waagnfnp

By Patrick DeTemple

[A few weeks back, I met Patrick at a DFA gathering. I was surprised to hear he was already fully committed to the Barack Obama Presidential campaign. I, like most people who plan at some point to be involved, was (and still am) in the camp of “it’s way too early, and besides, I resent like hell that this thing is starting up so early - like Christmas decorations going up even before Halloween. No thank you!

Of course, I expressed my personal “Obama beefs” to Patrick in no uncertain terms - (#1 being his vote for the draconian bankruptcy bill). But mostly I was fascinated to hear how this seasoned, lifelong activist had come to his decision to commit so early and so completely. So I asked him if he’d share his story with us, and he was kind and gracious enough to take time out of his busy schedule to do so. Thank you, Patrick!
-Oaktown Girl: MOJ, WAAGNFNP.]

In 2004, reenergized by the Howard Dean challenge I was working hard to get John Kerry elected (mostly through data support to 527s via “Map The Vote” and later directly with ACT) and in July I found myself sitting in the Fleet Center with an old UFW organizer colleague, Artie Rodriguez and his family. I had no clue what to expect when Barack Obama took the stage. At the end of the mesmerizing speech that we’ve all now heard Artie and I spun towards each other with crazy grins on our faces and I said “now THAT’S who I want to vote for”. After that we all went back to work for Kerry…but with a little more energy than before.

Maybe the speech hit me (as for so many others) because no matter how hard I work on how many campaigns I always feel like a little bit of an outsider in the official Democratic Party. The reasons are simple: I have a decade’s long focus on issues of social class (which is not the same thing as making poverty less onerous) and a deep belief that politicians who don’t respect the common sense of ordinary people will deservedly get their ass kicked. Barack Obama placed himself in the middle – not of the political spectrum – but the middle of the people, and he spoke from the middle and he made sense. This isn’t the place to say why others don’t or can’t do that but let’s just say that it was unusually refreshing for all of us.

After the loss in ’04 I was not excited about our prospects. I’d voted for John Edwards (loved the ‘Two Americas’ stump speech) and fought to get him on the ticket but with those high expectations his performance was very disappointing. Hillary just reminded me of everything I didn’t like about Al From and the DLC – they make a cynical kind of sense if the only pieces in the game are inside the beltway and the rules consist of ‘things as they are’ but I’ve been an organizer most of my life and that life is built around the constantly tested premise of ‘things as they can be’…so I don’t have that much in common with those folks. Gloomy days.

Then a year later came Al Gore’s speech on Martin Luther King Day, January 2006, and I perked up. Yippee! Al is sounding smart, articulate, gutsy and he’s laying out the big picture with both intellectual integrity and passion – where was this man years ago? And so I began talking, hoping and agitating for Gore to step into the race. That enthusiasm changed in both positive and negative ways over the following months. Seeing him a few more times reminded me that he was still essentially the same Al Gore, the pretty limited candidate that I’d known in 2000 and 1988. On the other hand, his movie reminded me of the passionate, deeply committed thinker who’d written “Earth in the Balance” so long ago. So I was very happy to have Al back in the mix but doubtful about the candidacy.

For Barack I had only high hopes but, viewed from the perspective of politics as usual, Obama was clearly too young and inexperienced to be a serious contender, right? I mean Hillary already had all the money, the keys to the rest of it, the highest paid staff, the major donor bundlers either charmed or beaten into submission, a large disciplined operation that was the envy of all political operators and she still had Bill in reserve. As everyone said back then Hillary had already sucked the oxygen out of the room and nobody could challenge her except maybe Al with netroots support. And then I actually started listening to Barack Obama.
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Who has it worse: The poor sap who has to go through Astaroth-only-knows-how-many levels of Dante’s hell trying to reach a real live useful human being at the Help Desk, or the Tech Support person who has to answer the calls?

This Open Thread is dedicated to Loyal Party Patriot “Seattle.” I’m sure she’ll be happy to tell you why!

Video from Bore Me.

By Heraclitus (Jeff)

Okay, I know we tend to slant more or less left here, but we also strive for fair and balanced reporting of the political and cultural trends that matter to you. I’m therefore very happy to present this “Open Letter to the GOP“, contributed by guest blogger Rod T. Straight (warning: the following may contain biting satire):

My fellow Americans,
Recently, I was at the grocery store, buying children’s cereal. Having perused the cereal boxes and given them sufficient consideration, I can only say that I am shocked, outraged, and disgusted. Only now do I realize what a sick and perverted world we live in. It is a world where innocent children are used as mere pawns in the twisted social and political agendas of the homosexual movement. That’s right. ALL OF THE CEREAL BOX CARTOON CHARACTERS ARE GAY!!! Gay as paint. Queer as a three-dollar bill. Okay, Tony the Tiger is probably an exception, and maybe Dig ‘em the Frog, but the rest are switch-hitters at best. Sonny, the bird from Coco Puffs? He’s flamboyantly gay (the brightly colored, striped sweater, the overly emotional behavior), also known as “flaming.” The Sugar Bear seems innocent enough. Kind of pudgy, always wearing a sweater; he kind of seems like the dad from Eight is Enough. Then you remember — HE’S ALWAYS SINGING!!! Toucan Sam, like Sonny the bird, TALKS WITH A DAMN LISP!!! And they don’t get any lighter in the loafers than that damn leprechaun from lucky charms. Snap, Crackle and Pop may be just weenie enough to be straight and still walk around in those absurd, gay-assed costumes, but Count Chocula and the rest are not only gay, but campy. Oh, foul, foul, world, where homosexual activists have infiltrated the graphics departments of cereal companies!!!

