FW: GOD Is Busy

Here's another wonderful edition in the ongoing series of email forwards I get from my family, and my replies to them.

Subject: FW: GOD Is Busy

----- This is great...keep it going! If you don't know GOD, don't make stupid remarks!!!!!! A United States Marine was attending some college courses between assignments. He had completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the courses had a professor who was an avowed atheist, and a member of the ACLU. One day the professor shocked the class when he came in. He looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, GOD if you are real then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you exactly 15 min.' The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop. Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, 'Here I am GOD, I'm still waiting.' It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and cold-cocked him; knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold. The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked and stunned, and sat there looking on in silence. The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked, 'What in the world is the matter with you? 'Why did you do that?' The Marine calmly replied, 'GOD was too busy today protecting America's soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot. So He sent me.' The classroom erupted in cheers!

So a student attacks a teacher for saying things he didn't like, and then delivers a sanctimonious lecture about protecting freedom of speech... this violence and hypocrisy is something theists approve of?

There have been over 4,000 US military deaths in Iraq, hundreds in Afghanistan, and tens of thousands wounded. I guess GOD didn't protect those people, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died in these wars and the millions who have been driven from their homes? But instead of reflecting on the carnage and terror our country's leaders and military have inflicted on our own troops and on countless innocent people throughout the world, let's all fantasize about smashing atheists in the face!

Destructive and illegal invasions of other countries have obviously made us less safe, not more, which even US intelligence agencies acknowledge (and which was understood to be the likely consequence beforehand). Holding up these murderous rampages as some glorious acts of protecting freedom is ridiculous. And making war out to be a holy act of god makes me proud to be an atheist.

delicate sensibilities

A family member ("T") unexpectedly read my blog recently and contacted me to complain about an entry titled "give up". It is short, so I'll just repost it in all of its crude glory:

among all the things that take themselves seriously, is there anything more fuck-yourself-in-your-own-asshole-with-your-own-cock-and-complain-about-the-pain retarded than politics in the US? jesus ass-fucking-with-his-own-cock christ!

T said the entry showed "hatred and bigotry" towards the US and towards Christianity. Uh... no. The object of my scorn is clearly politics in the US. As I've said before, a group of people and the system that rules them are not the same, so I haven't shown hatred or bigotry towards the US. Nor have I shown hatred towards Christianity. I'm not cursing Jesus, I'm just using "Jesus ___ Christ" as a curse, as is quite common practice, e.g. "Ow I just hit my thumb with a hammer! Jesus fucking Christ, that hurts!!". I haven't shown bigotry, I've simply failed to show reverence. There's a difference between hostility towards a religion (which isn't necessarily bigotry by the way - I think I've been hostile towards religion in other entries without being bigoted) and simply refusing to embrace its sacred cows. So I think T is way off on that criticism.

T further said that "[t]his shows no respect or tolerance for the beliefs of others" which "shut[s] down any chance of a civilized debate on real issues." Now I'm not sure how many of my readers have mistaken a profanity-laced comparison of the US political process to a painful act of auto-erotic sodomization for an attempt to initiate a "civilized debate on real issues," but I'll clarify now: I was just pissed off and venting frustration. If you want to see my attempts to start a reasoned discussion, look through my other posts. There's lots there to talk about! Or, if having seen the tiny kernel of thought contained in my rant, you want to start a debate about self-inflicted damage and the political system, I'll gladly take part. I'll even be happy to keep my diction in line with your sensibilities.

What can kill a friendly debate is conflating irreverence with hatred and bigotry. If you want to have conversations about serious and emotional issues, it doesn't help to have a shut-down-the-conversation-because-of-perceived-disrespect system with a threshold so low that vocabulary trips the switch.

accidental email

I think it had been over two years since I stopped getting political emails from my family, but I got one this week. Below is the original email and my response. For previous editions of this fun little game, see here and here.

-----

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

By Lou Pritchett

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I k now nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because yo u have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett


Note: Lou Pritchett is a former vice president of Procter & Gamble whose career at that company spanned 36 years before his retirement in 1989, and he is the author of the 1995 business book, Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat.

