Sketch For A Story Never To Be Written, again

This is an idea I have mulled over a bit for years now. Perhaps the protagonist shouldn't be Jewish, to avoid the appearance of anti-Semitism or blood libel, but that's how I conceived it.

A holy Rabbi and lifelong student of Kabballah is the principle figure here. He is beloved by all in his community and considered by many to be a saint. It is said that just to enter his presence is to receive a blessing.

His studies in the Kabballah have taught him that, when this world was created, the limitless holy light burst its crude vessels of matter and left divine sparks trapped througout the mundane creation. It is the duty of a holy man to liberate these sparks and unite them with the godhead, so that this world will eventually be reconciled with god in the spiritual perfection of the world to come.

After sundown on the first Saturday of every month, when the Sabbath has ended, he ventures out into the night and commits horrible acts of rape, murder, and dismemberment. He takes no pleasure in such acts; he considers them a horrible burden and goes about them in an attitude of sorrowful devotion, in order to free the divine light that is trapped in the most debased and perverse elements of the physical creation.

Perhaps he is a Lamed Vavnik, one of the 36 saints in every age that allow for the preservation of the world...

...or something much more colorful like that

Esther successfully ran her marathon and, unlike Pheidippides, she did not drop dead immediately afterward. Thanks to all who pledged money for Daniel McGowan.

It Could Be Nicer Being Red, Or Yellow, or Gold

My good friend Esther is running a marathon to drum up some cash for Green Scare convict Daniel McGowan. A source of information on the so-called Green Scare may be found here: http://www.eberhardtpress.org/content/greenscare.php

Either way, please visit the link below and pledge a few cents a mile or whatever you can spare for Daniel. He is not on vacation, he is doing hard time. Support that motherfucker or you're a douche.

http://bookinfordaniel.eberhardtpress.org/

Support the Troops

What does this mean? And why should we?

If you think the war in Iraq (abd/or the one in Afghanistan) is adventuristic, uncalled-for, needlessly brutal, immoral, unethical, unfortunate, ill-advised, fucked-up, bad news, uncool, just plain wrong, and/or sucky, why on earth would you qualify that position with the absurd (and probably meaningless) statement that you "support the troops"? That seems to be what the majority of people who oppose the war do, however; certainly it is de rigeur for a politician or public figure.

Saying you oppose the war but "support the troops" is basically saying that it is a wise, ethically justifiable, or honorable thing to consider yourself a piece of meat at the disposal of the US government, who will enforce any decision the politicians make without questioning it. This shit didn't fly at Nuremberg, so why should it fly now? If you believe that US servicepeople are responsible for their own decisions, like anyone else, and if you believe that the war in Iraq was a bad decision, then it is idiotic to say that you "support the troops."

I think a position of principled opposition to the war is incoherent unless it includes a position of explicitly NOT supporting the troops. It is true that many low-income people who feel they are without options wind up in the military. It is true that many very well-intentioned people wind up in the military. It is true that the military has a larger proportion of racial minorities than society at large, and this is probably the result of the aforementioned economic factors.

Fine. One can sympathize or even empathize with soldiers without giving them "support" qua troops, which gives them the message that you are behind them, right or wrong. It would be absurd to say "I am against rape, but I support the rapist. He is a minority and poor, and never had a proper education. That's not his fault, it's the fault of the politicians in Washington, etc. So I will not discourage him from raping you; instead, I'll write to my congressman."

This isn't to say that the primary blame for war should be directed at the soldiers; certainly, the above is an imperfect analogy. But "support the troops"?? Fuck the troops.

But Green's The Color of Spring

Absolutely fantastic news:

From Friends of Jeffrey ‘Free’ Luers:
The Court of Appeals just unanimously ruled that Jeff's case will be reversed and remanded back to the Circuit Court for resentencing as a result of Judge Velure's errors in imposing the original draconian sentence. The opinion just came out this morning and we are still reviewing it for details, but it looks like Jeff could potentially get about 15 years taken off his 266 month sentence. We will provide you with more information as it becomes known. The entire opinion is included below for those who are interested [link]. Congratulations to Jeff and his family!

