Some clever satirist in the town of
http://nosantaforhazleton.com/index.html
One part of the site allows people to send letters to Santa. I wrote him a letter. I feel badly that I had to sign it "Sarcastically", because that should be obvious, but I would hate for someone to think I was serious. Here’s my letter:
Dear Santa,
I am so glad the city of
Sarcastically,
Ben Gorman
ESL teacher from
Since this is a site devoted to pontificating on subjects where we are not, um, recognized experts, I think it's entirely fitting for me to talk about sports. As someone who is entirely objective (I've only been a
Here's what's going to happen. It will be a tough, Rumsfeldian slog, but just when it seems that the game will go on for another three to thirty years without any possible satisfactory outcome
After the Michigan win, because it is so close, the
And then...
On the very day that George Bush is impeached Dick Cheney will not only suffer a fatal heart attack when he hears the news, but he will also be struck by lightening and fall into a gaping sink-hole leading all the way down to the slobbering mouth of Satan himself. This will make Nancy Pelosi the President of the
But don't worry, Bill.
And
I just watched an interview with Pat Buchanan on The Daily Show. First of all, kudos to Job Stewart for having Buchanan on and listening to him spew bile through his smiling face. I would have thrown up in the guy's lap, assuming I could hold onto my pacifist ideals strongly enough to refrain from pimp-slapping the man. Stewart kindly allowed the guy to wax conspiratorial about the Mexican government's nefarious plan to invade and conquer the
I’ve been working with students learning English as a second language for six years now. Most of these students are from
What if all disbursal of federal funds, every last penny, was doled out to states and the amounts were directly proportional to population? I think this would immediately change the immigration debate. States wishing to expel immigrants might suddenly turn around and start arguing for amnesty. If Mexican immigrants could be counted for money, they would be far more desirable. How long do you want to bet it would take before some Republicans would start calling a given Mexican immigrant 3/5ths of a person?
This dispersal would have other benefits. No more earmarking millions of dollars for bridges to nowhere in
And what would states spend that money on? I think far more of it would go to services for citizens. Blue states might be criticized for their higher rates of taxation and their plethora of government services, but people keep moving to them because… let’s face it… they’re better places to live. Imagine every state working hard to make itself a more inviting place for all, rather than a state that serves only the wealthiest few. Doesn’t that sound nice? Welcome to
Is this even possible? Sure. The house of representatives is already proportional to population, so if the reps of the big states wanted this, it would fly there. Those Senators who wanted to publicly claim that the citizens of Wyoming not only deserve a more significant share of the electoral vote than Californians, but more federal tax dollars could certainly say so, but I don’t think it would be politically expedient if any of them had national ambitions. Would the president veto it? Our current president is from a big state and only uses the veto to carry out his crusade against science, so he might be amenable. Does it take away Congress’ power of the purse? Yes, but then this Congress has decided it has the right to cede certain constitutional powers, like its ability to declare war, to other branches. Couldn’t they give up the right to earmark for the sake of the people?
But it won’t happen. Why? Powers acquired are rarely given up, and neither this Congress nor any other would give up its ability to bring home the bacon. Also, immigration is a great wedge issue to tap into without ever really doing anything substantive; fear gets people to the polls even more effectively than moral outrage. The real answer to illegal immigration is so patently obvious that any child could figure it out, but that’s not really what these folks want, anyway. They could support measures to improve the standard of living in
They want fear. So I propose a simple challenge. No immigrants = no money. That will scare them. The fact that the xenophobes can’t conceive of their immigrant neighbors as human beings without a financial incentive is telling, though, isn’t it?
Students aren't the only ones anxious about the start of a new school year. My students will be arriving in my classroom in less than two days, and I can't fall asleep because I'm so anxious. I need to sleep in order to reorient my schedule to the early waking and sleeping required by the school day, but here I am, after midnight, waltzing aimlessly around the internet looking for something interesting to read because I know I can't accomplish the one thing that will help me sleep; I can't remember what I've forgotten to do.
