Off topic from the blog - confessions from the position formerly known as "the center"
Listening to the radio a while back - ok, I'll admit it, I was listening to NPR, I heard a print journalist arguing with a very liberal radio personality about welfare and class issues.
The journalist was not a big proponent of bloated welfare services nor was he the traditional bleeding heart liberal who wanted to save the whales at the expense of middle America.
"Listen" the journalist said. "I don't consider myself a leftist liberal. I just don't agree with aggressive unilateral foreign policy, I don't think we should write off social and class issues completely, and I'm not entirely convinced that global free markets is the absolute right answer all the time."
"I'm the position formerly known as the center."
I like that very much.... "the position formerly known as the center."
Before yesterday, I'd never voted for a Democrat in my life.
When I was a kid my dad taught me never to fight. If you can't talk your way out of it, just walk away. Violence rarely solves problems, and has a nasty way of creating problems. Even if somebody smacks you, the right choice is usually not to smack them back.
I punched a guy once. I was really mad at him. He was a good friend and he broke my heart. ("Fredo, I know it was you... You broke my heart") He knew it, too. He looked me straight in the face and told me "If you needed to take a swing at me, I'd understand." So, I did. I decked him with a hard right roundhouse to the jaw.
I'd like to say that it felt great, but it didn't. I was over at his place less than five hours later, apologizing.
My brother in law went to war this year. He's in the Navy, so he didn't get into the land battle. In fact, from what I understand, he didn't get anywhere near Iraq. He said he was in the northern seas of Africa. He was "hunting the Al-Queda." He's going back for a second tour. It's been scheduled so that he'll be gone on the day that he's supposed to be done with his service. I guess that sort of thing happens sometimes. I'm sure it wasn't intentional. Although, he did protest it, but was turned down.
My wife's favorite niece has this guy that she's dating. He's a Marine. He was over at my house the day before he shipped off to Iraq. It was during some of the bloodies times in Faluja, when Sadaat's body count was rising daily and just before we hit the 1,000 corpse mark. This poor kid from the south had been deferred from active duty due to a bad case of the night terrors. He would literally wake up screaming in the middle of the night. But, the Marines activated him, told him he'd be sleeping in "a safe place", and sent him into the heart of darkness.
This kid was in my kitchen talking to my wife and me. He told us how the Marines were going in there, cleaning up after the Army made a mess out of the situation. "Ever since the Marines showed up, it's under control." he told us. It was so odd, watching this guy. His head was pumped full of propaganda from the US military, which he kept repeating. "95% of the Iraqis WANT us there!" But behind his eyes and his Marine bred tough exterior - can you imagine the fear?
My wife's family speaks to him over there. He calls my niece often. He says that he can't really talk about a lot of things, but he'll tell us when he gets back.
"95% of Iraqis WANT us there!" he said.
It wasn't the first time I'd heard that particular statistic. To me, the number brings up some very silly images. How, I wonder, was that survey conducted? Who asked the questions? Iraqi journalists? French press? American military? What question was asked? 'Do you like the American occupation?', 'Did you prefer Saddam?', 'Do you favor removing Saddam?', or 'Here is a piece of paper, write yes on it or I will shoot you.', or maybe 'Here is a piece of paper, write whatever you like, and I promise I won't shoot you if I don't like what it says.'
But, it's not like John Kerry was the ticket to peace. Hell, Kerry was talking about more troops, more arms, more money, more, more, more. He couldn't wait for Bush to stop talking about supporting the troops so that he could talk about supporting the troops... but better.
What the hell are we doing in this war anyway?
I knew that Iraq didn't have WMDs. Not that the mainstream (liberal?) press helped me reach that conclusion. But, while this whole thing was warming up, before Colon Powell did his ball and cups show at the UN ("Now you see a camper shell.. now it's a mobile biological weapons lab."), I did a bunch of reading. I read all those estimates from the former weapons inspectors, and all them said that unless Saddam shits Twinkies, you'll never find anything more than some stockpiles of old chemicals that are now a bunch of useless goop. No nukes. No biological weapons. No new chemicals.
Now, I'm not a super smart guy, but somehow I was able to come across this information before we started bombing Baghdad. I even watched Colon Powell do his little show. I downloaded it from the internet and watched his whole presentation. I gotta tell you - He sucked. It was like "Pearl Harbor". There were no surprises, he tried to impress the audience with computer graphics, and nobody who watched it bought a frickin' word of it. All said and done, Ben Afflick was better than Colon Powell.