Jeff was sentenced in 2001 to 22 years and 8 months in prison for the arson of the Romania car dealership in Eugene, OR, and an attempted arson of Tyree Oil. The total damage amounted to burned tires on 3 SUVs, the tires were replaced and the SUVs were resold. No harm to any living things. Outrage over the unjust sentence spanned the globe. Jeff is currently imprisoned at the Oregon State Prison and the Civil Liberties Defense Center has continuously assisted Jeff with various legal matters during his incarceration.

Court of Appeals opinion: http://www.publications.ojd.state.or.us/A115208.htm

For additional background on Jeffrey Free Luers, please visit http://freefreenow.org/

Matt Lucas is King

Well, I'm back, but I don't really remember why I blog. No idears. So here is an amusing cross-posting from Long Sunday (I'm still not keen on the HTMF stuff, but there's a link to LS on the side):

Open Letter
(The following by guest author Jane Dark:)

While I appreciate the refined level of discourse here at Long Sunday, I'd like to bring it down a little. What follows is my open letter to the National Rifle Association.

Dear NRA,

You pussies.

That's right, National Rifle Association, I'm talking to you. You are cowards, lightweights, hypocrites, hand-wringing do-nothings.

My recollection is that it has been claimed you're just gun-toting bullet-freaks interested only in your right to extreme animal-killing convenience and click-click-boom phallic stroke fantasies, maybe popping off at the occasional illegal immigrant.

And my further recollection is that you have defended yourself against such scurrilous accusations through the patient insistence on your constitutional right to bear arms. You, the NRA, would be part of a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state."

Which is to say, your entire position and organization rests on the proposed belief that when bad government abrogates your rights and freedoms, and leads the nation along a course which the citizens have not mandated -- using force of arms to do so -- you are prepared and willing to resist that course, and refuse that government, using every means at your disposal, including the means guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

And yet we find ourselves with a government that is currently in the midst of an escalating military action seemingly not mandated by the population -- an action which is either explanation for or parallel with increasing depredation of your civil rights, most ominously in the case of the Fourth Amendment but as well the Sixth and Eight at a bare minimum. Were there to be a doomsday clock of civil rights, sometime in these last months we would surely have heard its chimes at midnight.

That the electoral legitimacy of the President whose administration has in main authored these violations is shrouded in doubt would seem to argue even further for a principled refusal of this abrogation of the rights and interests of the American people. This should be your finest hour. This is what you have been waiting for; on moments such as this is the very justification for both your rights and your existence premised. If you will not in the gravest and most evident circumstances exercise the freedom invested in you by your beloved Second Amendment, your authority to claim it must be found to have withered. And surely these are dark days. If not now, when?

What are you waiting for, you pussies?

Respectfully submitted,


Jane

State Of The Blog

There will probably be a hiatus for a couple of weeks as I will be out of town. I encourage you all to use this time wisely, closely studying the posts that are already up.

Also, perhaps this is a good place to solicit comments about the blog. How would you like to see it changed? Do I post too much? Should I authorize other people to post, making it a collaborative effort? More politics? Less whatever? You know, that sort of thing.

Sketch For A Story Never To Be Written

I dreamed the basic elements of this one last night. The protagonist is an ordinary woman, probably a blue collar worker of some sort. She discovers that gradually, part by part, her body is transforming into a machine. This isn't being done to her by aliens or evil scientists or whatever; somehow, the process itself is organic. We go through the expected stages of horror and confusion, but eventually the transformation is complete. Those around her are aware that she is now a machine. I'm not sure if she looks different, or how they know. But they come to accept her, and she's a good worker and not hard to be around. As a machine her desires are not totally extinguished, however, otherwise she could not function. Rather, her former desires act like programs for the machine to run, or imperatives. She has long carried a torch for a coworker, but never had the courage to speak to him. Now, she pursues him relentlessly. When confronted, he rejects her, however--not because she's a machine, but because he already has a girlfriend. I'm not sure how a machine reacts to something like this. It's a good thing I don't have to actually write the story.

