The drums of the Middle East keep on pounding away, far off in the distance, but routed direct through television to the living room of our homes. Year by year, month by month...right down to moment by moment, the twisting turns and sinuous paths of those vibrations are changed to meet the behavioral control needs of a very few. We, those of us who think of ourselves as intelligent interpreters of this jumbled mess of communication, are nearly as stumped as the rest of the population, as to who those few are. We are not sure, either, of what real direction they are caging us to follow. Is the combined power of the media really simply the beast of finance? Does it only respond to what makes it money? Or are there other motivations as to the messages channeled so personally into the heart of our very lives? And where, among all these messages, across all the mediums, is there any truth at all? We watch the network news, looking for clues (or maybe just laying there...senseless after a very hard day's work for too little pay), then move to the cable channels for more. Some of us listen to the radio, attempting to 'true up' any of what we have received from the other sources. Near the end, there are the newspapers. All those sources of supposed news contain 'vetted' stories, which means that someone has looked them over and checked them out to make sure they have some semblance of truth in them. Finally, there is the internet. From blogs to YouTube, and then down into the Facebook and Twitter stuff. And what are we to make of it all?
Iran has had an election. Some kind of election. We are never sure of any of that anymore. We have such deep suspicions about our own elections to the point that now, when we see or hear the word 'election,' we take the information in with a skeptical, barely contained, sneer of disdain. The message streaming from almost every source tells us that the current leader of Iran has stolen his re-election bid. The loser really won. We are given no figures because we have nobody, at all, in Iran (from any part of the mass media). The few that were there merely filmed what they could from hotel windows before they fled to the airport and got the hell out of there. Since Iran is connected to the internet, we have gotten YouTube footage and Twitter reports. But what can we make of them? Anybody can say or do anything on the internet, using video as well, if they are schooled in the technology of its use.
But lets look at the overall message we are getting from almost all sources. Iran's leader is bad. He stole the election. People are protesting. The runner-up should be crowned leader. Iran's leader should step down. All peoples everywhere have the right to peaceful assembly and protest.
Now re-read that paragraph. What is the message we are supposed to be getting? Maybe we should get more elemental than that. Okay, let's ask a more elemental question. Why should we care one whit? The current leader of Iran is just as big a hater of America as the runner-up! Yeah, the other guy was running around with that same screwy Iman who spear-headed the whole hostage crisis which catapulted Reagan into office. And the peaceful protest garbage! What is that? We don't have the right to protest here in the U.S.! Have you not noticed? Our cops and Secret Service have carte blanche to arrest and incarcerate anyone who assembles to protest, if that protest is anywhere near any of our big leaders. At the presidential conventions last year the protestors at both events were relegated to cages specially built to hold them, miles from the actual events! And this is in America! There is no right to peaceful protest of big leaders anywhere in the world. So what the hell is going on? This nonsensical 'reporting' is just like the idiocy that gets printed about torture. We decry all forms of torture...except the torture we commit as a nation. Yes, your nation and in your name.
We hate the Arabs. As a culture we hate them. We don't really want to, but we do. We hate Iran, Iraq, Libya and even Afghanistan. We are scared crapless of islam and everyone over there who follows its teachings. If they come here, to our country, we accept them...conditionally. But not over there. We have given Israel (now there is a bunch of cool-headed clever dudes living in a desert oasis!) nuclear weapons and every bit of high tech weaponry we can make. That is how scared we are. And so our news reflects this fact. There were supposed to be tons of YouTube tapes and Twitter comments about the riots in Iran. Those did not materialize after they were predicted. What do you suppose our vaunted mass media had to say about that? They said that Iran had gotten really good at internet suppression! All those Youtubes and Tweets were there, but suppressed by the brilliant internet hackers from under the sand in Iran. Oh please.
What humor, if you sit back and look at it. There were no YouTube tapes or Tweets because there were no real riots of any kind. I think you can pretty much take that to the bank (well, a bank in the Channel Islands, if you have connections and are smart). Oh sure, there was some demonstrating and crowd interaction. But that was it. And we are not even sure what any of that was about because our own media high-tailed it the hell out of there.
We believe the the Persian's hate us. And we keep asking the question about why they do. The question is meaningless because the premise is bogus. They do not hate us. They are frightened to death of us! How would you feel if a monster country, possessing more nuclear weapons than any combination of countries in the world, hated you? A monster country that has proven it will indeed use nuclear weapons if it fears and hates you enough? We need, as a culture, to begin asking the right questions. Why do we hate them? What exactly is it about them that we are so abominated by? Why do we fear these small groups of strange believing peoples living in awful desert conditions so very much? If we can't even ask ourselves those things then what are we to do? Wait for just the right opportunity to blow them all into oblivion? Is that any kind of answer at all?
