Games People Play

 

Over two decades ago, Osama bin Laden decided he was going to take down the Great Satan, aka, The United States. Despite what is in retrospect some pretty inept security, it took him and Al Qaeda until September 11, 2001 to make the big splash they’d been working toward. His goals were based on some central tenets: he needed to morally confuse and befuddle America, he had to bankrupt the American economy, and he wanted to diminish America in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Now that bin Laden has taken  a bullet to the eye courtesy of Navy Seal Team Six, it’s become popular to sit back and gloat about how America has won it’s personal battle with ObL. You just know he died scared, wishing for a few more moments before his brain was turned into a gray and red slurry, don’t you?  But things aren’t really as rosy as all that. And while bin Laden certainly cannot take credit for all our continuing ills, they’re no less real for that fact.

Consider the moral aspect.

While I am not judging, America greeted the demise of bin Laden as though Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck just exploded a world-killing meteor. We displayed a bloodlust, perhaps justifiably, but one that parallels that shown by many of the fanatics who oppose us so vehemently. Fat talking-heads gripe that Obama won’t show pictures of bin Laden postmortem, then complain that talking about his porn stash compromises national security. Senators decry a president’s adulterous inclinations just hours after getting oral sex in the back of their cars from mistresses. And even the most religiously zealous among us go blind to the WWJD billboards and cheer torture, revenge killings, and covert assassinations.

Now look at the economy.

We were already on a careening  crash-track before bin Laden ever signed off on the 9/11 attacks. Unfettered, and unregulated, greed on Wall Street led to exotic mortgage instruments and a runaway real estate bubble that doomed the economy the day the first NINJA loan was funded. We deemed many companies “too big to fail” and handed them billions of dollars to stay afloat. We sank over $3 trillion into a “war” in Iraq that was misguided, based as much on a son’s attempt to validate his daddy’s past aggressions as it was on a desire to strike back at an Axis of Evil. We continue to bankroll a similar debacle in Afghanistan, the mountainous Killer Of Empires. And we’ve forked over more than $11 billion to Pakistan alone in the name of fighting terrorism. Pakistan, of course, has done little toward that end, in fact harboring bin Laden for several years, and has instead used the billions to build hundreds of nuclear warheads to likely one day strike at India, bringing on a very real slice of Armageddon. Oh, and to keep things interesting, we continue to subsidize oil companies with billions as they record record revenue and profits perfectly well on their own.

And how do we look to the rest of the world?

This is certainly subjective. We will always have our fans, and our detractors. For every England, there’s a France (Ungrateful bastards, right?), and so on. More importantly, though, how do we compare with the rest of the world? Well, we hold our own in racism, but that could be considered subjective as well. So let’s consider metrics such as life expectancy, infant mortality, literacy, and math comprehension. We crack the top ten in one of those, life expectancy, and fall woefully short in the others. Infant mortality comes as little real surprise, as we’ve never given much more than lip service to those not yet of voting age. But it still speaks pretty poorly of us. And the other two, based on our obscene failures in education, result from two fundamental miscalculations. First, we can’t seem to understand that it is possible to correlate one fewer $4o0 ball peen hammers bought by the Pentagon to ten additional textbooks given to our schools. Second, in the wake of leaving our economy in the hands of those who had the highest incentive to abuse it, we’ve decided to make public services, including education, the illogical scapegoats, gutting funding and guaranteeing that we won’t be reading or adding numbers any more effectively in the near future.

American companies hire almost 80% of their technical professionals from other countries because, in the words of one staffing chief, “they’re smarter.” Since 2001, we’ve increased the anti-terrorism bureaucracy to the tune of three whole Pentagons worth of new office space.  And we kill, abuse, marginalize, and hate people different than us, all while holding some holy book that, at least in some parts, tells us that’s exactly what we shouldn’t do. And as one final stake in the heart, Conan The Barbarian is divorcing his Kennedy squeeze.

So no question, there’s no way you could say bin Laden was a winner in the end. But pending further review, it’s not clear what we’re winning, either.

Liar, Bully, Hypocrite…What Else?

 

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is many things, most of which, it seems, aren’t especially admirable.

He said he was in touch while in Florida during last December’s snowstorm. He said public-sector unions regularly pressure the state legislature for things they fail to win through contract negotiations. He professed to be a Trenton “outsider.” He attempted to explain why the state lost out on $400 million in federal education funds. He claimed to balance the state budget without raising taxes.  And in every case, he was less than truthful. So Christie is a liar.

