Sarah Palin ♥ Rapists

I know it is sexist to criticize Sarah Palin's actual policies. She is irreproachable. So, I won't say this as a criticism, but merely as an observation.

Sarah Palin loves rapists.

John McCain ♥ Pedophiles

Why does John McCain want to protect children from knowing the difference between good touches and bad touches? What does John McCain have to hide here? I understand the need to shore up his credentials with the crucial NAMBLA constituency, but this seems a little too open. Or is America ready to make this a truly historic election, between a black man and a pedophile?

My friends, I think not. As a friend of Silentio just said to me via IM, Obama's most suitable response to this is (in light of the duplicitous turn McCain has decided to take his own campaign): "John McCain: Wrong to be in a room alone with your prepubescent daughter. Wrong for America."

Reformed Maverick

This is well, good, and hilarious .... but, where Brando's fall from grace was greeted by laughter, McCain's fall may well be greeted by an inauguration. Give the people what they want, I guess.

Now, we can laugh at this all we want, but as has been the lesson of this blog for years, The Onion is right:

Smiling Now Primarily Used To Communicate Anger

The smile, a facial expression traditionally used to convey joy, pleasure, or amusement, is now mainly used to suppress rage, according to a five-year study released Monday by the Countenance Institute. "More than 85 percent of smiles are involuntary responses to mounting anger," the study read in part. "In addition, the length and intensity of these smiles directly correspond to the amount of anger the smile is concealing. A smile that lasts less than two seconds represents just a passing annoyance, while a smile of four to eight seconds indicates a genuine hatred for its target." The study noted that individuals smiling for more than one minute while nodding and baring their teeth are most likely preparing to kill the person they are smiling at.

This is What American Democracy Looks Like

(via Rushkoff) I have to first mention that I’m wasn’t at the DNC protests nor am I going to the RNC protests. I’m staying in DC doing media support and jail support from afar. I went to NYC for the 2004 RNC protests and I was, in the following order, beaten with a nightclub, wrapped in a giant orange net by the cops, set on fire (swear I’m not making that up), beaten again, arrested, put in a cage, hit by a cop car. So I’m taking it easy this time around.

The protests at the DNC are being organized under a couple of different umbrella groups. Broadly, it includes everything from progressives to anti-authoritarian radicals, with a lot of students and youth under 30 and vets.

The conditions were pretty poor. The police had also erected a mini-Gitmo of free-speech zones–protest pens–into which to corral the bulk of demonstrators and any kind of activity was almost immediately curbed. The other major problem was that there was effectively zero press coverage, even among liberal bloggers. I spent my week seeing liberal blogs excitedly gush about what was going on inside the convention and rail about Republican radicalism of the last eight years while I was cradling a phone in my hand listening to friends tell me stories of being beaten up a couple of blocks away.

That lack of coverage in a lot of respects really emboldens the police and allows them to get away with just about anything, aside from it absolutely impoverishing our ability to engage in a reasoned analysis of how power works and whether the Democrat vs. Republican frame actually depicts anything even close to reality.

And, speaking of police brutality, it’s pretty notable that they’ve been consistently targeting press. There was a documented incident where an ABC news producer was knocked down and arrested trying to get footage of delegates and donors. The police also detained and seized the equipment of the Glass Bead Collective (a well-known indymedia group). There was also the knocking down and detainment of a Code Pink member–probably the worst bit was seeing her get shoved down, the footage then cutting to her being interviewed by journalists, and then the cop walking up and grabbing her in the middle of the interview and dragging her off.

But that kind of one-time sensational pushing doesn’t really capture the full scale of what was going on. Marches were immediately surrounded by walls of police, people were told to leave, and then they weren’t given any exit to leave and those who tried were arrested. There was a 100+ person mass arrest after the police simply decided that a large group of people milling about looked “suspicious” and were carrying rocks (which were never found, naturally), a convergence space was raided, and vehicles were simply stopped and searched and equipment was seized.

My connection to this is that I’m part of DC Students for a Democratic Society, which is part of the national Students for a Democratic Society organization. We’ve become known for an event called Funk theWar, which is a Reclaim the Streets style event–we like to call it a Militant Mobile Disco, and we’ve been called “suburban terrorists” by a couple of right-wing writers, which is offensive as we all live in DC. A good chunk of people in my chapter and a lot of people in SDS went to the DNC and are also going to the RNC protests.

