The War On Terror

On this blog, and on my previous one, I've stated more than once that I think (although I didn't put it exactly this way) the central front in the "war on terror" is in the hands of law enforcement. In saying it, I also noted that John Kerry, when he ran in 2004, was laughed off the stage by the wingnuts when he said as much. From which, based on how often those voices have been wrong on pretty much everything including war, economics, and terrorism (as well as science, religion, energy, climate...), one might have instantly concluded that Kerry was absolutely right. Which he was, of course. Another blogger reinforces the concept.

I wonder how long the boys in the back room worked on the title. War on Terror. Given their affinity for style over substance, they must have taken a while to get it right. If your aim is to mandate unending war powers to a president while getting the populace to fall into line, you surely don't want a closed-ended moniker. We gotta give the guy permanent license, after all. Even "terrorism" could, conceivably, have an end-point. But terror -- TERROR!! -- who could argue that'll ever go away?

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the "war" (as opposed to the "wars") in the Obama administration. Even Donald Rumsfeld, at one time anyway, seemed a little uncomfortable with the name; so did others on the inside. I think it might take a while before Obama feels able to call it like it is. After a campaign in which he was cast as an America-hating, terrorist-loving, closet Muslim, for him immediately to point out the real nature of the response to terrorist threats would be to invite craziness from the right. But at some point one would hope it'll happen. For at least two reasons.

If we're engaged in a War on Terror, we'll never stop being a "nation at war." Which has been the engine for the Bush/Cheney takeover of government in which Congress, and the rest of us for that matter, have been complicit. ("I'm a war president.") And it's been a central justification for deficit spending way before Wall Street went South. We need to get real. When (if!!) we're able either to disengage or change the missions in Iraq and Afganistan, it'll need to be clearly stated: we'll always have to make significant efforts to protect ourselves from terrorism, but it'll not be primarily a military effort: not with invading armies, anyway.

Which gets to the meat of it: when (if?) the economy gets back on track, it'll be time to attend to gargantuan budget deficits. Nothing ought to be off that celebrated table. Angst ought to be engendered from both ends of the spectrum. Entitlements. And, for the right wing, military spending. This War on Terror, as ginned up and executed by Cheney/Bush, has been nearly the financial death of us. I hope Barack Obama will be able to address military spending; to do so, he'll have to make the case and convince the electorate what is and is not sensible in making ourselves safe. No military economist, I; but I'd say there are billions and billions to be saved.

[Update: The NYT weighs in.]

PTSD

I'm so far from expert on the subject that I probably ought not bring it up. But I read this article this morning, about a four-star general revealing his psychological difficulties on returning home from Iraq (to a base right down the road from here). Despite increased awareness of the problem, it's my impression that there remains, in the military, denial at best and denigration at worst, aimed at those who suffer combat stress. So I admire the guy for putting it out there. As far as I know, he's the first flag officer to do so.

I'm certain there's a broad spectrum, and the extremity of one's experience must be the biggest factor; but there's preparation, support, and maybe internal mechanisms for coping, all of which affect the ultimate outcome. That there should be residual mental effects of spending time at war ought not to be surprising. In fact, I'd say it ought to be assumed in all cases. We ask people -- especially the young and less-than-fully educated -- for a year or so to abandon civilization, to learn to kill, to accept "collateral" casualties, to live in constant touch with death and the possibility of death; and then we expect them to return home and resume normality like putting on a pair of pants.

In Vietnam, I had it relatively good. I never held a rifle (when I flew, I had a pistol in my survival vest, along with a silk cloth printed in several languages with a guarantee of reward in return for help, and a rubber-sheathed hacksaw, suitable for hiding where the sun don't shine), always slept in a bed, ate warm food. Dubbed -- for cause -- "Rocket City", Da Nang Air Base was a constant target of rocket attacks. They rained in more nights than not, and sometimes during daytime. I lived in "Gunfighter Village," home of all the pilots, right alongside the flight line, which was a prime target. On the other hand, the rockets were aimed mostly by leaning them onto a tripod of dirt and crossed bamboo and fired off in our general direction. (Symbolic of the insanity of the whole war, the rockets were often set up in "friendly villages," which, by definition, meant GIs couldn't do anything to take them down without permission from the village chief, who'd be killed if he gave it. In the daily security briefings we officers received, we'd be told where they were coming from and how many to expect.)