Osama Bin Laden. There are all kinds of small groups around the world who want power. Individuals crave it. We are hard-wired by sociobiology to crave it. The leaders get to impregnate more females (if they are male) or secure a quality future for their spawn (if they are female). Just look at Michael Jackson as an example. He was one miserable human being. I don't think that that can be denied. His personal life did not exist. But he craved public attention right up to the end. Osama does too. Cheney does too. These people never go away, unless it is to 'write' another book and then return. Or make another video. We must understand, as a culture, that this will always be the case. There will always be an opposition party. There will always be militia groups and terrorist outfits. It is hard-wired into our genetics. Evolution will only allow that to change if 'survival of the fittest' no longer includes getting rid of those presumed to be weaker. I, personally hoped, when I was younger, that technology would eventually allow us to vault up from the murder pit of amoral evolutionary expedition. As I age, I wonder, and the wondering is not a good thing.
We are so hurtfully directed to success. We are driven by fears so deep and dark that we cannot ever discuss them. If they are revealed by others we deny them and put down those others or label them losers or the weak. Only success matters. It permeates our financial sector, our trading mercantile sectors, our sports and even our television shows. It is all, and only, about winning. And it means that most people have to be losers. Do the math. "There can only be one Highlander," is a favorite expression of mine.
We must all be of Persian Persuasion in order to stop hating them. We must know them to care for them and about them. It is applied anthropology. Anthro, closely followed by history, is one of those disciplines, however, which interests many but is practiced by only a few, and almost none of the few are leaders of any sort. If we had paid attention to the anthropology of Iraq we would not be there. If we had paid attention, right after WWII to anthropology, Iraq would never have existed as a country for us to attack. Anthropology is about understanding other cultures. Amazingly, once you understand other cultures, guess what? You come to like them. So, in reality, our problems with the Middle East are all about schooling. We don't teach the right things in our educations system here, and then the media fails miserably to educate when we are done with that formal system.
This internet 'cloud' phenomenon, as some are terming it today, may be our only hope. Only here can words be written and read everywhere. They are not read everywhere for most of us who write here, however. There is just no easy or simple way to get people's attention to be read. That attention is being consumed by the famous. The Krugmans, Krauthammers, Coulters and Limbaughs gather the people in, but in becoming famous, they surrender telling the truth about what they are communicating. They communicate to stay famous and become more famous. Until they too are ready for their last shot of Demerol. But then, maybe, it only takes a few thinking human beings to influence the course of events. I pray that is so.
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Is is true blondes have more fun? It's certainly my take-away from seeing seeing McCain suggest that skinny-blonde Cindy McCain compete in the topless "Miss Buffalo Chip" beauty contest at the Sturgis biker ralley. While there were hundreds of nicer-looking women at the ralley, McCain said that his wife was the first woman who had a chance to win the beauty contest and become first lady! Is that supposed to make him appear to be a younger man, or does it just show him as he is: a cranky, rotten, dirty-old man?
The McCampaign's use of two blonde women, neither of whom is famous for their intelligence, in their go-low "celebrity" attack ad is typical of the love-hate/madonna-whore conflict of the frustrated reactionary mind that is the mainstay of fascism. Paris Hilton's response to the ad, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/05/paris-hilton-responds-to_n_117137.html is smarter than the ad itself. In spite her wearing a bathing suit, it speaks with intelligent words; the McCampaign attack ads use fancy editing to pump up their message; Obama's ads use his actual words!
What's with Cindy McGame, Ann Coulter, the Fox McSame "News 'babes,'" http://www.geocities.com/foxnewsmisc/pictures.html; sure there are darker Republicans and we have plenty of skinny blonde in our ranks, but the right's racist idealization of nasty, empty-headed skinny blonde women sure reminds me of another reich, another time.
Henry M
By the way, 4 August was my father's birthday. Yes, the same as Obama. Please check out my Happy Birthday, Dad and Barack! fundraising event, http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/44vr8"attend" it, and if you can, then please donate.
Thanks again.
Most conservatives will tell you that they abhor the tragic violence in Tennessee, and that they condemn it. But they also will most likely deny that any of their actions or beliefs could possibly be the cause of it, be it their help in the emergence and dominance of hate radio by the right wing, or their seemingly endless and unconditional support for a thoroughly unconstitutional Presidency.
