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May 16, 2009

Dong Bu Dong?

As I've mentioned before, I love living in Salt Lake City. Along with Iowa City, it's one of the most liberal, left-leaning places I've ever lived in my life; along with Tucson, it's one of the most geographically beautiful spots I've been lucky enough to call home. It's well planned (kudos to Brothers Joseph and Brigham for that), well maintained, clean, diverse, prosperous, interesting. It has a truly magnificent library that is always packed because I and countless others use it all the time; it has really great public transportation that I hardly ever use because it's so easy to walk in this city and I prefer that to riding the bus or figuring out train schedules. It has a vibrant arts scene, lots of green space, a fascinating graveyard, and plenty of fascinating architecture. It even has a violin making school!

OK, it also has a bunch of homophobic Mormons and the headquarters of the Mormon church, but all of that is remarkably easy to ignore, because as I said, the city itself is really liberal, and that affects life in the city itself (I'm NOT talking about the rest of the state) more than the Mormon church does. And some Mormons here do really great things for the city, the state, and perhaps even the world.

I'm speaking of the current governor, Jon Huntsman Jr, the Republican who miraculously succeeded in making Utah's liquor laws less weird and who has alienated more hardline conservatives by arguing for gay rights. (He balks at legalizing gay marriage, but advocates recognizing civil unions, which is much more generous than many conservatives.) He's a decent guy who makes careful policy. And now Obama has appointed him ambassador to China.

While I'm sorry that Utah will lose a prudent, effective, likable governor, I'm thrilled with this appointment. I think that the ambassadorship to China is one of the more important diplomatic positions within the US government, and I think Huntsman is an ideal candidate to fill it.

Like me, Huntsman became fluent in Mandarin when he served a mission for the Mormon church in Taiwan; unlike me, he appears to have maintained his fluency. But aside from the language issue, I think a mission in Taiwan was probably really good training for understanding a lot of issues in China. I mean, if you want to be a xenophobic jerk who learns nothing at all about the culture you're living in, you can manage that as a missionary, but if you want to understand what motivates people and what they care about, you can manage that too, fairly easily. Actually, I take that first part back. You couldn't even get in the door of someone's house or buy groceries if you didn't understand something about Chinese attitudes toward courtesy and indirectness.

There's also the fact that at the time Huntsman served a mission, diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the Mainland were nonexistent--people couldn't even send mail between the two places. Even when I was there, missionaries were often enlisted to help people in Taiwan correspond with family or friends on the Mainland: missionaries would mail letters from people in Taiwan to the missionaries' families in the US, who would then use US postage and a US return address to send the letter to Peoples' Republic of China. That was a huge lesson in international relations right there.

Plus Huntsman is a billionaire, which I have a feeling the government of China will totally respect.

And unlike Mitt Romney, another Mormon governor/rich businessman with lots of hair, he's not a douche nozzle, which I think will help things too.

The title of this blog entry, by the way, is the Romanization for a question easily translated as "do you understand?" "Dong" doesn't rhyme with "long," you should know; the vowel is the same as in "don't." The question is composed with a standard way of constructing a question in Chinese: you offer someone a set of options and they pick the accurate one--about like, "Do you get it or not?" Even when posing a question that could be answered with "Yes" if the question were posed in English--say, "You understand this, right?"--the answer would not be "Yes" but "I understand" (or even just plain "understand") because Chinese doesn't have a word that corresponds exactly to "yes." All of which is important in effective communication in Chinese, and all of which Huntsman already dongs.

Posted by holly at 9:09 AM | Comments (4)

May 2, 2009

Drown It in a Bathtub, Already

Lately I've heard a number of liberal pundits and commentators prattle on in what I suppose could be genuine alarm over the state of the Republican party. Its weakness, incoherence and lack of leadership are a threat to our democracy, they tell me. Two viable parties are absolutely necessary to the health of our democracy! Something must be done to save the Republican party, for the sake of the entire union!

So, OK, I believe that a vibrant democracy requires at least two vibrant, viable parties. Fine. But where is it written that one of those parties has to be the Republican party?

I'm willing to believe that the Republican party has been, at times, what it claims to be: a grand old party. It was the party of Lincoln, after all, as its members like to proclaim--the party dedicated to preserving the Republic.

But recently the Republican party has become a scourge to the planet and to most of humanity. Through its disdain for sound environmental practice and the rule of law, it threatens all life in the long term, but in the short term it sacrifices the interests and health of the many in order to advance the prosperity and power of a very small--and unbelievably selfish--minority.

I would like to shake up our democracy with not a two but a THREE party system. There could be a conservative party--meaning the Democrats--and then a party that champions the environment--say, the Green Party--and then a party that champions women, workers and children--say, the Feminist party. (Is there such a thing already? If not, there should be.)

But we don't need a party that champions grumpy old rich white guys who want to make sure they never lose a penny they aren't willing to part with--whales, polar bears, mountaintops in Appalachia and everyone else be damned. They'll even start wars and torture people if necessary in order to protect their wealth and their power.

The world--and our democracy--would be healthier if we got rid of that party.

I would like to see the Republican party shrink to the point where Ralph Nader could drown it in a bathtub. THAT would be good for democracy.

And the fact that the people in power and the people commenting on the people in power can only imagine opposition from the right of the Democratic party and not from the left of it, just shows how conservative, traditional and anti-change these people really are.

Posted by holly at 2:05 PM | Comments (3)

April 26, 2009

Dentistry, Torture and Intent

It is a truth universally acknowledged that dental work can really fucking HURT. But is it ever accurate to call it torture?

I was cursed with crappy teeth. All of them are extra small, most of them didn't start out where they were supposed to be, three of them never came in because they didn't exist in the first place, and one of them was grafted to my jawbone and thus impervious to the reshaping efforts of braces, on top of which it was malformed and looked like a teeny tiny little fang. When I was 22, a molar on the bottom left side broke one evening while I was eating a bowl of noodles at a dinner party in Taiwan, and three years later, the molar above it simply disintegrated one day, for absolutely no apparent reason.

In an effort to make my teeth look the way adult human teeth are supposed to look, I underwent all sorts of dental procedures. I had three orthodontists and two sets of braces, and I have three crowns and two bridges.

People whose jobs involve hurting me in some way--dentists, rolfers, electrologists--have occasionally told me that I have an exceptionally high pain threshold. "I don't think that's true," I said once. "It's not that these things don't hurt me; I just try to breathe through the pain and not freak out or cry, because I've learned the hard way that those things don't do any good." But I've been assured that when it comes to pain, I'm a model of stoic endurance.

Of all the things I've ever voluntarily undergone, repeatedly, the one that hurts the worst is dental work or orthodontia. The crown I had to get after my molar broke in Taiwan--that was hell. The dentist who did it was such an insensitive dick. Or my first set of braces--it was the 70s, back when braces involved bands that encircled each tooth, and there was this tool the orthodontist used to tighten the band (and, I suspect, to jolt the tooth loose from your gums so it would move more easily) that my sisters and I called "the thumper"--oh, how we hated that thing. Having it used hurt so bad you'd want to vomit from the pain, particularly if we were unlucky enough to have an appointment on the day the mean orthodontist in the two-guy practice was there. On those days, we often left the orthodontist's office in tears, which made him mad--but didn't make him any more gentle.

Remember that song "Dentist" from Little Shop of Horrors? The one that goes

I am your dentist.
And I enjoy the career that I picked.
I'm your dentist.
And I get off on the pain I inflict!

And remember Brazil? I am pretty sure I remember Michael Palin is a torturer, and the method of torture he uses is dentistry.

This is reflected in real life. There are regimes and organizations that use dentistry as torture.

So is it torture, or is it not?

The answer is, of course, THAT DEPENDS. You could argue that dentist work can't be torture because

A) People undergo it voluntarily
B) It has a beneficial purpose
C) It's done by trained professionals
D) Attempts are made to reduce suffering

But there are situations where none of those things are true.

People who argue that some sort of procedure--waterboarding, slapping, confinement, whatever--is not torture because it doesn't kill you as soon as you undergo it are missing two points: A) a procedure that kills you slowly with plenty of pain along the way is not just torture, but murder or execution; and B) almost ANYTHING can be torture.

What makes something torture is not merely how much it hurts or harms or threatens someone, but the reasons why those things are being done, and how thoroughly power over the entire situation is seized by the one doing the procedure and withheld from the one it's being done to.

Things that are pleasurable under some circumstances can be torture under others. Most of us enjoy food, but food can be used as torture, either by forcing someone to eat something they find repugnant or by forcing them to eat until they're ill. Sex can be torture easily enough. Tickling can be torture if goes on long enough.

We can endure with equanimity all sorts of mildly unpleasant things because we know they won't last long. But if mildly unpleasant discomfort is purposely intensified and prolonged, it can be torture. Being stuck under one of those big hair dryers in a salon can be torture if the heat is high enough and it goes on long enough. I just read a book called Life and Death in Shanghai where the form of torture used on prisoners was really simple: prisoners who didn't confess quickly enough to whatever crime the Maoists thought they were guilty of, had to wear great big brass handcuffs, for days and days and days, closed tightly enough that circulation was impaired. Because the hands were cuffed behind the back, prisoners could only eat by gulping food out of a plate like a dog, and it was often impossible to take one's pants down for elimination, so prisoners soiled themselves.

What makes something torture is not necessarily the particular procedure one is subjected to, but, first of all, whether the suffering it inflicts is intentional rather than incidental. And while there are evil, sadistic, brutal sociopaths who might torture someone just for the fun of it, in political and military situations, torture is usually a tool for interrogation. So if a condition for ending intentionally-inflicted suffering is that the person being subjected to it must answer some question, then whatever is being done is torture.

Pain in and of itself does not necessarily constitute torture--otherwise the abdominal surgery I had as a teenager would be torture. Also important are issues of power and personal sovereignty. If you deprive someone of sovereignty over their own body and inflict physical suffering on them as part of an interrogation, with the understanding that the way to make the suffering stop is to provide the interrogators with the information they want, then you're torturing them. No matter whether you handcuff their hands behind their back for days, or stuff a wet towel in their mouths and simulate drowning, or tickle them until they pee themselves, or force them to assume a position until it becomes painful and debilitating, or stick a dentist's drill in their mouth, you're torturing them.

Let's not pretend otherwise.

Posted by holly at 5:32 PM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2009

Excommunicate the War Criminal, Already!

Just in case anyone is unclear on the relationship of state-sanctioned and inflicted torture--and more particularly state-sanctioned tortured inflicted on political prisoners by a western army occupying some portion of the middle east--let me remind you that that's how Jesus died.

Jesus was tortured to death. The "Prince of Peace" (not the Prince of Abstinence, nor the Prince of Sobriety) was tortured to death. So if someone else also tortures people--maybe not to death, at least not on purpose--but as violently as possible without causing death ON PURPOSE, does that make the person or people doing the torture followers of A) the Prince of Peace or B) his executioners?