But hey, we made a mistake. We admit it. We'll move on. We'll try to do the right thing, right?
Hardly. The voice of the people has spoken. Apparently, a majority of Americans feel that there is no need to apologize for hitting Iraq.
It's not fair to those who died in Vietnam to call Iraq the Vietnam of our generation. Vietnam was a horrific bloodbath that Iraq hasn't come close to replicating. Some people would tell you that there is no similarity at all. But, I wonder, what was the lesson that we learned from Vietnam? And how did we apply it to Iraq? Or, did we ignore that piece of history when we made our choices?
I wonder what my daughter will ask me about Iraq. I wonder what her generation will ask us about cars, oil, Jihad, Israel, Arafat, Saddam Hussein.
I try to picture how a high school history book will sum up the last four years in less than a page with a little picture on one side and a caption.
"International Forces liberate Iraq"
Of course, Michael Moore is an asshole. I think even his fans know that he's an asshole. There's a guy out there making a movie called "Michael Moore Hates America", which ought to be interesting. I don't know if Moore hates America. I don't really like the guy, and I can't imagine that he'd be any fun to hang out with. He seems like one of those guys who would always talk down at you, or give you that false sympathy look. I watched his movies. Half of what he says is total garbage. But, the other half, unfortunately.. isn't.
The "news" this morning, actually some guy giving commentary, talked about "swing voters" who claimed that the most important issues in the election were "moral issues". Eleven states passed laws banning gay marriage and supposedly, all the talk about Supreme Court nominations brought out the pro-life vote.
That scares me. Sure. America is mostly Christian. We all know that. But, I thought that we tried to have this separation of church and state so that we could keep our government laws separate from our church laws. Of course, throughout our history, we've failed in various ways. We once outlawed alcohol on principal. That worked out really well, huh?
I'm not scared of someone restricting my freedom by making our government more Christian. I don't buy drugs or visit prostitutes. I'm straight. Heck, even if the Christian majority got all the laws turned to represent Jesus, it wouldn't change the way I live my life too much.
But, I can't help buy fear that the more religious we become as a country, the more open to Holy War we become. Right now, we have a "War on Terror", which is a war on a specific religious group. I know that not all Muslims are terrorists in the same way that not all Christians are Baptists. But, so far all the terrorists are Muslims, and they sure consider it a Holy War. They go to heaven if they kill us. Does Jesus send our boys to heaven when we kill them?
Now, I make fun of gays as much as any straight, gay-hating, fag-calling, queer-bashing homophobe I know. But I see the gay rights issue as today's Alamo of Christian Fundamentalism versus the modern era. The gays are the little pink Luke Skywalkers and Han Solos of the rebellion against the bible thumping empire. The popular vote has dealt them a crushing blow, but that's what intolerant majorities do to minorities. What did you expect? But, thank God that gays are so loud. I know that they'll keep making noise and they need to. Regardless of what the Bible says about marriage, it's now a function of the state, and a state cannot hand a marriage license to a straight couple and deny it to a gay couple just because they are gay. To quote Princess Lea, "It's not over yet."
And what about all this other stuff? We've been doing this globalization thing for almost twenty years now. Are we sure that it's working? What about that guy who wrote "The mystery of capital"? Can you really install a free market system in third world countries where the people have no enforceable property rights? "This is my house. I worked for it I bought it. I own it." "Yea, well, I'm bigger and there's no proof that you own it, and no courts to stop me, so get out or I'll beat you silly."
How is Iraq ever going to develop a middle class of consumers? For everything bad that we think about labor unions since Regan and Thatcher told us they suck, how else does anyone outside of the established upper class gain enough to buy property? Many of the communities where I live were built up in the 60s and 70s, when working class families from the unionized, heavily regulated economy moved out to California and could buy a house in a beach community on a factory worker's salary. Those same families sent their kids to college, call themselves upper-middle class, vote Republican, and talk about the wonders of deregulation and free markets.