What they most definitely will not tell you is that we've seen this pattern of violence before. That the rhetoric they espouse was used by another regime to begin the process of exterminating millions.
During a broadcast on Pravda Television, aka Fox News, ever-twitchy, ever-ranty Michelle Malkin sat spewing venom into the airwaves while a chyron below her read, "OUTRAGED LIBERALS: STOP PICKING ON OBAMA'S BABY MAMA!" Pretty classy, right? It's always amazed me that the right gets away with these kind of overt smear tactics. When Ann Coulter stood before her fauning audience of the 34th Annual Conservative Political Action Conference and called John Edwards a "faggot" the MSM simply shook their heads and tittered. "Oh, that Ann Coulter. She's a wiseacre." And probably a man.
Now we have Michelle Malkin, a soulless harpie who, if you watch carefully enough, literally seethes with hatred. If one looks close enough at Malkin's head they will actually see heat waves distorting the air around it, like a patch of blacktop running through the Sonora desert. Something bad happened to this poor wretch. Something from her youth. I was a sailor who visited the Phillipines and can only guess what the catalyst for such supreme hatred could have been. I'm sure that before her mother, Rafaela Maglalang, met her father, young Rafaela spent many a night under quivering, drunken sailors. That kind of family dishoner doesn't wash away easily, not even after you've married an American and taken the last name "Malkin". I'm sure that every time Rafaela had ever laid eyes upon Malkin's doughy white husband a shudder ran up her spine with memories of tainted childhood.
See how disturbing it can be when someone makes illogical leaps when it comes to race, family?
A couple of weeks ago, I kept hearing Hillary claim to be Rocky, and it kept generating strange questions in my mind.
I drew my cartoon, then starting thinking how in reality, the US and Russia were really allies like Coke and Pepsi, or Ford and GM, colluding to keep other powers out of the market.
This idea of collusive duopoly was proven in pre-game-theory economics by Cournot in the late 19th century. His work preceeded John "Beautiful Mind" Nash's equilibrium in zero-sum games, and was not known for 100 years after the founders naively used competiton as a basis for our democracy! Imagine that the "best" Democrat and "best" Republican could win their primaries, and then we have a competiiton between the two-best candidates for the General Election, to get our best man as president, Instead, the wealthy party can stick its thumb on the other side's scale.
Nixon's Watergate saga was really about Republicans choosing the weakest democratic candidate, while Iran embassy October Surprise was about weakening the existing democratic candidate. Now Maybe Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are the collusive Boris and Natasha. Hillary is colluding with supposed arch-enemy Rush Limbaugh, who is holding his fire, trying to help her win the primary, while she makes jokes about his help.
Well, eventually I figured out that she was not talking about the squirrel, but linking herself to Stallone's characters Rocky and Rambo...But thats even funnier than Billwinkle!!!
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The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently reported that Hillary Clinton may owe her Texas primary win on March 4 to Rush Limbaugh's efforts at undermining the Democratic Party and spoiling its chances of winning in November by encouraging his Republican listeners to switch parties for a day and vote for Clinton. As WSJ notes, Clinton won a notably higher number of Republican crossover votes in Texas than she has in past open primary contests, possibly owing to that crucial endorsement from the pill-popping porker; and a Texas election official told WSJ that 70 of 181 voters she dealt with identified themselves as "Rush Limbaugh voters" after Limbaugh instructed his Republican listeners to cross over and vote for Clinton so as to sabotage the Democratic primary race. "I'm here to vote for Hillary Clinton," one Republican crossover voter told the official, "I want to see the Democratic Party implode." With their own nomination race settled, it seems some Republicans have found themselves with little to keep themselves occupied other than to to go and make mischief for the other party.
Since the WSJ report others such as Wonkoblog have examined evidence that, while inconclusive, does suggest that the "Limbaugh effect" may have helped Clinton in Texas as well as in Ohio on March 4. Indeed, as Barack Obama has won endorsements from prominent Democrats and newspaper editorial boards across the United States on a daily basis, most recent Clinton endorsements have come not from Democrats but from Republicans wishing to do the Democrats harm: Shortly before the Texas and Ohio primaries right-wing Cincinnati radio talk-show host Bill Cunningham endorsed Clinton after growing angry at John McCain for repudiating earlier prejudicial comments made by Cunningham against Obama; and columnist Ann Coulter recently said that if McCain received the Republican nomination she would vote for Clinton in the general election. Why not Obama ?