In they came, regularly. Far enough away, the sound was a whump, often associated with a physical (real, or imagined?) sensation in the torso, as if from a subwoofer at a rock concert. They'd come in groups, "walking" closer, and as they did, the thump would evolve into a crash.

It was a big base. The odds for a given individual were pretty good, and that was consoling. My number came uppish once, when my barracks was hit. With only minimal injuries, I tended to others -- one with part of his shoulder blown away, into the hole of which I stuffed a tee shirt -- before getting attention myself. Being the only doc living out there with the pilots -- the others were together in the "medical hootch," a jeep or ambulance ride away -- it fell on me with every attack to don a helmet and a flack vest and run to the clinic while Cobra helicopters thwacked the air overhead and fired their gatling guns into the jungle at 6- or 700 rounds per minute, tracers lighting the night. Trotting awkwardly, trying to be low to the ground, it was too surreal to be entirely scary. I never could quite believe it was me.

Here's my point: as comfortable as my circumstances were, as different from the experience of the guys out there in the jungle, sleeping in muck, killing and being killed, it had an effect on me. I still hate the sound of helicopters; every time I hear a military jet (a Navy air base is not far from here) it reminds me of the ambient sounds of Da Nang. As does a certain kind of siren, sounding like the rocket warnings we'd hear a few seconds before the first one hit. In my case, that's about it: no nightmares, no (increase in my usual) depression, no difficulty returning to normal life when I got home. Just an occasional memory, triggered by particularly disliked sounds.

But neither was it entirely negligible. In me: educated, self-aware, well-supported, minimally exposed.

Money is tight, and will be tighter. I'd hope Barack Obama has the guts to take on military spending (Item one: the missile defense shield! Then maybe a few overseas bases). But one thing that must not be cut -- in fact ought to receive more money -- is care of vets coming home. This other report from today's news shows how, for the outgoing administration, "support our troops" has been a load of horse shit.

Poor Joe

No, I don't mean this guy. I'm thinking about poor Joe Biden. As I watched the rollout of the Obama economic team, whereas I think they all must have wondered why they had to be standing there mute, Biden seemed particularly forlorn. Maybe I was projecting.

The President-elect did begin his announcement by saying "Vice-President-elect Biden and I are proud to introduce..." But I found myself feeling sorry for ol' Joe, and wondering what he was thinking. Second fiddle? Is he regretting signing on? Now that it seems Hillary will be Secretary of State, Joe might be seeing his potential foreign policy input frittering away, and the economy was never his bag. On the other hand, there's clearly so much that needs doing, I figure -- hoping, at least -- that he has worked out a clear role in advance, more than just the promised once a week meeting.

I've always liked him. A bloviator, a sticker-of-foot in mouth: still, I find his Joeness awkwardly charming and -- to the extent that any politician is -- a straight talker. Smart, and knowledgable; a rare combination of taking himself very seriously and not seriously at all.

So I hope he's okay. [Update: here's an article on the very subject, appearing in the NYT Online, after I posted this.]

And while we're on the subject of the economic team, I couldn't help thinking about all the election rhetoric claiming how extreme Obama is, the most liberal, a Marxist; inexperienced, not ready to lead... Yet there he was, assembling a team of highly qualified, experienced, respected, non-ideological pragmatists. Taking charge, confident, serious. For one thing, I felt vindicated, having argued here -- and with certain skeptical friends -- that he'd be much more solutions-oriented than blindly "liberal." How refreshing. How reassuring. How needed, how recently missing.

But I recall eight years ago: the "MBA presidency." "The adults are back in charge." And look where that took us. On the other hand, at that time it was mostly Bush and his acolytes saying that stuff. Now, it seems to be everyone.

Boggled

I saw the guy behind this ad on a news show this morning. Key (paraphrased) quote: We need people to oppose the anti-American policies of Barack Obama. And thanks to Sarah for "representing" us real people.

I'm of two minds. The nomination and subsequent lionization of Sarah Palin by many on the right says nothing but depressing things about the nature of a broad swath of American politics. Atmospherics over ability. Connection based on, well, connection.

On the other hand, much as I think (in theory) that as a nation we're better off with an opposition party of quality, if Sarah Palin really is the preferred candidate of the right wing -- whom I find highly repugnant in their theocratic tendencies, for their permanent campaign based on divisiveness and negativity and demonization and extremism -- I say to them, "Go for it!!" Enjoy your life in the shadows.

Together?

