You know that thing scientists always say when hippies jump up and down about Chernobyl and how nuclear power is going to kill us all? It goes something like, "10* different things went horribly wrong in the Chernobyl accident; only the Soviets could possibly be stupid enough to let them all happen at once." I feel like we're going to be saying the same thing about the American oil regulato-industrial complex in about twenty years.
*I made that number up, but the truth is not an insignificant integer
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Fe
Okay readers, your challenge is to come up with an irony greater than the idea that the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico could make it more difficult to pass climate legislation (thanks to President Obama's crazy notion that bribing Republicans was ever a good idea; sorry, I refuse to accept that anyone I voted for actually in his/her heart of hearts thinks that offshore oil drilling is ever an acceptable alternative to anything).
Saturday, May 8, 2010
"yes, John; of course, John; whatever you say, John"
[that's John Sheridan; not anyone who may be reading this blog; it's a reference to the Babylon 5 episode "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place"]
I recently flew home for a quick break before the madness ensues. The next two weeks will be a constant stream of workshops (yay!) and visitors (yay! [this time without the sarcasm]) before I fly home again on my way to Houston for the wedding of a dear good friend (yay! [add the cowbell]). Riding shotgun as my Mom took me back to SeaTac for the return to Seoul, I noticed that the car in front of us had two bumper stickers. One featured "goarmy.com" printed on a camouflage background; the other said "Give war a chance." I'm going to go out on a limb and say that neither was an attempt at irony.
The CIA has recently added a United States citizen to its list of people it is going to try to kill. I'm still trying to sort out my reaction to this news. Let's meander through some of the salient points.
1) Initially, I was very upset that the CIA can kill people. That's what the military is for. This thought is, of course, even more troubling than the news that spawned it. To borrow a thought from Joss Whedon, "a government [or military] is just a group of people, most notably ungoverned." Hopefully I'm alone (but I doubt it) in the visceral notion that the military somehow has the right to decide who should live and who should die. Regardless, the idea is hogwash. If we trust the military, it is because we believe they will never buck the authority of our elected representatives. Remember how we felt when we thought health care reform meant that our elected representatives would be deciding whether or not to pull the plug on grandma? (I actually don't, since I never thought that, but I can imagine I would've been pretty upset if I had.)
2) I invested a lot (hopes; dreams; time; and, yes, money) in this administration. I want to believe that Barack Obama is a good man and a great President. That idea involves believing that Awlaki has it coming. If the official story is to be believed, he's not really a nice guy (any more). He seems to be doing a pretty good job of encouraging people to kill other people. Of course, what is missing from the official story is the notion that Awlaki has actually pulled the trigger on anyone himself. I reconcile my intellectual rejection of the death penalty* with my emotional desire to pee on Osama bin Laden's bloated corpse with the reassurance that "they intentionally target civilians; the American military does not." Now we're targeting a guy (and I guess this description also applies to bin Laden, which, I'll admit, is more than a little troubling) whose participation in the War on Terror seems to be at the level of military recruiter or maybe Department of Defense official, but definitely not soldier. Living in a country where bluntly criticizing the military is considered impolite (there's even a law forbidding colleges who don't allow full access to military recruiters from collecting federal funds), I'm not sure this is a line we want to cross.
3) [in which I go completely off my rocker] We are occupying the world. There is no habitable continent on which we do not have military bases. Our budgetary outlook is so red it has almost left the visible spectrum, but, while we are allowed to say whatever we want about eliminating programs to fight poverty, discussions of reining in military spending require careful maneuvering and political subterfuge and are generally criticized as being radical hippie goofishness. Now we want to start killing our own citizens without due process, and a former major party nominee for the Presidency thinks that Mirandizing Americans is optional.
None of this denies the notion that the people we think our military is fighting (the Taliban, Al Quaeda) are awful human beings. Among other things, I hope that I believe that the idea that "women are people, too" deserves defending**. I fear though, that when the history books are written, they will not say that "the world went bat sh#t f$%#king loco while the United States of America remained perfectly sane and reasonable in its response." More likely, they will say something about how we, from our position as "the winners," could afford to go crazy while the other side, from their position as "the losers," had no other choice. I feel like we should be shooting for something a bit more complimentary.