When presented with his blatant falsehoods, he and his likeminded staff bombastically cry foul, claiming hidden agendas, hair-splitting, and misrepresentation. He attempts to demonize police officers, firefighters, and teachers to all who will listen. So Christie is a bully.

During his campaign to become governor, and early in his term, he berated past officeholders for shortsightedly mortgaging the state’s future by borrowing so far down the line. Since then, he’s floated over $10 billion in longterm bonds, all set to come due after his term will be completed, and some due even after a possible second term (shudder!) is past. So Christie is a hypocrite.

So what’s next? Well, recently Christie was asked about his views on evolution and creationism. His response boiled down to “It’s none of your business.” Well, I beg to differ.

The governor has the ability to present a bill to the state legislature. It generally carries considerable weight, and with a sympathetic legislature, can be pushed through rather quickly. And therein lies a very real and frightening problem.

Just look what the neo-neanderthal Bobby Jindal has done in Louisiana with a bill that allows teachers to teach creationism in science class. Elsewhere, in Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Kentucky, along with other states, loosely-veiled policies allegedly allowing free discourse on the subject instead permit creationism to be presented as science.

Let’s understand this first. Evolution is science. It is a theory, just like gravity, and only the misunderstanding or deliberate ignorance of the definition of a scientific theory can attempt to render it as less than fact. And in some ways, we understand evolution more clearly than gravity, Yet, who is questioning the veracity of gravity?

We’ve conjured up countless equations that will accurately predict the effects of gravity, but we still can’t say exactly what it is. Is it some sort of magnetism, or curvatures in space time, or invisible rubber bands, all acting in step with our mathematical proofs? On the other hand, we’ve identified many of the drivers behind and influences on evolution. From top to bottom, there are fewer gaps in our knowledge of evolution. So why aren’t more “believers” trying to cram a god into the gaps in gravity theory?

Now it’s time to circle back around. Evolution is science. Creationism is mythology. Evolution is to be taught in science class. Creationism is not, no more than civics or English Lit or any other subject should, or should not, be. Heck, you can start a class on world religions or mythology or theological philosophy, and talk about creationism till the cows come home, but at no time should it be elevated to the status of science. And science class is no place to point to the gaps in the total understanding of evolution and shout “Goddidit!”

So, Christie, when someone asks you your views on evolution and creationism, it is our business. You have the power to earnestly attempt to thrust New Jersey back into an anti-intellectual Dark Age. Teabaggers and other ultra-con neo-fascists would certainly love such an attack on reason, logic, and rational thought, but this is New Jersey, not Louisiana or Texas. So come clean and either relieve those of us who actually think, or give face to one of our basest fears.

You’re already a Liar, Bully, and Hypocrite. Now enquiring minds want to know: Are you a Moron as well?

‘Tis the Summer of Our Discontent…

 

So gas prices are playing leap-frog with the $4.00 per gallon mark, one week over, one week under, though at least in New Jersey it seems to spend more time under than over. Still, we’re hearing doomsday predictions of $5.00 prices coming our way, perhaps right in time for the grand summer gas-guzzling extravaganza kicking off Memorial Day weekend.

And of course this means a corresponding increase in costs for anything touched along its given way by petroleum, which happens to be just about everything. Food, power, service industries, manufacturing; they’re all accordingly corrupted and priced in part by oil.

And yet, strangely, while we’re paying an absolute premium for our premium, oil companies are raking in record profits. No, we’re not talking about gross, but net numbers here. But why is this, since you would think that the rising prices must be coming from rising costs closer to the source? Surely there’s a shortage, or concern about stability in some oil-rich part of the world, or some sort of disaster that would seriously impact production, right?

Wrong. OPEC says there is no shortage, and in fact, there is even a surplus at this time. Other oil-producing countries and consortiums are expressing the same sentiment. And sure, the geopolitical stability in most regions is, as usual, tenuous, but actually no more so than at most other randomly selected times in the past when gas prices were a whole lot lower. And unquestionably, the Gulf debacle of last year is wreaking havoc still on fishing in the effected areas, despite our pitifully short attention spans shuffling this disaster to some fog-sheathed back-burner. But the economic aftershock on oil prices should now be a pebble’s ripple in the sea.