If it's reasonable to draw any conclusions about the meaning of electing Barack Obama, the central one might be that enough people said "enough!" Time to get to work; time to focus on issues rather than politics. That's what I had in mind, anyway.

So the question is, will congressional Republicans rise to the occasion? Will enough of them work with Democrats -- and will Democrats include them -- to the extent that party can be put aside while we work our way out of the many messes in which we find ourselves? Signals from the right are at best, mixed.

Regarding that last link: it's my impression that for mangy Mitch, obstruction has become his mantra. For its own sake. Nor has it faded from my memory -- as it seems to have from his -- that in the first years of the Bush administration (the very term puts the "moron" in "oxymoron"), when Republicans controlled the ball, they made a point of NOT including Democrats in any significant way. And, oh yeah, the Republicans -- who filibustered legislation in the last two years more than any group in any congress in history -- screamed bloody murder back then whenever the Dems threatened or used the filibuster.

To be a politician, you have to have the ability to say a thing and later say the opposite, not only without hesitation but without the least sense of irony. It defines the subspecies.

Time will tell. I do think Obama continues to signal a desire to include everyone; and it's already clear, by way of appointments so far, that he intends to surround himself with brilliant people who are not ideologues. I wonder how long it will be -- if it ever even happens -- before those who characterized him as the "most liberal Senator," a Marxist/socialist/terrorist/Muslim/America-hater will notice? Might be a while.

Even so, I'm cautiously optimistic. Results will speak for themselves. And it will be a survival test for the crazy-talk wing of the right wing: if no crisis is too great; if there is no national need that could ever justify putting aside reactionary rhetoric, then a successful Obama administration might -- as a welcome side-effect -- put their brand of idiocy out of business. And, given the numbers, it'll only require a couple of decent conservatives to make it happen.

Rooskies

Having studied it for several years, there was a time when I was a pretty good speaker of the Russian language. Better, in fact, than a number of high school teachers of it who were fellow participants in a language study tour of the Soviet Union during the summer of 1963. (If I may be self-indulgent for a moment -- what, a blogger? -- I'd add that I was complemented frequently, while there, on the authenticity of my accent, about which I took a modicum of pride, большое спасибо.) But that's not my point.

Even as a naive college sophomore, international politics-wise, it was apparent to me that the Soviet system was built on sand. Housed in huge and ugly buildings, squeezed into small apartments furnished sparsely and with modest and poorly-functioning appliances, citizens wore drab clothes, stood in pulsing crowds forming chaotic lines to purchase goods (worse: you first worked your way to a display to decide what you wanted and learn its price, then fought another crushing crowd to pay and get a receipt, then back to fighting your way to get the product with your ticket...), and worked in deteriorating and inefficient factories. What kept them going, what facilitated their acceptance of their lot, was everywhere: the government-promoted fear and hatred of America. Posters, slogans, billboards, singing it loud. There's nothing like an omnipresent enemy to let a government do what it wants, and have the people toe the line.

I mention this because of an column in today's New York Times, by which it seems we're back to square one:

[At] "a Halloween-themed rally in front of the American Embassy in Moscow...nearly 20,000 young people held pumpkins marked with the names of “America’s victims,” among them the casualties in South Ossetia. In an amateur film shown at the rally, an actor portraying a drunken George W. Bush bragged that the United States had engineered both world wars and the rise of Hitler to expand its power....

...In the post-Soviet era, many Russians are angry because their country has neither the stature nor the living standards that they believe it deserves.... As frustrations mount, it is often easier to blame an external force than the country’s own failings. It doesn’t help that the 1990s, when pro-Western attitudes were at their peak, are remembered as a time of poverty and insecurity. The result is an inferiority complex toward the West and, in particular, the United States, as the pre-eminent Western power and cold war rival. This widespread sentiment combines admiration, envy, grievance, resentment, and craving for respect and acceptance as an equal. Most Russians viewed the recent conflict in Georgia as a victory over the Americans — a matter less of strategic self-interest than of psychological self-assertion..."


I think it bodes ill.

And it can't help but make me wonder about our own sandy structures: two hot wars plus another (the one "on terror") wrapped tightly in the language of fear; the pillaging of the people in the name of promoting plutocrats; the abrogation of the Constitution; etc, ad nauseum...

When George Bush, after the failures of the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, trotted out George Tenant, Tommy Franks, and Paul Bremer, and hung Presidential Medals of Freedom around their necks, it reminded me of nothing so much as the ceremonies on the Kremlin wall, where Khrushchev or Brezhnev did the same to aging generals after the failure of another five-year plan.