*death penalty supporters are urged to click on that link
** Dear Conservatism, I will trade you one War on Terror for one "you never get to bring up or restrict abortion ever again." Think about it.
***And now I am hesitating to actually publish this post because it is implicitly critical of the military on all levels (that may have been the point) and I am currently living in a country that is forever on the brink of existential war with its nearest neighbor, whose citizens all share family trees with its own. Springsteen said, "all men want to be rich; rich men want to be kings; and a king ain't satisfied until he rules everything." What, I wonder, do they think they're going to do with it once they rule it?
I recently flew home for a quick break before the madness ensues. The next two weeks will be a constant stream of workshops (yay!) and visitors (yay! [this time without the sarcasm]) before I fly home again on my way to Houston for the wedding of a dear good friend (yay! [add the cowbell]). Riding shotgun as my Mom took me back to SeaTac for the return to Seoul, I noticed that the car in front of us had two bumper stickers. One featured "goarmy.com" printed on a camouflage background; the other said "Give war a chance." I'm going to go out on a limb and say that neither was an attempt at irony.
The CIA has recently added a United States citizen to its list of people it is going to try to kill. I'm still trying to sort out my reaction to this news. Let's meander through some of the salient points.
1) Initially, I was very upset that the CIA can kill people. That's what the military is for. This thought is, of course, even more troubling than the news that spawned it. To borrow a thought from Joss Whedon, "a government [or military] is just a group of people, most notably ungoverned." Hopefully I'm alone (but I doubt it) in the visceral notion that the military somehow has the right to decide who should live and who should die. Regardless, the idea is hogwash. If we trust the military, it is because we believe they will never buck the authority of our elected representatives. Remember how we felt when we thought health care reform meant that our elected representatives would be deciding whether or not to pull the plug on grandma? (I actually don't, since I never thought that, but I can imagine I would've been pretty upset if I had.)
2) I invested a lot (hopes; dreams; time; and, yes, money) in this administration. I want to believe that Barack Obama is a good man and a great President. That idea involves believing that Awlaki has it coming. If the official story is to be believed, he's not really a nice guy (any more). He seems to be doing a pretty good job of encouraging people to kill other people. Of course, what is missing from the official story is the notion that Awlaki has actually pulled the trigger on anyone himself. I reconcile my intellectual rejection of the death penalty* with my emotional desire to pee on Osama bin Laden's bloated corpse with the reassurance that "they intentionally target civilians; the American military does not." Now we're targeting a guy (and I guess this description also applies to bin Laden, which, I'll admit, is more than a little troubling) whose participation in the War on Terror seems to be at the level of military recruiter or maybe Department of Defense official, but definitely not soldier. Living in a country where bluntly criticizing the military is considered impolite (there's even a law forbidding colleges who don't allow full access to military recruiters from collecting federal funds), I'm not sure this is a line we want to cross.
3) [in which I go completely off my rocker] We are occupying the world. There is no habitable continent on which we do not have military bases. Our budgetary outlook is so red it has almost left the visible spectrum, but, while we are allowed to say whatever we want about eliminating programs to fight poverty, discussions of reining in military spending require careful maneuvering and political subterfuge and are generally criticized as being radical hippie goofishness. Now we want to start killing our own citizens without due process, and a former major party nominee for the Presidency thinks that Mirandizing Americans is optional.
None of this denies the notion that the people we think our military is fighting (the Taliban, Al Quaeda) are awful human beings. Among other things, I hope that I believe that the idea that "women are people, too" deserves defending**. I fear though, that when the history books are written, they will not say that "the world went bat sh#t f$%#king loco while the United States of America remained perfectly sane and reasonable in its response." More likely, they will say something about how we, from our position as "the winners," could afford to go crazy while the other side, from their position as "the losers," had no other choice. I feel like we should be shooting for something a bit more complimentary.
*death penalty supporters are urged to click on that link
** Dear Conservatism, I will trade you one War on Terror for one "you never get to bring up or restrict abortion ever again." Think about it.
***And now I am hesitating to actually publish this post because it is implicitly critical of the military on all levels (that may have been the point) and I am currently living in a country that is forever on the brink of existential war with its nearest neighbor, whose citizens all share family trees with its own. Springsteen said, "all men want to be rich; rich men want to be kings; and a king ain't satisfied until he rules everything." What, I wonder, do they think they're going to do with it once they rule it?
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