Mr. Pritchett confirmed that he was indeed the author of the much-circulated "open letter." “I did write the 'you scare me' letter. I sent it to the NY Times but they never acknowledged or p ublished it. However, it hit the internet and according to the ‘experts’ has had over 500,000 hits.

----

Obama scares me too, for a few of the same reasons. These 3 in particular:

>You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild
>and irresponsible spending proposals.

When the Republican Congress moved in lock-step to pass everything
Bush/Cheney told them to, they were rightfully criticized by Democrats
as mindlessly following executive orders. Now Democrats are doing the
same thing. In many cases they're actually saying that they oppose
the legislation that they're voting in favor of, but believe it is
more important to support "their" President. It is hard to see what
the point of Congress is, from a check-and-balances perspective, if
they just do whatever the executive says. It scares me to see how
easily people in positions of extreme power will cynically invoke or
ignore important principles at their convenience.

>You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view >from intelligent people.

I find this scary too, and this is true of all presidents in recent
memory. More on this later.

>You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

The media is highly deferential to power. Bush had an abysmal
approval rating for much of his presidency, and still the media
refused to call him on his blatant lies and multiple crimes against
humanity. A popular president like BO will get and even easier time
from the media, which is pretty damn terrifying. Just like Congress,
the mainstream media has abandoned any adversarial function it should
be performing, if it ever actually served one at all.


That said, the rest of the list is fairly insane. What does it say
about the author that he can begin a list with "I know nothing about
Obama," then go on to list 19 things he knows about Obama? He claims
to even know Obama's deepest feelings and desires (e.g. "you falsely
believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient"). I guess if you
can simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs, you can believe
pretty much anything, regardless of reality, which partially explains
the craziness here.

I won't address everything point by point, though I'm tempted, but
there are two general themes of his list that I'd like to comment on.
The first theme concerns these items:

> You scare me because you lack humility and 'class',
> always blaming others.

> You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned
> yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you
> refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who
> wish to see America fail.

> You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the
> 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

The mainstream American media allows a certain a spectrum of opinion
about American foreign policy. On the right/nationalistic/

reactionary
extreme is the opinion that the US Government (hereafter "USG") is a
force for pure good in the world that is always perfectly morally
justified in anything it does and is always selflessly trying to
spread freedom and democracy across the globe. On the left/liberal
extreme is the opinion that the USG is a force for good in the world
that always acts with the purest intentions, but that has sometimes
gotten carried away in its quest for spreading freedom and democracy
and in a few isolated incidents has made regrettable mistakes. That
is the spectrum of opinion that is allowed in the US media (I say
"allowed" because editors and their bosses self-censor, not because of
any state censorship.)

The far right side can't stand even the suggestion that the USG has
ever done anything wrong, and so anyone who ever acknowledges American
misdeeds is instantly part of the "Blame America First Crowd," and
endlessly beaten over the head with this slur. This is objectionable
on several different levels.

One level of offensiveness is the inability or unwillingness to
distinguish between a group of people and their rulers. Is "America"
a nation of 300,000,000 people or the comparatively tiny group of
people that control the USG? To criticize the actions of a government
is not the same as criticizing the people of the nation, especially a
nation whose government often acts against the wishes and interests of
its population, as ours does.

So what would it mean to "wish to see America fail"? The overwhelming
majority of "radical extremists" who he's characterizing this way are
those who object to the actions of the USG, some of whom maybe even
wish for the dissolution of the government. But that doesn't mean
they wish harm on the 300,000,000 who live in the US; they think those
people would be better served with a different social arrangement.

Conservatives like Mr. Pritchett claim to value limited government.
They loved Reagan's "the government is the problem" line and supported
Gingrich when he led a shut down of the federal government in
opposition to Clinton. One would think such people would be cautious
about slinging accusations about "wishing to see America fail." But
given the breath-taking contradiction he chose to lead off this
tour-de-force screed, I don't suppose that connection has ever
occurred to him.