On Religion (Three)

It's neither my expectation nor intent to change minds. But since some things simply make no sense to me, I feel like saying why. If it were possible, at minimum, to encourage a person or two who didn't already, to recognize the right of people to believe differently and, therefore, to pull pack a click from trying to politicize their beliefs, I'd be more than happy. Not counting on it.

Today's topic: miracles.

For all I know each religion has its own clear definition. Mine is an event that indicates the hand of god, or gods, at work: something the occurrence of which can't be explained except as such. Which, if I understand omniscience and omnipotence and perfection, ought to include everything, all the time.

When you think about it, that there can be no middle ground: If God is all knowing and all powerful, either he is in control of every single thing that occurs, everywhere, to everyone, or he's checked out entirely and no longer has his finger in the pie. Theologicians, ministers, believers can argue but there's no logical basis for concluding otherwise. In the universe of an omniperfect god, we're marionettes with minimal if any free will, or we're entirely on our own. To believe in miracles as an extraordinary event -- and in the power of prayer, for that matter -- you must reject the idea of a perfect god who is omniscient and omnipotent.

School bus drives off a cliff, carrying eighty kids. One lives. It's a miracle, say his parents, the press, and everyone who hears the story. God was watching over him. A woman is diagnosed with incurable cancer, "given" (as a doctor I always hated that term/concept) six months to live. Five years later, she's still alive. Miraculous.

But think about it: how can you call the survival of that child an act of god, without also saying the death of the seventy-nine was god's idea as well? If he chose to save the one, mustn't he also -- in his perfection -- have chosen to kill the others? Because, after all, he could have saved them; or what the heck -- not pushed the bus off the cliff in the first place.

We can't know the mind of God, people will say. He has his reasons; a plan for us all. Okay, fine. But since we know he arranged the death of the seventy-nine, and since we consider miracles an event that shows the hand of God, why don't we rejoice over the dead ones, and call them a miracle as well? Or is it that since we know God is at work in all these things, the miracle is when he does something nice? What does that say?

God is at work, or he isn't. If he chooses to (fill in the blank) and if he has (by accepted doctrine) the power and knowledge to do it, then when (fill in the blank) doesn't happen, it's also his choice. Right? How can it be otherwise? Unless sometimes he's not paying attention. In which case he's not perfect; certainly not omniattentive. Oops, he says. Didn't see that cliff. Well, there's still time to grab the one kid...

The death of the other kids is no less the work of God -- no less a miracle, therefore -- than the saving of the one. There are no miracles, or everything is a miracle, which sort of dilutes the significance. If God can choose to intervene sometimes, then he's also choosing NOT to intervene in the others, unless he's not fully engaged. But by the doctrine of perfection, power, knowledge, he must be. So there it is: he's doing it all, or he's doing nothing. Made us, intelligently designed us, then left us completely alone, like a terrarium in a sixth-grade science project, to see what would happen. Stayed overnight at a friend's house.

.

Exit Strategy

Several years ago, a friend's house was robbed. In addition to stealing precious things and trashing much of what was left behind, the thief took the time to defecate on her bed before he left.

For some reason I've been thinking about that a lot, lately.

Update: and there's this.

On Religion (Two)

Like most kids, I had a religious upbringing, albeit in a family of generationally diminishing fervor. Great grandparents were founders of temples, rabbis; grandparents lit the Sabbath candles more often than not, insisted on Holy Day get-togethers, trips to the Temple, and following the proper rituals. Once in a while my mom tried valiantly and mostly in vain to get us to services on Friday nights; my dad had an abiding dislike of all men of the cloth except for the priest (later Bishop, then Archbishop) who presided over the University of Portland. I attended Sunday School until I graduated high school, took a certain amount of pride in my heritage, went through the usual adolescent period of religiosity, even imagining what it would be like to give moving and soul-expanding sermons to my future flock. At about age fourteen, I received a scholarship to a religious camp in California, where I had what some might describe as an experience of the divine, one evening in the woods, away from the bonfire, with a girl from Piedmont...

But that's another story.