I have to note though that this hasn’t stopped with the end of the DNC. In the Twin Cities, where the RNC is taking place, there was a massive raid on a convergence space with all inside (several hundred) detained in handcuffs (including a four-year-old) for hours simultaneous to a raid of three private homes around the area and then a raid on the base of I-Witness Video, a documentary outfit that specializes in recording incidents of police brutality and proved instrumental in getting people’s charges dropped after the 2004 RNC. The police called the whole thing a “criminal enterprise” and a handful of individuals have been charged with “conspiracy to riot”, but no evidence has actually been found as far as anyone can tell.

I’m gonna cut this short because I’m going on a bit, but I think one really important thing comes out of this and this is really what I feel like you’d be interested in: What the police are doing here isn’t stopping the demonstrations. They’re getting us to change the frame of discussion. Since these raids started, we’ve all switched from talking about the war, about capitalism, about the system, and about what we want in place of all this. We’re now talking about police brutality and we’re all getting a certain amount of titillation out of that. But it effectively completely sidelines why my friends are out there on the streets and why they’re willing to risk being beaten and arrested. Police action against doesn’t just shut down our march or cast a chill over organization activity–-it helps us forget why we’re fighting and that scares me more than anything else. I saw the same thing happen to the anti-globalization movement after 9/11 hit and I hope we’re strong enough this time around to inoculate ourselves against this sort of attack.

The last paragraph strikes me as off the mark a bit. The police action may "sideline" why the protesters choose to on the streets, but it actually illustrates all too well why more of us should be on the streets. Police violence is not a distraction. It is, in fact, the very embodiment of that against which the protesters fight. Here is exemplified the violence that sustains and perpetuates the status quo; when its ever-present gestures of defense are betrayed as aggression and projection of power at all costs. We are distracted most when it is ignored.

Four Increasingly Esoteric Thoughts About Politics

§ 1: Picking Sarah Palin strikes me as a very poor decision. A lot of people are calling it savvy (a PR term for "cynical"), but I think that given a little time it will prove very clumsy. Of course, Obama & co. have to tread gingerly when they assail her lack of experience, but this doesn't mean they can't exploit it. As a presidential candidate, Obama has plenty of chances to convince people that he is ready -- he will either do so or he won't. Palin doesn't really have that luxury. Not only will she not get the same amount of media coverage to make her case, having to make the case at all unavoidably reminds people why it is an issue in the first place ... because McCain is older than the dirt that makes up more dirt. Does he seriously want his age & health to be in the back of people's mind, especially as they watch videos of Obama playing hoops and lifting weights? (Maybe if McCain's captors in Vietnam had served more arugula he'd look more lively and vivacious.) Of course, what do I know, Palin may well poach scores of female Democratic & independents voters who (a) are vehemently opposed to abortion (even in instances of rape & incest), (b) are against gay marriage (& health benefits for the domestic partners in same-sex couples), (c) don't care about getting equal pay as a man (unless, that is, she is determined to convince McCain otherwise on this), (d) hate polar bears, and (e) think that human activity has nothing to do with climate change. Oh, and how can I forget, independent women who, like Palin, thought Bush was too moderate and supported super-isolationist Pat Buchanan during the 2000 general election. Barring that, at least she'll be the Far Right's seasonal pin-up girl. Welcome to your base, Senator McCain.

§ 2: After watching Obama's speech last night, I really have a hard time seeing him lose the election. While I've not drank the Kool-Aid on him, and still support him for naively Leftist reasons, I simply cannot envision a defeated Obama. (Note: In the event of a McCain victory, it's so much that I'd be disappointed -- I'm far beyond that at this point. Simply speechless.) He is successfully speaking to the country's better angels, and this might be one of the few times in recent history that the country is open to that. Maybe this is due in part to the crises of climate change and economic decay, to the dread that we are most threatened by those things we cannot help but create. While I don't necessarily put a lot of hope in Obama & co. leading the way on adequately addressing these issues, I do think there is a certain power in a promise believed -- even when that promise is a half-truth (at best). Obama's claims of being post-partisan should be believed, I say, if only because doing so, against Obama's intentions surely, creates a kind of hyper-partisanship, which in effect opens the way to a kind of revolution in the way we as a people set priorities and/or cast our attention.