Not that I have any sympathy for Saddam Hussein, but I think I'm starting to understand what it must have felt like for him during the run up to war in early 2003. Imagine the quandary he was in: He had to prove he didn't have weapons of mass destruction within his country while not giving up sovereignty. Weapons inspectors were on the ground but couldn't satisfy the Bush administration, largely because he'd prevented inspectors from having unlimited access in the past. At that point, suddenly giving them unlimited access wouldn't have satisfied anybody. It would have made him seem very weak and frightened, a position that would have lost him more of the country he already wasn't in full control over. Plus, the illusion of
I am not going to lose my position as despot of a middle-eastern country if I can't remember what I forgotten. I won't even lose my job. In all likelihood whatever I've forgotten will require a few more hours after school than I had planned on spending, and the crisis won't even appear for a few weeks. Unless, of course, I've forgotten something major. Which I may have. I can't be sure.
Maybe I haven't forgotten anything at all. All I have is a feeling, that feeling one has before locking the front door on the way out when leaving for a vacation; what am I forgetting? Maybe nothing, but in my experience it's always something that seems small but is a day-to-day necessity, like deodorant or socks, and I have to buy more when I arrive at my destination. But you can't buy personalized lesson plans at a 7-11 or Fred Meyer's.
I have racked my brains trying to discover what is not there. I've gone to my classroom, thinking maybe the setting would shake something loose. I've gone through my lessons plans, my syllabi, the loose papers piled on my desk. I've stared at the ceiling. I've tried to distract myself. Nothing works. Whatever "it" is, it isn't there.
I guess it all comes down to trust. No one would have trusted Saddam even if he had sworn he didn't have any
Are there any out-of-work U.N. weapons inspectors out there who could try to figure out what I have left to do before school starts? I promise I won't ignore your findings.
There are some other things worth mentioning about this guy, such as his desire to lower the age of consent to like 14 or 16 at the oldest, his delightful views on marriage and other relationshippy things, his unbelievable misogyny, and just his general utter stupidity. But really, the point here, and I don't know how well I've been able to communicate this a few months after the fact, is the overt racism.
The common thing about both MyRCs is that they say things that are by definition racist and have no conception that what they are saying is racist. They would or did deny that they were racist and don't see anything objectionable in what they are saying. But if you stop and think about the statements for half a second, you'd see that they are reducing an entire race of people to a specific belittling comment.
My issue with all of this is how does one deal with it. Do you call them on it and try to show them the error of your ways? Do you ignore it or turn up your ipod and pretend you didn't hear it? Do you agree to disagree?
Well, i suppose i should get back to "working". Feel free to show me the light in how to deal with MyRCs in general.
zaaq
Another issue is can you really expect someone to give an assessment on an entire race? Can you say that because someone is X race, they are hot? Or that they are likely to be hot? Maybe i'm making too much of an inane comment, but seriously, who thinks like that?
Basically, my question is what are these people i work with, supposedly enlightened people living in the cultural capital of our country, if not the world, so small minded as to make needless comments about people's race in such offensive and/or perjorative terms?
I'll follow this up hopefully tomorrow with tales of another MyRC... if you've read any of my blog on MySpace you've encountered this guy... he's a gem.
Today’s Washington Post has a thoughtful editorial by David Ignatius titled, “Are We Fighting ‘Islamic Fascists’”. He expresses a discomfort with the term currently being used by Bush, Snowe, Fox News, et al. I, too, am uncomfortable with the term, though not for the same reasons.
Ignatius’ contention is that the term implies that all Muslims are Fascists. While that would certainly be wrong (and silly) I don’t think that’s really being implied, though I think it’s indisputable that this administration has benefited from those Americans who cannot distinguish between Muslims of different sects, political backgrounds, and national origins. (Well, they’ve benefited when those folks are voters or soldiers. They’ve suffered when those people are their own policy makers, as have we all.) I don’t think that these officials and pundits actually believe that all Muslims are Fascists or are trying to make us think so. In fact, I think they’re trying, half-heartedly perhaps, to draw a distinction between the Muslims they like and those they don’t. If I’m not mistaken, the term was coined by Christopher Hitchens, a columnist for Slate and various other publications. Hitchens himself is a former Troskyist (he argues that “Troskyite” is a pejorative) turned Neo-Con (shouldn’t that be a pejorative by now?). He is far too educated and cosmopolitan to believe all Muslims are Fascists. I have to wonder, though, if he chose to call these terrorists Muslim Fascists rather than Muslim Stalinists because, though a Troskyist would have every reason to detest Stalin (perhaps even more that Hitler) the notion that these terrorists might be motivated by any breed of communism hits a little close to home. I think the administration would have loved to sell us the Muslims Stalinists label, as it would have cemented a connection between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein that never existed outside a political theory class. Also, bringing back elements of the Red Scare would have reinforced their domestic agenda, which benefits from painting any government action intended to mitigate the widening income inequality as a sure path to Soviet-style damnation. So why go with “Fascists” rather than “Stalinists”?