And then we have the Mexicans, or, as the talk shows like to call them "the illigals". California tried to give "the illigals" driver's licenses, so that 10% of the population of our state could drive on the road legally rather than always being the uninsured motorist in a hit-and-run. But popular opinion lashed out like a coiled snake. We can't give them drivers licenses. Deport 'em. Every last one. The INS raided a church full of a mixed crowd of citizens and non-citizens and detained the whole lot. Is it OK to arrest legitimate citizens and say "Show me your papers"? And, for every illegal worker, isn't there an illegal employer? What are the odds that he's white, and makes a pretty good living?
But, the important thing is that we provide government money to foster private profits. This is the kind of thing that makes me sick. It's what Ralph Nadar calls "corporate welfare". By my house, we have a nice stadium that houses the Anaheim Angles. The whole thing was built by taxpayer dollars, and somehow I doubt that an appropriate share of my ticket price goes back to the city coffers to pay it back. No need to wonder who gets all the profits, it's pretty clear. Nobody is hiding.
My property tax is also paying off bonds for city improvements that we part of the Disney California Adventure deal. Great. Maybe I can take my kid there some day. Oh, it'll cost me half a stack of bills? Cool. That's fair.
The entire drug industry in the United States is heavily subsidized by federal monies. My tax dollars pay to develop new drugs. The distribution right are then simply turned over to drug companies who don't pay me back for developing them. Then, when I want to use these drugs, I pay out of my ears. And, my representatives protect the whole process. They'll arrest me if I buy drugs from Canada or Mexico.
Hey, what a deal!!! I have an idea. Let's take our deficit state budget and throw $6 billion towards doing some more of this! We'll call it "stem cell research", and anything that gets developed, we'll simply hand off to whatever company wants to make the money. Do you think we can get Christopher Reeve to help us sell this one? Everybody loves Superman in a wheelchair!
My wife says that I'm a pessimist. "You think everything is a goddamn conspiracy, don't you." she asks. "Maybe we should get you some Prozac. You're depressed."
I hope so.
So, Kerry looses the popular vote. He could be an ass and try to fight for Ohio, and, who knows, maybe get the presidency. Howard Stern, a strong Kerry supporter, came on the radio first thing this morning and advised Kerry to simply announce victory. Ok boys, we're down to one state, it looks like the other guy is in the lead.... hey, WE WON!
Then I heard that Kerry conceded. Good for you, man.
You had my vote.
From the position formerly known as the center,
-Travis
The journalist was not a big proponent of bloated welfare services nor was he the traditional bleeding heart liberal who wanted to save the whales at the expense of middle America.
"Listen" the journalist said. "I don't consider myself a leftist liberal. I just don't agree with aggressive unilateral foreign policy, I don't think we should write off social and class issues completely, and I'm not entirely convinced that global free markets is the absolute right answer all the time."
"I'm the position formerly known as the center."
I like that very much.... "the position formerly known as the center."
Before yesterday, I'd never voted for a Democrat in my life.
When I was a kid my dad taught me never to fight. If you can't talk your way out of it, just walk away. Violence rarely solves problems, and has a nasty way of creating problems. Even if somebody smacks you, the right choice is usually not to smack them back.
I punched a guy once. I was really mad at him. He was a good friend and he broke my heart. ("Fredo, I know it was you... You broke my heart") He knew it, too. He looked me straight in the face and told me "If you needed to take a swing at me, I'd understand." So, I did. I decked him with a hard right roundhouse to the jaw.
I'd like to say that it felt great, but it didn't. I was over at his place less than five hours later, apologizing.
My brother in law went to war this year. He's in the Navy, so he didn't get into the land battle. In fact, from what I understand, he didn't get anywhere near Iraq. He said he was in the northern seas of Africa. He was "hunting the Al-Queda." He's going back for a second tour. It's been scheduled so that he'll be gone on the day that he's supposed to be done with his service. I guess that sort of thing happens sometimes. I'm sure it wasn't intentional. Although, he did protest it, but was turned down.
My wife's favorite niece has this guy that she's dating. He's a Marine. He was over at my house the day before he shipped off to Iraq. It was during some of the bloodies times in Faluja, when Sadaat's body count was rising daily and just before we hit the 1,000 corpse mark. This poor kid from the south had been deferred from active duty due to a bad case of the night terrors. He would literally wake up screaming in the middle of the night. But, the Marines activated him, told him he'd be sleeping in "a safe place", and sent him into the heart of darkness.