The Mormon church worked hard to say that the reason they excommunicated the guy who created the shirtless elder calendar wasn't because he created the shirtless elder calendar; it was because he had stopped wearing garments, didn't pay tithing and was inactive. This is pure bullshit. The church doesn't excommunicate inactive people who don't pay tithing, wear garments or attend church; it bullies and harasses them by sending home teachers, and devotes part of each General Conference to inviting them to come back to church. (My sister mentioned that when she heard that in the GC two weeks ago, she said to someone she was with, "Those people aren't listening!" No duh.)

The stated rationale for excommunicating the guy might have been that he didn't wear garments, but the reason he had to be disciplined was the calendar. He embarrassed the church. That was his real crime.

Other people who embarrass the church are kicked out, even when they're doing work vital to keep the church honest, like Lavina Fielding Anderson.

So there are two questions I am waiting to see answered now: A) Will the church feel embarrassed by the fact that some of the most egregious memos from the Bush adminstration justifying torture were written by a Mormon, Jay Bybee; and B) will it do anything to discipline him?

My guess about the answers is: no, to both questions. But both answers should be YES.

Someone might argue that the answer should be NO, because after all the Mormon church hasn't informed its members that they are endangering their membership or their salvation if they support, justify or engage in torture.

That is true. The LDS Church is too busy working to deny women and gay people full civil rights to care about the things like war crimes.

If the church were truly a moral institution, it would condemn war crimes, even when commited by its own members. That's easy. But it's not a moral institution. It's a repressive structure devoted to preserving its own power, and it doesn't give a shit about ethics or the rule of law, unless that law is its own form of sharia.

I honestly believe that the church's indifference on this topic is as vile as its active work to deny marriage to gay people. I think anyone who cares about justice should be outraged by its silence.

I can only say, Flip Monson, Fetch the Twelve.

Posted by holly at 11:41 AM | Comments (4)

March 25, 2009

Do Fetuses Have More "Personhood" Than Women?

Watch it and try to keep your jaw from dropping.

Posted by holly at 1:47 PM | Comments (1)

March 8, 2009

My Latest Crappy Part-time Job

Remember back in October when I discussed this crappy part-time temp job I'd taken, the one with the job title "obsessing about the election"? Well, I've got another crappy part-time job, though I'm afraid this one won't be a temp job. And it's called "reading all the memos documenting our trip to hell in a handcart." We're going to hell in a handcart rather than a hand basket or handbag or clutch purse or because we're trying to take as much stuff with us as possible. But it's still where we're going.

Most of the memos can be summarized in two words: We're fucked.

We're well and truly fucked, and collectively, as a species, we asked for it. Individually we might not have, but collectively, we certainly did. That's the lesson in the biblical observation that "you reap what you sow." We sowed selfishness, greed, instability, carelessness, obliviousness. Oh--we also sowed violence, death, destruction, and because we lived by the sword, collectively, it's probably how we're going to die. War, after all, is not only what pulled us out of the last great depression, but what helped us all get into it in the first place.

I've spent three and a half hours this morning reading the news--how the mortgage crisis is affecting Cleveland, which I care about because I went there a lot while I lived in Erie--it's not a bad place, and it doesn't deserve what's happening to it. Or the genocide ongoing in Darfur, another place that doesn't deserve what's happening to it. Or riots over lost homes and jobs in Eastern Europe. Or the ongoing environmental devastation that is both the result and an exacerbating factor of all we're experiencing. Or the complete INSANITY that is setting clocks an hour ahead two weeks before the spring equinox and setting them back six weeks after the fall equinox--why the FUCK do we have daylight saving time, which sucks?

Grumble, mutter, sigh.

I keep thinking about this one moment in Lord of the Rings that I just love, that's one of the reasons I love Ian McKellen. Frodo says something about how he wishes the ring had never come to him, and Gandalf replies (paraphrasing here), "So do all who live through such times. But that is not for them to decide. All you can do is make the best of the time and situation you're given."

I feel like I'm watching the end of the world--or at least, the end of our world. I feel grief, and anxiety, and moments of desperation, and moments of despair. It's worse than watching the war begin, which was pretty bad. I went back and read my journal from March 2003 a few weeks ago. It was harrowing, frankly. At that point, I just knew we were preparing to fuck ourselves over. Now I'm watching the results. They suck. I knew they would. I didn't know they'd be this bad.

And I don't know how to witness this. I guess no one else in the history of the world who observed unbelievable trauma and destruction knew how to be an effective witness to what was unfolding around them.

I guess I'll just keep doing the best I can--paying attention, trying to make sense of the senseless, hoping that as a race, we survive and emerge wiser than we were before.

I don't know what else to do.

Posted by holly at 10:56 AM | Comments (3)

February 11, 2009

US Churches' Attempts to do SOMETHING About Gaza

There's been a ceasefire in Gaza for a few weeks now, but one of my readers recently brought to my attention the responses to two christian sects to the Israeli attacks: this condemnation of them from the Episcopal church, and this offer of $21,000 in "hygiene kits" and blankets from the LDS church.

It's a fairly significant difference, but not surprising if you consider each source:

after all, one is an enterprise that seeks to understand and do Christ's will in the present, and thus offers women and homosexuals full fellowship in its organization (like this person or this person) in addition to condemning violence and warmongering, while the other is "the only true and living church on the face of the earth," and thus run by old straight white guys (plus maybe a few closeted homosexuals and a token man of color or two, because those are the people God prefers to talk to) interested in maintaining the status quo and, because they know they're the only ones on the earth God really approves of and communicates to, free from any responsibility to ask themselves if they are truly behaving in Christlike ways.

But I guess considering how bellicose and reactionary the Mormon church has been in the past, $21,000 in blankets and shampoo is a major improvement, and we should be grateful for progress wherever it appears.

Posted by holly at 11:08 AM | Comments (2)

February 8, 2009

Wars Are Expensive, But Why Should They Be the Standard By Which Other Spending Is Judged?

One of the conservative arguments against the stimulus bill making its way through Congress is that it will "cost more than all the wars in US history."

Now, first of all, this is untrue. If you adjust the cost of World War II for inflation, it goes from $288 billion to somewhere around $3.6 trillion. (At least, that's what I learned from sites I found through Google. I didn't want to link to any of the sites providing these numbers, because they're mostly wacky right-wing platforms.)

Or, as this post from the Daily Kos explains, the "war on terror" has already cost more than the stimulus package--and it's not even over.

But what I want to point out is this:

saying, "the stimulus is going to cost more than any war has ever cost," can be paraphrased this way:

"We are going to spend more in an effort to heal our economy, begin to address the problems with our health care, provide for our children's education, feed the hungry, house the homeless, and repair and strengthen our crumbling infrastructure, than we ever ever spent to kill people."

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that's so bad, and frankly I wish it were true.

I admit, I spend a lot more of my income on things like food, education, clothing, housing, transportation, etc, than I spend on killing, maiming and undermining my enemies.

I mean, what's YOUR budget for contract killings? How many soldiers do YOU employ to attack and protect you from your enemies?

We SHOULD spend more on investing in our own country and our own citizens than we spend killing other people in other countries, if you ask me.

Let's hope that we never again spend nearly as much waging war as we spend taking care of each other.

After all, that's what Jesus would do.

p.s. Also see this analysis from the Daily Kos demonstrating that the New Deal actually did work. An excerpt:

The oddest idea is that "putting the nation on a war footing" was the cure that finally ended the depression when the New Deal couldn't get the job done. It's something that gets repeated every time this tall tale is told, because even Republicans realize that the Great Depression did end. They just have to think of some way to give credit to something other than Democrats.... But if they really believe that wars are stimulating, you have to ask: why aren't we stimulated? We have two wars going on. We've invested lots of capital -- including the kind that lives, breathes, and has family -- but that doesn't seem to be shooting the GDP skyward. Maybe Republicans think we need to take on a bigger target. Would a war with Iran get the stimulus working? Or is this stimulus more China-sized?

Posted by holly at 3:18 PM | Comments (3)

February 7, 2009

Republican Legislators: Bad Faith Fire Fighters

Discussing the approach of Republican legislators to economic stimulus, Rachel says, (basically--I'm paraphrasing rather than making the effort to make sure this is a verbatim quote): If your house is on fire, and you call the fire department, and they tell you to pour gasoline on your house, they're not making a good faith to help you save your house.

Republicans want us to pour gasoline on our economy. Tax cuts don't work; spending does.

Watch Rachel's insightful analysis if you haven't seen it already.

p.s. If you are one of the unlucky people in the world who don't already know Rachel, read this profile of her from the Guardian.

Posted by holly at 9:29 AM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2009

Rethinking Success and Failure, Courtesy of Honda

Huh. Very interesting approach to the creation and solving of problems, especially when compared to this article about how the world's economic leaders view the problems they created.

Posted by holly at 2:17 PM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2009

People Who Truly Believe in Hell Often Can’t Wait Until the Next Life to Send the Heathen There

Remember a few weeks ago when I was writing about various avoidance techniques I was using to help me not write? I recently rediscovered a truth I’ve known quite well and put into practice successfully in the past: the very best writing-avoidance-technique of all is some other writing project. I’m still not working on the project I committed to, but I’m getting all sorts of other writing done. Check out the January calendar here on my blog--you’ll notice that there was a flurry of activity last week. I was blogging so I wouldn’t have to work on the real project I needed to deal with. In fact, that’s why I’m blogging right now.

But back before I started writing in order to not write, I read stuff. And one of the things I read was this really scary book entitled American Fascists: the Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges, which came out in 2006.

This book truly alarmed me, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who has ever been to church, as well as anyone who has never been to church and so doesn’t know what happens there. In other words, it’s essential reading if you want to understand one of the challenges facing our society.

This book does not mention Mormons--the word doesn’t appear in the index, and indeed there are significant ways in which Mormons don’t fit into definition of religious fascists Hedges presents. (If there weren’t, Harry Reid, the Mormon Democratic senator from Nevada and Senate Majority Leader, couldn’t exist. Also, I think the fact that Mormons tried and failed to create a theocracy in North America has left them with a little more distaste for the enterprise than a lot of conservative Christians.) But there were ways in which they do. For instance, this passage could easily describe life in the Mormon church:

By submitting to the Christian leader, and to a powerful male God who will destroy those who misbehave, followers avoid dealing with life. The movement seeks, above all, to banish mystery, the very essence of faith. Not only is the binary world [of good and evil] knowable and predictable, but finally God is knowable and predictable. (81)

and this passage is a powerful critique of acculturation into Mormon society:

This conditioning of children to fear nonconformity and blindly obey ensures continued obedience as adults. The difficult task of learning how to make moral choices, how to accept personal responsibility, how to deal with the chaos of human life is handed over to God-like authority figures. The process makes possible a perpetuation of childhood. It allows the adult to bask in the warm glow and magic of divine protection. It masks from them and from others the array of human weaknesses, including our deepest dreads, our fears of irrelevance and death, our vulnerability and uncertainty. It also makes it difficult, if not impossible, to build mature, loving relationships, for the believer is told it is all about them, about their needs, their desires, and above all, their protection and advancement. Relationships, even within families, splinter and fracture. Those who adopt the belief system, who find in the dictates of the church and its male leaders a binary world of right and wrong, build an exclusive and intolerant comradeship that subtly or overtly shuns and condemns the “unsaved.” People are no longer judged by their intrinsic qualities, by their actions or capacity for self-sacrifice and compassion, but by the rigidity of their obedience. This defines the good and the bad, the Christian and the infidel. And this obedience is a blunt and effective weapon against the possibility of a love that could overpower the dictates of the hierarchy. In many ways it is love the leaders fear most, for it is love that unleashes passions and bonds that defy the carefully constructed edifices that keep followers trapped and enclosed. And while they speak often about love, as they do about family, it is the cohesive bonds created and family and love that they war against. (88)

One of the things Hedges continually draws attention to is the way the Christian Right claims to be victimized at the same time it is victimizing everyone who disagrees with it. I wonder if Ann Coulter has read Hedges’ book, since her most recent book involves accusing liberals of claiming to be victimized while they are going around victimizing everyone else.