So this means the oil companies are gouging. And while all the Randian idealists are trumpeting Free Market Or Die, we’ve never operated under any sort of true, pure capitalism. There has always been governmental involvement in the country’s economy. Ask the banks borrowing short term at insanely low interest rates. Ask Microsoft, Bell, or major league sports. The government has always had a hand in what goes on with our dollars and cents. What’s varied over the years is the degree of hands-on treatment.

This country has been struggling to recover from one of its worst economic disruptions. There’s been no definitive cure to the illness, but some of the symptoms finally appear to be improving. There is hope for the first time in some time.

Cry all you want, you ultra-con naïfs, but if there has ever been a perfectly valid reason for the government to investigate an industry, the targets would be oil companies, and the time would be now.

Chillax…

 

They say stress can kill you, and with what stress seems to have heaped upon me recently, I don’t find that hard to believe.

One day you figure that stress is supposed to feel like a set of eagle talons clamped onto your neck and shoulders, and the next you’re passing out at work, ending up in the hospital, and within 24 hours being told that you have an irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar. No, sir, you’re not going to die, not yet anyway, but there are some physical peculiarities that need sorting out.

You get an echocardiogram, and it shows that your heart muscle is up to the work it has outlined for it, but the elderly cardiologist tells you you’re fat, too young to be putting so much stress on your systems, and get some blood work done, thank you. Oh, and see you in a few weeks for a stress test, after we’ve dealt with that hypertension, of course.

You’re out of work until things make a little more sense, and meanwhile you’re taking pills for the blood pressure and anxiety, just to keep all the metrics where they belong.

You need to stay active, not just give in to the nearly debilitating right hook of mortality socking you smack in the jaw, but at first it’s an uphill battle. Then, after a few days, you come to grips with the fact that you’re a stone’s skip from fifty, and getting a wake-up call this cheaply is actually a pretty decent bargain.

Your wife loves you, despite your various failings, and you have a chance to make sure she continues to do so. You can lay out a path to better health, for yourself and your relationship. You see your children as treasures, the kind you need to stay around for a long time to admire and cherish.

This is when you realize you need to relax, make the changes that keep you on the right tracks, and enjoy the ride more often. Find reasons to say yes, not no. Don’t begrudge, be giving. Take the chance you’re given, and turn it into smiles, not scowls.

Because even when things don’t work out exactly according to plan, it’s still sunny on the inside.

Amazon Reverses Course

Last night I'm watching the local news, and it includes a story about a book written by some miscreant in Colorado titled "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure." And of course, because they are the media, the story focused not so much on the abhorrent subject matter of the book, but rather on the fact that Amazon was selling it on their mega-website. Apparently there is no story that can't be bastardized into a news sensation.

Don't get me wrong. Amazon's decision to sell this vile screed can be seen as at least questionable, and they must be willing to take any public relation or commercial hits as inevitable consequences. But as a long-time opponent of censorship, I do not have an issue with Amazon's right to sell the book. They sell books about racist supremacy, religious fundamentalism, and various other nasty, exclusionary, bigoted topics, and they are allowed to do so. Still, there comes a time when doing something just because you have the right to do it is counterproductive to doing what is right. Yes, there is often a difference between exercising your rights and doing the right thing.

And so, Amazon has now apparently made the decision that selling the book is not the right thing to do. Granted, the over 3000 one-star reviews (the site review minimum), anguished expressions of disgust, and countless calls for boycotting Amazon likely played a substantial role in determining this course of action, especially heading into the free-for-all holiday spending season. But regardless of the reasons, Amazon, after coming to the realization that their anti-censorship policy could in this case cost them untold millions in revenue and reputation, made the right call in making the book unavailable on their site.

I have more to say about the author of the book, one Phillip R. Greaves II, but that's a special topic for the near future. For now, I'm thanking Amazon for doing what is right. It's not often a large company has an admirable corporate philosophy that it actually stands behind, and rarer still when such a company comes to understand that said philosophy, while well-intentioned, can also work against morality, ethics, and sensitivity.

You Don't Look Like Me

On top of all the other shenanigans going on, now Arizona is banning all ethnic studies courses in its public schools. It's okay to teach American History, or European History, but no Black or Hispanic History. And this because some shitheels decided it would be appropriate to teach an Hispanic Revolution course, allegedly advocating the overthrow of Whitey and The Man.

This blanket-bombing mentality is just beyond me. Rather than target the specific offending course, the state is saying no to all ethnic studies. And then they'll act all self-righteous when their motives are questioned.

