The Great Republic

During every presidential election it’s inevitable to hear the electorate ask repeatedly, ‘What will the president do about the economy? What will the president do about the environment? What will the president do about foreign policy?’

Sadly, the proper answer is, ‘Not much'.

The economy, including fiscal policy, taxation, corporate investment, consumer trends, the price of food and gasoline, involves global forces which are largely beyond the control of the president.

The same applies to issues affecting the environment. The president cannot dictate what cars we drive or how we choose to warm our homes. Actually, he can’t even proclaim where we can dig for oil or cut down trees.

The same limits on executive power do not apply quite as stringently to the president’s foreign policy decisions. After all, the Constitution of the United States specifies that the conduct of foreign affairs is the one area in which the executive reserves a great deal of discretionary power.

But even in this arena of endeavor the president must take care to act in concert with the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives. That is, through Congress.

After all, let us not forget that our nation is a republic. It is a nation of laws. And these laws do not proceed from the pen of the president. Nor does he reserve the power to interpret these laws. These functions are properly reserved by Congress and the Supreme Court. The executive can only act in accordance with these laws and the interpretation of their Constitutional propriety.

Anything contrary to this rightfully deserves to be called a tyranny.

So, why do I express a preference for one presidential candidate over another knowing that the president actually has little power to effectively address the big issues?

Precisely because I believe the current president and his coterie have acted as far outside the expressed will of the people as they dare without risking a Constitutional crisis and impeachment. Initially he was able to do so largely on the basis of the fear and panic engendered by the bombing on September 11, 2001. But as that date recedes in the public consciousness he has only been able to pursue his policies of executive aggrandizement, corporate cronyism, and international alienation by judiciously jettisoning some of the more publicly unpalatable members of his inner circle and the lavish use of executive signing orders and the veto power.

In my judgment a vote for McCain will simply give assent to the continuation of an imperial executive. I don’t agree with this. I greatly respect the Constitutional principle of separation of powers. I have no use for a president who freely vetoes legislation drafted by our appointed lawmakers, and who then seeks to justify the legislative deadlock by pointing an accusing finger at a ‘do-nothing’ Congress. Such an action is simply an exercise of tyranny in disguise. And I bristle when the president seeks to accuse courts of ‘legislating from the bench’ when they arrive at legal conclusions with which he doesn’t agree.

I believe that Barack Obama will act with greater regard for the principles upon which our great republic is founded.

Also, I relish the idea of Hillary Clinton being appointed to the Supreme Court.

Sort of balance things out, you know.

Vote Democratic because . . .

In November I intend to vote to put a Democratic candidate into office as the President of the United States. Either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would make fine Chief Executives, though my preference is for Obama, largely because his election would show to the world that as a nation Americans consider themselves to be part of the global community. I believe that this is a far more important and realistic aim that that offered by the opposing party.

Listening to the Republican candidate I hear nothing but the sounds of fear and alarm. The Republicans constantly seek to remind Americans of how they must regard the rest of the world with suspicion, and that only aggressive and preemptive warlike behavior can bring the American people any degree of safety. Then they further remind the American people that they will never truly be safe, that they must constantly be in a state of readiness for war. That they continuously have to arm themselves, and that they should be prepared to react violently to address the slightest perceived slight. Otherwise, “they” might get “us” first.

I’m not buying it. To paraphrase another great American, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. A fearful nation is a dangerous one. The American public is aggressively fed a steady diet of fear, anxiety, and panic. The networks, newspapers, and magazines are replete with alarms of imminent disaster. Be it terrorists, environmental collapse, asteroids, nuclear-armed rogue states, or bioengineering disasters Americans are subjected to a screaming barrage of apocalyptic news. Even household germs are waiting to devour our families.

Yet, life goes on. Why do so many surrender themselves to blind fear and chronic anxiety rather than get on with the ordinary day-to-day task of getting along?

Well, because the task of ordinary living is largely boring. It’s painfully routine. Terror and warfare makes our lives so much more interesting. And it’s easier to wage war than to deal with such things as global warming, poverty, and universal health insurance.