Beyond that, it should be noted that Obama himself is well within the
mainstream spectrum of opinion. And nobody within the spectrum
"blames America first." They all assume that America has noble
intentions, and any misdeeds they reluctantly acknowledge are taken to
be aberrant: it isn't really our fault because we were trying to help
but got carried away, or a few bad apples ruined it, or those
ungrateful Iraqis weren't willing to accept our help, etc.

My final note on that matter is that at no point does it have anything
to do with reality-based argument. There's no attempt to understand
the world, no argument as to why Obama's alleged "blame America first"
is factually incorrect or illogical. It is simply a smear designed to
demonize and avoid intelligent debate. If, as I would contend, the
unmistakeable reality is that foreign policy of the USG is not and
never has been about spreading freedom or democracy, and that it has
repeatedly immorally destroyed innocent lives around the world, should
we not acknowledge this as our first step to correcting it? (Not that
Obama does so.) Yelling "BLAME AMERICA FIRST" eliminates that
possibility, which is of course the entire point of yelling it. And
you have to yell it even at the people on the left end of the
permissible spectrum so that people outside it to the left (i.e. the
reality-based community made up of the vast majority of the rest of
the world) are ignored. And this is from the same guy who complains
about someone "refusing to listen or consider opposing points of view
from intelligent people."

So that wraps up my first general theme about discussion of American
foreign policy and "blame America first."

My second comment on general theme concerns the subtle bigotry running
through many of those items above plus these:

>You scare me because after months of exposure,

> I know nothing about you.

> You scare me because I do not know how you paid
> for your expensive Ivy League education and your
> upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

> You scare me because you did not spend the formative years
> of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

> You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the
> Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing,
> conservative points of view.

Again, America is a nation of 300 million people, the vast majority of
whom can name an immigrant among their recent ancestors. The idea
that there is a single American culture or that spending 4 years of
your childhood in another country is necessarily sinister is
incoherent at best. It strikes me that when you combine that
xenophobia with the innuendo about mysteriousness about his life and
finances, it taps into the same pockets of fear and anger that in less
polite company express themselves as overt racism. Combine THAT with
the "Blame America" nonsense, and you get "Obama is a secret Muslim
working with the terrorists to destroy America, because after all he's
a nigger with a funny name so it is obvious." The conservative
commentators he listed regularly invoke this kind of bigotry, often in
not very subtle ways, and certainly deserve scorn. (Not that Obama
actually "demonizes" yet alone "wants to silence" them).

I suppose I'll leave it at that for now.

Pictures I like.

This picture was taken at The Phoenix, the graduate student pub on campus at McMaster.



It includes the following noteworthy storylines:

• David (2nd from left), a friend from Ohio, and Bailey (middle), my sister, came up to visit for...
  
• It was taken November 27, 2008, which was American Thanksgiving, and 2 days before my 28th birthday.
• It includes Dan's asymmetrical beard (far left), one of the more amusing results of a decision among the men in my class not to shave for a few months.
• It includes Kira's recent short haircut (2nd from right).
• It was taken by Leo, a visiting grad student from Brazil, who I really ought to have some pictures with.
• It is the only picture I've seen from a very fun night that featured a much larger crowd, including my supervisors, who I really ought to have some pictures with.

Here are other pictures I like.


Hanging with the bride (Kate... on the left), the night before her wedding. Canton, Ohio. October, 2007.


Last day over there: (left to right) Paolo, Ate Lady, Jakob, Ram, JJ, and Jam. Calamba, Laguna, Philippines. November, 2006.


Kira and I, in top shape clearly. Annapolis, MD. Christmas, 2006.


Left to right: Sarah, Dave, Phil's ass, Phil, Phil's hair, Zsaz, Kira. Ada, Ohio. May, 2008.



Left to right: Katsu, Hattori, Horus. Ada, Ohio. March, 2008.

2 years

Crazy X Insane X Lunacy

Since I'm talking about my family and politics, here's something else for y'all. I was about to blog about how this reminds me of a family political discussion and tell you about it, but then I remembered that I already did. So I'll just add some more commentary.