A Marching Song

In honor of my Tamil friend Suresh, I composed this fighting song for the Tamil Tigers. The language is perhaps a bit outdated; I sort of imagined them speaking a somewhat antiquated form of colonial English. I'm quite sure that in real life they don't. The brothers and sisters of Tamil Nadu call it the 'Nad for short, for those of you who are perplexed by the lyrics. Anyway, Wikipedia should give you all you need to understand this one, if you don't already:



We fight for honor and for glory

Proud sons and daughters of the ‘Nad

Honor to our brave soldiers

And glory only to the gods

We would not harm a cow, but we’ll disembowel ye now—

Fear the dreadful thunder of our rods—

And taste the awful savor of defeat

By proud sons and daughters of the ‘Nad.

The arrows fly thick and fast about your heads

Launched by the wrathful bow of Arjuna

Now we hunger for your cowardly blood

Though we won’t eat any flesh—not even tuna—

When Shiva’s eye does ope, ye’ll surely give up hope—

And flee before good Colonel Karuna--

He’ll help us win for honor and glory

Proud sons and daughters of the ‘Nad.

Proud sons and daughters of the 'Nad!

Take The Pillow From Your Head

I got this from another blog, I'm not sure what the original source is. The link there takes you to the Jakarta Post, but not to anything containing this quote:

Philosopher Martin Heidegger stated that human beings live existentially (Das Wesen des Daseins liegt in seiner Existenz). Reading is one way to experience our own existence and better understand the lives of others. Reading is also a habit of successful people.

I think this quote speaks for itself. If you don't think it's funny, I can't tell you why it is. But it got me thinking...why is reading held to be a sacred thing by so many, as if it were an unqualified good? How many times have I heard about a bad but popular book, "At least it's got people reading"? Who the hell cares if they're reading? Isn't it better to watch a good cartoon than to read a bad book? Isn't it better to do good drugs than read a bad book? Is reading going to suddenly transform society, when a critical mass of people suddenly make the jump from Michael Crichton to Proust or something? Is John Grisham analogous to a gateway drug, that will eventually lead you to the hard stuff? And why should people read things they won't understand? Or is reading such an unqualified good that they can just keep on reading Danielle Steele, and that is good enough in itself?

What the hell is so important about reading?

It Can Be Quite A Hassle Being Green

a modified version of this article appears in the December 2006 issue of Z Magazine

Testing the Limits of Dissent and Repression in the Green Scare
By Dan Berger


One of the biggest post-9/11 criminal cases involves the prosecution of fourteen radical environmentalists on a slew of charges for property destruction, mainly arson, and conspiracy. The actions for which they are accused date back as far as 1996 and include the multi-million dollar destruction of a Vail ski lodge expansion in 1998. No one was hurt in any of the actions, which were claimed by the Earth Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Front, or jointly by the equally shadowy and decentralized groups.

The FBI swooped up the defendants in December 2005 in multi-state raids the government dubbed “Operation Backfire.” This massive operation targeting the awkwardly named phenomenon of “eco-terrorism”--but which environmentalists and civil libertarians are dubbing “the Green Scare”--is at the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s assault on domestic dissent under the auspices of fighting terrorism. The “terrorism” these defendants are accused of, like other eco-militants arrested in recent years, has targeted the property of large corporations to the tune of more than $100 million--done intentionally without harming anyone.

Yet because the T-word is attached to the case, people are facing more severe punishments than they might otherwise face for property destruction--including the possibility of life in prison. Indeed, six of the fourteen pled guilty shortly after their arrest in exchange for reduced--but still lengthy--sentences. Part of their plea agreement, however, mandates that the half-dozen eco-militants cooperate with the state in ongoing investigations against radical environmentalists for the rest of their lives.