I do think that blind panic led to Columbine. And the invasion of Iraq. And gang-related murders. And road rage. And the marginalization of the poor. I believe that all acts of violence and anti-social government policies find their ultimate support and justification in a largely unfounded but aggressively fostered sense of public fear.

The time has come to elect a president who will govern a sane and rational nation at peace, not a nation sustained by some paranoid fantasy requiring Americans, as both a people and individually, to react violently to the world around us. The time has come for a president who will not seek to profit by fostering a false sense of anxiety in the American public.

There is no war other than the one we create. The war on terrorism? A total fiction. It’s true. There are no Mujaheddine awaiting offshore in fastboats, prepared to run wild through the streets of our cities throwing burkhas over our women and cutting out the tongues of blasphemers. Such an absurd fantasy serves primarily to divert our attention from the fact that the global industrialists are robbing us blind, draining the blood and resources of this nation while the national infrastructure falls apart from neglect, while more and more Americans are falling into poverty, losing jobs, health insurance, and their homes while more obscenely rich individuals make it onto Forbe’s list of world billionaires.

But I digress. Fight for peace. Hell, do the right thing. Vote Obama.

Noise

I’m sitting here listening to NPR on the radio, as I do virtually every morning, and from time to time I find that the words take on a sort of meaningless droning sound. This brings me to the realization that the world we hear is full of cant, painfully crowded with a meaningless verbal noise.

It’s hard to escape this avalanche of empty talk. Be it NPR, or CNN, or MSNBC, or FOX news, or any one of the innumerable AM talk shows. All just meaningless noise masking as either informed opinion or meaningless angry rant.

At such times it’s so nice to simply move to the room overlooking my backyard. There I’m not assaulted by the empty verbal madness. Looking over my backyard I hear only the occasional songs of birds, the whir of insects, the rustle in the trees.

Everyone should have a backyard. I feel myself to be very fortunate.

What To Remember

Those of you who have read my writings at this location to any extent may have formed the impression that I hold soldiers and soldiering in mild contempt. This would be an unfortunate misinterpretation of my sentiments as they touch upon such matters.

It is not those who do the fighting and dying whom I hold in low esteem. Rather it is the horror and obscenity that is war itself that draws forth my full angry disdain and vituperation.

Unfortunately those who are empowered so as to be able to command a nation’s resources, both human and material, and to direct them into the madness that is war invariably seek to rally the general populace behind their decision by a variety of appeals to the general sentiments of a nation. These appeals range from memories of hearth, home, and loved ones, to national honor and dignity, calls for revenge, to tocsins and alarums for the future. These are all the ordinary repertoire of propaganda.

One other such element in this repertoire is the call to support those who choose, or who are chosen, to enter the dark and dreadful theatre of pain that is warfare. A people at war think it just and necessary to lend support to those who face bloody dismemberment or oblivion in their behalf. That this should be so is clearly obvious.

But, I make a distinction between wars. All war is an obscenity. There is no good war. One need not have been in combat to understand its nature. A person need only read of the horrors and listen to those who experienced them to understand that these experiences are such that you would not want to wish them upon yourself or upon others. Similarly, one need not walk off a cliff to understand that it is not a good thing to do.

However, there are wars which, despite their inherent tragedy, are inevitable and necessary. I have just finished reading biographies of Truman and Churchill, and I am now reading the latter’s memoirs of the Second World War. Both these men were admirable figures who did not shirk from the need to wage war, for they believed in all sincerity, and I think rightly so, that their nations fought to preserve the humane foundations of Western Civilization against a tyrannical and feudal new order based upon the enslavement and extermination of human beings.

World War II was a necessary war. Interestingly enough, Churchill was of the opinion that the central tragedy of the conflict lay in the fact that it was an unnecessary war. He thought that an alliance of militarily potent nations could have convinced the Nazi leaders to limit or even forego their imperial designs.

However that may be, I am convinced the current conflict which engages this nation in the Middle East is wholly unnecessary, and that our republic is squandering its human and material resources in a quixotic crusade to attain a victory we can not identify by means wholly unsuited to the circumstances.