It is kind of funny/insane what happens when two separate propaganda campaigns collide, in this case 1) that socialism is inherently bad and 2) that whatever Democrat is running for office is a socialist. Both ideas are so detached from reality that I don't even know where to start. That old post I linked to is as good as anything I'd come up with now.

In the actual conversation mentioned, I simply asked for clarification as to what was so troubling about the policy ideas under discussion, and my followup questions on the meaningless replies made it obvious to everyone involved that the replies offered were meaningless. Which led to: "so you're a fan of Hillary, huh?" Which introduces another dimension of lunacy, which is that by passively implying that assertions should defensibly make sense, in the alternate reality we inhabit I was defending the ideas/person under attack. Of course in my own personal reality all I was doing is valuing intellectual honesty. But in America there's no such thing; there is only power. Through that lens I suppose I was indeed somehow defending Hillary Clinton and the power structures with which she is aligned simply by questioning a baseless attack against her.

If I wanted to I could probably come up with a few more levels of insanity but that seems like enough for now. I guess my point is that there are so many layers of bullshit operating simultaneously that is is almost impossible to break through them and make sense to people. These people I was talking to aren't stupid. They're actually pretty smart, but they've soaked up the bullshit that is forced upon them. In that regard, we're all victims of ... this...

Colin Powell makes me wonder

The people who have dominated political conversations in my family are, as far as I can tell, paranoid reactionaries whose thought processes don't seem to be much deeper than "America is number one" and "abortion is bad because Jeebus told me so." They think of themselves as conservatives and loyally vote for Republicans. They also love the US Military and are racist against black people behind closed doors, which is why I thought of them right away when I heard about Colin Powell endorsing BO.

In a weird way it is a bit of a relief to think about something deeply personal in response to the orgy of insanity that is the US electoral season. If not for this family thing, I'd be thinking about how maddening it is that among the highest laws of Respectable Political Discourse enforced by the mainstream media is a bipartisan respect for the honor, integrity, and moderate sensibility of Colin Powell, all of it a huge lie. And I'd be thinking, like Chris Floyd, about how BO's acceptance of an endorsement from a blood-drenched war criminal like Powell is yet another disturbing revelation about who Obama really is.

Instead of all that, I'm wondering how they're resolving their cognitive dissonance back home. My initial assumption was that their heads must have exploded. They fucking love them some Colin Powell, and Colin Powell just endorsed a secret Muslim terrorist for President.... HEAD ASPLODE!!! Maybe they'll rationalize and figure that he knew Obama was going to win anyway, so he might as well give a meaningless endorsement to help himself somehow (which does seem like a pretty good explanation for his actions). So maybe they'll excuse him on those grounds.

But then I started to think about how the reason Colin Powell is so universally beloved is because he's black (at least by American one-drop-of-African-blood standards, cause really his actual skin tone is very light), because he's a highly-decorated military man, and because he tells people what they want to hear. Bipartisan respectable Americans love the military and are racist in the same back-room way as my family, so it gives them great pleasure to have a negro in a high place ("one of the good ones") telling them what they want to hear, especially a (4 star) general who can make us all feel like American use of force is something other than the industrial-scale imperial terrorism that it really is. So that's why Powell has such a counter-factual public image, and why my family loves him.

Now that Powell is off the Republican reservation, endorsing "the most liberal member of Congress" who has deep associations with known terrorists (as opposed to actually being a terrorist bomber like McCain was), now Powell isn't telling my family what they want to hear. So maybe they'll actually decide they never really loved him in the first place, never trusted him. Those blacks, you know how they always stick together. It is probably Powell's fault that we never caught Bin Laden and aren't doing so great in Iraq! He probably was secretly undermining Bush all along, as part of his secret liberal agenda. Now we know what he really is, an Arab-loving commie traitor who hates America and always has! I'm getting a bit loopy here, but I'm serious that I think this kind of retroactive denunciation might be how they'll respond. But who knows. Maybe I'll find out somehow.