For one thing, there’s the anti-Semitic connotation. These “Muslim Fascists” are certainly anti-Semitic and benefit from blaming
Are the “Muslim Fascists” more like European Fascists than Stalinists? It’s not that cut and dry. A large part of the ethos of Muslim fundamentalism is the argument against Western decadence and appeal to economic populism.
The definition for Fascism that Ignatius uses does make a case for the term. He sites Ernst Nolte’s definition: a “resistance to transcendence”. Stalin, unlike the Fascists, was not opposed to change. He wanted to force change and maintain an iron grip on the nature of that change. This might be the only distinction between the far left and the far right, and it ultimately reinforces the notion that the political spectrum is circular, because Fascism’s desire to prevent change at all costs does impose a controlled change in the same way Stalin’s forced “progress” imposed a controlled change. The myth that change can be prevented makes Fascism into Stalinism, and the myth that change can be controlled causes them both to fail. Muslim fundamentalism carries this same virus. It, too, is a doomed political project. Change (though not necessarily some positive Hegelian progress) is an inevitability, and it doesn’t matter if you are from
But if Fascism is a “resistance to transcendence”, shouldn’t that term apply to American conservatism? So much of the conservative philosophy is built on the notion that we should be moving backwards; the appeal to “traditional values”, the call for originalist constitutional interpretation, the demands for older definitions of marriage and Christmas (though very specific and not the oldest). If anything, Neo-Conservatism saves Conservatism from being Fascism; while conservatives reject change, neo-conservatives demand exporting their “traditional” values in the form of an imperialist project. Neo-conservatives are the Stalinist wing of the more Fascist party in American politics and they’ve been given the reigns of international policy while the more traditional conservatives have held on to domestic policy. It’s Fascism at home and Stalinism abroad. Seen in this light, of course this administration doesn’t want to paint Muslim extremists as “Stalinists” or the current Iraq conflict would be battle of Muslim Stalinists vs. American Stalinists, and that has Crusades written all over it. Instead, they want to paint it as a conflict with Muslim Fascists because, even if the administration doesn’t admit that they have imposed a Stalinist takeover of a country that never attacked us, they can still take comfort in the fact that Stalin was successful against German Fascism. Perhaps the administration’s refined goal in
Of course, the success of post WWII West Germany and
But there’s one more reason why the administration and its neo-con supporters favor the term “Muslim Fascist” to “Muslim Stalinist”; it’s got more punch. I expect that, in the privacy of the Oval Office, Bush still thinks of “Muslim Fascists” as the “Bad Muslims”, and thinks of family friends from the House of Saud as the “Good Muslims” despite their human rights record. But if he’d started publicly referring to “Bad Muslims”, besides the inaccurate inference that he’s calling all Muslims “Bad” (remember, Saudi Prince Bandar is Bandar Bush, so I’m sure our president thinks he’s more with us than against us), it would reinforce the entirely accurate notion that Bush is a simpleton. So what term could the conservative punditocracy come up with that Bush could use instead of “Bad”. “Stalinist” is just too academic. Plus, we’re in a hot war, and it’s making the cold one look good by comparison, so why remind people about that. No, “Fascist” is certainly “Bad” made over.