Now it all makes sense. Now we can see why the country is slouching towards Gomorrah. Now we can see why American is in danger of doing something as unspeakable evil and demented as electing a Democratic Congress. This is not right. We don’t need a bunch of homos selling us our cereals. We need good, strong cereal cartoon characters, as Dubya used to say before he lost the ability to string even three words together coherently. Here are my new, decidedly un-gay, suggestions:
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Warning, this post is acronym filled, and may contain nefarious allusions, probably inappropriate but nevertheless, they exist.

UNITED NATIONS Copyright - A new treaty designed to promote and protect the rights of the world’s 650 million persons with disabilities opens for signature at the United Nations on Friday.

At its core, the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ensures that persons with disabilities enjoy the same human rights as everyone else, and are able to lead their lives as fully-fledged citizens who can make valuable contributions to society.

Forty years ago, as an upper-division undergraduate student, I was offered one of those scholarship jobs that go to jocks and related others. These were legacy-based inheritances, passed along to the next class of student athletes by graduating seniors, eagerly anticipated by the younger, who have heard-it-through-the-grapevine that this or that is the coolest chance at getting paid to do nothing, or close to it. My offer was not for one of those cushy roles (lifeguarding the women’s gym pool {only male allowed}, or driving the little tractor that picked up golf balls), but rather a heritage role for those of us in a special and unique club (the fish lane). Ours was the strand that provided support staff for the Education and Psychology departments’ on-campus education environments.
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Once, gone with the Da to the Genealogical Society’s cubby in the Santa Cruz Main Library.

It’s off to the side there as you enter the building, full with all manner of raw harvested names of the past, folks registered for what must have seemed good and sufficient reason at the time with the age-old compulsive exactitude of the scribe. Stuffed with polling lists, that space is, registries of addresses. List of passenger arrivals on ships entering SF Bay 1860-1889. Reams of privately printed brochures: family trees of folks forever otherwise unremarked in history (The Johnsons of Sussex, World Concordance of Burgesses, that sort of thing). Great midden heap of ur-history in that small room, primary source material, checklists of myriads of common selves living lives only now and then winning the bare notice of public record. But, too, local newspapers on microfilm.

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Life Changing Moments of Highs and Lows
{in praise and thanks to Amanda French}

This has been one hell of a week (the last seven days). From the IPCC report, released in its toned-downed version and yet still deeply troubling and downright scary, to the questioning of the US Attorney General, withering under the surprising assault of his own party faithful for his complete dereliction of duties and gross mismanagement of the Department of Justice and the US Constitution (perhaps it was only just neglect and endangerment, but still, if this had been a hearing in family court, the judge would have immediately revoked his visitation privileges). Sandwiched in there were some great professional sports moments (the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s taking the field for the boys in blue), some environmental fun (the Great Turtle Race {and yes I am cheering for Stephanie Colburtle), and hideous evil acts of violence.

In the spirit of this past week and this upcoming weekend, and in the hope of inoculating some sort of anti-despair vaccine, the old cynical me will take a brief respite to talk about seeing the highs through the lows and the music that helps make that so.

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Friends, fellow-travellers, and members of the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now Party, I come before you today not to praise Technorati but to bury it. Will you join me in declaring war on this Enemy of the Party?

Consider the function of its nefarious popular page, which is a huge step toward doing to blogoramaville what was done to radio and tv (which in their day inspired similar public sphere utopianism as teh intertubes, according to Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan’s New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader (Routledge, 2005) — namely, promoting crap over quality, elevating voyeurism and invective over reflection and dialogue, and making ratings and profits the name of the game. Don’t get me wrong — there are certainly some good blogs among the most linked and most favorited top 100s (a certain ex-fugitive from Party justice is at #85 on the latter list) — but everyone’s heard that even a bad function can find nuts twice a day (or something like that). It’s not like Technorati doesn’t have the capacity to do better: imagine if they produced 100 top 100s, each recognizing a particular bloggy genre. But no, what counts as a new idea for them is WFT (Where’s the Fire) — I say “wft?!” to its WTF Topics list, which takes Technorati’s default-celebrity-sex-tapes/gadgetry/wingnuttia-obsession-mode to its logical and absurd end.

Ah, but Technorati is the royal road to the American unconscious, you say; This Is What the People Want. To which I say, Fuck the People; the WAAGNFNP is all about the annihilationism, not the populism or the humanism.