I have a clear recollection -- clear enough almost to be able to re-conjure the feeling -- of asking my mom about death, probably around age six or eight. "Will I die," I asked. Her affirmative answer included nothing about afterlife, no heaven: Jews are pretty silent on that subject, especially we of the Reform variety. I recall feeling the numbing and transfixing coldness of terror, deep and abiding, palpably physical. It was the foreverness of it, the infinitude: less the idea of death itself but that there was no end to it, I'd be dead always and evermore, millions of billions of years. That feeling has stayed with me, lessened with time by the realization that it must be like it was for the infinity in the other direction, before I was born. And that seems to have been all right.

In that moment, whether I fully apprehended it or not, was the existential engine of belief: even a little boy could feel the terrifying certainty of death and the panic it engenders. That's an (if not the) essence of us: before there is belief, there is dread. Enough to drive us to the certainty and peacefulness of ignorance, in the "ignoring" sense of the word. The need is too great to resist.

And yet, I do; and I can only wonder what it is that separates those that do from those that don't. It's not intelligence or even inquisitiveness. Is one, or the other, more evolved? Is one, or the other, more felicitous for the future of man? I don't know, and I won't live to find out.

At some point it just stopped making sense.

I guess belief, by definition, isn't supposed to make sense. I'm okay with fantasy books and movies, but there has to be internal consistency. In my single-digit youth, Saturday morning serials pissed me off when the next episode showed King of the Rocket Men free of his impossible predicament without ever explaining how it happened. I like good science fiction that creates improbable worlds with imaginative rules that make a sort of sense of their own and that plays within them. And so I think it should be with belief: even if unrooted from reality, it ought to follow a sort of esoteric logic. I can't -- nobody really can, convincingly -- reconcile an omniscient, omnipotent god who has a plan for us, loves us, with what we see around us every day. Or with free will. Or miracles. Or the power of prayer. Or, for that matter, with the idea of eternal reward and eternal punishment. It takes theologians to do that, which is to say people willing to suspend reason and call it scholarship.

That's why I said, in post one on this subject, "The fact that I'm no theological expert makes my thoughts particularly worthy, because since there's no true religion, there can be no true experts. The world needs a little input from that perspective." There's much to say, lots of fascinating subjects; in the name of brevity, let's start with the biggest -- and easiest -- one: who created God?

Contemplating the Universe, one has to accept the idea of existence without creation. Either of stuff, or of God. Or gods. People look at the complexity of our world, of life, of nephrons and nucleotides and say it can't just have happened: such intricacy implies a creator. And yet what could be more complex than that creator: a tinkerer with tryptophane, a meddler with mitochondria? It's a lot easier, for me anyway, to accept the primordial existence of atoms and rocks than of a big guy with jewelers' forceps and loupes. Who sat around for an infinite number of eons with nothing to do until twelve-thousand (or is it six-?) years ago, when it occurred to him to create something.

So that's the first thing: if you can get your mind around the idea of the most complex, powerful, brilliant and perfect being imaginable existing forever with no creator, why not protons and electrons? If neither is explainable, isn't the latter a hell of a lot simpler? More sensible, even? Occam's razor.

Given a little more time, I intend to spout off on those other issues, too.

.

Change

Because the first of his appointments include several from the Clinton era, Barack Obama is being criticized by some as reneging on his "change" agenda. I disagree.

Emanuel, Podesta, Craig, Holder, maybe Hillary. Several others. As far as I know, these are strong and capable people. What it says to me is that he wants people in place who have been there; that he wants to avoid having to bring staff up to speed, wants to get off to a running start. It's less about where they've been than it is about what they will do. And whereas that remains to be seen, I find no reason to think it will be business as usual. I'm glad he's not starting with neophytes. I'm happy to see some old hands, experienced in dealing with Congress, knowing their way around the White House. I draw no premature conclusions about policy and productivity, other than to see evidence of seriousness of purpose.

One would predict, based on what he's said many times, that there will be great changes in how business is done: there will be inclusiveness, thoughtfulness, carefulness, openness, non-ideological. That's the kind of change he promised and which we expect. And until we have a look at these people in action in an Obama administration, claims to the contrary are premature, and silly.

On Religion (One)

Why is it that, if we humans need to believe in deities, we also need to be told what to believe? What connects the internal, the personal need, to the external, the -- for lack of a better term -- social need? The mob mentality. If that connection could be severed, I might feel better about all the religion that's out there.

