regard for progression of ancestors stretching behind us, nor the children waiting to be born.

We all love Star Trek and Star Wars, right? Those incredible programs that used the power of imagination to show us what is possible, to show us ourselves among the stars….

I am telling you that we will never reach the stars until we deal with the less evolved here on Earth.  It is not okay to be hateful or cruel or discriminatory because of outdated superstitious customs or ethnic vendettas. It is not okay to own the earth and let many starve so that a traitorous few may rule. It’s not okay to not evolve, to want to return to the image of a past that never was. It's not okay to pretend corporations are people, or that people are disposable, or that the planet can be replaced.

Let’s proceed, instead, into the future, together…

Navy Yard Shooting

America has been rocked by yet another mass shooting, this time inside the heart of the nation's capital, within a highly secure military facility. Aaron Alexis, a former Navy reservist who was being employed as a civilian contractor, entered the Washington Navy Yard with a shotgun recently purchased in neighboring Virginia. He used the weapon, along with others acquired along the way, to wage a campaign of murder that would end with twelve fatalities and numerous injuries.

Alexis apparently suffered from documented mental health issues, including a tip from Rhode Island police to their Navy counterparts that Alexis reported "hearing voices" and that unseen assailants were using a microwave device to send vibrations into his body. Despite this, and past incidents involving firearms, Alexis was allowed to keep his security clearance. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel admits that there were red flags ignored in the Alexis case, and has ordered a review of military procedures regarding security clearances.

There is no indication that Congress will move on so-called gun control legislation, despite the president's urging; there have been more than a dozen shootings involving four or more fatalities, the FBI's standard for a mass shooting, since he took office. Even legislation requiring background checks, which is polling extraordinarily high among the American people, cannot get traction in this legislative environment. It is not clear how effective such legislation would be in stopping this type of violence even if it could be made law.

So we are left with a renewal of the cycle of the left calling for gun reform, the right hoisting the second amendment up like a Spartan shield, and the blood spilling in the streets, schools, churches and workplaces of the nation.

The scars from having the children and teachers of Sandy Hook taken from us have not even had a chance to harden - we are still sore from grief, numb from horror, shocked by evil.

This is the truest terrorism, is it not? The sure knowledge, planted like a darkling seed in the deep soil of your heart, that there is no place of safety, anywhere. There is no time that your children and wife can't be slaughtered like animals, for no discernible reason.

This is the truth of America, and anyone telling you differently is selling something or running for office.  "It's not just America, people kill each other everywhere" says the peanut gallery.

"Yes, Peanut. That is true. But Americans have a gift and a flair for killing, and it is not slowed a step when turned against other Americans. Look at the Civil War - bloodiest damned scrap this country has ever been in, and we were fighting ourselves."

True story.

 Where does this bloodthirstiness come from? Why do we raise a fist when in the past we would have raised a voice? Why do we raise a gun when we would have raised a fist? Why kill so many, so wantonly, with such a vicious remorselessness that even the youngest among us are not exempt?

Just, why? Our politicians, law enforcement personnel, mental health professionals and assorted clergy all do their best to answer that question, yet obviously they come up woefully short, the lot of them. These people killing us are us...our brothers, husbands and sons. Where are we losing our boys? They watch the same movies, play the same games, tell the same jokes...yet...some of them kill. Why?

If we can find an answer to that...an answer to the rage that bubbles beneath the surface of so many in these 50 states...an answer to a cultural fascination with violence that is older than the nation itself...an answer to the paranoiac distrust that Americans feel for each other...the isolation...the dissolution...the growing sense of inevitability that this is simply the way it is here now...the way our children and their children will have to live...if...if only...

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned"

-W.B. Yeats

Bloomberg's Vision for New York

"Wouldn't it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here [New York]?"

Yes, Mayor Bloomberg, it really would be just great.

The soon-to-be-Ex-Mayor of New York posed this question to New York Magazine's Chris Smith during an interview conducted for the Magazine in August 2013 (read the full article here). The mayor was posing the question rhetorically as part of his argument that the rich, read here as the top 20 percent of earners in NYC, pay for everyone else's services.

This seems like a standard observation of the Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule, which states that, for any given system, 80% of observable effects are traceable to just 20% of the possible causes.