The case has been built on informants: the government’s star witness who helped build the initial case is, by his own admission in a gossipy article in the August Rolling Stone, a longtime drug addict who says he took part in several of the arsons yet who faces no charges himself. After the FBI starting applying significant pressure in the Pacific Northwest through grand juries and home visits, other activists also began cooperating as the government expanded the number of people indicted to 18. Some remained defiant; Jeff Hogg spent six months in jail for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury.

Of the remaining eight defendants from the initial arrest, one person, Bill Rodgers, committed suicide in his cell shortly after being arrested in December. Three people remain at large, and four people--Nathan Block, Daniel McGowan, Jonathan Paul, and Joyanna Zacher--changed their pleas to guilty in November, after months of negotiation. As a condition of their plea, however, these four defendants remain non-cooperative with the state. As a result, prosecutors will seek a “terrorism enhancement” charge in their case, attempting to add up to 20 years to the reduced plea sentence.

Many progressives haven’t paid much, if any, attention to the trial of these eco-militants--feeling distanced, perhaps, from a movement that has not only utilized illegal tactics but has generally done too little to incorporate itself into a broader social justice initiatives and whose militant sectors have earned the wrath of the FBI as the “number-one domestic terrorist threat,” according to FBI deputy assistant director John Lewis last year.

But the ramifications of this case are too large to ignore, and not just because it is likely that such militant actions will increase in number as the earth’s destruction becomes more severe.

One of the defendants is Daniel McGowan, an activist who has devoted significant attention to exactly the kind of bridge building that the environmental movement is in desperate need of. As with radical attorney Lynne Stewart and incendiary professor Ward Churchill, the government has gone after seemingly extreme radicals in the hope of cleaving off any significant support from the left for people whose tactics or politics prove controversial, even among progressive circles. Unlike Stewart and Churchill, however, many of these eco-activists face up to life in prison as a result of illegal activities and an investigation bolstered by informants and surveillance.

It is a strategy that has been used before, with some degree of success: go after the apparent margins of the left as a way to limit the parameters of dissent more generally. The targeting of clandestine anti-imperialist militants and jailhouse activists of the 1980s with experimental control unit prisons led to the more widespread use of such draconian institutions. This includes the “supermax” prisons in Florence , Colorado , and Marion , Illinois , as well as the other entire control unit prisons, and the “special housing units” within most prisons, which function as exceptionally austere prisons within existing prisons. In both cases, according to groups like Human Rights Watch, prisoners are separated from any human contact except the guards and confined to tiny cells for 23 hours a day. Numerous psychologists have criticized such institutions for the mental illnesses they engender in those incarcerated.

This case is also one where the worst of PATRIOT ACT surveillance and its related snitch culture are being tested. The six who pled guilty in the spring and summer are required to cooperate with prosecutors in testifying against other defendants, numerous people have been hauled before grand juries to testify about environmental activism in the northwest (resulting in the incarceration of several people for refusing to comply with the invasive and undemocratic subpoenas), and it appears that the initial arrests were made on the basis of
voluminous surveillance data. Besides informants, the case is evidently built off the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program.

According to a September story in the Eugene Weekly, the government has handed over “some 28,000 pages of documents, 71 CDs (likely recordings made by snitches with wires), four DVDs and three videotapes. But they hedged the request [from the defense] for information obtained by NSA surveillance.” Since a federal judge in Detroit ruled domestic NSA surveillance illegal for violating the Fourth Amendment, revelation of warrantless wiretapping used in building a case against these radical environmentalists could have rendered the government’s case null and void. The judge presiding over the case ordered the prosecution to “find out whether warrantless wiretapping was used to build a case against the
defendants,” the Weekly reported.

Ultimately, however, the defense agreed to drop this motion when the four defendants opted to plead guilty (presumably in exchange for lower sentences). Still, these proceedings and the case overall mark an important turning point in the existence of radical opposition within the United States : can resistance movements develop and maintain consciousness about non-cooperation with the repressive aims of the state? And will the rights of people to oppose the government and corporate agenda beat back the current Orwellian strategies of control?

Check out http://www.greenscare.org or http://www.supportdaniel.org for updates.