People -- reportedly created by a perfect god -- are shockingly imperfect. Speaking physically, it couldn't be more obvious: cancer, arthritis, birth defects, halitosis. Morally: hateful, vengeful, selfish, dishonest. Psychically: fearful, wildly varying in intelligence, weak-willed, needy, easily deceived, quickly roused to mob rule. With all our failings, compounded by enough self-awareness to be scared stiff of death and dying, it's not hard to understand the comforting role played by confidence that there's a greater meaning, an end beyond the end. And yet what's out there is the grandest of breakfast buffets: take your choice, fill your plate, come back for seconds if the first didn't fill you up. There's something about it that puts the lie to itself. If scrambled eggs were the perfect meal, there'd be no need for the pastry table.

So here we are: a species in need of solace. And it's obvious that there's not a single source of it; in fact, there are so many religions, and so many variations within those religions, so many churches and subsets and preachers of their own minds, that for all intents and purposes we're making it up as we go along. Infinitely customizable, individually internalized, why is it, then, that people are so easily convinced that their beliefs are in some way truer than those of the person next door? Why the need, moreover, to impose them on that neighbor?

Which gets back to the original question. The ultimate purpose of belief, as I see it anyway, is to assuage the fear of death, to confirm meaning where there might be none. What could be more personal or individual? Whence, then, the leap to the general: the good book, the sermon, the joining of forces, the mob? The accepting as literal truth, words written, re-written, translated, updated, modified; having selected one among countless many religions and beliefs, wherefore the need to go beyond personal rejection of the others, to banishing them? To destroying them. To imposing on them one's own. Why the inability to say, This works for me, that works for you, peace be upon us all?

Answer: none of it really works. If belief fully satisfied the soul, there'd be no need to denigrate another's. There'd be no need to join up with thousands of others, marching, chanting, threatening. If personal belief, alone, were enough to give comfort, the beliefs (or non-beliefs) of others would be of no consequence. There wouldn't be religious wars, there wouldn't be megachurches, there wouldn't be a Prop 8. For that matter, there wouldn't be Nazi rallies, gangs, or crowds with torches. Or burning crosses. But that's not the way it is. For some reason, we puny humans need constant validation of our beliefs; we need to surround ourselves with amens and we need to drown out the doubt that arises from seeing others believing differently. In our essence, something is greatly amiss.

Which is to say the obvious: if there were one true religion, it would have resolved the doubts of everyone. If a belief were transcendently right there'd be no others. (It's a truism in surgery -- about which I know a few things -- that if there are several different operations to solve a particular problem -- example: chronic pancreatitis -- the perfect one hasn't been found.) Logically, the only reasonable assumption is that everyone who thinks their religion is true, is wrong, if for no other reason than that there are billions of people -- nearly everyone, when you get down to the minute particulars -- who believe something very different. With just as much certainty. Billions. They can't all be right. In fact, if there is a cosmic truth, by simple arithmetic you can point to any individual believer and be sure he or she is most certainly wrong about it. That includes me. And you.

I plan to write more about this. The fact that I'm no theological expert makes my thoughts particularly worthy, because since there's no true religion, there can be no true experts. The world needs a little input from that perspective. The emperors have no clothes, and you can never have enough people saying so.

Before I go on, I want to clarify something, because I have valued friends who are believers: I respect religion as it applies to individuals. To the extent that it provides guidance and comfort and internal peace, given our obvious human frailties and shortcomings, I see the value, the appeal of religion. Most people couldn't get along without it in some form. For reasons I'll try to explain, I wish that were not the case. But I'm a realist. So for now, I'd settle for the elimination of organized religion, with its need to impose itself on everyone else. If people could find personal solace in their beliefs, and were comfortable enough in them to rise above the need to see them reflected everywhere they look, the future would look way better. Dayenu, is what I'd say.

And finally, why now? Prop 8. Mormon support for Prop 8. Sarah Palin. Priests refusing communion to Obama supporters. Obama is the antichrist. Burning black churches after the election. This. Intelligent design. Young earth creationists. 9/11. The Middle East. Our failing education. By much evidence, organized religion is an increasing threat to our future as it tries to substitute belief for reason, to deny human rights, and as it forces itself onto the body politic, narrow-minded and certain of its rectitude.

Just Wondering...

Throughout his campaign, John McCain said countless times, "I know how to catch Osama bin Laden." Once, he even said so in front of Barack Obama. Do you suppose he gave the secret to the President-Elect during their meeting today?

Open Letter To Barack Obama

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

I'm aware of the presumption here; first and foremost thinking you or anyone near you will ever see this; knowing letters like these abound in the interwebs like fruit flies in that other web, outside the window of my kitchen; and, of course, thinking I have something useful to say. But this, I hope, is a little different, because I admit I know next to nothing; and I ask even less.