The problem here is that most liberals don’t claim to be victims themselves--they’re typically educated, financially comfortable, able to take advantage of society’s benefits. They decry and argue against the victimization of OTHERS--of people who are NOT THEM. They are interested in creating a society that benefits everyone--not just themselves. Whereas people like Ann Coulter--and the segment of the population she represents--complain about their own victimization, and want to created a society that benefits primarily themselves--everyone else be damned, literally. And because of their own selfish, limited view, they necessarily project their own way of thinking onto their enemies:

Because fundamentalist followers live in a binary universe, they are incapable of seeing others as anything more than inverted reflections of themselves. If they seek to destroy nonbelievers to create a Christian America, then nonbelievers must be seeking to destroy them. This belief system negates the possibility of the ethical life. It fails to grasp that goodness must be sought outside the self and that the best defense against evil is to seek it within. When people come to believe that that they are immune from evil, that there is no resemblance between themselves and those they define as the enemy, they will inevitably grow to embody the evil they claim to fight. It is only by grasping our own capacity for evil, our own darkness, that we hold our own capacity for evil at bay. When evil is always external, then moral purification always entails the eradication of others. (151)

The conclusion of the book is quite chilling, particularly in light of what happened with Proposition 8 in California and other bits of anti-gay legislation around the country. In the 1980s, Dr. James Luther Adams, who was Hedges ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his 20-something students that when they were Adams’ age (around 80), they “would all be fighting ‘Christian fascists.... Adams was not a man to use the word ‘fascist lightly. He was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as the Confessing Church, with dissidents such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States” (194-195).

Adams, finally, told us to watch closely what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. The Nazis had used “values” to launch state repression of opponents. Hitler, days after he took power in 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations. He ordered raids on places where homosexuals gathered, culminating in the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin and the permanent exile of its director, Magnus Hirschfield. Thousands of volumes from the institute’s library were tossed into a bonfire. The stripping of gay and lesbian Germans of their civil rights was largely cheered by the German churches. But this campaign legitimized tactics, outside the law, that would soon be employed against others. Adams said that homosexuals would also be the first “social deviants” singled out and disempowered by the Christian Right. We would be the next. (201)

If that doesn't scare you, well, then perhaps you're an American fascist, or perhaps way more sanguine than I am.

Still, those of us who are opposed to fascism, American or otherwise, can take hope--quite audaciously--in the fact that while Prop 8 and other similar measures passed, we elected a president who has shown himself dedicated to protecting civil rights in significant ways. Perhaps this hater movement has spent its energy and the flurry of anti-gay legislation was the last lashings of the shore before the tide turned and the storm abated. We can’t count on that--we have to work to make this country truly free in all the ways it needs to be--but it is a reason to believe that our efforts can succeed.

Posted by holly at 9:16 AM | Comments (1)

January 22, 2009

Was It Good For You Too?

As is often the case, there are LOADS of things I want to blog about. But a combination of other obligations, plain old sloth, and momentous events, has interfered with my timely fulfilling of my duties as a blogger.

The last few days I have, of course, been busy observing world and US history being made. (Does anyone know: has any other western country ever elected a black man to serve as president or prime minister or whatever its highest office is?) I had to watch crappy, slow live feeds of speeches and parades; and I had to cry, and be happy, and watch other people cry and be happy. Then I had to read and listen to analyses of the speeches and the crying and the happiness.

That has all been really important and felt really good. But at least as important has been following Obama's earliest actions once he as assumed the office of president. I'm really heartened and excited by the closing of Gitmo, and the repudiation of anything resembling torture, and all sorts of things our new pres has done.

And I've also had to learn more about the horrible, horrible things the Bush administration did. No doubt we're going to find out that as bad the stuff we knew about was, there was a bunch of other stuff that was WAA-AAY worse.

For instance, the scope of unauthorized governmental spying on innocent American citizens, just 'cause the Bush administration felt like spying. This interview with whistleblower Russell Tice on Keith Olbermann's show last night, for instance, left me speechless.

Posted by holly at 1:33 PM | Comments (1)

November 28, 2008

And Then There's Copper

It's not often that I get to read about my home in the NY Times, but here's a story and a video (scroll down and look on the left side of the screen) discussing the current state of the copper industry in southeastern Arizona, which, along with Chile, "continues to rank as one of the two richest copper provinces in the world."

The article refers several times to the "Safford valley" in Graham County, but there's no such place: The name of the place is the GILA Valley; Safford is merely the county seat and largest town. (Thatcher, the town I grew up in, is the next largest--and still quite small--and now right next to Safford, though they used to be miles apart. Historically, Safford was the business center; Thatcher the intellectual and religious center, the place where the college and the church headquarters were.) There's a mention of the recently opened pit mine there, which just about everyone I knew was in favor of: sure, it was going to be UGLY, and extremely visible, given that it was just across the Gila River (hence the name of the valley) to the north of town, but hey, it would bring prosperity.

The article mentions that Safford's Main Street, which was "once full of empty storefronts with boarded-up windows, is nearing 95 percent occupancy." And I guess that's a good thing: I worked in a couple of businesses on Main Street, and it was indeed depressing to walk past these abandoned businesses. Though the tone of the article suggests that lay-offs and boarded-up storefronts are imminent. We'll see.

(by the way, in case you didn't recognize it, the title of this entry is taken from "Moonstruck," and occurs in a line delivered by the plumber dad about the virtues of copper pipe.)

Posted by holly at 8:11 AM | Comments (2)

November 10, 2008

Why I Love Keith Olbermann

Keith Olbermann is often considered a partisan hack, because he mercilessly mocks stupid conservatives like Bill O'Reilly. And recently Ben Affleck did a bang-up job of doing a send-up of him on Saturday Night Live, and made him look ridiculous. But I dig him. He's tall, and has that prematurely gray thing working for him in really attractive ways. And, every so often, he says something like this, about why our country needs to embrace gay marriage:

Posted by holly at 8:17 PM | Comments (4)

November 9, 2008

The Diminishment of Dreams, Or, Hope Really Is Audacious

In a comment on my most recent entry, JGW pointed out that my statement that after Obama's victory, "I felt better than I would have if McCain had won, but I didn't feel great," was a crashing understatement.

I sort of knew this when I wrote it. I sort of intended it to be understatement. I wanted the entire entry to be flat and clipped and short on emotional complexity, which is how I had felt. But I didn't realize just HOW MUCH of an understatement that was--and the truth of the matter is, I probably still don't.

It's not that I was always confident that Obama would win. It's not that I couldn't imagine a McCain victory. In fact, back in September, when I was really down, I predicted that McCain would win and the US would end up a third-rate bankrupt dictatorship. But I couldn't--and frankly still can't--imagine the emotional emptiness and hopelessness I would have felt if Republican control of our country had continued.

By that I don't mean that I couldn't let myself, or wouldn't let myself. I mean that I COULD NOT IMAGINE IT. I've imagined some pretty horrible possible futures at different points in my life--for much of my mission, I imagined I would be damned because I rejected so much of the message I was supposed to preach, and living in the present with that future looming before me really sucked. But the volatile nature of the world makes it impossible to guess what's coming next for our country. Who but the people who had access to that memo announcing in August 2001 that Osama Bin Laden was poised to strike in the US could have imagined September 11? OK, Bush and Rice and Rumsfield et al should have known the attacks of 9/11 were coming, but as for the rest of us, all we should have known was that 9/11 would come after 9/10 and before 9/12.

I also feel that my imagination and my psyche have been damaged by the past eight years--and so have the collective imagination and psyche of the country. That's one reason Prop 8 passed now when a similar initiative failed in California a few years earlier--as a whole, we're less capable of compassion now than we were eight years ago.

I used to be quite a dreamer. By that I mean that I was very interested in the mental activity that took place while I was asleep. I had vivid, captivating dreams, and I remembered them. I kept a dream journal. I got really good at lucid dreaming--you know, that state where you know you're dreaming and are able to manipulate or influence the events of a dream. I read books on dreams. I sought interpretations of dreams that particularly intrigued or troubled me.

And then about 2002, my dreams got considerably more boring. Most of them were anxiety dreams. The ones that weren't full of anxiety were usually bedraggled and drab.

I thought this was mostly my fault, or the fault of my individual life, at least. I had a job I hated. I had stopped doing yoga because the house I lived in was too small to afford room to do it. I had moved to a small community and my social circle was very limited. I was lonely.

And yet I knew that one of my primary sources of anxiety was the impending and then the actual war. One recurring nightmare that never failed to wake me in a state of horror, my heart pounding, my mouth dry, involved drowning polar bears and shrinking ice caps. It wasn't just the suffering polar bears that scared me so. It was my own hopelessness.

I remember reading studies about the dreams of Germans during the Third Reich. A woman named Charlotte Beradt collected the dreams of Germans from 1933 to 1939, at which point she had to flee the country. But the dreams she documented were fascinating. (I should admit I haven't read her book, which has long been out of print, only accounts of it.) People had dreams of radios that would never shut off, of household appliances bugged so that every word said in private was recorded in some government office. And those were in the dreams of people who weren't especially scared of the Nazis!

The dreams of those who hated and opposed the Nazis revealed profound helplessness. One housewife dreamed that every night she would rip the swastika off a Nazi flag, only to discover in the morning that it was sewn back on, more securely than ever. One man cried in anger and shame as he realized that despite his conscious and deliberate effort to stop it, his arm was rising, inch by inch, to form the Nazi salute.

I can't find documentation of this, but I remember reading that by the end of the war, Germans reported dreams that consisted merely of gray blobs, muddy brown rectangles, dull wordless moaning.

What we went through or did under the GW Bush administration is by no means as bad as what Germany endured and perpetrated under Hitler. But it wasn't good.

Something remarkable has happened to me since the election: I've been tired--really, really, tired. As in, exhausted. As in, needing to sleep A LOT. As in, going to bed earlier and earlier every night, and still wanting to take a nap every afternoon. It's not just that I'm tired. It's that I'm sleeping deeply, and having copious, vivid, funky dreams. It's been great.