Dan Berger is a writer, activist and graduate student in Philadelphia . He is the co-editor of Letters From Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out (Nation Books, 2005) and author of

Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (AK Press, 2006).

What Went On In Your Head?

Physical events seem to take place within a generalized economy of cause and effect. Mental events, or thoughts, can also be conceived in terms of cause and effect, but my thoughts don't seem able to have effects on anything besides other thoughts of mine. For my thoughts to influence yours, they have to pass through a physical medium. Thus, it easy to understand why thoughts are often seen as epiphenomena or side-effects of physical events.

Magic (or "Magick", not sleight of hand but ritual folderol), then, is not the affirmation of the rule of mind over matter, or the domination of thoughts over physical events. Rituals are rarely done to directly cause physical events to happen. Rather, magic is predicated on the belief that thoughts, just like physical events, inhabit a general economy. Most of us--those of us who are not magicians--simply do not know how to make our thoughts cause anything. What thoughts do cause is other thoughts (or, more accurately, unconscious mental events) which in turn have physical efficacy. In other words, if I am a magician and need a piano moved, I wouldn't do a ritual to cause the piano itself to move; I'd do one to get someone to come and move my piano.

Thus, ritual magic is not irrationalism, but another sort of mechanistic rationalism.

The Music of Memory

Bill Monroe was born and raised in Rosine, Kentucky. In the early 1930s, when Bill and his brother Charlie began playing together professionally, they had been working in an oil refinery in Indiana. Upon ending his musical partnership with Charlie, Bill formed his own band and called it the Blue Grass Boys. They played the same basic old-time style of music that dozens of other bands at the time played. But Monroe was picking up a wide range of influences. Many of the old-time string bands of the period were playing a speeded-up, urbanized style of the old-time music they had grown up on. The Blue Grass Boys were among the fastest, sped along by Monroe's prodding mandolin. Monroe, who as a child was influenced by a blues guitarist named Arnold Schulz, was soaking up jazz, pop, and even schoddische, and incorporating these various elements into his music. In 1946, when the three-finger banjo picker Earl Scruggs joined Monroe's band, the synthesis was basically complete. Often picking at extremely fast tempos, but including slow yet muscular ballads, singing high and hard, and passing solos around between banjo, mandolin and fiddle, the Blue Grass boys created a brand new style of music that would soon (within 15 years) come to bear their name--bluegrass music.

Bluegrass, from the beginning, was a music that was made in cities but looked back to rural roots. Lyrically, the earliest bluegrass songs reflect a yearning for a way of life that is passing out of the world; the songs tell of a lost home and dead parents. While bluegrass is hardly new in singing about lost love, often the departed lover is just one more part of the general milieu around the old home place that has been unfortunately left behind. Bluegrass music is about memory and loss.

In one of his most enduring songs, Monroe sings:

Back in the days of my childhood
In the evening when everything was still
I used to sit and listen to the foxhounds
With my dad in the old Kentucky hills

I'm on my way back to the old home
The road winds on up the hill
But there's no light in the window
That shined long ago where I live

This is the quintessential bluegrass song.

The Humean Stain

Here's a little excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on Lyndon H. LaRouche:

--According to a biographer, Dennis King, LaRouche has described his childhood as that of "an egregious child, I wouldn't say an ugly duckling but a nasty duckling." [4] King writes that LaRouche had learned to read by the age of five, and was called "Big Head" by the other children at school. He was also bullied, after being told by his parents, who were both Quakers, that under no circumstances could he fight with other children even in self-defense. This advice led to "years of hell" for him from bullies at school, [5] as a result of which he spent much of his time alone, taking long walks and finding solace in the works of Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant. He later described the bullies in his autobiography The Power of Reason as "unwitting followers of David Hume." [6]--

If only they'd taught the categorical imperative in grade school, things might have been different...

It's Actually Quite Difficult Being Green

Here is a draft of a statement my friend Esther made at a benefit for the "Green Scare" defendants. (If you don't know who they are, follow the links in the first comment under "It's Not Easy Being Green" below.)