Alright, well I'm hoping to go home for Christmas this year, and there's some (very small) chance that some people in my family might actually read this, so I should do some damage control. First of all, my level of frustration and outrage with this unending election is getting a bit out of control, so maybe that is messing with my head a bit. Second of all, all the non-speculative things I said about you* are true. Most notably for its potential controversy, you're racist. If you don't like it that I think that, maybe you should have given me a reason to think otherwise. But there's always a chance to change that. None of this means I don't love you guys. It just means that I have some very serious problems with some of what you say and do, and that these relate to the very serious problems I have with US politics.

I don't know if that was actually damage control or not, but apparently I've been needing to write something like this, so here it is.

*Note that by "you" I'm not really talking about a specific person, but kind of the average of a group of people. For example, if one or two people say or do overtly racist things, and nobody speaks up against it, everyone in that whole group gets the "you're racist" tag even if you yourself don't say racist things. By not resisting a culture of racism, "you" are racist. I think it is reasonable to see some people as more responsible for this than others, but everyone has a share. How you, the person reading this, specifically fit into all this is for you to decide I suppose. Feel free to talk to me about it.

Lastly, courtesy of Guys from Area 51:

Why bother? (Surely I must already have used that post title by now?)

In mid-June I sent this email to a bunch of family and friends:

"The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." -Italo Calvino

This essay by Chris Floyd documents how Iraqi civilians in Fallujah are suffering high rates of miscarriage, birth defects ("These infants include many with heart defects, cleft lip or palate, Down's syndrome, and limb defects."), and cancer, because of the illegal use of chemical and radioactive weapons by US forces in the siege of that city in 2004. The public health crisis was certainly not helped by the illegal targeting by US forces of medical clinics and personnel for destruction or capture, or by the illegal intentional disruption of water and electricity services. These massive war crimes are never reported by the US corporate media, but they outrage the rest of the world along with the few Americans who are able to access such information through alternative sources. And they've destroyed countless lives of Iraqis.

By the standards of the Nuremberg Trials, a war of aggression is the ultimate international crime, considered to encompass the whole of all the evils it contains, like the evils mentioned above. As such, civilian and military leadership, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and others should be on trial for war crimes for their roles in launching this war. But in the US, the impeachment charges brought up by Dennis Kucinich are barely even acknowledged, except as subject of ridicule, even by the purported opposition party. And so criminal prosecution is unthinkable, making mockery of any concept of law or justice.

Part of my decision to move to Canada was because I wanted to morally disassociate myself from the actions of the US Government and political class. I don't know if crossing an imaginary line really achieves that or not, but my feelings of outrage and disgust aren't likely to improve even if my conscience does. And so I'll continue to "seek out what is not inferno" and share my thoughts with my family, in the fleeting hope that it will make some kind of difference somehow.

- Adam

I received barely any response. I can count on one hand the number of people who have even acknowledged that I sent it. Email is a tricky medium, and we've all seen that people have trouble replying even to messages with very clear requests or instructions. And I don't suppose many people welcome receiving unsolicited politically charged mass emails (even if they are personally composed by a family member or close friend, as opposed to a forward of unknown origin). So I don't know that I should interpret the deafening silence in response to this missive of informative despair as complete disinterest. But it is hard not to do so.

I bring this up because another Floyd essay is tempting me to repeat this exercise. I guess something about the combination of US military violence and child suffering and death makes me want to reach out and... and what? Try to make it stop? See that someone else gives a shit? Torture myself over my own guilt? Force people to confront things they'd rather ignore? I don't know. I wonder how many of the people who read the email gave more thought to why I sent it than to the overt content it contained. I suspect that any time spent on either could be measured with the second hand of a watch, and recorded with one digit. I suppose I should be envious.