Already I sense a list of demands out there -- differing from each other, often at odds. People and groups who supported you are elbowing their way to the table, enunciating expectations and -- sometimes none too subtly -- suggesting electoral consequences were you not to satisfy them. Not me.

Between my wife and me we contributed more to your campaign than to all previous campaigns at all levels: presidents, governors, senators, combined. (Well, that might not be strictly true: I gave a big chunk when my wife ran -- successfully -- for the school board.) And we gave to other groups that might help in your election, and to congressional candidates from other states where it seemed a boost might matter. Even as our savings poofed into the oblivion of a failing economy, we kept giving, thousands of dollars by the time it was over. Such was our belief that you are the right person for this time. And all we hope for is this:

Don't listen to any of 'em, or to us, for that matter. Listen to your advisers (I'm okay with whomever you choose for your cabinet and policy teams by the way), trust your intelligence, and do what you conclude is right: address problems, not politics. Forswear the "permanent campaign." Our belief that that is exactly who you are is what got us solidly on board. I don't care if your policies are "liberal" or "conservative," just that they have a chance of succeeding. I believe that the majority of voters for you did so in that hope: for label-free, fact-based, thoughtful policy, accountable to the truth. For a welcome change.

I'm pretty sure you don't need to hear this, and I'm a little embarrassed to have said it, because throughout your campaign you proclaimed it yourself, many times. But since most of the advice bubbling up in bytes is specific and often particular to one interest-group or another, I thought you might like to know that to me at least, you owe nothing specific; my donations came string-free (I feel your sigh of relief!) At long last, all I wanted was a president with extraordinary intelligence, the ability to engage ideas from all points on the compass, and to find solutions based in reality, above politics. That will be more than enough return on the investment (and maybe even the return of my investments!); and, most certainly, it would assure your reëlection, even absent -- were it to be the case -- votes from the extremes.

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of your campaign was to convince so many that we're all in this together; and to engender the belief that each of us has a stake in the government, after all. Your continued ability to inspire and reinforce that commitment (it's amazing: I really think it's more than an empty sentiment for many people now, thanks to you) will be a necessary part of your success.

Yes, I'm a liberal; and I happen to believe that facts favor progressive policy. Pragmatic policy. So I'd bet your efforts will be in that direction. But if they work, I don't really care.

Yours optimistically, humbly, and with great relief,

Sid Schwab

P.S: The video is from the greatest concert movie of all time: "Mad Dogs and Englishmen." I think it should be screened at the White House (to a carefully selected audience) when you need an uplifting break. And it's my opinion that Leon Russell, herbaceous mellowness as seen above notwithstanding, made Joe Cocker who he is.

P.P.S: Having watched you last night on 60 Minutes, reconfirming everything I've come to believe about you, this letter seems particularly dispensable. But I'm posting it anyway: you know how it is with us bloggers...

Talking Heads

In the waning weeks of the presidential campaign, I found myself no longer watching the Sunday talking head shows: they tended to drive me crazy and only increase the general angst I was feeling. Turns out, there may have been a reason. Today, in fact, the schedule is as follows (per Atrios):

7 Appearances by Republican current elected officeholders
3 Appearances by Democratic current elected officeholders.
2 Appearances by Republican former elected officeholders.
1 Appearance by a Bush Cabinet Secretary.
T. Boone Pickens
Ted Turner.

(The myth of the "liberal" media has, in my opinion, long since been debunked. But it serves as a convenient whipping boy for the right wing. Lazy? Yes. Vapid? Certainly. Superficial? Like scum on a puddle. Liberal? Not so much.)

Nevertheless, because I noted Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize winning economist, whom I read regularly, acknowledging his partisanship) was on, I tuned into This Week this morning. It was quite amazing.

There are perhaps none on television as fond of hearing themselves talk, as smug and self-satisfied as Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, and George Will (as opposed to the first two, I think he's a very smart guy and often worth listening to; how the other two are elevated to thrones of thought-production, I don't know). There they sat, with the opportunity to hear from an actual expert on the economy, and they barely allowed him a word. Literally: no sentence passed his lips, but that it was interrupted by one of the triumvirate. Not one. It was stunning, even for them.

Not that it matters. None of them (the regular panel of pronoucers) has an actual say in anything of substance. Still, it's amazing what passes for discussion on television nowadays, and it reminds me why I turned it off a while back.