The current consensus in the scientific community is that most of the observable warming of the planet in the last fifty years is a result of human activity, like the burning of fossil fuels and land clearing. I recently read an article in the New York Times explaining that polar bears are drowning because the Arctic ice shelf is melting. The bears now have to swim much greater distances to find food and, as a result, drown to death from exhaustion and hypothermia. The humans in this region are suffering as well. Inuit mothers are now faced with an unthinkable decision. It has been found that the pollution levels in their breast-milk are so staggeringly high that health officials recommend that they no longer breast-feed their babies. Industrial compounds, flame retardants and PCBs, concentrate in these women's bodies because they maintain a traditional diet of fish and Arctic mammals. Do they abandon their traditional diets and therefore their traditional lives? Do they no longer breast-feed their babies because their bodies are so polluted with chemicals?

Just before the time the Operation Backfire indictments were handed down, the headlines were full of stories about global warming. The world’s leading climatologists were presenting the world with a new idea, the tipping point. It is something like this: the earth is heating up to such an extent that we may have reached the point where enough ice has melted so that the sun’s rays are no longer reflected back into space but absorbed by the water where there once was ice. As a result, the earth begins to heat up even more rapidly, so rapidly that we may not be able to stop it at all.

So then these eco-terror indictments are handed down. These people are terrorists because they burned things down, not to gather insurance money, not because they were mad at their ex-wives, but because they are very concerned about the
environment. The average sentence for arson is around five to seven years. What the government wants to do is add 20 years to the sentences in the form of a "terrorism enhancement" because of the ideas behind the crimes.

I want to affirm that the health of the planet, and the animals and humans that live here, is more important than profit. The health of the earth’s ecosystems, the health of the forests, the air we breathe and the water we drink, is more important than profit. This health is seriously threatened by human activity. Scientists, environmentalists, everyday people -- anyone paying any attention whatsoever realizes this, and yet we as a species remain on a dangerous trajectory. And we are dealing with a system that seems to leave no recourse. People have held signs, people have locked themselves to bulldozers, people have given power point presentations, people have written letters, written articles. And yet we as a species remain on this trajectory. The scientific community has been clear about this for years and years and nothing is changing. It gets worse and worse every year. What is an ethical response to this?

I am not here to talk about tactics or to make judgments. What matters is this: The state is sending a message, and that message is the following: If you commit a crime because you are concerned about the environment, then you will be locked up for a long, long time. This is a threat to anyone who cares about old-growth forests, clean air, polar bears or the continuation of our species. This is part of an ongoing effort to silence those who speak out. We must not be silenced!

It is imperative that we be here for these folks as they bear the brunt of state repression. We must support them now, we must support them through their sentencing and through their time in prison. And we must be there when they get out. If there is a benefit in five years for these folks, we must be there. We need to raise funds for these folks, we need to write them letters while they are in jail. We need to remember them. They are going to be in there for us, let’s be out here
for them.

And most of all we must fight the forces that threaten the health of our planet, and that steal away the lives of these beautiful people. We will fight back! We will not be silenced!

Here's Another Clue For You All

In a 1971 interview, John Lennon gives an interesting assessment of the '60s:

TA: What did you think was the reason for the success of your sort of music?

JL: Well, at the time it was thought that the workers had broken through, but I realise in retrospect that it's the same phoney deal they gave the blacks, it was just like they allowed blacks to be runners or boxers or entertainers. That's the choice they allow you--now the outlet is being a pop star, which is really what I'm saying on the album in 'Working class hero'. As I told Rolling Stone, it's the same people who have the power, the class system didn't change one little bit.

Of course, there are a lot of people walking around with long hair now and some trendy middle class kids in pretty clothes. But nothing changed except that we all dressed up a bit, leaving the same bastards running everything.