It also might be an insight into the gross economic inequality between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else in the economy that the bottom percentages have so little wealth to tax. Hence, instead of working to construct a solid rapport with the "regular" folks in the city, Bloomberg seeks to lure more Russian billionaires to the Upper West Side.

 "Air-conditioning in the schools, the subways. Are you crazy? Now, by most of the world’s standards, you ain’t poor...I’m not being cavalier about it, but most places in the world our poor are wealthy."

It is instructive to pay attention to how the Mayor approaches issues like income inequality in the city. The implication of his statement is that there are actually no poor people in America, due to the fact that, as the world's most powerful nation, we have established something of a socioeconomic safety-net, to catch less fortunate citizens and at least slow their descent into personal catastrophe. We are undoubtedly lucky to live in a nation that has decided to mitigate the destitution of its citizenry, and it is likely better to be homeless and unemployed here in the States than in many other places around the globe - you will get no argument from me on these points. Yet I still don't see how any of that affects the observation of economic patterns WITHIN the socioeconomic framework that defines the lives of those of us who live and work here. Not to mention the validity of observations of the role of the American plutocrats and corporatists in the economic conditions observable around the world.


"...this city is not two groups, and if to some extent it is, it’s one group paying for services for the other." 

This is the culmination of a sequence the Mayor began by calling Mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio's election campaign, which feature his biracial son Dante and his Black wife, "racist" as well as an example of class-warfare. The Mayor goes on to defend the "stop-and-frisk" practice that has come under criticism and constitutional scrutiny.


"We have not racial-profiled, we’ve gone where the crime is."

The program has been shown to be minimally effective at removing weapons from the street, and again the implication here is that there is no crime in non-Black neighborhoods. I have it on good authority that a large robbery was committed by a group of men on Wall Street. Might want to check that out.

Seriously, the epidemic of gun crimes in the Black community needs to be addressed on several fronts, but the data shows that the stop-and-frisk tactics are not effective policy, and they certainly do nothing to address any of the core socioeconomic realities that create the situation on the ground in the ghetto. The para-militarization of urban police departments and the promulgation of an "us-against-them" mentality among "peace officers" denies the possibility of gaining support for community policing of a qualitatively different nature. If communities all too often have reason to view the police as shift-working mercenaries bussed in from outside the community to harass and detain, there is little chance of the reciprocal action that is so critical to understanding what is really happening in the streets. It is a fundamental difference in philosophy.

And that is the ultimate story with Bloomberg, and his predecessor Rudolph Giuliani; they have a fundamentally different philosophy than many New Yorkers, and they see the city very differently than many who grew up there. We don't all have a vision of the city as a mecca for billionaires, with the economy built around them.

There was dream called New York...once. A city where every imaginable race, religion and political persuasion rubbed shoulders on the subway, forming the backbone of a magnificent specimen of urban democracy. Messy? You better believe it. Worth the hassle? More so than any city in the solar system...

Thank you for you service, Mayor Bloomberg.

Accidental Diplomacy

Thank the lucky stars for accidental diplomacy. During a London press conference, Secretary of State John Kerry makes an off-the-cuff remark about how Syria could avoid a military sanction by the US, namely by surrendering his chemical weapons store to the UN and allowing inspections.

Russia and Syria appear to being saying yes. Whoddathunkit?

Didn't we use to call this kind of use of leverage...diplomacy?

Seriously, why is this kind of strategic foreign policy playing second fiddle to cruise missile deployment? I understand that the situation in the Middle East is complex, which is why I am baffled by the fact that so many smart people think that blowing things up will sort things out. If that were the case, wouldn't things be sorted out already?

John Kerry's Accidental Solution

Obama seeks Congressional approval for action in Syria

It is somewhat alarming to hear cable news pundits questioning the motives of the President in seeking Congressional approval for military actions against the Syrian government. Some of the questions being bounced around the broadcast echo chamber:

"Doesn't this project weakness"

"What will the Syrian rebels think?"

"Is it because David Cameron didn't get support in the UK?"

Firstly, I don't think the US, which possesses the most powerful military in the history of militaries, needs to worry overmuch about appearing weak. We are well known for our capacity and proclivity for force.

I am also not overly concerned with the opinion of the Syrian rebels, who are fighting either for or against Al Qaeda, depending upon the news source. I do not mean to sound callous; I saw the horrific images of the victims, the innumerable small bodies of dead children among them, just as most of you did. Many times that number have been killed through the regime's use of conventional ordinance in actions prior to the recent chemical attacks. Still, the decision to deploy American military power remains in American hands, and must be made with all due consideration.