[Update: Here's one that got through more or less uninterrupted, and showed George Will a thing or two.]

Hating George Bush

One of my most respectful commenters tends to see my posts through the lens of "Bush Hatred." It's a convenient deflection.

Similar to the unmentioned and evidently forgotten Clinton Hatred, the concept of Bush Hatred (that conniest of neo-cons, my fellow M.D. Charles Krauthammer, coined the term "Bush Derangement Syndrome" [in fairness to me and my fellow physicians, Krauthammer is a former psychiatrist, which subset of medical doctors I've always considered a waste of a good education [[in fairness to psychiatrists, not all of them are as idiotic as Krauthammer, nor do I mean to disrespect the profession: only to say it hardly requires a medical degree]]]) misses the point entirely -- as does, for that matter and most of the time, the commenter to whom I refer.

Just as there were on the right people who so hated Bill Clinton that they couldn't credit him with a single positive thing, so there are on the left a few (present blogger excepted) who are so enraged by George Bush that they are blind to his accomplishments.

Or would be, if he had any.

What I hate about George Bush is not the man (although it gets pretty damn hard to take when the President of the US constantly embarrasses us all) but what he's done. My wise commenter suggests that "if libs proclaimed their disdain for people who would harm this country as loudly as they proclaim their disdain for the current president, maybe they wouldn't sound so "unpatriotic." " He (I assume it's a he, because the women I know [I'm speaking personal knowledge, now, as opposed to one I've seen of late on TV] are pretty rational thinkers) couldn't be more wrong. The tragedy, the disgrace of George Bush is exactly that in every way, he's aided and abetted those who would harm this country. Because of his shallow and incompetently executed policies, wherever you look you see our enemies stronger than they were. It's precisely BECAUSE we dastardly liberals understand the danger to our country posed by those who wish us ill that we are angry at George Bush.

You name it: our economy is faltering, our military is weakened, the invasion recruited more terrorists than it eliminated, Iran is stronger, al Queda is safely ensconced in Pakistan, North Korea has bombs, peace is further away from Israel and Palestine, we are more hated and less respected around the world: in short, I can see only damage to our interests inflicted upon us by George Bush. His "war on terror" is, in addition to being stupidly named and constitutionally abused, nearly entirely ill-conceived;* it has accomplished the exact opposite of what was (presumably) intended (other than to have enriched certain pro-Bush members of the plutocracy). (Not wishing to sound too conspiratorial, I'll allow the possibility that that was not the primary intent.)

It's the unswayable Bush lovers that represent the real danger. In passing off all disagreement as "Bush Hatred," and in claiming falsely that liberals don't understand that we have enemies, people like my commenter willfully ignore the real reasons behind the criticisms and make correcting the mistakes harder. You can't eradicate terrorists with invading armies. You can't recruit help in finding them when you piss off the entire world. You don't make the country safer when you disregard the vulnerabilities on its own soil, nor when you bankrupt it to the point of being unable to fix them. When you round up people and torture them and hold them without charges, you not only get inaccurate information, you degrade your ability to try them in a respectable court of law (assuming you believe in such a thing) and rob us of our ability to demand lawful behavior in others. When you spend trillions on an unnecessary war that in no way plugs our weak spots but in fact increases them while killing our own and tens of thousands of others, you damage yourself more than our enemies could have -- and did -- in their wildest seventy-seven-virgin-dreams in their deepest caves. That, I'd say, is reason enough to believe George Bush has been a disaster for our country, and a boon to our enemies.

We all agree there are dangers and dangerous people out there. Where we disagree is in what are effective responses.

To buy the simple-minded idea that "liberals" love our enemies and hate our country is only to exacerbate and catalyze the destruction wrought by George Bush: by reducing the argument to absurdity while ignoring the issues, it -- as did he -- plays right into the hands of those who wish us ill.

*[I happen to agree that domestic surveillance and world-wide intelligence-gathering are an integral part -- the main part, in fact -- of fighting terrorism. Republicans laughed it off, of course, when John Kerry said as much in 2004; but, in fact, to the extent that we are safer since 9/11, it's due to the increased security (such as it is) at airports, and to the plotters (the ones that were actually real) that were uncovered by surveillance (mostly in and by other countries). On the other hand, there's no reason why such surveillance can't be done within the law, a concept evidently foreign to George Bush.]