§ 3: When a lot of people read something like that last sentence, they instinctively and dismissively think I'm describing a utopia, and point out that what I'm arguing for leads to gulags and mass executions. And I say, yes, it can and has. The better angels of our nature rarely win out for too long. But we appeal to them not because they are safe, but because the failure to do so causes us to forget and/or repress the revolutionary kernel of our being: the possibility of creating ourselves as something different. The betrayal of the Other in ourselves, e.g., the rejection without question or pause of a new set of possibilities that do not map out onto the contours of our country's prized pragmatism, is perhaps more destructive than even our persecution of the Other "out there" -- the one(s) we believe threatens us. The latter is deadly, but (typically realized in retrospect) impotent and pathetic. How can one faithfully identify foreign threats when one is not willing to identify the fundamental threat one poses to oneself? Who should trust such a person?

§ 4: We Westerners are a depraved people, for whom our politics are well-suited. This is why many of us say we're more interested in the strategy than the policy, and why one can watch 24-7 cable news coverage of politics and never hear a discussion of what a policy actually means (only how it sells!). But if the religions across the world teach us anything of value it is that redemption or enlightenment emerge only from the depths of our depravity. Would that this be true, and for a moment our depravity got us somewhere productive.

"A Necessary Political Decision"?

It's a very intriguing question as to whether Clinton is at all tempted to tweak Obama's nose and come out guns a'blazin' against the pretty atrocious FISA Compromise he supports. I doubt most people give a crap about FISA, but hardcore Democrats do, and it is certainly a chance to throw out to them a token "I told you so." If she could be instrumental in shooting it down, as doubtful as that is, she would not only be able to illustrate the hollowness of Obama's control over the party, but do so in such a way that he couldn't really cry foul without alienating his supporters (most of whom now are rationalizing the decision as "a necessary political decision," "the smart political move," etc.). Of course, this is a moot point if Clinton supports the compromise. But I honestly don't see any reason she'd feel inclined to do so, unless she is particularly convinced of its necessity.

A Theology Post!?!

Lately I've been revising an essay of mine that addresses the differences between “righteousness” and “justice.” For most readers of Paul, the difference would appear mostly cosmetic. I've latched onto a contemporary analogy, though, that I think might be helpful in showing a distinction at issue that makes a significant difference.

Consider one of the most important economic issues facing the globalized economy today, debt. In the event of a crisis, whereby there is a person or a country whose credit is overextended, the normal response is to tweak the existing structure that imposes and enforces repayment, normally through some kind of legal reform or economic refinancing. The upshot is a realignment of one’s position with respect to the existing economic and legal structure, but not a complete reassessment of its legitimacy. This is generally comparable to how most traditional conceptions of righteousness is understood to work in, say, The Epistle to the Romans. If we were to extend the analogy, justice would then correspond to wholesale, worldwide debt forgiveness. The results of debt forgiveness are, in terms of the existing structures of political economy, unthinkable (and, inasmuch as the results are thought at all, with the probable collapse of present markets, economies and currencies, even horrific). Which is to say, because debt forgiveness and justice cannot in any way be made to square with the existing legal and economic order, neither can the results of their occurrence be fully anticipated or evaluated. This seems really striking to me, and ultimately very significant for a conception of theology that actually informs one's political disposition.

An Election Rant

Congratulations, California voters! Your retrograde, wistful memories of the 90s, those heady days of a boom economy that sought nothing short of sucking the world's resources dry, welfare cuts, and NAFTA has in all likelihood subjected us to a four or five month contest over whose dick is bigger, Hillary Clinton's or John McCain's. Good times. Let's at least hope that she'll be so busy proving to everybody she's as ready to blow up Iran or Syria as she is to pull troops out of Iraq that she won't have time to spontaneously cry on cue.

Seriously. This country's collective imagination is appalingly dim. Assuming Hillary wins the general election, America is seriously okay with two families churning out four presidents -- in less than a twenty-five year span? And don't give me any crap about Hillary representing sound ideas. She's winning elections because she's a Clinton, plain and simple. Clinton supporters love to give Obama supporters a hard time for the flimsy content of their candidate, and this criticism is fair; but, at least Obama's devotion is based on an infectious personality, not nostalgia. The difference is that Obama is selling himself, or some vision of himself as a community organizer, along with some vague, liberal messianic vision, and Clinton is selling a return to rearguard politics, where Democrats gleefully win their few petty victories, protect abortion with a Supreme Court appointment, etc. Me, I'll take the vague messianism ... because, as seen with Reagan, if people buy into it, it gains a force of its own, and it takes on a life of its own, and it motivates a foundational shift in our conception of politics that I think is necessary.