I can feel my imagination waking back up. Hope is an mental state dependent on a healthy imagination. It's hard to have that when you're subject to an institution or set of institutions that spy on you, inculcate fear of all that is different, seek to control your thoughts, punish dissent, and reject compassion.

For someone to proclaim during the Bush administration that he had hope, so much hope that he could share it with others, is to me completely audacious. I couldn't do it. But I could recognize that hope when I saw it and latch on to it. I could rejoice when it triumphed. And now, I'm beginning to find my own hope. It's small, and cautious, and weak. But I have hope for my hope. I hope it will grow, and become audacious. As it should be.

Posted by holly at 1:15 PM | Comments (3)

November 6, 2008

Since Halloween

Friday I celebrated Halloween by going door to door--not asking for candy, but doing GOTV stuff for Obama. I didn't knock on the doors of strangers; I told campaign people that I would never do that again in this lifetime, having already fulfilled my quota of door-knocking for the Mormon church. Nor would I do phone banks. Instead I did stuff like data entry or hanging those little thingies on door knobs, reminding people to VOTE on November 4. Oh, and I also brooded about the upcoming election.

Saturday I felt like crap and tried to fight off a cold, and brooded about the upcoming election.

Sunday I cleaned my home really, really thoroughly, first of all for something to do. Also so that if the election went well, my happiness would be increased by the pleasure I always feel waking up in a clean house, and so that if it went badly, I could just sulk and not have to deal with housework. Then I brooded about the upcoming election.

Monday I tried to be upbeat. I wore an outfit I really like, hung out in cool places, planned a nice meal, bought booze. I worked hard at projects that needed hard work. Then I brooded about the upcoming election.

I had cleared Tuesday entirely. The only three things I had to do were A) vote and B) brood about the election until the votes were reported, and C) watch the results.

Voting was not as difficult as I feared. I didn't vote early because I like going to the polls on election day. I was able to walk to my polling place. There was no line. None. There were eight voting machines and people at four of them. My wait time to vote was 0 minutes. I voted, walked out of the church (my polling place is often a church) and kept walking, to get my blood moving and to kill time.

Tuesday night I switched between various web sites. I watched states turn red or blue. I opened a bottle of wine. There was that moment, after Ohio was called for Obama but before California came in, when I did the math like everyone else and realized Obama was going to win.

I burst into tears and I cried on and off for the rest of the night. I cried for the same reasons so many others cried: joy, astonishment, gratitude, hope, fatigue, relief. Emphasis on astonishment and fatigue. I mean, I knew I felt joy and hope, but they were muted by the huge strain of waiting for the election.

I toasted the president elect and his family. I toasted myself. I toasted everyone who made this possible. I went to bed eventually. I slept fitfully. I woke up with a hangover.

Wednesday I did the minimum I could get away with in terms of professional and social obligations. I read accounts and analyses of how Obama won, how the world reacted, what his presidency would mean.

I felt OK. I felt better than I would have if McCain had won, but I didn't feel great. I still felt a lot of astonishment and fatigue.

And then, in the evening, something happened. I finally laughed.

A good part of it was reading about how McCain staff said Palin's shopping addiction was worse than was reported before the election, and that REPUBLICANS lamented "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast." Or watching video on Fox News informing us that Palin didn't know Africa is a continent, and threw temper tantrums that reduced her staff to tears when she got bad press.

This is who the Republicans chose to lead them, and us?

I laughed because it was so ridiculous. A new bar has been set in the theatre of the absurd. I thought it was bad enough that the Republicans stuck us with a president as stupid and incurious as George Bush, but he was no comparison for Sarah Palin in the contest for stupidest person ever to run for office in the American presidency.

I laughed out of schadenfreude. Who hasn't? Bill Kristol, Pat Buchanan, John McCain, certain members of my social circle, all these people who vaunted Palin as a legitimate candidate: their credibility has been profoundly damaged. And Sarah P herself had to return the clothes and go home.

I laughed the nervous, anxious laughter that bursts forth when you realize you've missed a bullet. Except that we didn't miss a bullet. We missed an entire artillery assault.

I laughed because I could. I laughed because laughing finally helped dissipate the tension in my gut. I laughed because it felt good, and it helped me feel the other things that made me cry: joy, astonishment, gratitude, hope.

At a time when it really counted and we knew it, we did the right thing.

Posted by holly at 11:36 AM | Comments (7)

November 4, 2008

PRESIDENT OBAMA

9 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. MSNBC calls the presidential race for Obama.

We did it. We elected the right guy.

For the first time this millennium, I am actually proud of my country.

Posted by holly at 9:00 PM | Comments (2)

October 30, 2008

The Only Legal Way to Cancel Out Your Neighbors

fucking genius.

Posted by holly at 9:09 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2008

Stealing the Other Guy's Lines Because Your Own Lines Stink

Everyone should watch this--especially anyone still thinking about voting McCain:

Posted by holly at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2008

What Makes Democracy Work

This composite video of unscripted interviews with conservatives explaining why they are voting for Obama made me cry--with pride, with joy, with grief, with hope for my country. You need to read the commentary from Eric Hirshberg, pointing out that "an open mind" is what makes democracy work, but the video is pretty darn great in and of itself.

You can see more interviews at Conservatives For Change.

Posted by holly at 8:15 AM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2008

The Worst Thing I've Heard in a Really Long Time

Well, McCain did it: he wanted to enrage people, and he succeeded. Check out this piece from the Huffington Post, scroll down to the second audio bar, and listen to the horrible, horrible phone messages left on ACORN voice message systems by McCain supporters. There's a very surreal quality to the messages, with the recorded electronic voice of this woman saying, "Next recorded message" after a long string of obscenities and death threats.

But at least when you visit the HuffPo you can see a slide show of Sarah Palin's outfits, culminating with a shot of her looking like shit at the grocery store before she was named McCain's vp candidate. It's worth looking at, as is a slide show of her bad blush and this video montage of her hair:

p.s. I realize that posting stuff about Palin's appearance is a cheap shot, but that's what people who don't love America tend to do.

Posted by holly at 3:38 PM | Comments (2)

October 19, 2008

Why the F**k Is This Story About American Greed in the British Press?

This story in the Guardian, about how a TENTH of the $700 billion bailout for Wall Street is being spent on payouts for the people who brought us the bank failure, PISSED ME OFF for so many reasons I can't name them all.

I recently had to listen to a Mormon woman who has voted Republican for 50 years complain about the way these horrible rich bankers and stock brokers are taking these massive payouts, and retiring. I wanted to say, "Why are you complaining? This is the trickle-down principle in action. This is what you've endorsed and voted for all your life." But I didn't.

It enrages me that the Republican party is identified as the party of Christianity, when in fact the Republican party is one of the least Christian organizations on the earth. Few other entities are so unapologetically devoted to helping the already rich amass and protect even greater wealth; few entities have such indifference to the people Jesus Christ said we should help: the needy, the poor, the sick.

I guess the American press is as scared as I am to point out to "good Mormons" and "good Republicans" how full of shit they are, how responsible they are for this mess, how our government still lets the robber barons steal from the poor and run off to England to drink fine wine and eat partridge, while the rest of us are supposed to eat... not cake but something off the McDonald's dollar menu.

The thing about karma and chickens coming home to roost is that it doesn't affect a single person. The country has karma, and it's biting us on the butt. But we've worked hard to ensure that some people are protected as much as possible from the consequences of their actions. The country as a whole has to deal with its karma, but just as wealth is not evenly distributed, neither is suffering.

I won't go so far as to say that the Republican party is dedicated to the creation of suffering; that's not its explicit goal. Instead, it merely pursues policies--military aggression, handouts to the wealthy, marginalizing and demonizing minorities--that cannot but help create suffering. What the Republican party is dedicated to, at least for the past ten years or so, is ensuring that when suffering occurs, it's the poor and the weak who suffer more than the rich and powerful.

It's done a heck of a job. I just hope it chooses a new goal.

Posted by holly at 9:21 AM | Comments (2)

October 18, 2008

The Neo-Con VP Battles

I don't know what's more upsetting to me in this article from Scott Horton on how Sarah Palin became the nominee for vice president: that she's on the ticket because of the support of the deceptive fuckwit Bill Kristol (who predicted at the end of June that she'd get the position), or that Karl Rove's choice for vp was Mitt Romney. I mean, I knew MR was a scumbag, but enough of a scumbag that KR would support him? That I didn't know.

Update 10/20/08: The New Yorker has a much more thorough article on how Palin got the pick--check it out.

Posted by holly at 8:02 AM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2008

It's All Right There on His Facebook Page

Unlike the debates, this won't completely nauseate you. McCain went first, but Obama was way funnier.

Posted by holly at 9:37 AM | Comments (2)

October 16, 2008

My Crappy Part-time Temp Job

Like so many people today, I am availing myself of as many opportunities as possible to improve my economic standing and provide for my future, which is why I have taken on a part-time temp job that doesn't pay shit and sometimes requires so many extra hours and so much preparation that it impedes my ability to do my REAL job. The only good things about this job are A) the work is actually interesting, B) I can do it at home in my pajamas, and C) it will end soon.

This part-time job is called "Obsessing About the Election." I don't actually get paid for it at all, but I'm spending so much time at it lately that it really does feel like a job.

This morning, for instance, I got up and watched last night's debate on Youtube. That took 91 minutes. Then I had to spend a long while being nauseated about the way McCain used air quotes and a sneer when he referred to "the health of the mother" in abortion issues. Then I had to read commentary. Then I had to read polls proving what any sane person could see: Obama won. Then I had to read all the other news.

It took A LONG time. It's almost noon, I'm emotionally and physically exhausted, and I want to take a nap. But I've got my REAL job to do now.

I will be really glad when this election is over, particularly if Obama wins it, the way he looks like he's going to. I will take several days off not only from the election, but from all the news, and step far, far away from the computer.

Posted by holly at 11:45 AM | Comments (3)

October 11, 2008

He Wants the Precious

I don't usually link to NY Times stories unless I can offer some commentary on them, because I figure most of the people who read my blog also read the Times, and I know they can click on headline links just as easily as I can. But in case you didn't bother to read this op-ed by Gail Collins, you should. I laughed out loud at this bit:

Remember how we used to joke about John McCain looking like an old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn? It’s only in retrospect that we can see that the keep-off-the-grass period was the McCain campaign’s golden era. Now, he’s beginning to act like one of those movie characters who steals the wrong ring and turns into a troll.

During that last debate, while he was wandering around the stage, you almost expected to hear him start muttering: “We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious.”

Posted by holly at 9:05 AM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2008

Hey Smart People, Go Away and F*** Off

David Brooks is one of the few conservative columnists I can read with any frequency--probably because he's not so much of an idiot that he can't see what's wrong with his party. Here's the final paragraph from his most recent column, discussing Sarah Palin and the class wars conservative foment:

Politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission — because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.

I think his statement that in conservative thought, "The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts" squares well with the analysis I offered earlier, of why Republicanism is to politics as punk is to music: you have regular joes who just love rock & roll making music in their garages--or you have oversophisticated, overeducated, overambitious guys who (gasp!) learned their craft at a university or conservatory and make music that actually exploits what they learned from other experts. Eek! Oh no!