As for Mr. Cameron, the Prime Minister tried to provide the President with the cover an international coalition, but his parliament did not see things his way. This is at least partly the result of the credibility deficit from which our intelligence proclamations suffer post-Iraq, due to the failure to turn up WMDs. This is the international political equivalent of the parable of the Little Boy who Cried Wolf.

The administration has made it clear, however, that it is quite willing to proceed with unilateral action. Before we do, though, the President has decided to allow our parliament the same opportunity as Mr. Cameron's.

In a former life, the President was a constitutional law professor - how many of the knee-jerk critics can boast as much? I think the administration, not to mention the Constitution, will ultimately benefit from erring on the side of caution - even though the President has made it known that he believes that ordering the strikes does lie firmly within the authorities granted by the War Powers Act.

The act was passed in 1973 by a Congressional override of President Nixon’s veto. The legislative branch was concerned over the prolonged incursions in Korea and Vietnam without a Declaration of War, seeing in these actions an erosion of their authority. It was intended to limit powers available to the Executive branch in cases where it did not seek approval from Congress.

We’ve already allowed our reputation as a coherent democratic state and responsible international actor to be immeasurably damaged through covert drone strikes, black site prisons, indefinite detentions at Gitmo and NSA surveillance of untold scope. There is only so much mud left available for our name to be dragged through.

Random

I still remember the day the nuns told us that we all had someone special inside of us, waiting to emerge like a butterfly from a chrysalis.

"You all can be anything you want, just remember that the most important thing is to be yourself", the young woman in the habit said.

"Except for you, Mark. It's imperative that you try to be anyone else, other than yourself. And if that thing inside you somehow breaks through the barriers into our world, I trust you will do the right thing and end the menace to us all."

"Ok, who's ready for recess?"

Ah...Catholic school.

So I've been compulsively reading the comment sections of articles dealing with race, politics and current events (Zimmerman trial, voting rights act, racial tensions, etc) on various websites. This is a bad idea, I know, since it seems online anonymity provokes the worst elements of glib, hateful and cowardly expression. But I did it and now I'm stuck with the cognitive repercussions of what I saw. I've had enough vodka to realize that I've got to let this out if it's going to go away (the racial anxiety, not the vodka), so I'm about to engage in some pretty heavy-duty generalizing based of a pretty small sample population. Not the most rigorous application of method, but my primary intellectual foes don't believe in science, people. A person gets lazy...

American Blacks and Whites (self identified) have SEVERELY different opinions and assumptions regarding the history, cultural psychology, and economic functions of their country and it's various inhabitants.

Blacks seem to forget that there are narratives playing out in America beyond that of "Black and White", and that there are plenty of places on Earth where minorities have less protection against capricious majorities than they do here. The American Constitution is not perfect, but it's a damned sight better than most nations'.

In order to solicit sympathy, which seems to be a perennial objective of some voices, there most be reciprocity and a willingness to be at least empathic in return. Blacks have a long, hard history with America, but so do many others. Just ask your Native American friends. Oh, you don't have any? Hmm....

Whites seem to be in a bubble where the historical facts and the evidence on the ground are less important than clinging to an unsupportable cultural narrative about hard work and reward, as if engineered social leverage had nothing to do with their advance as a whole. News Flash...the entire structure of American society for most of its existence has been de facto affirmative action for Europeans. Get over yourself and get into history.

In other words, neither group is dealing with history or current affairs in a mature way, opting to wade in shallows of ignorance rather than dive into depths of understanding. I don't know if Mr. Zimmerman is guilty or innocent, or if I am going to have to organize against anti-voting measures as generations before me had to do, or if I am going to be stopped and frisked when I move back to New York (Mayor Bloomberg recently said that too many whites were being stopped). I do know that proclamations of the death of racism are premature, and that those of us with ties across racial boundaries must take it upon ourselves to further substantive and conciliatory dialogue. No one else seems capable.

Twerkin for Syrian Peace

Not to distract America from the ever-present threat of Miley Cyrus' twerking, but it seems like we may be launching missiles into yet another Middle Eastern country. #syria #sarin #teamusaworldpolice