Yet, the current Administration and its acolytes have sought repeatedly to turn public support for the soldiers engaged in this misdirected imperial adventure into a referendum on its global policies. The President and his minions would have the American people believe that support for the soldiers is support for the war. To posit, as does the current President, that in order to support the troops one must vote for the funding to pursue the misguided policies requiring them is circuitous reasoning of the most cynical sort.

No. To support the troops under the current circumstances is to make the war unnecessary. Talk, negotiate, build lines of friendship and trust. Make war unnecessary. Build toward a future in which those who speak of the need for war and its concomitant horrors are regarded with disdain and dismissed. People must no longer be led to believe that a due regard for the sacrifices of the fallen requires an implicit affirmation of the need for war.

I believe the memory of the fallen is best served by striving to seek an end to war.

A Godless Christmas

At first glance it would appear that the phrase ‘a Godless Christmas’ is an obvious oxymoron. After all, Christmas is generally considered to be first and foremost the celebration of the birth of Christ, who is regarded variously as either the son of, the manifestation of, coterminous with, etc., etc, God. (The actual details of the familial relationship vary in certain ways depending largely upon the celebrants’ doctrinal inclinations.) However, I would like to point out that it is in fact possible to celebrate the spirit of the season regardless of one’s religiosity or lack thereof.

I hardly think the heathen Teutonic tribes-people were very much aware of the birth of someone in the Middle East when they gathered about a sacred evergreen in the midst of some forested glen, to hang offerings to their unknown deities and sylvan spirits from its boughs in celebration of a magical time.

And undoubtedly the pagan Latins were wholly without regard for any sort of Christian god when they danced and made merry upon the coming of the Saturnalia. They simply celebrated the hope for good fortune, and used the occasion to share with others the sweet things which goodness can bring into human life.

While it is true that I am an avowed atheist this assertion must be understood in the strictest sense. It simply means that I don’t believe in the existence of god. Any god.

It does not, however mean that I have no spiritual dimension to my life. Truly, I believe that existence is full of all manner of strange and unknowable things. The fact that these things are strange and unknowable makes them a wonder to me. I have no need to apply any sort of name to them. I think that’s because I’m satisfied with the wonder per se, and I feel no need to control it with a label. Most people feel a need to control, so they label the unknown in the sadly mistaken belief that by doing so they understand it.

When I was a child I actually believed that the little animated deer Bambi was a real creature. I truly believed that he and his friends lived and communed somewhere deep in the forest. Over time Bambi died, succumbing to the chilly environment of facts and physics which makes up the adult world. I never regarded this as a good thing.

Children should be allowed the time to inhabit a world filled with wonder, a world in which the ordinary is, well, no longer ordinary. Children should have the opportunity to experience magic in the world. Because in this way the world becomes something extraordinary for us as adults, as well.

The other day I watched a movie entitled The Polar Express. I watched it with a great deal of reservation, believing that it would be just another piece of the sort of commercial schlock which inundates us all during this time of year. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s an absolutely charming story about the need to believe in the magical in order to bring wonder into one’s life. I ended up thinking that young children would be absolutely enthralled by the story.

The entire holiday season is the opportunity to celebrate the goodness which can be found in life. It is a time to remind oneself and others of how sweet things can be when we live our lives with generosity and compassion toward each other. It is also a time to foster in the minds of the young, and to recapture in our own hearts a sense of the magic and wonder which permeates creation.

And for my part you really don’t need the birth of a divine being to celebrate these things, although it may make for a convenient occasion.

Happy Holidays!

PETA Thanksgiving

Yesterday I watched a documentary about Ingrid Newkirk, founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, also known simply as PETA. At the beginning of the film Newkirk read from some of the letters sent to the organization by individuals with contrary views. Now, PETA is one of those organizations about which people hold very polarized attitudes. Rather similar to those engaged in the Pro-Choice / No-Choice debate. You are either fervently for them, or you regard PETA members as a bunch of, in the words of one correspondent, “carpet-munching motherfuckers.”