Because while right-wing swine like Limbaugh, Cunningham, and Coulter may hate Hillary Clinton, they fear Barack Obama. They fear Obama because they don't know how they will deal with him in the general election race if he is the Democratic nominee. They fear him because most polls now show him to be the favorite Democrat to beat McCain in November. They fear him because he threatens to take the country in a new direction that will leave them behind and make them irrelevant. Limbaugh and others like him are a product of the Clinton era, which as we know was also the Gingrich era. They know Bill and Hillary Clinton, and they thrive in the very atmosphere of divisiveness and cynicism for which the Clinton era is best-known. Deprived of a Republican candidate whom they consider a "real conservative," Limbaugh & Co. would probably be as happy with Hillary Clinton in the White House as with John McCain.
Anyone looking for a good reason NOT to vote for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming Democratic primaries need look no further her new best friend.
I've caught Obama fever! Obamamania, Obamarama, Obama, Obama, Obama. (I just pray to God this is clean, renewable electricity I'm feeling.)
Only white guilt could explain the insanely hyperbolic descriptions of Obama's "eloquence." His speeches are a run-on string of embarrassing, sophomoric Hallmark bromides.
In announcing his candidacy last week, Obama confirmed that he believes in "the basic decency of the American people." And let the chips fall where they may!
Obama forthrightly decried "a smallness of our politics" -- deftly slipping a sword into the sides of the smallness-in-politics advocates. (To his credit, he somehow avoided saying, "My fellow Americans, size does matter.")
He took a strong stand against the anti-hope crowd, saying: "There are those who don't believe in talking about hope." Take that, Hillary!
Most weirdly, he said: "I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness in this -- a certain audacity -- to this announcement."
What is so audacious about announcing that you're running for president? Any idiot can run for president. Dennis Kucinich is running for president. Until he was imprisoned, Lyndon LaRouche used to run for president constantly. John Kerry ran for president. Today, all you have to do is suggest a date by which U.S. forces in Iraq should surrender, and you're officially a Democratic candidate for president.
Obama made his announcement surrounded by hundreds of adoring Democratic voters. And those were just the reporters. There were about 400 more reporters at Obama's announcement than Mitt Romney's, who, by the way, is more likely to be sworn in as our next president than B. Hussein Obama.
Obama has locked up the Hollywood money. Even Miss America has endorsed Obama. (John "Two Americas" Edwards is still hoping for the other Miss America to endorse him.)
But Obama tells us he's brave for announcing that he's running for president. And if life gives you lemons, make lemonade!
I don't want to say that Obama didn't say anything in his announcement, but afterward, even Jesse Jackson was asking, "What did he say?" There was one refreshing aspect to Obama's announcement: It was nice to see a man call a press conference this week to announce something other than he was the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby.
B. Hussein Obama's announcement also included this gem: "I know that I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change." As long as Obama insists on using Hallmark card greetings in his speeches, he could at least get Jesse Jackson to help him with the rhyming.
If Obama's biggest asset is his inexperience, then if by the slightest chance he were elected and were to run for a second term, he will have to claim he didn't learn anything the first four years.
There was also this inspirational nugget: "Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more, and it is time for our generation to answer that call." Is this guy running for president or trying to get people to switch to a new long-distance provider?
He said that "we learned to disagree without being disagreeable." (There goes Howard Dean's endorsement.) This was an improvement on the first draft, which read, "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."
This guy's like the ANWR of trite political aphorisms. There's no telling exactly how many he's sitting on, but it could be in the billions.
Obama's famed eloquence reminds me of a book of platitudes I read about once called "Life Lessons." The book contained such inspiring thoughts as:
"When was the last time you really looked at the sea? Or smelled the morning? Touched a baby's hair? Really tasted and enjoyed food? Walked barefoot in the grass? Looked in the blue sky?" (When was the last time you fantasized about dismembering the authors of a book of platitudes?)
I can't wait for Obama's inaugural address when he reveals that he loves long walks in the rain, sunsets, and fresh-baked cookies shaped like puppies.
The guy I feel sorry for is Harold Ford. The former representative from Tennessee is also black, a Democrat, about the same age as Obama, and is every bit as attractive. The difference is, when he talks, you don't fantasize about plunging knitting needles into your ears to stop the gusher of meaningless platitudes.
Ford ran as a Democrat in Republican Tennessee and almost won -- and the press didn't knock out his opponent for him by unsealing sealed divorce records, as it did for B. Hussein Obama. Yet no one ever talks about Ford as the second coming of Cary Grant and Albert Einstein.
Maybe liberals aren't secret racists expunging vast stores of white guilt by hyperventilating over B. Hussein Obama. Maybe they're just running out of greeting card inscriptions.