This kid was in my kitchen talking to my wife and me. He told us how the Marines were going in there, cleaning up after the Army made a mess out of the situation. "Ever since the Marines showed up, it's under control." he told us. It was so odd, watching this guy. His head was pumped full of propaganda from the US military, which he kept repeating. "95% of the Iraqis WANT us there!" But behind his eyes and his Marine bred tough exterior - can you imagine the fear?
My wife's family speaks to him over there. He calls my niece often. He says that he can't really talk about a lot of things, but he'll tell us when he gets back.
"95% of Iraqis WANT us there!" he said.
It wasn't the first time I'd heard that particular statistic. To me, the number brings up some very silly images. How, I wonder, was that survey conducted? Who asked the questions? Iraqi journalists? French press? American military? What question was asked? 'Do you like the American occupation?', 'Did you prefer Saddam?', 'Do you favor removing Saddam?', or 'Here is a piece of paper, write yes on it or I will shoot you.', or maybe 'Here is a piece of paper, write whatever you like, and I promise I won't shoot you if I don't like what it says.'
But, it's not like John Kerry was the ticket to peace. Hell, Kerry was talking about more troops, more arms, more money, more, more, more. He couldn't wait for Bush to stop talking about supporting the troops so that he could talk about supporting the troops... but better.
What the hell are we doing in this war anyway?
I knew that Iraq didn't have WMDs. Not that the mainstream (liberal?) press helped me reach that conclusion. But, while this whole thing was warming up, before Colon Powell did his ball and cups show at the UN ("Now you see a camper shell.. now it's a mobile biological weapons lab."), I did a bunch of reading. I read all those estimates from the former weapons inspectors, and all them said that unless Saddam shits Twinkies, you'll never find anything more than some stockpiles of old chemicals that are now a bunch of useless goop. No nukes. No biological weapons. No new chemicals.
Now, I'm not a super smart guy, but somehow I was able to come across this information before we started bombing Baghdad. I even watched Colon Powell do his little show. I downloaded it from the internet and watched his whole presentation. I gotta tell you - He sucked. It was like "Pearl Harbor". There were no surprises, he tried to impress the audience with computer graphics, and nobody who watched it bought a frickin' word of it. All said and done, Ben Afflick was better than Colon Powell.
But hey, we made a mistake. We admit it. We'll move on. We'll try to do the right thing, right?
Hardly. The voice of the people has spoken. Apparently, a majority of Americans feel that there is no need to apologize for hitting Iraq.
It's not fair to those who died in Vietnam to call Iraq the Vietnam of our generation. Vietnam was a horrific bloodbath that Iraq hasn't come close to replicating. Some people would tell you that there is no similarity at all. But, I wonder, what was the lesson that we learned from Vietnam? And how did we apply it to Iraq? Or, did we ignore that piece of history when we made our choices?
I wonder what my daughter will ask me about Iraq. I wonder what her generation will ask us about cars, oil, Jihad, Israel, Arafat, Saddam Hussein.
I try to picture how a high school history book will sum up the last four years in less than a page with a little picture on one side and a caption.
"International Forces liberate Iraq"
Of course, Michael Moore is an asshole. I think even his fans know that he's an asshole. There's a guy out there making a movie called "Michael Moore Hates America", which ought to be interesting. I don't know if Moore hates America. I don't really like the guy, and I can't imagine that he'd be any fun to hang out with. He seems like one of those guys who would always talk down at you, or give you that false sympathy look. I watched his movies. Half of what he says is total garbage. But, the other half, unfortunately.. isn't.
The "news" this morning, actually some guy giving commentary, talked about "swing voters" who claimed that the most important issues in the election were "moral issues". Eleven states passed laws banning gay marriage and supposedly, all the talk about Supreme Court nominations brought out the pro-life vote.
That scares me. Sure. America is mostly Christian. We all know that. But, I thought that we tried to have this separation of church and state so that we could keep our government laws separate from our church laws. Of course, throughout our history, we've failed in various ways. We once outlawed alcohol on principal. That worked out really well, huh?
I'm not scared of someone restricting my freedom by making our government more Christian. I don't buy drugs or visit prostitutes. I'm straight. Heck, even if the Christian majority got all the laws turned to represent Jesus, it wouldn't change the way I live my life too much.