This isn't to say that I don't think music--or literature, or visual art, or anything--can't become too obscure and self-involved. There's plenty of poetry I can't stand, because it's technically ambitious and weird, but has nothing to SAY. But I believe that a critical engagement with the ideas that have shaped our world, and a careful reading of what others have had to say, helps writers have something to say and say it in a way worth paying to.

I believe that art, like politics, is a conversation. And the best way you participate in that conversation is by trying to respond thoughtfully and articulately to what's been said before--and knowing what's been said before requires an education. That education can be conducted on one's own--certainly there are great autodidactics in the world, one being my good friend Saviour Onassis. (Hey, SO!)

A movement that disdains education will be devoted to a xenophobic desire to destroy what is foreign or difficult to understand, and it will trade on the familiar, even as it objects to anyone further down the social ladder appropriating for its own ends the goals, rhetoric and tools of the familiar. I believe, for instance, that the current attacks on Obama involving claims that "people don't know who he is" and "his name says it all", coupled with assertions that he's a terrorist--I mean, a black man with a weird name and foreign ancestry is running for president!--are akin to punk's horror of rap and hip hop, its outrage that people who were too poor even to buy a guitar or an amp and so went from three chords to zero chords, still managed to make music other people would want to hear.

Brooks takes a starker stance than I took. I wrote that both Republicans and punks "decry anything 'elite,' both privilege raw emotion and anger over intelligence and expertise--not that they have no use for intelligence or expertise; they're just not as important as being pissed off." Whereas Brooks writes that within conservatism, "a disdain for liberal intellectuals [has] slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole."

I don't think the Republican party has much that is thoughtful or articulate to say these days. And I think defenses of the relevance of both punk and conservatism need to be reconsidered in light of political actualities. Because another similarity I see between punk and the GOP is that even their defenders acknowledge that there is something worryingly stupid in both.

Let's defend the intelligent and well-informed, OK? Please?

Posted by holly at 10:40 AM | Comments (2)

More of Sarah Palin's Wacky Friends

Just so you know, BHO isn't the only candidate in this election who has "palled around" with people who want to attack the United States. Read all about Sarah Palin's radical right wing friends--they're WAY scarier than Bill Ayers.

Posted by holly at 8:16 AM | Comments (0)

October 8, 2008

This Almost Tempts Me to Buy a Cup of Crappy 7-Eleven Coffee

Turns out a poll that accurately predicted the outcome of the last two elections involves paper coffee cups at 7-Eleven.

I guess it's the fact that the poll requires the purchase of coffee that has Obama winning even in Utah (59% to John McCain's 41%), Idaho (same percentages) and Arizona (55% to 45%): ain't no conservative Mormons participating in this poll.

Let's hope the poll is an accurate prognosticator this time too.

Posted by holly at 7:05 AM | Comments (2)

October 7, 2008

Why My Old Senators Were Really, Really BAD

My distaste for Arizona politics increases daily.

This is long, but you MUST watch it.

Posted by holly at 7:36 AM | Comments (0)

October 4, 2008

If Only This Would Work For Mormons

I'm not a huge Sarah Silverman fan, but I loved this. And I loved the Great Schlep website. Its talking points on how to convince one's grandparents to vote for Obama are concise and intelligent.

I wish the plan would work for Mormons Republicans, but I don't think it will. One reason, of course, is something I mentioned back in a discussion of Mormon opposition to gay marriage: the message is now preached from Mormon pulpits that logic and rational thought are tools of Satan. So we'll just have to applaud our Jewish friends, and add one more reason to the list of why so many liberal Mormons suffer badly from Jewish envy.

Posted by holly at 8:41 AM | Comments (0)

October 2, 2008

Draw Me a Diagram

I liked this piece in Slate on the nonsensical nature of Sarah Palin's sentence.

Posted by holly at 8:14 AM | Comments (0)

October 1, 2008

The Punk Political Party

OK, I know that if some of my best friends read this entry, they're going to be pissed, but I'll say it anyway:

The Republican party is to politics what punk is to music.

Both decry anything "elite," both privilege raw emotion and anger over intelligence and expertise--not that they have no use for intelligence or expertise; they're just not as important as being pissed off. Both say that exploring solutions isn't as important as venting your rage over the fact that you've been wronged by the system.

The Ramones are the musical equivalent of Sarah Palin: both follow an approach that says you don't really have to say anything of substance in your songs/policies--in fact, one phrase can just be repeated over and over. ("rock, rock, rock & roll high school" = "drill, baby, drill." Who cares what it really means, what the greater implications are? It's fun to chant!) Whether or not you have the ability to play an instrument isn't as important as whether or not you want to play an instrument, just as whether or not you have the ability to govern wisely isn't as important as whether or not you want to govern in the first place. It's best to keep it short and simple, because people don't really go to rock concerts or political rallies to be intellectually or morally challenged; they go to have a good time!

Honestly. I'm a little facetious, but there's some seriousness here. I've always felt that punk relies on a false appeal to democracy: "anyone can start a band." Yeah, well, it's true: anyone can start a band. But it doesn't mean they deserve attention from the rest of us. It doesn't mean they're any good. But of course, part of the aesthetic of punk is that things don't actually have to be any good. Excellence can be largely irrelevant. Excellence and merit can be, in fact, something to reject.

When I read some of the rhetoric about why people support Sarah Palin and John McCain, I hear this echo of why people rejected Pink Floyd and embraced the Sex Pistols.

OK, Pink Floyd was an incredibly talented, innovative, intelligent, hardworking band. But you could hear all that talent and intelligence in their music. They didn't try to hide it. In fact, they celebrated and flaunted it! They were angry about things that had happened to other people--because they themselves were fairly well off! Elitist bastards! Plus you couldn't really dance to their music.

Whereas the Sex Pistols were just average guys who loved rock & roll and couldn't stand all these wankers trying to turn it into a modern version of classical music. Same goes for the Ramones. They could have been your neighbors. They didn't study at a music conservatory. Did you study at a music conservatory?

You can't dance to Joe Biden. You can dance to Sarah Palin. You can't dance to John McCain, but he's a maverick--as were the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Whereas Obama went to Harvard, and actually studied stuff. He's the political equivalent of Yes, circa 1972's Fragile, the cover art of which depicts anxiety about the destruction of our fragile world--not just one continent, but the whole world.

That "whole world" business is important, because both punk and the Republicans wear their rejection by the world at large as a badge of honor. Obama is a celebratory sell-out, packing arenas even overseas, whereas McCain/Palin is a home-grown band that plays primarily to small and mid-sized local venues, proof of their authenticity and fidelity to the real roots of democracy/rock & roll.

And Hillary Clinton.... Hillary Clinton wasn't Janis Joplin, or Madonna, or Aretha Franklin. She was Heart. As in the once-great band that went from making amazing songs like "Barracuda" and "Magic Man" and "Straight On," to churning out complete crap like "What About Love" and "All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You." I say that because I feel that HC's support of the Iraq war was a sellout she could never recover from, despite her incredible talent and influence.

So. There it is: a brief sketch of politics as music. Feel free to add your own comparisons, or, if you're a fan of punk, tell me why I'm full of shit and can just go listen to my un-danceable Pink Floyd albums while you're off having fun with people who keep it simple, fast and loud.

Posted by holly at 8:49 AM | Comments (4)

September 30, 2008

Top Censored Stories

Here are a bunch of terrifying news stories I knew little about--like most people. Why? Because they've been under-reported or censored, so read all about them now.

Posted by holly at 8:09 AM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2008

Sarah Palin's Church Is CRAZY

OMIGOD.

You have GOT to watch this.

and check out this commentary from the Guardian as well.

WTF?

Posted by holly at 8:36 AM | Comments (1)

September 23, 2008

A Third-Rate Bankrupt Dictatorship

In 2003, as we moved toward war, I read The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman, which I discussed briefly in this post on the bad popes of the Renaissance. As I mentioned there, Tuchman's discussion of Vietnam served as an excellent analogy for the "conflict" in Iraq, and served as well as good notice that the whole affair was going to be a MISTAKE.

Lately I've been watching (for the umpteenth time) something that I believe also serves as an analogy for the current political situation in the US: Simon Schama's 15-hour documentary History of Britain. In particular, episode # 8, "The British Wars," which discusses the revolution by which Britain briefly became a monarch-free republic, seems relevant. Armies were raised--many of them. There was a protracted civil war, a fight started because of a ruler who thought he deserved absolute obedience. Watching the episode, I have wondered what weapons ordinary citizens have against the despots who are seizing the country. I don't think we have many.

I hope I'm wrong, but I believe we are heading towards a revolution. I think it will be bloody. I think it will be brutal. I think it will bankrupt the country even more than the war in Iraq and the bailouts of Wall Street have done, and I think in a generation or two we'll be a third-rate bankrupt dictatorship somewhere between the current Zimbabwe and the old Soviet Union in terms of its repressiveness, its inability to provide its citizens with their basic needs, its misery and its blight.

Naomi Klein's article The Battle Plan II: Sarah "Evita" Palin and the Coming Police State adds to my dread. Read the whole thing. Read it carefully, especially the bit about our preparations for a homeland army that will fight in American streets against threats like natural disasters and terrorists. I hope you'll have more guts than I did and will send it to your Republican relatives. I don't dare, because I've been told that if I want certain members of my family to continue to talk to me, I won't discuss politics. But I know that I can't just sit by and watch as this happens. I don't really have much faith that the upcoming election will be anything but rigged, but I have to do what I can to affect the outcome. I've got to volunteer.

Posted by holly at 6:26 AM | Comments (8)

September 22, 2008

Palin on Biden

You can see other installments here.

Posted by holly at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2008

Please Post This On Your Blog

Because so much rests on this election, please make this video as widely available as possible.

Posted by holly at 10:45 AM | Comments (6)

September 10, 2008

Letting Mother Nature Fight Your Battles

I truly suspect that if Republican national leadership could get away with it, they would treat places like New Orleans after Katrina the way the Burmese junta is treating these villagers--which is not merely to let them starve to death, but to demand taxes that hasten their deaths. Why fight your opponents when you can let Mother Nature defeat them for you?

Posted by holly at 8:06 AM | Comments (0)

September 7, 2008

Proving Something Important

My family and I have gotten along pretty well in some ways. OK, I am the black sheep and have profound political and religious differences with them, but they just go along most of the time as if there was no one in their midst who disagrees with them, and most of the time I don’t make a stink about it. I fold my arms and say “amen” when there’s a blessing on the food, even if it involves requesting blessings for President Monson. I make a point to congratulate my nieces and nephews on their baptisms. I simply walk out of the room when someone has Fox News on. I turn off lights (and more lights, and unused appliances, and unplug cell phone chargers and adapters plugged into the wall with nothing plugged into them) rather than pointing out how careless and profligate a certain branch of the family is when it comes to electricity and power. I even went to Nauvoo, Palmyra, the Sacred Grove and the Hill Cumorah with my parents, because those places were near where I was living, and they wanted to see them. Until Friday, I never said anything to anyone about how vile I consider the Proclamation on the Family.