A dozen things

1. Softball is fun. I can't believe I never bothered to play softball before.
2. Beerfest at the grad student pub is fun. I can't believe I never went to beerfest before.
3. No limit hold'em is fun. I can't believe I never played it very much before.
4. This structure is fun. I can't keep it up much longer.
5. I've been meaning to do some kitteh blurghing but I can't find my camera and I feel like any kitteh blurghing must have photographic accompaniment. So I should get around to that eventually.
6. Canada is sweet, yo.
7. I'm going to the theatre this weekend to see Romeo and Juliet, which I'm pretty sure I've never actually seen. That's probably against some rule about being a cultured white person, so I guess this is all part of the deal.
8. Despite being non-plused with the preview, I want to go see Dark Knight, but I don't want to pay $11 (x2 for the wife) cause that seems excessive.
9. Speaking of the wife, she just got a very cute haircut. Very cute. She donated most of her hair to cancer kids or something nice like that, so it is very short, but in a way that really works for her. So now the hair she sheds at German Sheppard pace will be much shorter.
10. I can't wait until Kira experiences the 1-2 punch of a nice compliment about her hair then comparing her to a dog. That should be fun. I ruin everything.
11. Charles Darwin was a nifty fellow, or so I hear.
12. Fresh local produce is the only way to eat. At least in the summer.

Fin.

Move recap

Kira has the story.

I am back

I've just returned from a trip home to the Maryland area. I have a lot of blog reading to catch up on. Regular bloggage will resume here at some point. In the meantime, read about me here or here.

Cat pictures

Katsu, Hattori, and Horus (from left to right). This was a pause in the middle of a massive three-way fight. Hattori is on his back because Katsu is about to pounce on him. Hattori will throw him off, and Katsu will retreat to the kitchen, strategically leaving Horus in between himself and Hattori. So Hattori will attack Horus, who will run frightened into the back room and hide under the bed.



He climbed up here today for the first time, and he's spent most of the day up there. For him to climb so high is a huge deal. He spent the first month mostly sneaking around the house in a low crouch when he dared leave his hiding spots, and we were so excited when he started to walk in an upright position. So now exploring vertical space seems like such a major breakthrough. If I were to walk further into that room, he'd definitely jump down and hide under the bed though.




The other day he came out to the main room and took a nap with me sitting a few feet away. That he's willing to lower his guard around us is big. He's started climbing that structure he's sleeping under here as well. Usually he gets near the top, then gets scared and runs away.




This picture was taken about a year ago. It is a nice contrast to the next one.




Hattori has lost a lot of weight, and Katsu has grown so much. But they still love looking out the windows and I spared you the sight of my ugly feet.




Katsu the pillow.

what is the point of school

A while back I mentioned an interest in home schooling, but haven't directly followed up on it since. I haven't done much more research specifically about home schooling, but I've done a significant amount of reading and reflection about learning and the function of institutionalized education.

When I first contemplated home schooling, one of the first drawbacks I considered was about socialization. How would the kids learn how to interact with people? It is a very common concern, but I imagine almost all of the people who share this concern have one thing in common: they went to standard schools. Since that's where they (we) had their (our) first social experiences, it is hard for us to even imagine growing up in a different environment.

My sister sent me a great essay about this topic of socialization in institutional schooling that makes several great points. Exactly what does this oh-so-important "socialization" process actually teach kids? That they have to stick with people of exactly their own age? That you should sit indoors, bored out of your mind, being forced to pay attention to some subject you don't care about? That you shouldn't talk to your friends or make jokes in that situation? That you have to keep interacting with the same asshole that you don't get along with every fucking day because that's the way the seating chart is assigned?

Basically my position now is that I see little of value in the traditional education system that couldn't be better achieved through alternative methods. And I see lots of things in the standard school system that are extremely negative, aside from what I mentioned above. In my recent post over at Inertia Anonymous, considering how academic success is largely measured by test scores, I wrote:

Well what do tests measure except the ability to tell authority figures what they want to hear, to regurgitate information that we committed to short-term memory simply to earn the approval of the authorities, to jump through fucking monkey hoops just to see a shining "A" on the "report card" that the school authorities sent out to other school authorities (not to mention our home life authorities.)

Institutional schools are class societies. The ruling class makes the rules and enforces them cruelly. They control information and tell you what you can believe. They allow you a certain amount of freedom amidst your drudgery, and you spend your whole days looking forward to it, but they always remind you that this is a privilege that they can revoke at any time. The lower class must obey the rules, or else they are punished. They must stand in lines and tell the authorities what they want to hear. They are prevented from doing what they naturally want to do, and forced to do mundane tasks for no apparent reason. They must stick within their own groups in the lower class, groups formed arbitrary conventions like age and name, with little regard for personality, interest, or ability. Sure you sometimes have honors classes, debate teams, or a sophomore on the varsity soccer squad, but these are exceptions and afterthoughts (that suit the needs of the ruling class, who have their own rulers they must answer to).