But, I can't help buy fear that the more religious we become as a country, the more open to Holy War we become. Right now, we have a "War on Terror", which is a war on a specific religious group. I know that not all Muslims are terrorists in the same way that not all Christians are Baptists. But, so far all the terrorists are Muslims, and they sure consider it a Holy War. They go to heaven if they kill us. Does Jesus send our boys to heaven when we kill them?
Now, I make fun of gays as much as any straight, gay-hating, fag-calling, queer-bashing homophobe I know. But I see the gay rights issue as today's Alamo of Christian Fundamentalism versus the modern era. The gays are the little pink Luke Skywalkers and Han Solos of the rebellion against the bible thumping empire. The popular vote has dealt them a crushing blow, but that's what intolerant majorities do to minorities. What did you expect? But, thank God that gays are so loud. I know that they'll keep making noise and they need to. Regardless of what the Bible says about marriage, it's now a function of the state, and a state cannot hand a marriage license to a straight couple and deny it to a gay couple just because they are gay. To quote Princess Lea, "It's not over yet."
And what about all this other stuff? We've been doing this globalization thing for almost twenty years now. Are we sure that it's working? What about that guy who wrote "The mystery of capital"? Can you really install a free market system in third world countries where the people have no enforceable property rights? "This is my house. I worked for it I bought it. I own it." "Yea, well, I'm bigger and there's no proof that you own it, and no courts to stop me, so get out or I'll beat you silly."
How is Iraq ever going to develop a middle class of consumers? For everything bad that we think about labor unions since Regan and Thatcher told us they suck, how else does anyone outside of the established upper class gain enough to buy property? Many of the communities where I live were built up in the 60s and 70s, when working class families from the unionized, heavily regulated economy moved out to California and could buy a house in a beach community on a factory worker's salary. Those same families sent their kids to college, call themselves upper-middle class, vote Republican, and talk about the wonders of deregulation and free markets.
And then we have the Mexicans, or, as the talk shows like to call them "the illigals". California tried to give "the illigals" driver's licenses, so that 10% of the population of our state could drive on the road legally rather than always being the uninsured motorist in a hit-and-run. But popular opinion lashed out like a coiled snake. We can't give them drivers licenses. Deport 'em. Every last one. The INS raided a church full of a mixed crowd of citizens and non-citizens and detained the whole lot. Is it OK to arrest legitimate citizens and say "Show me your papers"? And, for every illegal worker, isn't there an illegal employer? What are the odds that he's white, and makes a pretty good living?
But, the important thing is that we provide government money to foster private profits. This is the kind of thing that makes me sick. It's what Ralph Nadar calls "corporate welfare". By my house, we have a nice stadium that houses the Anaheim Angles. The whole thing was built by taxpayer dollars, and somehow I doubt that an appropriate share of my ticket price goes back to the city coffers to pay it back. No need to wonder who gets all the profits, it's pretty clear. Nobody is hiding.
My property tax is also paying off bonds for city improvements that we part of the Disney California Adventure deal. Great. Maybe I can take my kid there some day. Oh, it'll cost me half a stack of bills? Cool. That's fair.
The entire drug industry in the United States is heavily subsidized by federal monies. My tax dollars pay to develop new drugs. The distribution right are then simply turned over to drug companies who don't pay me back for developing them. Then, when I want to use these drugs, I pay out of my ears. And, my representatives protect the whole process. They'll arrest me if I buy drugs from Canada or Mexico.
Hey, what a deal!!! I have an idea. Let's take our deficit state budget and throw $6 billion towards doing some more of this! We'll call it "stem cell research", and anything that gets developed, we'll simply hand off to whatever company wants to make the money. Do you think we can get Christopher Reeve to help us sell this one? Everybody loves Superman in a wheelchair!
My wife says that I'm a pessimist. "You think everything is a goddamn conspiracy, don't you." she asks. "Maybe we should get you some Prozac. You're depressed."
I hope so.
So, Kerry looses the popular vote. He could be an ass and try to fight for Ohio, and, who knows, maybe get the presidency. Howard Stern, a strong Kerry supporter, came on the radio first thing this morning and advised Kerry to simply announce victory. Ok boys, we're down to one state, it looks like the other guy is in the lead.... hey, WE WON!
Then I heard that Kerry conceded. Good for you, man.
You had my vote.
From the position formerly known as the center,
-Travis
posted by travinator @ 1:17 PM
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