This goes well beyond the Illegal Immigrant law, which at least has the benefit of motive behind it, even if it does impinge on the rights of citizens as well.

So gird your loins, America, there's more to follow. It's just a matter of time until Walter Mosely and Maya Angelou are banned from the public libraries.

On the Road to Vicktory...

1) The Eagles signing Michael Vick is not about grand ideals such as redemption or forgiveness or second chances. It is about green, and not Eagles green. It is about money.

2) It's time for all the wannabe social workers to shut up with their psycho-babble. Enough about Vick's "rehabilitation." First, prison in this country is NOT about rehabilitation, it is about parking the nightmares someplace far away from where the righteous among us sleep. Second, what Vick operated was a vile, systematic process of torture and death, with money as an additional motive. To do what he did requires a complete fracture inside, a total disconnect between right and wrong, humane and inhumane, benevolent and malevolent. He is broken, and prison cannot fix that break. So shove this rehabilitation angle up your asses, you naive, bleeding heart morons.

3) Vick did not make mistakes, unless that's what you want to call getting caught in the first place. If he was driving down the road and a neighbor's dog ran out in front of his car and he failed to hit the breaks in time and he hit the dog and killed it, then he would have made a mistake. But what Vick executed was a premeditated, organized, ruthless business plan that just happened to involve the torture, fighting, and various other abuses of dogs. That is not a mistake, that is a state of mind. It is a way of life. It is a life-view.

4) Far be it from me to attempt to judge the worth of Vick's alleged remorse, but on referring back to #3 on my list, I'm not sure that a man with the psychological and emotional warping needed to do what he did is actually capable of what most of us would consider genuine remorse.

5) To those pointing to Vick's involvement with The Humane Society and other charitable organizations and noting how it evidences his moving away from The Dark Side, allow me to call you a clueless cancer on the organs of society. Vick is following this path for one reason only: it is the path mandated as part of his sentence for the heinous crimes he committed. It does not spring from generosity or care or regret. Anyone who really believes he is speaking for these organizations because it's what he'd really rather be doing than lounging in his crib with his doting posse is simply too stupid to live anyplace except Utah.

6) I want to ask a few questions of the bleeding hearts and those who see the Vick signing only in the context of how he can help the Eagles win. Do you have a dog? And if you do, would you want a man convicted of Vick's crimes living next door? And if you saw the man hooking battery cables to your dog, or beating him with a bat, or bashing his head with a shovel, or hanging him in the air with a chain by his neck, would you be thinking about redemption or forgiveness? No, not if you have a metaphorical ball in that metaphorical fleshy sack between your legs. But hey, it's okay to have the guy playing for and representing the football team for which you profess to bleed green, right?

7) On the flip side, can we stop using Vick's name in the same sentence, paragraph, or even chapter as misanthropic monsters such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, bin Laden, and even Manson? What those men did, in varying degrees, defies the most basic tenets of man's tolerance of his fellows. As twisted and, sure, even evil, as Vick's actions were, to compare them to the atrocities perpetrated by history's most infamous, demonic screwheads is disingenous at best, and dangerously unperceptive at worst.

And so...

Michael Vick committed some damned horrible crimes. He was caught, and sent to jail, and served his assigned sentence. And in fact, he is serving it still, with post-release conditions being followed, and to a tee, I'm sure. And now that he is out, he has a right, like every other felon who has spent time in prison and then returned to the outside, to earn a living.
But here's the thing: what Vick did, and the crimes and horrors he undertook, illustrate just who and what Michael Vick is. He is a man priveleged to have experienced the best of what celebrity offers an individual in this country and morphed that sense of entitlement into the perceived right to plan and execute systematic breeding, training, torturing, fighting, and killing of dogs.

Vick can have his second chance. There are thirty-one other teams in the NFL that I would have been perfectly content to deride as misguided when they signed him. The fact that it is the Eagles, the team I have cheered and booed and cried about and thrilled about for over forty years, who signed Vick makes me realize that there many, many things more important than watching grown men playing warrior games and making millions of dollars on a Sunday afternoon.

Just like I wouldn't want Vick living next door, I don't want him playing for the Eagles either. But then, the callous effetes running the team just don't understand that comparison. They're forcing people to make a choice. And for a good person, the choice can mean compromising your principles. But then it is all about the green, right?