Now, I'm not saying Obama represents my ideals, nor do I care even to call him "progressive," as I only care about progress to the extent that it actively constructs a future -- not the moving toward a utopic end. His cries of "unity" and such are stirring rhetoric, but it must not be the ultimate purpose. More preferable is the unity of an ecosystem, with its separate parts & species, living and non-living, working together -- and not always in apparent harmony. But an active ecosystem is not one that simply survives; indeed, there may be no such thing. An active ecosystem is built on nothing less than creativity.

I support Obama, and indeed voted for him today, only because I think he is the only remaining candidate capable of constructing a space for a community from whom something genuinely creative might take place beyond (and, perhaps, in spite of) his presidency. Hillary's appeal is to her success, much of it nothing of consequence, as a hard-knuckle liberal who will go toe-to-toe with the dreaded conservatives. It has been fun, but time is running out on this cynical charade that is American politics. I don't realistically see it lasting in its present spectator-sport form another fifty years, and really see nothing to gain in the long-term from the battles. The whole experiment around which it is based, quite literally, is running out of gas.

My hope for a Obama presidency extends beyond what bi-partisan legislation he can ram through on health care. His policies, in all likelihood, would be nothing to write home about. The idea, though, is that all movements have a spark; and they all have a figure around which they initially rally or relate, even if often for no reason that can be rationally argued. In Obama, and at this point, only Obama, do I see a president that maybe, one can but dream, whose personality ignites a desire to re-learn how to build and participate in communities; and, relatedly, to re-train ourselves how to think beyond the material constraints of our resources and environment (these limits will become increasingly obvious, possibly even as early as the first term of the next presidency -- and they represent a reality that, I fear, both McCain and Hillary would rage against militarily); and, in spite of himself, a re-dedication by these communities to re-take & re-vitalize politics as a creative struggle that unites professed Democrats & Republicans only by virtue of extending the horizon of possibility beyond what either have to offer.

Maybe this means Obama, if he somehow won, would have ultimately to sacrifice himself as a politician -- i.e., for his followers to betray him, by believing in him. Maybe so. But, I'm okay with that.

Sir Charles

I've been a fan of Charles Barkley ever since he actually made Auburn's basketball team fun to watch back in the early '80s. Even as a nine-year-old I could appreciate the sheer athleticism of somebody so fat -- at one in his college basketball career was weighing 300 lbs, all carried in a 6'4 frame. He, of course, went on to become one of the greatest NBA players of all time. And, in all likelihood, one of the most entertaining.

Fortunately, Barkley has not become an embarassing shell of his entertaining self like Michael Jordan. TNT was very wise to pony up the big bucks to land him on their Inside the NBA studio show, and it is consistently one of the most fun things to watch on tv. I suspect that even non-basketball fans might enjoy it, if only because it's so rare to see people on a live set actually seem to enjoy one another's company and have a good time talking.

For those who do not know him very well, Barkley is the consummate court jester. He is, though, also pretty insightful, as this interview proves. Much of it can be ignored, but he does hit on something in crystal-clear, "blue-collar" language what I think is the fundamental truth about the world today (not just America):

So is that what interests you primarily--economic issues?

America is divided by economics strictly. You know, people always talk about race, and we have racial problems in this country. Of course we do. But the real issue is the rich against the poor. We've got to get poor white people and poor black people and Mexicans [sic] to realize they are all in the same boat. If you in one of those three groups and you are poor, you are going to be in a bad neighborhood, you are going to go to a bad school, and you are going to have strikes against you. You can't commit crimes in good neighborhoods. They will get your ass. Their kids go to private school, or they go to school in a good economic area. But the poor people, they are all in the same boat but they divide you based on race or stuff like that. A lot of these politicians say things like "We've got to stop all these illegal immigrants." I am like, "That is so easy to stop." They are not working for other immigrants.

Has your perspective on these issues changed in the last few years?

Yes, when I realized that rich people will always be rich and the poor people are like crabs in a barrel. They are going to fight with each other, but they are really in the same boat. They want you to argue about gay marriage. They want you to argue about the war in Iraq.

Well said.

The Story Told Differently

First off, I realize this post might come off as odd. For starters, it is an actual post. Who would've thought it was still possible for me to post twice in one day? More importantly, though, I think it may surprise a few people.

I've long heard, and probably even said once or twice, the maxim that goes something like "if only we told the story differently . . . " E.g., "If only we Democrats could frame the issues better, use positive language, etc. we might win more elections"; or, as I'm sure some of the readers of this blog have wondered or said aloud, "If only Christians weren't such distended assholes, the faith always be treated like bullshit nobody (not even the faithful) really believes." There is, of course, an obvious logic to this kind of thinking. Without it, where would all our marketing gurus be today? But logic only ever goes so far for me. I can't help but wonder: is it possible for an actually existing (versus hypothetical) faith to finally and fully override and overrule either (a) what one would like their faith to be, or (b) what one would like to think this faith used to be?

