Occupation of Independence

The internet is abuzz with howls of protest about the TSA's new procedures for screening airline passengers. I wasn't too interested in this at first, probably because I haven't flown for years. But then I saw an angle that did interest me. When an issue fits neatly into the Left-versus-Right paradigm, it can be quite boring. All the shibboleths and slogans are so predictable. If you ask somebody for their opinion, it ends up being a mere recording. But it is much more interesting when an issue produces mixed feelings and cross-currents on both sides. Let's consider the poor Democrats first. A good liberal's instinctive reaction to some -- nay, to any -- new or expanded federal government program is that it must be a step towards Progress. At least its intentions must be good; what else matters? And yet, this is part of the War on Terror, which is Bush's War. And the airline unions hate the new procedures. Furthermore privacy issues are a not-insignificant pa

As national holidays go, Veterans' Day is a rare success. It stands for something serious instead of frivolous or merely traditional. Oh it's true that there are a few political cranks (like me) who get nervous about too much patriotic bluster on 11 November because they think it contains an implicit advertisement for the permanent Warfare state that America has become. But many people would admonish the cranks thusly: Why not put your stupid politics aside for one day of the year, and honor the individuals who suffered and sacrificed and were proud to do so? Very well then, let us put politics aside and admire individual soldiers for what they went through. But wasn't war itself once called 'the continuation of politics by different means?' If that is true, and if we are serious about ignoring politics, we should be just as happy to honor soldiers who fought on the "other side." Why focus exclusively on American troops? Surely most people have the great

If I were a Republican I'd be careful about post-election euphoria. None of the fundamental weaknesses of the GOP have been addressed. It is still seen on the coasts as the party of low IQ Bahbl-bangers in the hinterlands. When an independent voter thinks of the GOP, unpopular perma-wars in the Mideast are the first thoughts to come to mind. If the "God and Country" coalition that dominates the GOP had its way we would find new wars, starting with Iran. The coalition is made of Rapture Christians, neo-cons, and defense industries. The label, conservative, is still misapplied to the GOP. The party was taken over by neo-cons during the G.W. Bush's administration. Neo-cons pay some lip service to the idea of limited government, but their real loyalty is to post-WWII hegemony by the USA. When they talk of "patriotism," they really mean defending the American global empire, starting with Israel of course. Rapture Christians naturally feel the same way. It won&

Every now and then the Internet is given credit for having an effect on the elections by way of fundraising and organization. But what about the quality of public discourse? Remember how narrow opinions were just a few years ago before the internet. What a disgrace it was that a country like ours was satisfied to sit before the newspaper, radio, or boob toob, and passively consume the drivel of a small number of corporate opinion providers. The opportunity is indeed huge compared to what has happened in the past. How was public discourse improved by the Hearst newspaper chain when it became nationwide? All we got was a disgusting little war, the Spanish-American War, and the "Teddy" cult. We turned our back on our proud tradition of non-interference in other countries and embraced imperialism, all because it made good copy for Hearst. A couple decades later, the high-tech miracle of the day was radio, which had a huge effect on the politics of the 1930's: it amplified

If it's hard to believe the political situation that the Obama administration has fallen to, perhaps the explanation lies in the initial expectations. The mainstream Media treated him like the messiah. His adoration in Europe was even more unrealistic. Back then I started to notice how consistently the Media photographed him: his eyes were always inclined at about 25 degrees above the horizontal. I wouldn't have expected his eyes to be looking at the floor of course, but his eyes never looked horizontally at the camera either, like a normal mortal's would. It was easy to recall the famous painting of Christ in profile, looking upward towards heaven, which used to hang in an honored spot in many Americans' houses. When that image popped to mind, it seemed like fair game to poke fun at the Media's adoration of Obama. (A political cartoonist could have achieved immortality if, during those salad days of post-inaugural euphoria, he had drawn Obama in a humble white

The world is so full of praise for Beauty that it drowns itself out. The Uses of Ugliness is a theme that seems under-rated to me. And speaking of Ugliness, we have another election season coming. There should be an alternative to the usual choices of watching Media coverage with sour disdain or with numb toleration. There is a point when Ugliness attacks an irreducible center of human dignity. We simply must defend ourselves in order to live. Here is something that works for me: there have been a few books written over the centuries that say something worthwhile about politics. We have all heard these classics praised, and we say that we probably should read that book someday... That is the beauty and use of Ugliness. Ugliness can be a sharp sensation felt right now, not just someday . It impels us to action; quite an accomplishment for a "negative" thing. So instead of following the electoral horse-race on the boob toob I will be rereading Alexis de Tocqueville's &

With elections coming up, it is fun to step back from the hackneyed slogans of day-to-day vote-buying and think about the big picture. Ancient Greece was supposed to be a laboratory of political science, with democracies, oligarchies, and tyrannies just a few miles away from each other. Like a modern Aristotle cataloging the various constitutions, we can observe and compare many little societies, such as churches, lodges, civic organizations, etc. In my case it was bicycle clubs. Bicycle clubs do indeed span the political spectrum. One such club was helpful and considerate almost to a fault: they would always wait at the top of a hill for the slowpokes to catch up. If anybody had a flat tire, the whole group would stop and assist. They shared meals together. Great folks, it seemed. But over a summer the starting time would slip because they simply lacked the guts to leave anyone. Many of the flat tires were caused by people running on old rubber. Their obsession with safety became

I was interested in a recent article in asia times dotcom that speculated on whether China would emphasize aircraft carriers or anti-carrier missiles. With their satellites they know exactly where American aircraft carriers are, and to knock them out it only takes a high-tech missile that costs, what?, 0.3% as much as the aircraft carrier. The missile can be fired from anywhere -- even a fishing trawler. Of course the US Navy believes that nothing projects a country's power like the carrier battle group. One of the most amazing features of modern American life is how much money it spends on its military, and how useless most of it is. Fred Reed is a favorite writer of mine who has a military background that has left him with a respect for military personnel and a savage disrespect for political/military policies. Perhaps the US should recognize that it has a second-rate military at phenomenal cost – an enormous, largely useless national codpiece.