Sometimes it takes all my willpower not to say something. One night at dinner during the cruise my family took together, a certain lawyer in my family commented that one reason the church is so afraid of gay marriage is because it knows that if gay marriage is legalized, there’s much more chance that polygamy will be decriminalized, and the church would be caught in a terrible dilemma, since it will never embrace polygamy again but doesn’t want to be forced to admit that. Another of the women stated passionately that she believed the way polygamy would work was through cloning, that God would simply make additional copies of each man righteous enough to make it to the celestial kingdom, and in any event, that better be what was going to happen, because she would never share her husband with another woman. Eventually I just rose from the table and walked about the deck for a while. But I really wanted to vomit, and scream.

At the Sacred Grove, my dad went on all the tours, though he commented on how insulted he felt that there were all these young missionaries delivering long spiels about basic church doctrine and practice, as if the people on these tours didn’t know the first thing about the church, even though 95% of the visitors to the sites were Mormon. Even my mom got so annoyed she wouldn’t do the last few tours. (I of course wouldn’t do any; I just walked around on my own.) Dad came back from a tour of the recreation of the tiny farm house where Joseph Smith had grown up, and said, “Most of these tours are a waste of time, but I learned something important on that one.”

“What was that?” Mom asked.

“Well, in pictures of the first visit, you always see Joseph alone in a bedroom while the angel Moroni talks to him. But it turns out that he was in a loft with two beds in it, and there were three boys in each bed. The girls were in a loft on the other side of the cabin. Joseph was surrounded by other people when the first visit happened. Some of them were sleeping only inches away from him. But no one else heard or saw a thing. And that proves something really important.”

I caught my breath and waited. Was my father about to admit that Joseph Smith was a fraud, that he'd made the whole story up? After all, that was the logical conclusion, the most obvious inference to draw from what he’d just discovered. But what my father went on to say was, “It proves that if God has a vision for you, he can make it happen so that you and you alone see it.”

He went on to explain that this was of doctrinal importance, because some offshoot of the church claimed that someone had seen the light under the door and heard the noise when God or an angel appeared to someone alone in a room with the door shut, and used this secondary observation of a heavenly visitation as proof of someone’s authority to do something counter to the preferences of the real Mormon church.

It was hard not to laugh. It was hard to acknowledge just how vast was my father’s capacity for self-deception. It wasn’t hard not to say something, because what could I say that would A) persuade him how flawed his thinking was and B) not piss him off?

Occasionally I’ve said something. Sometimes it’s been angry and inflammatory. On the cruise I finally said something when a conversation arose about the war. I was so angry I couldn’t refrain, though I didn’t say nearly as much as I wanted to. I found out from my mother the other day that one of my in-laws has never forgiven me for that--and of course part of what made my statement unforgivable was the fact that I was, from the start, right about the war and how disastrous it would be.

Sometimes I’ve said things that aren’t inflammatory, just clear statements of my boundaries. Particularly given how angry my family becomes when I air my views, I have forbidden them from bearing their testimonies to me. One Sunday I agreed to go on a drive with my family to look for the graves of family members who chose to be buried in the middle of the nowhere rather than a proper cemetery. The driver put in a cd of church songs for children, horrible smarmy indoctrination set to bad music. I took several deep breaths, and said, “Please take me home or else change the music, because I absolutely cannot listen to this.”

Mercifully the cd was removed, and we listened to classical music instead. But my nephew was unhappy and said, “Why did you change the music?”

The answer: “Because Holly asked us to listen to something else.”

But couldn’t they have guessed beforehand how much I would hate that music? Couldn’t they have thought about why I wouldn’t want to listen to the Articles of Faith set to music? Couldn’t they have made a gesture so I didn’t HAVE to say something?

As my sister told me Friday, No. They couldn’t. It’s too hard to try to imagine what my life is like or how I feel. I shouldn’t ask that of them.

Admittedly, she backed off from that eventually and said she’d try to have more empathy--though she had trouble remembering the word and at first said she’d have more apathy.

That to me sums up political conservatism: I can't imagine what life is like for other people, because it's too hard. After a lot of prodding, I can grudgingly admit that my attitude is really uncool and violates the religious creed I advocate, and I'll say I'll try to do better, but empathy is so rarely used in my vocabulary or my life that I confuse it with apathy.

Heretofore I have tried to protect my family from my blog in a couple of ways: I’ve never suggested they read it, and I’ve written very little about them that wasn't bland and complimentary. But I think a discussion of certain things is now warranted. For one thing, I’m tired of being punished for being right by people who can’t admit that they were wrong. I was right and my family was wrong about the war, about climate change, about what Bush’s economic policies would do. I think they need to be accountable for that, and I’m saying so publicly.

For another, I predict that McCain and Palin will win, and the results will be disastrous. My entire family is going to vote for John and Sarah, and it may well cost at least a few of them their jobs, because they work in areas of business or industry made vulnerable by the Bush administration’s fiscal recklessness. If that does happen--and I pray it won’t, but I think it will--I want it on record that I could see, even if they couldn’t, where their foolishness would lead.

Posted by holly at 11:49 AM | Comments (5)

September 6, 2008

Underestimating Conservatives

In 2003, as preparations for the inevitable war intensified, I decided to do something I’d never done before: I decided to march in a protest. Marching and chanting aren’t really my style; I prefer to protest by writing. But this was important, and I wanted to do something extra. So I made arrangements to head to Phoenix for the long weekend of Presidents’ Day.

When my mother asked me about my plans for the long weekend, I told her I was going to visit friends. I didn’t tell her why I had asked these friends if I could stay with them for a few days, because I knew it would upset her. I did tell the friends about my plans.

These were people I’d known since I was an undergrad. At one time H, the husband, had been more liberal than I was. But he got more conservative as he aged, while I got more progressive. By 2003, he’d given up driving small fuel efficient cars and drove a giant truck on his hour-long commute to the prestigious hospital where he worked as a doctor. He and his family made no effort to conserve water, even though they lived in a particularly water-deprived region of the Phoenix area. And he supported the war--although more cautiously than a lot of people. But he still thought it was the right thing to do.

The night after the protest, H, his wife and I went to dinner. He told a story about going home teaching to some inactive guy. The man wasn’t there when the home teachers arrived, but the guy’s roommate was. He was pleasant to the home teachers, but said there was no reason for them to come back, because the guy had realized that he wasn’t welcome at the Mormon church. One of the home teachers kept saying, “That doesn’t sound right. We welcome everyone. Our doors are always open. We invite people back, and we mean it.”

The clueless home teacher’s partner was writhing in embarrassment, and tried his best to cut the visit short. In the car, he said to his hapless companion, “Didn’t you realize?! The guy is gay! That was his partner we were talking to! He can’t come to church because he’s gay!”

Brother Clueless was mortified, and at first suggested that they return, so he could explain to the guy that he just hadn’t realized that they were gay. The less idiotic one said that would only compound the embarrassment, that they should just act differently when they returned, or else not return at all.

Given that H had told--and laughed at--a story that underscored how backwards and clueless Mormons were about homosexuality, and given that he had made it clear that he understood that gay people truly aren’t welcome in the Mormon church, no matter how many official church statements are issued claiming otherwise, I thought he would be agree with me when I said I just didn’t see what the big deal was, that being gay was a perfectly acceptable thing to be, that gay partnerships could be every bit as respectable and ethical as straight ones.

But H said, “I don’t actually believe that. I do believe that homosexuality is evil, that acting on gay desire is a sin.”

I sat dumbfounded for a moment; finally I said, “You really think that someone’s choice of a sexual partner is automatically a more important indicator of a person’s moral character than things like, say, how honest and kind they are?”

He said, “Yes.”

I said, “Really.”

He said, “Yes. I think that fornication is a sin akin to murder.”

I said, “You really think that having sex with someone you’re not married to is as bad as willfully ending another person’s life.”

He said, “It’s not exactly the same, but it’s as bad in its own way, yes."

And I thought, wow, I really underestimated this guy. I didn’t realize just what a prick he’d turned into. (I have to wonder if he thinks Bristol Palin’s fornication is a sin akin to murder, or if he’ll let her off the hook for any number of reasons, like Bill O’Rielly and others.)

Our contact decreased considerably after that. There was occasional email but little else. And then, in 2004, as we prepared for another presidential election, I read something about the horrific trauma and suffering the war had brought to the Iraqi people, about the fact that we don’t even count how many of them we kill.

So I sent it to H, along with a note saying something like, “Here are the results of the war you supported. Do you still support it?”

In response I got a note in which he told me, “You have underestimated me. I take no pleasure in dead Iraqis.”

Boy oh boy did I ever underestimate him. It had never occurred to me, in my wildest dreams, that he might take pleasure in dead Iraqis. I had mistakenly believed that he’d be SAD about the senseless, painful deaths, the brutal suffering.

I told him that, and I ended the friendship.

I’ve confronted lately a number of ways in which I’ve underestimated other conservatives. I’m trying to decide what to do about it.

Posted by holly at 4:40 PM | Comments (4)

September 5, 2008

The Price of a Scottsdale Split Level

This Vanity Fair piece on the cost of the outfit Cindy McCain wore Monday night at the RNC caught my eye--not only because it's yet another glimpse at Ms. McCain's very strange choice in outfits, but because of its point that it's the McCains, not the Obamas, who are out-of-touch elitists.

(And for the record, I was surprised that $280,000 was enough to buy even a crappy split-level house in Scottsdale, but I checked some real estate sites, and it appears to be true. At least, it's true now, after the Republican-engineered mortgage crash.)

Posted by holly at 6:39 PM | Comments (0)

September 4, 2008

Just Like Everyone Else

I'm way too busy reading about the insanity that is McCain's choice for vice president to do most of the things I'm supposed to do. OK, I manage to shower and dress each day, to eat when I get hungry, to respond to other human beings when they speak directly to me, but other things--like this blog, for instance--have fallen by the wayside, and may remain there for a while, until I make some sense of all this. I'm not dead or anything, I'm just reading about pit bulls who wear lipstick and advocates of abstinence who are upset when other people's kids get knocked up before they're legally adults, but are proud as punch when their own kids go to the altar halfway through a pregnancy. Or people who cite their family situation as one of their main qualifications for national office (this person's a normal person, with a FAMILY!) then cry holy hell when other people probe that situation. Or people who think that asking librarians if they're willing to burn books means someone is ready to interaction with a diverse cast of world leaders.

My eyeballs are starting to bleed. Seriously. I looked in the mirror last night and found that the whites of my eyes had disappeared, and realized that I saw the world entirely through lenses of red and blue, with a pair of great big black dots in the middle.

OK. I have to get back to trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Posted by holly at 9:56 AM | Comments (7)

August 27, 2008

Write Brain

With pleasure I announce a friend's new venture: Write Brain Publishing, "a full-service writing and editing company with emphasis on resume writing, cover letter templates, and business cards for everyone’s career continuity and transition needs."

Check it out!