That is to say, what would it mean for the truest manifestations of the faith (be it religious or political) to be boiled down to the simple formula: "the story told differently"? What if this manifestation of the faith is, for lack of a better word, a singularity; or, to be more "prophetic," miraculous? Is it still possible, in this apparently post-liberal age, to use the same language and forms of a faith (e.g., the Bible, the sacraments, the liturgy, etc.), but for this use of language & form to be recontextualized? What I'm talking about is not a return to liberalism -- for instance, the transformation of the traditional gospel of orthodoxy to the social gospel of Enlightenment values, and thus of traditional concepts of redemption and judgment to the terms of social justice (although I'm not opposed in principle to this transformation). Rather, what I'm wondering about is the relationship of speaking and living the faith & truth: is it still possible to speak of the faith in such a way that the opposition between "story told well" and the "story told badly" makes no sense? Why? Because the story told truthfully is in-built with an intensity that makes it impossible to "frame" (and thus to circumscribe) but also impossible to silence -- i.e., that speaks itself in truth simultaneously in spite of & because of its particular context/language/form.

Which is to say, in short, what if there are no "better" stories, or "better" versions (and thus more compelling versions) of the truth? Only stories/versions that perpetually call forth the truth that is worth listening to and speaking -- the story told differently, that truth which effectively destroys it form, perhaps on a Cross, and thus all one expects and knows of it, perhaps like a god, in order that it might be reimagined into something neither qualitatively "better" or "worse," as this assumes some standard by which we judge it; but rather & simply something worth being listened to and spoken yet again, a listening & speaking in faith that is, finally, the only true act: that of creation.

A Common Sense Shit Post

I know most people regard me as a die-hard partisan Democrat, though I'm not, and that I'll say and do anything to make a Republican seem dirty, which I will, but it is reporting like this that should put to rest the attempts of so many to paint the Jack Abramoff scandal as one shared by both Democrats and Republicans.

It goes without saying that career politicians of all stripes are almost certainly dirty individuals, in some respect anyway, and that there should be reforms; but it doesn't stand to reason that this scandal needs to be equally laid at the feet of both parties in order for that to happen.

Maybe We're Not So Different After All

I obviously spend a lot of time frustrated at my country's undyingly fundamentalist fervor -- be it fully fleshed out in something ostensibly noble like 'justice', or something ostensibly wrong like 'revenge' -- for, in short, a messianic return. We all want a return on our investments, so why not go for the biggest return of all, the promise of which prompts the investment, cynical or pious, of many a president and professional politician.

Which brings me to Scott Peterson's excellent two-part article in The Christian Science Monitor on the appropriation of religious language, especially that of rapture and eschatological fulfillment, in the political saga currently unfolding in Iran. (part one // part two).

It's nice to think that all that divides us is the name of that tyrannical religious excuse for demagoguery.

Checking In

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I last posted. I've been bad before, but surely never this bad. And this after a torrent of comments related to my, shall we say, strong opinions about The Chronicles of Narnia.

There is something about life in Belgium, especially when you're not in the city, that causes days to race by without you even noticing. Mind you, I'm not isolated. I have super-fast internet, a variety of BBC channels, and an assortment of Flemish and French documentaries that I can sometimes vaguely follow. So, I know what's happening in the world.

I know, for instance, that the US Senate is on the verge of likely confirming a Justice with a conception of 'executive' power disturbingly similar to that of the US President, and that all right-thinking people should by very very concerned. A move to Belgium, in fact, should not be ruled out.

I know that West Virginia mine officials, the private corporations that failed to heed governmental warnings and governmental agencies that failed to enforce said warnings, have little to no interest in the lives of the workers who keep them in power.

I know that I'm a little sad that Tom DeLay will no longer pursue leadership of the House -- but am also a little delighted that in the span of a few years the head Republicans of both the Senate and the House have had to resign their positions in disgrace.

I know that I'm very depressed at the prospect that none of this will matter on Election Day in November.

I know, moving to lighter stuff, that last night the New England Patriots took one more step toward playing the Indianapolis Colts in the playoffs. ('nuff said) And that the Bengals will likely lose today against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I know that my viva is less than two weeks away and all bravado has slipped away.

I know that this was a very haphardously random blog post.

I know that I'm going to try to be a better blogger the rest of my trip abroad.