I don't even have a kid, and it makes me queasy just thinking about putting a child through that if there are better ways to raise them. I don't know that that makes homeschooling the default alternative. I could imagine a variety of alternatives to mainstream schools, involving various combinations of formal and informal opportunities.

bush, terror, saudis, mommy, etc

A popular right-wing response to various accusations against the Bush regime is that whatever "questionable" or "unpopular" (read: illegal and immoral) actions they may have taken (read:did), they were certainly doing them to Protect America From Harm. This idea is very much an article of faith among people like my family: comforting and totally wrong. That should be obvious (even Bush's own analysts concluded that the Iraq invasion increased the threat of terrorism) but reality isn't something these types are good at seeing.

Nevertheless, after noticing this little nugget, I decided to send along some information to the folks. A painfully distorted justification is the only engaged response I'm likely to receive, but I can always hope...

Here's the message:

It is well documented that the Bush family, including both Presidents (and Dick Cheney) are very close personal friends with Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, going so far as to nickname him "Bandar Bush." Previously secret documents recently revealed in British courts show that the Bandar had threatened to make it harder for British officials to prevent terrorism unless they ended a corruption investigation into massive secret payments to Saudi royals by British aerospace company BAE, which promptly scuttled the investigation.

Recap: the President's close personal friend basically threatened to kill random civilians if the British government even thought about trying to stop the dirty money and weapons flowing to him and his associates.

This is of course just one small episode of corruption and disregard for human life from the Saudi royal family, whose deep personal and business ties to the Bush family has lasted decades. Put aside for a minute that the job of a President is to protect and defend the Constitution, not the nation. Does a man committed to doing everything he can to protect America cuddle up to a guy like Bandar Bush?

I just noticed that I used the words "scuttle" and "cuddle," which kind of rhyme. So I got that going for me.

xmas trip recap

Well we're back from our whirlwind tour of Maryland. We put 1600 miles on the car (I'm thinking about buying carbon offsets - any suggestions anyone?), slept in 8 different places (some more comfortable than others), had some good meals and some bad ones, had some good times and some bad ones, and despite enjoying our trip, we're both quite glad to be home.

As for possible topics for blogging in the near future:

• I read a lot of Chomsky on the trip, and imagine I'll be blogging about it. I also landed a handful of books as gifts, and they'll be showing up too.
• I won my fantasy football league, which was worth $320. Perhaps I'll share my secrets to paying a month's rent with your fantasy sports prowess. (Teaser: Step One is to move to rural Ohio.)
• We encountered all kinds of family drama, which at first I thought I shouldn't really write about. But then I realized that I'm only aware of one family member reading my blog with any regularity, so what's the difference right? And in a way that inattention is related to the drama, so there's all kinds of opportunity for the self-conscious meta-analysis on which this blog was founded.
• The cats traveled with us, and spent an exciting evening with an energetic 8 week old mini-beagle. An overload of cuteness was the inevitable outcome. Also, the puppy pooped in the litter box.
• We saw I Am Legend and The Golden Compass. I'd cautiously recommend both and might elaborate in a future post.
• I've submitted 3 of the 4 grad school applications I'll be completing (the last is due by January 15), and might share some thoughts on that subject.
• My friends are really starting to reproduce. I hung out with two infants and a pregnant woman. This feels like some kind of life passage. (I myself have no plans for reproduction in my near future. Maybe if we get one part-time job between the two of us...)

That's all I got for now. If you're part of my immense audience the is here for the kinds of powerful political insights I usually generously provide, I'd suggest clicking on some of the blog articles linked to in my sidebar or here.

adspar disappears for newtonmas

Not that I ever blog any more, but I'll be home for the holidays from tomorrow to some time late in the month, and so I won't be posting for a while probably. I'll make it up to you guys, I promise!