Read the rest of the interview here:

http://counterpunch.org/lennon12082005.html

And this quote from Hakim Bey seems in a similar vein:

It seems clear that in human society, despite the best intentions, technology has alienated people to such an extent that they mistake technological and symbolic action for social/political action. This is the commodity stance. You buy a certain product, and you’ve made a political statement. You buy a car that runs on salad oil. It’s still a car! Or make a documentary. Where did we cross that line where we forgot that making a documentary about how everyone would like to have a food co-op is not the same as having a food co-op? I think some people have lost that distinction. Now, about art in the service of the revolution: There is no art in the service of the revolution, because
if there’s no revolution, there’s no art in its service. So to say that you’re an artist but you’re progressive is a schizo position. We have only capital, so all art is either in its service or it fails. Those are the two alternatives. If it’s successful, it’s in the service of capital. I don’t care what the content is. The content could be Malcolm X crucified on a bed of lettuce. It doesn’t matter.

The source:
http://www.thebrooklynrail.org/spotlight/july04/wilson.html

Oldies But Goodies

These days we hear about "Bushisms." For those of us old enough to remember Dan Quayle's vice-presidency, though, there's no doubt that Quayle was the best at saying ridiculous things. Here are a few old chestnuts for the fans:

"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."
Senator Dan Quayle, 9/15/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92, The New Yorker, 10/10/88, p.102)

"Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here."
Vice President Dan Quayle, Hawaii, 4/25/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"We are on an irreversible trend towards more freedom and democracy - but that could change."
Vice President Dan Quayle, Hawaii, 5/22/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

Here's Quayle's attempt to quote the motto of the Negro College Fund, "A Mind is a Terible Thing to Waste":

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."
Source: (USA Today 5/10/89)

"Mars is essentially in the same orbit...Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
Vice President Dan Quayle, Hawaii, 8/11/89 (interview broadcast on CNN, referenced in 9/1/89 Washington Post article: "A Quayle Vision of Mars")

"For NASA, space is still a high priority."
Vice President Dan Quayle, talking to NASA employees, 9/5/90 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
Vice President Dan Quayle talking about the Mideast situation, 9/22/90 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"I have been asked who caused the riots and the killing in LA, my answer has been direct & simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame."
Vice President Dan Quayle (during the Commonwealth Club speech 5/19/92)

I remember this next one well, but I couldn't find a reliable citation for it. Here is Quayle addressing the Samoan people:

You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be. - to local residents upon arriving in American Samoa

A Few Remarks About Music

I am listening to Patsy Cline sing "A Poor Man's Roses" at the moment. There is a poise and precision in her singing that reminds me of Charlie Parker's alto sax playing.

On "Blood on the Tracks," Dylan acheived a certain balance between the monumental and the personal, or the giant and the miniature, that largely accounts for that album's power. Those two strands have always been important in his songwriting, but BOTT points to a future direction where the personal becomes increasingly important--raw emotion is more and more conveyed within the lapidary, polished song-structure, which at its best seems to acheive Wordsworth's definition of poetry--strong emotion recollected in tranquility.

With "Oh Mercy" and "Time Out of Mind," Dylan began to perfect a new synthesis. I think it is more fully realized on the latter album, but in both cases, unlike BOTT for the most part, Dylan seems unable to avoid cliches or ill-considered rhymes when he accentuates the personal. A moving and mostly successful song like "Standing in the Doorway" can leave you almost crying and wincing at the same time. "Trying to Get to Heaven" feels more detached and speculative, but succeeds lyrically and emotionally even more than "Standing in the Doorway" does. It seems to pay the price for this success by being less specific-feeling, though. And even the magnificent "It's Not Dark Yet" can't seem to avoid a line like "Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear." It's as though, the more honest and emotional Dylan's lyrics get, the more they threaten to become simply mundane.

These three songs are like the gestation for a fourth, an outtake from TOOM that was included on "Love and Theft" and is far and away the best song on the latter. "Mississippi" is almost totally free of the monumental--there is no bombast; the lyrics, although as apocalyptic as any of 50 other Dylan songs that earn that epithet, remain very ordinary and emotional. But there are no wasted lines, no real cliches (except the ones that, as always, Dylan strategically deploys--certainly an arguable proposition, but anyway) or phoned-in set-ups for the rhymed payoff. "Mississippi" is like the fruition of a period of transition that began with "Blood on the Tracks."