That’s why I won’t call conservatives or Republicans “Fascists”. It’s not because they don’t fit Nolte’s definition of resisting transcendence. If that were enough then the Republican party would be the American Fascist Party just as much as Muslim extremists are Muslim Fascists. But the word has connotations that go beyond its technical definitions, and obscure the point. It implies evil. Resisting transcendence is certainly philosophically bankrupt and is evidence of ignorance, but that’s not necessarily evil (just stupid), so why conflate the two ideas? In cases where I think there is a genuine immorality, I’ll just say so. Dick Cheney strikes me as an evil man. And in cases of stupidity, I’ll say that, too. George Bush is a fool (and might also be evil, but those are different qualities). In cases of ignorance or philosophical error, I’ll say that. Republican regressivism is ignorant and based on demonstrably false premises. But “fascist” is just an ad hominem attack now, in that it implies more than it means, confusing the issue.
So which is Bush trying to say? Are Muslim fundamentalists ignorant, incorrect, or evil? I wish he’d be more specific. That way we’d know just what the pot is calling the kettle.
It’s become commonplace to depict the actions of Hezbollah as the enactment of orders given in
While
Ahmadinejad certainly has ulterior motives for encouraging conflict between
Now, I'm not trying to make Hezbollah and
I understand our media's reluctance to paint our own president and any other world leader with the same brush, especially when that other is a holocaust denier, among other things. But we should at least be intellectually honest enough to recognize that the rest of the world will see our relationship with
Ha was not a great basketball player. He averaged less than two points a game, which means most games he didn’t make a single field goal. He also averaged less than two rebounds per game, which might be the fewest for any guy in the league standing at 7’3”. Oh, and according to his carreer stat line he never made a single assist. Ouch. Now, this doesn’t mean Ha might not become a great player. Jermaine O’Neal averaged less than five points per game while with
But there’s more to basketball than basketball, I guess, because Ha made the game experience more fun. You don’t go to a Trailblazers game expecting to see a win. Not last season, anyway. After all, we were worse than the Knicks, and we don’t have Isaiah Thomas intentionally running the club into the ground as an excuse. We didn’t have a lot of opportunities to put Ha in as a victory cigar, like Darko Milicic in
I liked Ha from the get-go, because he reminded me of my friend Nick. Nick was a six-and-a-half foot tall Korean guy I knew in college. He let us call him Korean Abdul-Jabaar. He’s one of the nicest guys you could ever meet in your life. He was funny. He knew the most outrageous pick-up lines. And, if he really had used them, as he claimed, then he was also very brave. Because I had such a positive impression of Nick, I instantly liked Ha. After all, how many Korean guys are over six feet, let alone over seven? They must all be nice, right? Nick sold me a car that was a hunk of junk, but it ran for almost a decade after I bought it, and may still be running today. Sure, it smelled like he might have puked in it after a night of heavy drinking, but the smell faded and was replaced by smells I was responsible for. I’ve rediscovered Nick thanks to MySpace, and sure enough, he’s still a nice guy and doing even better than when I knew him. So there’s hope for Ha, too.
Not only was Ha unprepared for the NBA game, but he often looked like basketball itself was just too much for him. It’s one thing to look perpetually confused when you can dominate the court like Shaquille O’Neal, but when you’re missing passes, failing to box out, and generally watching nine guys do things you can’t understand, you really can’t afford to let your confusion show like that. I would love to play poker with Ha. That’s assuming he can turn that expression off when he actually knows what he’s doing. Otherwise he would shark everybody.
The greatest thing about Ha was his name. When Ha made a good play (or even a competent play) we would scream his name like madmen. When he made a bonehead play we would scream it, too. That’s the magic of Ha; his name is the sound of laughter. Support and derision are intimately fused. To cheer is to ridicule.
Sure, we also liked Ha because, unlike some other players, he never sexually assaulted anyone, tried to sneak pot wrapped in tin foil through an airport metal detector (tin foil is a metal, Damon), or tried to use his basketball trading card as identification when pulled over for speeding. Instead, Ha went to visit kids in the hospital at Christmas. While there, he looked confused. And he probably frightened the kids. But he was tying to be a good citizen, and we liked him for that, too.
Maybe
So long, Ha. Oh, Ha. Oh, Ha. Oh, Ha Ha Ha.