Now, when you give it a little thought you cannot help but be puzzled as to why anyone would express such vile hatred toward people who seek to halt the needless suffering of animals. I’ve given the issue a little more thought, and I’ve concluded that it’s probably because people know they are doing wrong by engaging in the thoughtless and violent slaughter of millions of innocent lives. Most people don’t like to be reminded of their complicity in mass murder. And some people take it quite personally when they are called killers. Such people react aggressively and violently.

Before watching the documentary I liked to believe that I could occupy a reasonable middle ground between animal rights and the practical necessity to engage in the euphemistically-termed practice of animal management. The film reminded me, however, that PETA does not allow one to occupy a middle ground. PETA reminds people that they are either complicit in the mass slaughter of innocent lives, or not. If not, then you don’t eat that Big Mac or cashew chicken dinner. If not, you don’t buy that bomber jacket with the fleece lining or those doeskin gloves with rabbit fur lining. In other words, refusing to participate in the slaughter goes beyond simply being kind to your dog or cat. It demands that one totally reorient their eating and buying habits away from products made by the killing of animals. It demands that one makes the effort to be aware of the scale of suffering inflicted upon animals by a huge corporate consumer society which relies upon the wholesale thoughtless slaughter of innocent lives to feed the marketplace.
It’s easy to dismiss the tactics used by PETA activists to protest the treatment of animals. It’s easy to scoff at the theatrics and histrionic behavior of the protestors as the actions of a bunch of loonies and naïve bleeding hearts who ought to shut up and mind their own business. It’s easy until you see the videos taken in the slaughterhouses. Or when you see an animal being skinned, and realize the bloodied body hanging from the hook is still blinking, breathing. Still alive.

The scale of the slaughter is staggering. It’s difficult to comprehend how many animals it takes to feed the huge hunger of a single nation each year. Consequently we tend not to think about it at all. PETA is there to remind us of the extent of the slaughter, and of our complicity in it.

Think of that chilling scene from the film ‘War of the Worlds’ with Tom Cruise. As the human survivor cowers in the cellar of a house and watches the gigantic alien machines spreading human blood over the landscape he comes to realize that people are being used simply as fertilizer. He realizes that human beings have simply become an agricultural commodity. The aliens have no regard for thoughts or feelings. The things which wriggle and scream as they are pierced and squashed are, well, mere things.

Well, we are those aliens. We can’t be bothered with wondering whether or not the animal screeching and bellowing as it is stabbed and beaten is a thinking, feeling being. We reduce the living to mere things.

Carry this thought one step further and you can see the logical progression from animal slaughter to the Holocaust, from McNuggets to genocide, from the slaughterhouse to mass killings in schools. A society which casually accepts the wholesale slaughter of animals for the marketplace is inherently a violent society.

But that’s another subject altogether. There comes a time when people can no longer remain silent when they see a grave injustice. At such a time they can either continue to argue politely, or they can throw the tea into the harbor. They can either let the lawyers squabble, or they can storm the Bastille and undo the system of injustice. Silence abets the actions of those who slaughter the innocents. PETA has disavowed silence. It regards theatrical activism as a necessary adjunct to speaking with corporate heads and the occasional polite ad on PBS.

Frankly, I agree. More people should be made aware of what is at stake. I really doubt that this awareness will serve to prompt many to change the way they live. But at the very least people should be aware of the price of their choices. People should accept responsibility for their actions.

Time to Gird One's Loins

I recently read a review of a book which I’m now reading. I chose to read it largely because I was attracted by the fact that someone out there remains unashamed to characterize themselves as a Liberal. I’ve always been proud to characterize myself as both a social liberal and a humanist. You can imagine my shock and dismay to find that both terms have become dismissive pejoratives in the popular discourse.

Paul Krugman’s work has reassured me that the time is right to remove the gloves and aggressively combat the sort of mendacious, hypocritical, antisocial egocentrism which characterizes Movement Conservatism. Neocon spinmasters are not nice people and are not worthy of the sort of respectful adversarial stance traditionally assumed by liberal humanists. They are aggressive and unprincipled hypocrites who must be confronted and stopped whenever and however they seek to advance their cruel agenda.