Marriage is a little bird, tweeting in a meadow…

[Title=cult. non-seq. ref.; 10 pts.]

I don’t yet have the second part of my last post.  In fact, I’ve been avoiding all mention of politics for the past several weeks, ever since the Green convention.  I’ve been told by reliable sources that I haven’t missed much, which was rather my perception that led to the sabbatical in the first place.

I’m still thinking that I’m not quite ready to come back.  I’ve been paying a lot of attention lately to baseball and theatre and my kids and trying to get a better job.  I went bowling over the weekend, which I didn’t do well at, but I could console myself that I was a helluva lot better at it than Barack Obama.

You have to pay attention to politics in this country for the same reason you have to pay attention to deer by the side of the road while driving, because God alone knows what’s going to happen if you take your eyes off ‘em.  This isn’t necessarily a criticism as much as it is one of the problems of democracy, or at least the democracy-cum-kleptocracy that we’ve developed…and yes, you can cue one of Jefferson’s quotes about liberty right here.  I’ve done a great deal of paying attention over the last several years, and sometimes it’s just good to let your mind dwell on other subjects for a bit.

The way forward, part 1

Publishing this now, as is; there’s much more to say, but I’ve been sitting on this for long enough.  More to come.

As we all know by now, Cynthia McKinney won the Presidential nomination of the Green Party on the first ballot last weekend in Chicago, and chose Rosa Clemente, a hip-hop activist from New York, as her running mate.  Most are reporting that the atmosphere was very positive and congenial.

I was unable for financial reasons to make the trip to Chicago and participate as a member of the Maryland delegation, but as most out there also know, I was actively involved in the campaign and my candidate didn’t win.

Now some would be interested in hearing what I have to say about this.  After all, I’m a former co-Chair of the Party, I was actively involved, as I said, and I have a blog and a podcast dedicated to, in part, news of the Green Party.  And I’ve been weighing this carefully, because there’s a lot to say.  I don’t want it to seem like sour grapes because my guy didn’t win - that’s really not the case - and I want to make sure that the GP itself isn’t getting damaged.  Not being a “major” party, we can’t really afford to have a lot of people forming caucuses and such that work at cross-purposes.

The shot heard by no one

I haven’t written here for a while, but there’s a particular reason for that.  The GP’s convention occurred the weekend before last, and it’s safe to say that it had an impact on my view of the Party and the actions that I’ve been taking and planning to take as an activist.  I figured that the best thing to do was to take some time and sort out exactly how I felt about the whole thing.  (As an aside, I do wish more people, particularly journalists, would do exactly that; however, the 24-hour news cycle demands immediate filler and “breaking news” even when it would be best to report the bare bones of a story and leave analysis to a later time, once things develop - in other words, say it is too early to tell because it is, and leave it at that for a bit.  Of course, this can’t be done, and in any case such tactics are best for those who create the policy rather than those who report on it.  I have a foot in both camps, to an extent, so I find myself in the ever-popular “weird area”.)

So my silence hasn’t been because of neglect, but rather a deliberate consideration as to my next move: what I’m going to say, how I’m going to say it, and what I’m going to do next.

In the meantime, I was struck by a few recent developments of JFK assassination lore: the publishing of a new home movie taken on the day of the assassination, and the publication of Vincent Bugliosi’s voluminous defense of the Lone Gunman Theory.

The very uncomfortable area

I’ve been reading some of the testimony of Hermann Goering from the Nuremberg Trials; more specifically, from interviews conducted in his cell by a psychologist. Not exactly the best of reading topics at any time, and particularly not now.

I’m struck by the justifications from men in power - the denials, the half-truths, the buck-passing.  It was all further justified by their worldview - that this would have happened in any country and it was the same anywhere, and that they’d suffered at the hands of other countries and of the “Jewish race”.  They were being prosecuted only because they lost, not for any reasons of moral transgression.  It was petty and small, unbacked by any kind of greater vision.  Goering reiterates his hate of communism, because he believes the idea that men are created equal to be a ridiculous notion, unproven on its face; he bristles at the idea of the United States, who took wide swaths of territory from Mexico, condemning Germany for doing the same thing in Europe.  Hess, Goering, Doenitz, and the others mostly blamed those who were dead, playing down their own part when it would have gotten them in trouble, inflating it otherwise.

The worst

Let’s get to the meat of the matter.  Is George W. Bush the worst President in U.S. history?