…and, frankly, it stinks. David S. Broder’s piece “Voter Anger That Cuts Both Ways” in the Washington Post describes the current movement away from centrism without weighing in on the danger this poses to democracy. He even goes so far as to say that the current mood poses a threat to the gridlock in
“The McCain-Lieberman Party begins with a rejection of the Sunni-Shiite style of politics itself. It rejects those whose emotional attachment to their party is so all-consuming it becomes a form of tribalism, and who believe the only way to get American voters to respond is through aggression and stridency.”
Does anybody else smell that?
David Brooks is often described as the liberal’s favorite conservative. I would argue that he's the worst kind, because he's smart. Instead of choosing to use his intelligence to divine the most moral or even pragmatic take on policy, he uses his wits to shill for the party line far more persuasively than the Bill O’Reillys and Sean Hannitys of the punditry world. But when it comes down to it, he consistently defends conservatism. Now, when the political landscape is looking particularly dangerous for incumbents, the majority of whom are conservatives, he’s advocating centrism?
There are a number of assumptions here that should be exploded in order to smell out the real motive for Brooks’ newfound love of triangulation. First of all, there’s the assumption that compromise is inherently good. I’ve previously written extreme examples to show that this doesn’t necessarily provide a moral solution (two Nazis try to find a compromise between exterminating the Jews or expelling them forcibly from German lands, for example) but the Senate recently provided a model for exactly why compromise sometimes finds a crappy outcome for everybody. When Dems pushed for a hike in the minimum wage, and Repubs knew they couldn’t go back to their constituents and brag that they killed it again, they poisoned the bill with a near-elimination of the estate tax. If such a bill had passed, who would have been winners? The growth in income disparity between the ultra-rich and the working everybody-else would have grown t such a rapid pace that the minimum wage hike would have been too little from the outset. The government, already buried in debt, would have lost billions in revenue. The Dems would have lost credibility for providing a minimum wage increase that made the working poor even poorer in relation to the ultra-rich. The Repubs would have lost even more ground on the myth that they value fiscal responsibility. Oh, and the government would be more broke. Compromise, in this case, provided a bill that was a loser for not only the government and the citizens it supposedly serves, but also for the parties ostensibly serving those citizens. Way to go, Party No. 3. Luckily the Sunni-Shiite tribal politicos prevented this monumental blunder, though some smart Senators may have to pay for their good sense in the short run.
Then there’s the assumption that bi-partisanship naturally makes the government more productive. Sure, it may get further on a flag burning amendment, but on the issues that really matter, does this work? Well, we’re poised to watch sea levels rise some twenty to forty feet in my lifetime. Millions of people will be killed or displaced. What has bipartisanship done here? Support for moderate candidates like
Lastly, there’s the assumption that the McCain-Lieberman party will do better than the “tribalism” Brooks warns against. McCain made real headway against the administrations use of torture not by playing nice, but by being aggressive and strident, the two qualities Brooks denounces. But when the President attached a signing statement saying he didn’t have to actually do what the law said when it came to torture McCain found his hands tied by a Congress unwilling to go head-to-head with the White House. And why is the Congress cowardly? Maybe it’s because people like Joe Lieberman have been painting those who dissent as unpatriotic, advocating a show of solidarity with the president hat should only be limited to the length of the eternal War On Terror.
So if compromise sometimes stinks, often reinforces the status quo, and sometimes trips itself up, who would really benefit from a Party No. 3 with nor particular platform and an obvious predisposition to prevent real change? Why, the administration, of course. You starting to smell that now?
Bush, and his shills, used to present their policies as the right way to go. Now that all the evidence suggests that these policies are disasters in practice, they’ve resorted to characterizing those who want to take on a new direction as dangerous extremists (especially on the left. Presumably the far right is an enemy of Party No. 3, but you don’t hear Brooks bashing them much). So here’s the new talking points, decoded for those of you that feel nostalgia for the wonderful world of Orwell’s 1984: Our way is clearly the wrong way to go, but those who suggest going a different way are just crazy.
Joe Lieberman has stayed the course. Let’s just ask half of Party No. 3 how well that works.