It's hard to imagine lyrics that more effectively evoke a fragile optimism about life while fully acknowledging finitude and failure than the following:

"I know that fortune is waiting to be kind
So give me your hand and say you'll be mine

The emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back,
but you can't come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long."

This song may be perfect.

But the rest of "Love and Theft" is nowhere near as cool. It mostly consists of genre-exercises with Dylanized lyrics, which makes for fascinating listening, but doesn't provide anything that rips your guts out the way "Mississippi" does.

Because, for me, all the best music is emotional and personal, I'd like to see Dylan do more songs like "Standing in the Doorway," "Trying to Get to Heaven," "Not Dark Yet," and "Mississippi." They could almost be said to constitute a genre of their own.

Now the Patsy Cline cd is over, and I'm listening to George Jones. "She Thinks I Still Care" is playing, which is probably a throw-away but still manages to be much better than just about anything else out there.

The Lotus Eaters

OK, I've made it so that registration is not required in order to post. Now anyone can make comments...

Here's an inspirational quote from James T. Kirk, from "This Side of Paradise":

"Maybe we weren't meant for Paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through, struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute--we must march to the sound of drums."

On Voting

For those of us concerned with the question of what an anti-state praxis might look like, the question of voting is a particularly perplexing one. The most important things are never at stake in a political decision, be it for a candidate or ballot initiative--we are still saddled with the same system, although there may be alternate views of how best to run it. Nevertheless, it can't be denied that real issues ARE put into play, and they can be very important to those they affect; at times, maybe even a matter of life or death.

A voter boycott, like veganism, is a kind of refusal that can seem like a purist pose. After all, a massive, intentional voter boycott has not been seriously proposed as a tactic for social change by anyone that I'm aware of; all the arguments against voting I've heard tend to treat it as a personal choice, or at best a potential collective "no" that is recommended on its merits, without hope of any really efficacious result. And I find "if everybody" arguments highly unsatisfying, which is one of the reasons I am no longer a vegan.

If the government wants to ask my advice on how it should be run, why shouldn't I give it? It's true that I can't hope to seriously affect the outcome of an election with my single vote, but voting costs nothing but a few moments of my time, so it would seem there is nothing to lose by doing so.

Voting is something that gives the illusion of participation by putting certain questions into play while leaving the really big questions entirely out of play. However, the rub is that the questions that ARE in play are often, as I've already stated, very important. On the one hand, a small and perhaps insignificant act that costs me nothing; on the other, what is perhaps an empty pose of refusal that, in any event, can claim even less efficacy than voting can. Whereas it could perhaps be argued that voting has a small effect (i.e., if I can identify myself with a certain statistical grouping or bloc), not voting clearly has none. The scale seems to tip, ever so slightly, towards the ballot.

However, if there is to be something like a liberatory praxis, I think it would have to be a sort of acting that is other than a repetition of the white noise and empty chatter that surrounds us as beings awash in public discourse, yet alienated from public decision-making. We are divested of any ability to determine the conditions of our lives outside of a very narrow sphere, and in place of this power we are handed the vote. When I vote, I take up my position as a citizen, or a political subject who is asked to ratify his own exlusion by pretending to participate in decisions I, in fact, have no real part in; I am confronted with alien conditions not of my making and asked to act out a charade to convince myself that I am their source. It is widely recognized, even by avid partisans, that elections are yet another consumer spectacle, a choice between two products that is largely determined by advertising.

Not voting is indeed a small act of refusal, but perhaps it is a crucial one; it is my exit from a sphere that I was never really in to begin with, or the refusal of an illusion. Uneasy as I am with some of this terminology, and unsure as I am of the content, I will venture to say that voting is, objectively, the enactment of a false consciousness, no matter the subjective thought that accompanies it, regardless of how much cynicism runs along with it. Not voting effects nothing, affects nothing, acheives nothing, issues forth in no product. But perhaps it is the proper way to begin to move toward what I would hope would be a liberatory social praxis.