Typically, up to this point in history, Warren Harding has been considered the worst.  For sure, he was a conservative, and functioned as the sort whom FDR had to later save the country from.  He was corrupt, dreadful at using the language, and a sell-out for business interests, and surrounded himself with similar stooges - all of which is to repeat my earlier point about him being a conservative.  Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan also often make the list, in a clear case of historical evaluation over the long haul - they’re most infamous over what they didn’t do, what they allowed to happen in their wake.

Some were tremendously complex and disjointed in their legacy.  Richard Nixon was also a conservative, and was, along that ideology, completely ruthless and lacking in even basic morals.  But he was also capable of compromise for the good of the country and occasionally produced moments of brilliance in foreign and public domestic policy.  (As Ralph Nader correctly points out, he would be seen as too liberal for the Republican Party of today, and probably the Democratic Party as well.)  Ronald Reagan has been unjustly deified by conservatives who are absolutely desperate for a lasting hero who matches their peculiar anti-social ideology; thus, he “won the Cold War” by taking a hard line against the Soviets - a hilarious and childishly naive assessment.  He damn near turned the world into a series of smoking radioactive craters, succeeding only when he, uncharacteristically and in a series of manuevers which are just now being historically understood, suggested nuclear disarmament at Rejkjavik.

In which I learn a new word

(Note: many naughty words herein. Sometimes, there’s only one way of saying something. Warning duly delivered, those under the age of, etc., your mileage may vary.)

Cab Driver: Look out there; it’s a fucking coup d’état.
Sands: I can’t see, fuck-mook. I have no eyes.
– from Once Upon a Time in Mexico

I don’t really know whether it was Robert Rodriguez or perhaps Johnny Depp who first coined that particular word - Depp, apparently, ad-libbed some of his dialogue in the film - but I’ve come to appreciate in retrospect the usefulness and versatility of the word fuck-mook*. It takes the pejorative mook, used to describe the faceless extras that are plowed down by the dozen in martial arts and Hong Kong action films, and turns up the vitriol an appropriate and necessary notch. It also serves to amplify the connotation of mook - that of the generic human obstacle, too lacking in any personality or imagination to register on one’s consciousness as anything but, and useful only in their rapid disposal. The prefix fuck-, in this case, indicates an almost willing embrace of a fate over and above that - someone who has reached their pinnacle in mookdom, either through working their hardest and failing to arrive anywhere else, or through a cussed determination, unvarnished by a scrap of intelligence, to become such to those who honestly do have better things to do.

Who do you love?

Leave it to the WashPost, in particular their Express birdcage liner that’s handed out free at Metro stops, to completely and utterly miss the point of the legacy of Bo Diddley.  The generic, vaguely respectful footnote-style obit noted all of the superficial aspects and failed to capture what we have lost in our soul by not having him with us.

Hitting the small time

I don’t pat myself on the back very often - no, really, I don’t - but boy howdy, my latest podcast ep suddenly took off.  Granted, it has more to do with my loverly efbq hawking it on a couple of podcast sites than anything I did, but it’s still nice to have happen.  It stars m’self and my sister (link to her usual font of incorrectness), and it was pretty good.  Another ep is of course in the works, so stay tuned.

That and my fantasy baseball team being in first place is enough to brighten my spirits a bit after the pounding that Jesse Johnson took in Maine, which is essentially enough to take him right out of the race.  At least we won’t be doing what Hillary is doing, though he is staying in the race.  (Note to “Mary”: what do we have to lose?  Have a look at Hillary and ask that again.  Betcha can’t.)

Change we can really believe in

I just went to get some lunch at a laughingly named “cafe” around here on North Capitol St.; a sandwich shop, really, run by Korean immigrants and doing a very brisk business at the time.  I handed the fellow at the front a sawbuck for my meal; I received in change two fives and a bit of coin.  I stared at the cash for the briefest of seconds.  He’d mistaken my ten for a twenty.  Decision time, right there at the register.  What was my conscience saying to me?

Thinking caps

Now I have a couple of credos I live by.  The first and foremost is that actions should have reasons behind them that make some objective sense.  If you don’t want to do that, at least have some other, more subjective reason.  Do it for art, do it for the Revolution, do it for some reason.  Don’t do it because you just happened to be plodding along and this was the default action.  Don’t do it because it was the thing that the teeming masses of that area were doing.  Question yourself, and question the dominant paradigm.  Of course, by introducing my comment in this fashion, you know that I’m about to talk about baseball caps.