"I don't read your political blog posts"

1.) "I don't read your political blog posts." I get that line a lot. I'm curious as to how those people expect I'll react to "Hey I don't read the 95% of what you write... you know, the stuff you obviously care a great deal about. But dude that shit about the Ramen was funny! I love Ramen!!!" Thanks. Thanks a lot. (If you've said this to me recently and figure I'm talking about you, I assure you that you're not alone. My readership has changed dramatically since I used to write about poker and movies all the time.)

2.) I had a conversation recently with my mother, who loves George Bush unconditionally, trusts him completely, and fully supports his war-making. Over the course of this conversation it became appallingly obvious how ignorant she was about basic facts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She actually outright refused to believe factual information I provided that casts the actions of our military in a negative light, starkly denying the possibility that it could be true. She knows nothing but Progress and Noble Goals, and unquestioningly assumes the Goodness of The United States of America. She once told me "America is number one." I stopped and asked her what that means exactly. She paused, thought about it for a while, and said "it means that we have the privilege to live in a country that is the best."

--

This is America in a nutshell. We're occupying a country on the other side of the world that we illegally invaded, causing death and injury to untold millions, and nobody wants to know a thing about any of it. The vast majority of us are shockingly ignorant and oblivious, but that doesn't stop huge numbers from blindly supporting our course of destruction anyway, because hey, if we're doing something, it must be right, because we're Number One and being #1 means we're The Best. The Best might occasionally mess something up or have an isolated bad apple, but we're always operating with the Noble Intention of Spreading Freedom, and the net effect of our actions is always Good. (Because we're The Best. The Best = #1. America is #1. )

I don't blame you that you don't want to question these stories. I know you don't want to actually think about this. I know you don't want to discover that your country is a monster and your flag-waving friends are idiots. Do you think I do? Do you think I want to know that my own mother's carefully considered explanation for why America is #1 is that "we're the best"? That she believes every lie from George W. Bush's forked tongue and not a word from mine?

Go read that link. I know you don't want to; that's what the link it actually about, the way we censor our own conversations to avoid unpleasant reality. If you manage to suppress your urge to click elsewhere, if you actually read it, you might realize that by voluntarily ignoring the spread of evil, you're willingly surrendering to it.

Explain this phenomenon to me

I object to Bush's war and they bring up Sandy Berger. This has happened twice now, once with each parent, in incidents almost a full year apart.

[Berger was Bill Clinton's National Security Advisor who later stole classified documents from the National Archives by stuffing them down his pants. The lead prosecutor of the case indicates that he stole only copies and that no original material was destroyed, though this story is hotly disputed by Rush Limbaugh and the like, who claim without much factual basis that something much more sinister was happening.]

Who knows what the hell was going on there, but what kind of derangement is happening when you attempt to compare this to Bush's war crimes? Its like comparing the Columbine shootings to spray-painting some graffiti on a school wall. I can't even fathom what point they're trying to make by bringing it up. "Well you're saying that Bush illegally invaded two sovereign nations causing the slaughter of at least a million people, but this one guy who used to work for Clinton stole some documents!!"

pictures

Moving into the new place. Lots of cat pictures.

Ohio

I don't even know where to start writing; I feel like so much has happened. The bottom line is that I am now in Ohio. I loaded up the Penske truck last Wednesday and Thursday, closed on the house Friday afternoon, and arrived here very late Friday night. By Sunday we had dumped everything from the truck into the house, and here I am now, amidst the boxes and clutter.

Our new place is kind of a dump, but I kind of love it. We don't have air conditioning or a dishwasher. We have one small bathroom that smells a little funny no matter how much we clean it. It is a 10 minute walk from campus and we look out our front door to the local high school. I have some pictures I can post if I find my camera sometime soon. Our cats seem to like it here. Our rent is $325/month.

I'm glad to be here. I'm glad that my house sold, that the long drive went smoothly, and that my wife will be starting school again next Tuesday. We've found a farmers market for fresh locally-grown produce, and a family farm that raises grass-fed beef and pork, and free range poultry and eggs. We stocked up on good beer and wine. Life is good.