Posted by holly at 10:03 AM | Comments (1)

August 21, 2008

God Fought the Law, and the Law Won

I’ve been thinking, ever since I wrote a response to that dreadfully illogical, dishonest, hypocritical document published by the church to explain its opposition to gay marriage, about struggles framed as a battle between the forces of god and the forces of who or whatever.

The thing is, god so often loses.

Several apt examples drawn from Mormon history:

1. God could not keep his people safe in Ohio, Missouri or Illinois. Mormons were persecuted, raped and murdered--and God couldn’t or didn’t stop it.

2. God could not make Utah sufficiently self-reliant that the church could exist without the trade and support of the US federal government, resulting in a showdown between the US government and the church over polygamy.

3. God could not influence the hearts and minds of the rest of the country enough that people would allow Utah to become a US state unless the church renounced polygamy.

Or look at Jewish history. God couldn’t or didn’t do much about the destruction of the temple, the diaspora, or the holocaust.

Or look at Catholic history. If it was the one true church, God should have been able to do something to stop Martin Luther and John Calvin. He should have been able to prevent the accession of truly immoral popes like the various Medicis and Borgias.

Mormons believe that god is omnipotent, but I’d like to see some serious evidence of that. When you look at what god actually manages to do, how good he is at furthering his agenda, the claim of omnipotence seems like the pathetic blustering braggadocio of a schoolyard bully. Seriously: according to Mormon scripture, God’s work and glory is “to bring to pass the eternal life of man,” a state that requires people to become Mormon. But when you look at how long the Mormon church has been around, and how few people actually join the Mormon church, well, the numbers show that god is pretty damn lousy at achieving his work and his glory.

Truth be told, god is a big fucking prurient loser. The only way to argue otherwise is to look at history after it happens, and decide AFTER the fact that whatever happened was god’s will. The civil rights movement? Oh, despite the resistance to it among christians, that was actually god’s will. The defeat of Nazi Germany? Well, despite the fact that it took a really long time and almost didn’t happen, and despite the fact that the Nazis’ victims numbered in the MILLIONS, it was actually god’s will that that happen. God didn’t have particularly strong feelings about other genocides, however. Cambodia, for instance--he wasn’t too anxious one way or the other about that one. And he stayed pretty neutral in Vietnam, sorta like the Red Cross, except without the part where he actually dispensed aid and comfort. Even now he ignores Africa as much as all the G8 Nations--the suffering of that entire continent isn't something he will ask his followers to redress, 'cause it doesn't involve his major obsession: letting white guys police how other people approach sex and relationships. And the conflict in Palestine/Israel seems to have him stymied, too. Especially given all he did to create that particular problem, you’d think he’d work a little harder to solve it--at least, he’d work harder if he wasn’t A) so feeble and B) such an asshole.

God is going to lose the battle over gay marriage, which is as it should be: god should lose any battle where his edicts and decrees are in opposition to the full development of human potential for love, compassion, intelligence and wisdom. Recognizing gay relationships by allowing homosexuals to marry is a positive step in developing that potential.

Now, there are some people who will say that because I am in favor of gay marriage, I am a tool of Satan. But that’s like calling me a servant of Voldemort or an agent of the Cylon Empire. Satan is a metaphor for evil, not an actual person. DUH.

And in return, I say that people who are opposed to gay marriage are not tools of Satan--they are just tools.

Opposing gay marriage makes people stupid, embarrassingly so. It requires them to resort to illogic and fear in order to fight something that isn’t going to hurt them. Which isn’t to say that opponents of gay marriage won’t have to change when it's finally accepted across the globe: they will be forced to join those who have seen the light and admit that the earth is round, that the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around, that other races are not genetically inferior to whites, that slavery is not a divinely sanctioned institution, that kings do not rule by divine decree. And that will indeed be painful for those who resist, but in that good way that maturing spiritually, emotionally and intellectually always is.

Not only that, but opposing gay marriage and taking the Lord’s name in vain by saying that he opposes it too just helps to show what a pathetic loser the god these bigots worship really is. You think they’d learn the lesson of the face-off between Jehovah and Ba’al and find themselves a god who can actually get something done. But no. They’re content to worship the puny, inept idol they’ve created in their own image, confident that one day, he’ll show up and reward them for being as small-minded, bigoted and cruel as he is. Whereas they’ve got their reward all along: they are as much like their nasty loser god as its possible to be.

Posted by holly at 10:24 AM | Comments (5)

July 2, 2008

Believe Him, It's Torture

Well, if Christopher Hitchens, who has been an ardent supporter of the Iraq war, can admit that waterboarding is not "extreme interrogation" but instead is "outright torture," the rest of us should find it easier to accept that, especially after watching this video of what he underwent, the controlled nature of his experience with the technique.

Posted by holly at 7:54 AM | Comments (1)

June 22, 2008

More Proof That Sexism Is Tolerated in Political Campaigns and the Media, While Racism Is Denounced

The guy who created that horrible racist button I mentioned earlier has apologized and withdrawn it, and the Texas Republican Party is DONATING TO CHARITY (probably the only time in the history of the organization it has ever done such a thing) the money it collected by leasing a booth him at the party's convention.

But all his nasty pins insulting Hillary and her gender? Those you can still buy.

Posted by holly at 9:12 AM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2008

They're Voting Republican

In case you didn't see it:

Posted by holly at 7:17 AM | Comments (1)

June 18, 2008

"Affectionate" Racist Toy from Utah Couple No Longer Available, But Maybe You Can Still Buy a Racist Button in Texas

Uh....

Well....

Turns out a couple in Utah created an Obama sock monkey doll, but these Utahns claim the doll isn't racist. No! Aimed at Obama supporters, it's "a charming association between a candidate and a toy we had when we were little," and something that helps us "really try and transcend still existing racial biases." They're shocked and hurt that so many people are REALLY offended by this horrifically offensive doll, and have concluded sadly that "there is an element of naviete [sic] on our part, in that we don't think in terms of myths, fables, fairy tales and folklore."

The one bit of good news in this particular story is that according to the company's website, they will not proceed with the manufacture of this toy.

I don't want to ignore the fact that this toy is REALLY gross. But I do want to point out that the reaction to the toy supports Katie Couric's contention that truly egregious racism against Obama isn't tolerated by the mainstream, while truly egregious sexism against Hillary is shrugged off as no big deal. (You paying attention, Mr. Nighttime?) As she says, if Obama regularly confronted attacks equivalent to those Hillary endured, "the outrage wouldn't be a footnote; it would be front-page news." Indeed the sock monkey story was the lead story for the ABC news station I link to, and at the time I'm writing, the video of the news clip is the website's most popular clip.

There is one, uh, mainstream-ish venue, however, where racism is tolerated: the Texas Republican party. At the state convention, you could buy a button reading, "If Obama is President... will we still call it the White House?"

The answer to the question, is, of course, obviously YES. I mean, despite all the blockheads who've worked in the Pentagon, it's still referred to by a name denoting its five sides.

Posted by holly at 8:11 AM | Comments (1)

June 12, 2008

More On Why I'm Glad Hillary Ran, and Hope We Keep Talking About Gender

Katie knows what she's talking about:

Posted by holly at 11:18 AM | Comments (11)

June 11, 2008

I'm Glad Hillary Lost, But I'm Also Glad She Ran

I liked this little editorial from Salon:

Posted by holly at 6:48 AM | Comments (0)

June 2, 2008

A New Form of Piracy

Most days, I manage to love my country enough to be able to live in it, because A) even though it's done some really shitty things throughout its history (and especially of late), it's done some great things as well, and I keep hoping that the balance will be restored again; and B) it's my country, and loyalty works that way.

But this morning I read about these prison ships the government is doing its best to keep secret, and I don't even know how to feel or what to say about this latest atrocious barbarity, except OH MY GOD.

Posted by holly at 8:40 AM | Comments (2)

April 23, 2008

Some Stuff From Yesterday

First of all, I'm bummed that Obama didn't win the Pennsylvania Primaries, but the despair I feel about the future of my country is currently more diffuse than the anxiety I feel about certain other topics, so I won't dwell on it. The one thing I liked about yesterday's election was the "I Voted" sticker I got after voting. Sometimes they're really lame but this one was cool: it was big and square and had this parchment colored background, with a picture of the flag and the script of "We the People" from the preamble to the constitution. OK, it's not really all that important, but these days I'm grateful for small pleasures.

Next, did you know that you can ship live birds through the mail? I didn't, until I went to the post office yesterday and a guy was doing just that. If you scroll down on the PO's special handling page, you'll find instructions on how to do it. You can also send bees.

Finally, something else I learned at the post office yesterday: did you know that postage rates are going up again? A first-class letter will soon cost 42 cents. (I just noticed that there is no cents character on my keyboard.) So rush out and buy as many of those "forever" stamps as you can afford, though at least some of the new $.42 stamps are cool: there are some featuring the face of Martha Gellhorn, whom I totally dig and admire--her essay collection The Face of War is pretty damn amazing.

Posted by holly at 10:30 AM | Comments (3)

March 21, 2008

JS on "the Speech"

In case you didn't see it:

For the record, Obama's my man. I am praying he wins the nomination.... And lately I've been thinking about what else I can do besides requesting that vague powers somewhere in the universe help us put the right person in the White House, particularly as Pennsylvania has one of the few remaining primaries. So when someone from the Obama campaign called me yesterday and asked me for a donation, I gave it, and asked for a volunteer packet as well.

Posted by holly at 8:20 AM | Comments (2)

September 22, 2007

shock doctrine, the movie

Posted by holly at 9:55 AM | Comments (2)

August 17, 2007

No Surprise for the Dickster

via Salon

Posted by holly at 10:04 AM | Comments (1)

July 12, 2007

How Reading War Literature Helped Me Know Our Current War Was a BAD Idea

People are sometimes surprised or disappointed by my interest in war literature. It's gruesome and depressing; why would I want to study stuff like that? Maybe because then I already know about stuff like these "routine atrocities" reported by The Nation and can try to prevent it happening again.

Posted by holly at 12:08 PM | Comments (1)

May 30, 2007

My Blog Roll and the Supreme Court

First off, something is wrong with my blog roll and I don't know how to fix it.... I used to have all these links to all these great blogs, and they're still there, somewhere in the html.... but they don't show up on my actual blog. This is what I get for neglecting the place for the better part of six months, isn't it.

The same can be said for the Supreme Court. I remember a conversation I had at a barbeque in Iowa City back in the summer of 2000, in which the members of the Green Party I was talking to argued that it really wouldn't make any difference for anyone in the long or short term if a Republican instead of a Democrat was elected president. And then, we read something like this in today's NY Times, all about the recent ruling limiting the time an employee has to file a lawsuit regarding pay discrimination:

As with an abortion ruling last month, this decision showed the impact of Justice Alito’s presence on the court. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whom he succeeded, would almost certainly have voted the other way, bringing the opposite outcome.

What can I say but "I told you so."