I leave it to the reader to decide whether it is a vice to look for images to overcome confusion or disorientation when confronting a new situation. At any rate looking for an image was what I did recently when I volunteered for a committee that tries to develop walking and bicycling trails in my little city. As luck would have it, I soon thereafter ran into an interesting movie: "Ikiru (to Live)" by the famous Japanese director and auteur, Kurosawa. The supposed greatness of his other films has always escaped me; I've never been able to finish them. Fortunately I gave "Ikiru" a chance. The movie is about an older man who was section chief in city government. He had spent the last thirty years sleep-walking through his job of stamping approvals on meaningless paperwork. Then he found out that he had terminal cancer. At first I thought this was going to be a Japanese film version of Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilyich." But there was no Tolstoy-ian gr

After my flop with volunteering on the Continental Divide Trail I started working on a committee that tries to expand recreational trails in town . Since I've benefited from other people's work on such trails many times in my life, maybe it is high time I contributed something. Yes, that is a bit of a guilt trip, but for some reason it doesn't matter in this case. Everybody likes the old Chinese proverb of 'lighting one candle rather than cursing the darkness.' Can you think of a better application than a recreational trail in an American city? To me, trails are one of the few things that make life in a city worth living. Kunstler refers to the American landscape as "The Geography of Nowhere," due to our noisy automobile-sewers, big-box parking lots, nation-wide uniformity, etc. It was a bizarre experience to attend the first meeting at a county-annex building in a strip mall. These days, county governments are bigger than the Federal Government during

For the first time in 40 years, after another 35,000 wells have been drilled, we finally got unlucky with an oil spill. Why did it take so long? Don't count on that ever being discussed. Of course as a bicyclist and pedestrian I reacted at first with some evil pleasure at the notion of anything that will make gasoline cost more in the future. My goodness, I get so sick of noisy pickup trucks and hectic traffic. It says something about our country that the Media immediately ran to the American president, as if he can just push a buzzer in the Oval Office and make the crisis du jour go away. Watch the talking heads, the politicians, and the Greens posture in front of the TV cameras: none of these could handle the tiniest technical problem themselves. They have no appreciation for the complex engineering involved in bringing petroleum to an economy completely dependent on it. Most galling are the Greens. This is a perfect chance for them to demagogue big Evil oil corporations.

The Socialist party in Japan pulled out of the ruling coalition, and brought down the prime minister, merely because he failed to live up to his promise to boot out a foreign invader. (The American military base in Okinawa.) The socialists in Japan showed some real integrity and guts by reacting to betrayal the way they did; contrast this with the indifference of the American Left, when the latter's "peace candidate" turned into a warmonger. Why the discrepancy? Does the "Left" mean something different in Japan than in the USA? Or is the American Left just especially spineless? Actually I don't think political ideology explains why the American Left continues to support a president who should be considered a political traitor. Demographics does. The USA is a country that has few indigenous Leftists. By 1900 or so most of Europe's intelligentsia had become Marxist (on the continent) or Fabian Socialist in England. Many of the professorships at America&

Perhaps we should believe the Media occasionally, but it's hard not to be skeptical. These days we are hearing about a crisis brewing in Korea. Don't touch that channel button, folks; you need to find out if that wacko in North Korea is going to start lobbing some nukes! The Media always portrays Kim Jong-Il, the leader of Stalinist North Korea, as mentally unbalanced and dangerous. Korea, Iran, etc., have actually become franchises in the crisis industry. As the crisis du jour , it's a great opportunity for the American secretary of state or president to look like a hero by defusing the crisis at the last moment. Later, we learn that Kim Jong-il quietly managed to get a few billion dollars as part of the deal, for "agricultural development" or whatever. The timing of the most recent crisis in Korea is somewhat curious. It was starting to look like the American taxpayer was going to get stuck bailing out Europe. After all, it's the End of Europe, folks!!! Pe

Lately we've been hearing that if the euro currency fails, Europe fails. Shame on me for not losing any sleep over this. What exactly do they mean 'Europe?' A historian might say that 'Europe' began with Charlemagne. It had barely beaten off an attack from Muslims from North Africa, by way of the Iberian Peninsula. The way Islam was growing, it seemed like it was going to take over the world. Then Europe had to face the depredations of the Northmen. It survived, and even converted those barbarians to its civilization. Next was the Little Ice Age, and the rise of the Ottoman Turks, who threatened the south and east of Europe for hundreds of years. Let's not forget the Black Death which killed a fourth of Europe. The religious wars hit hard in the 1500s and early 1600s. Yet Europe survived. It also survived the French Revolution and the Marxist irruption. To top it all off, Europe survived two World Wars over a thirty year time span in the early twentieth ce

Reading an email from a friend and fellow blogger, I got fired up. He complimented me on editing some of my old posts. In part I am doing that because they will be obliterated when I drop the old blog hosting service in mid-June. Since the old and new sites won't easily switch the old posts to the new, I must use brute force, which in fact is fun. But I was worried about alienating readers. Would they think it was cheating to recycle old stuff? Actually, some probably do, but so what? Why do amateur bloggers like me think they need to be popular? Why do we think it's our job to give readers a free morning newspaper to read, full of Breaking News? A blogger should write for his own benefit, mostly.