Others then chime in: an imaginary political party can’t declare war — only the Congress can do that (in the U.S., at least). To which I say, ever heard of the neocons? The Project for a New American Century? Dick Cheney?

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Sixty-two years ago today, American army units, supported by naval artillery, were preparing for yet another assault on Kakazu Ridge, a part of the outer line of the “Shuri” defenses on the southern part of Okinawa Island. April 1st, Easter Sunday, had been L Day (the landings on Okinawa itself) for Operation ICEBERG. There had been little opposition to the American landings, nor any significant fighting during the first few days of the operation. However, within the first week, American Army units, including my father’s, had begun to run up against the well-established Japanese defenses concentrated in the southern third of the island and which took full advantage of the abundant rocky hills, caves and burial tombs. These engagements marked the start of more than two months of  bitter fighting as American Army and Marine units slowly forged advances through the well-prepared Japanese defenses. When they reached the southern tip of the island in June, the last land battle of World War II came to a close. The Americans had suffered 12,000 dead and 50,000 wounded, the Japanese Army almost 100,000 dead and 7,000 captured (up to a quarter of the army was Okinawan conscripts), and estimates of the death toll among Okinawan civilians ranged from 40,000 to 150,000 (modern consensus favors the higher estimates.)

Hill that was part of the defenses, normally covered with verdant foliage.

US Tanks and infantry on Okinawa.

The campaign for Okinawa had many noteworthy features, including the most intense Kamikaze attacks of the war against the supporting US fleet, extensive use of flamethrowers against entrenched Japanese defenses, mass civilian suicides, the deaths of the commanding officers on both sides - and of the famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle, the sinking of the “super” battleship Yamato, intense disagreements on strategy and tactics within both the American and Japanese commands, and of course the question of what impact, if any, it had on the subsequent decision by the United States to use atomic weapons against mainland Japan. For further reading, I recommend the official Army history available online here, and the books: Operation Iceberg (primarily an oral history) and Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb. For me, Okinawa has served as a nexus of the personal and the historical, linking my quest to connect to my father’s specific experiences, with the larger narratives of World War II, war in general and the decision to use atomic weapons . (I want to thank The Constructivist for this post at Mostly Harmless and a subsequent one here at waagnfnp which prompted my latest reexamination of my views on the entire episode, and which led directly to this post.)

As far back as I can remember, I was aware that my father had served in World War II, but it was only after he had rebuked me in uncharacteristically angry tones for suggesting that a particularly intense fireworks display might be akin to an actual bombardment, that I began to view his time in the war in anything other than the most simple-minded comic book terms.
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By Amanda French

******

The coffin lid shut with a thud.
The pallbearers clomped through the mud.
The requiem started.
The dearly departed
Was dead as a dodo or dud.

******

By Zeus

For all those that would seek to impose religious doctrine on a nation,
a world, a people, I would simply counter as a person of faith, that
faith requires freedom of belief, and in this strong sense, separation
of church and state. No faith can come of imposition. Choice is
always a requirement of faith. Confronted with the unknown, I need my
brothers and sisters of different beliefs to inform my understanding
and my choices. I may find my roots in a religious tradition
(Christianity, in my case), but realize that my exercise of faith can
never come from authoritative attempts to determine who I am and what I
ought believe.

Furthermore, faith, faithfully exercised, is generous. It invites
contrary views, because it knows that truth, in any deepened form that
we may know it, requires our facets of experience to come together,
from our deepest present understanding, to form a more complete and
universal knowledge. Faith, as deep spiritual interest, requires a
similar honoring, an engagement, understanding, intuition, and
experience of mystery, not a battle of wills. For the will, for all its
great power, is still quite attached with the ego, the interlocutor,
not the advocate, of the spirit. To betray faith to the will, to
political will or other, to collapse church and state is to exalt the
world over the spirit and to betray faith rather than uphold it.

Much jeering has spewed forth in the current battle between the
“reality-based” community (largely secular acolytes of scientific
empiricism and Enlightenment tradition) and the so-called “faith-based”
community (a largely fundamentalist “we-create-reality-you-study-it”
absolutism).

I am a scientist by training, a philosopher by nature, and a person of
faith by choice. In my experience, reality emanates in large part
from faith. Our lives themselves are exercises of faith. The meaning
we construct, the purposes we pursue, the poetry we create cannot be
merely captured or inspired by cause-and-effect, mechanistic thinking.
Conversely no faith worth its name can call itself faith while
insisting on rejecting rationality. Though faith may acknowledge the
non-rational, something beyond the merely rational, it should be secure
enough to embrace what is in front of its face. Without this faithful
engagement with empirical reality, personal suffering and social
injustice could be ignored (or victims blamed), and the central and
ubiquitous religious tenets of human compassion and loving-kindness
would be rendered void.

Reductive scientism and irrational religionism fail because they seek
to impose rather than embrace. Faith requires embrace. Let us work
toward a church and a state that eschew all authoritarianism and
embrace the challenge of this faith called democracy.

Citizen Zeus