Posted by holly at 9:37 AM | Comments (4)

October 10, 2006

Voter Fraud, and What to Do about It

Here's a message that arrived in my inbox this morning and absolutely sickened me. I'm reprinting the whole thing with permission--and you can too--because I'm linking to www.blackboxvoting.org

It's going to be up to us to make the case. We can't solve a problem if we refuse to look. Citizens are fed up with black box elections, and are mustering up evidence of improper behavior that will swing the pendulum back in the direction it belongs.

Examples of the astonishing evidence uncovered by candidates and extraordinary citizens follows.

At first, we proved that the machines "theoretically' could be tampered with. Then, in experiments in Leon County and Emery County, citizen-led investigations machines could ACTUALLY be tampered with.

At first, public records requests from Black Box Voting and others proved that election results were not authenticatable using available audit records. And now, Black Box Voting and citizens are coming up with audit records that show strong indications of improper behavior.

Be aware that we are not going to see a Perry Mason moment. Proof of corruption will be incremental, but it will come.

In 2006, your job will be to embark on the biggest citizen evidence-gathering expedition in history, to take this past the tipping point and achieve real change. Nothing will do but a reversal of the pendulum, back to citizen ownership and oversight of our own government and its electoral processes.

Let's take a look now at some of the evidence citizens -- and Black Box Voting -- are uncovering:

1. Memphis: Candidates in Memphis asked Black Box Voting for help securing public records from the Aug. 3, 2006 election. Black Box Voting recommended getting a copy of the Diebold GEMS database, along with the Windows event log. What we found shocked us: The sheer number of legal and security violations in the event log were horrifying, and it also showed that Shelby County -- or someone -- was accessing the file during the middle of a Temporary Restraining Order prohibiting this.

- A remote access program called PC Anywhere was found resident in the system
- Evidence of insertion of an encrypted Lexar Jump Drive was present
- Evidence of attempts to alter or write HTML files (used to report results) was present
- Apparently without a firewall, the GEMS system was opened up to the County Network
- A prohibited program, Microsoft Access, which makes editing the election chimpanzee-easy, was installed on the system AND USED shortly after the election.

Read more about Memphis.

2. Alaska: In early 2006, the Alaska Democratic Party asked Black Box Voting for help. The election numbers simply didn't add up. BBV's Jim March urged them to fight for the right to obtain the Diebold GEMS database, which Diebold had until then been asserting proprietary rights over. After months of hard-fought battling, they prevailed. That database was released publicly at Black Box Voting here.

You can open it yourself in Microsoft Access, and when you do, choose the table called "audit." In this table you will see evidence that someone was changing things as recently as July 2006 -- after the matter was in court, before the file was released. The changes are substantial, and involve redefining ballot and candidate items, along with a reference to a second memory card.

If you don't have MS Access, here is a pdf copy of that controversial log.

3. In Georgia, Cynthia McKinney contacted Black Box Voting. Very odd things were happening in the 2006 primary and the runoff election that followed -- Democrats were being served up Republican primary ballots on the Diebold touch-screens, McKinney's name was left off some ballots, but reportedly appeared on other ballots nowhere near her district. The electronic poll books -- something Georgia voters never asked for and a whole new source of glitches -- were malfunctioning regularly.

Black Box Voting advised McKinney to seek the troubleshooter and pollworker logs. What we found on these shocked us -- in an election reported as "smooth" by the press, was evidence of dozens and dozens of voting machine malfunctions, electronic pollbook glitches, and most disturbing of all (given the dire consequences available based on the Hursti and Princeton studies), the seals for dozens of voting machines were missing, broken, and mismatched -- yet the machines were used anyway.

View a list of the problems in Dekalb County, Georgia.

4. In Ohio, Richard Hayes Phillips examined ballots from the 2004 presidential election. They'd been kept locked up for 22 months, and he was under immense pressure to look at as many as he could before they were destroyed. What he found shocked him: Patterns of tampering, as evidenced by statistically impossible overvotes, strategically placed and favoring George W. Bush. He listed his findings here.

This is the tip of the iceberg. The missing ingredient is, and has been, the active oversight of the citizenry. In 2006, please join the movement as an active participant in overseeing and authenticating your election. We'll help. Start here, with this pdf version of the Citizen's Tool Kit.

Posted by holly at 2:30 PM | Comments (1)

September 18, 2006

It's the Thought That Counts, Which Is Why These "Gentlemen" Can F**k Themselves with a 2X4

So, um, yeah, it's embarrassing to admit, but sometimes when I'm too busy to devote time to my own blog, I neglect other people's as well, not reading for a few days and then catching up on entries in batches. Which is what I'm doing this morning. I found this entry on Rebecca...and all that entails about trying to find a decent print news magazine to subscribe to. She asks for recommendations, and someone recommended "The Economist."

Which prompted me to leave this comment, which I am reproducing here because I like the story.

The Economist? Oh god, no! Run away in horror from The Economist! What a load of conservative tripe. My father gave me a subscription to said horrorshow for Chirstmas 2004, explaining his decision to do so by saying, "They endorsed Kerry for president."

To which I replied, "Dad, the freakin National Review, the conservative rag started by William F. Buckley, godfather of contemporary American conservativism, endorsed Kerry for president! Virtually everyone in the whole freakin' world [The Economist is British] realizes that George Bush should not be president!"

So then I got The Economist every freakin' week but couldn't bear to open it. It just started cluttering up my magazine stand and one day I decided to open an issue and saw that letters to the editor all still began with the saluation "Gentlemen."

It's the freakin 21st century and there's still some horrible retro news rag stressing that it's editorial board is male.

So that was it; I had to cancel my subscription. I called the toll-free number and talked to a very nice young woman who had to ask why I was canceling. I explained about the "Gentlemen" thing, adding, "Jesus fucking christ, can't these guys not act like assholes?"

To which she replied, very warmly and sympathetically, "It appears not."

And then I had to explain that it was a gift and ask her not to tell my dad that I was in essence returning his Christmas present.

She had no problem with that and agreed to send me the check for the refund, which was in the neighborhood of 60-70 bucks, and this was late April! If only I had canceled in early January.

p.s. Dale, I included a semi-colon in this post just for you.
p.p.s. Here's a great editorial by my idol Karen Armstrong on why what the pope said last week was bad.

Posted by holly at 9:16 AM | Comments (10)

July 6, 2006

A Slew of Inconvenient Truths

Much to my surprise, the theater in the rancid backwater I call home actually booked a few showings of An Inconvenient Truth--the movie arrived on Friday. Convinced it won't stay in town for long, I went to see it yesterday.

It didn't tell me much I hadn't heard before, and I was just so thrilled that the movie might be seen by people who might otherwise not think about this stuff, that it really cheered me up. But then I started thinking about how different the world might be if Bush had not stolen the White House, and I got really depressed.

I don't know how Al Gore would have handled the 9/11 attacks but I am convinced he'd be a better president than Bush--and even in 2000, when I had little affection or admiration for Gore, I still knew he'd be better than Bush--I KNEW Bush would be a disaster; I knew he was simply a bad, bad man. It was very painful for me to listen to my friends in the Green party insist that there was no difference between the two major parties' candidates, because there was so little difference between the two major parties.

One reason I suffer so from insomnia is that I have always been a worrier. I sometimes wake up out of a deep sleep, my heart racing and my mouth dry with panic over melting polar ice caps and destruction of wetlands. My primary obsession is the environment and I admit that I have long felt it should be everyone's because if our world is uninhabitable, what does the rest of it matter?

I became concerned with the environment because I started paying attention to it, after a couple of decades of being trained to think of the earth as a combination self-replenishing piggy bank and bottomless toilet: anything you want, take from it, because there will always be more; anything you don't want, just dump it someplace where you can neither see nor smell it and that's it, it's gone. Realizing how thoroughly fucked up that approach is was a big deal for me, and one that caused as much conflict in my family as my departure from the Mormon church. One of the ways my Mormon Republican father earned a living was suing the likes of the Sierra Club whenever they did anything that would inhibit the right of farmers to suck as much water as they wanted out of the local river, or inhibit the right of timber companies to cut down trees on our mountain, or inhibit the right of ranchers to kill any and all wildlife they didn't like. He was not happy when I joined the ACLU, but he said, "Just so long as you never join the Sierra Club."

I've lost track of how many environmental organizations I belong to (including the Sierra Club) but I feel it's a losing battle. I will continue to try to minimize and compensate for the amount of CO2 I produce, but we've just fucked so many things up--and so many people don't want to change. My neighbors, for instance, leave their porch light on all night and sometimes forget to turn it off in the morning--it drives me NUTS to see it burning there all day, giving off heat (because that's what incandescent bulbs do) and CO2.

Here's the thing: WE SUCK at our primary job as human beings, which is to take care of one another and the world we live in. I'm not much one for volunteering or activism any more--my mission kind of killed that impulse--but perhaps I must force myself to do it anyway. But what should I do?

It's not like simply knowing about shit really helps much: In early 2003, when it became clear that we were going to war no matter what, I became a news junkie. I began spending two to three hours every day reading half a dozen online newspapers, trying to understand what was happening in our world, as if understanding it could somehow mitigate its destructiveness. And then, after the elections in 2004, I forced myself to cut back. I got rid of my online subscription to the Washington Post and a few other newspapers. I even canceled my subscription to my local paper, which had endorsed George Bush for president. I felt so impotent and enraged and hopeless that I just couldn't bear it. Which is pretty much how I feel right now.

Posted by holly at 12:40 PM | Comments (9)

April 16, 2006

Playing The Clash Made Him a Terror Suspect

Here's a story I would have only imagined could appear in something like The Onion, but according to The Daily Mail (which I admit sort of reminds me of The Onion), it really happened.

Some British guy got hauled off an airplane and questioned for three hours because he played London Calling by the Clash and Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin in a taxi, and these songs scared the taxi man. I admit the lyrics to "Immigrant Song" are scary, but only because they're so incredibly silly--I included a link to the lyrics so you can see for yourself in case you're unfortunate enough not to be thoroughly familiar with Zeppelin III.

Read it and weep: all you need now to be to be suspected of terrorist sympathies is a fondness for classic punk and rock.

Thanks to Spike for sending me the link.

Posted by holly at 9:50 PM

April 4, 2006

US Criticizes Foreign Dude Who Fails to Care for His Own Country First

Here's an article in the NY Times criticizing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for--get this!--spending all kinds of money to fix things in foreign countries when there are still poor people in Venezuela. Thanks to this article, we learn that

Mr. Chávez is "spending considerable sums involving himself in the political and economic life of other countries in Latin America and elsewhere, this despite the very real economic development and social needs of his own country," said [Bush appointe] John Negroponte, the American director of national intelligence, in February at a Congressional hearing in Washington.

Can you imagine?! A president of some resource-rich country in the Americas, spending lots of money abroad while people in his own country go hungry, cold or naked, while there are children who are uneducated, people in their prime without work, and old people who are sick and alone? What would it be like to live in such a country? And what would it be like for citizens of other countries to know that their lives are shaped by the hypocritical meddling of a government eager to buy influence abroad, even at the expense of its own citizens' well-being?

p.s. Here's a response from Counterpunch that's pretty insightful.

Posted by holly at 9:50 AM | Comments (3)