Marketing Testosterone....

Glenn Greenwald over at Unclaimed Territory writes a lot of very thoughtful posts that reflect a depth not often found on the web. Most of the time I feel like a freshman Political Student when I read his work but today I found a reason to disagree; at least on some minor points.....but important points nevertheless....

Let's overview, shall we?

Greenwald notes, correctly, I think, that America seems now to choose war over diplomcacy as a first choice, not by any means a last choice. He then goes on to explain why in this paragraph:

snip

There are probably numerous reasons for this. Many claim that the senseless Vietnam disaster instilled in Americans an exaggerated resistance to war, a refusal to recognize it as necessary even when it really was. Whether that is true or not, I think the "wars" the U.S. fought in the 1980s and 1990s led Americans to the opposite extreme. The wars fought by the Reagan administration were covert (in Central America) or absurdly easy and bloodless (in Grenada). But the most consequential force pushing Americans to lose their instinctive resistance to war was probably the First Persian Gulf War -- everyone's favorite. It was the first fully televised war, and it made war seem like nothing more significant than killing bad people by zapping them from the sky with super high-tech, precision weaponry that risked nothing -- war as video game, cheered on safely and clinically from a distance.

and then, concludes, as here:

In our political discourse, there just no longer is a strong presumption against war. In fact, it's almost as though there is a reverse presumption -- that we should proceed to wage wars on whatever countries we dislike or which are defying our orders in some way unless someone can find compelling reasons not to. The burden is now on those who would like not to engage in a series of endless wars to demonstrate why we should not.

I have a slightly different view on the evolution of our easy acceptance of war as a foreign policy tool, or, more accurately, war in place of foreign policy and diplomacy.My view is that Viet Nam poisoned America's soul but it also left our national pride in tatters. Hence, when Ronald Reagan came riding into the White House on his White Horse, with his White Hat, well, hallejuha! We were saved from our National Disgrace of defeat in Viet Nam. To prove it, Reagan flexed his (our) muscles in the ways Greenwald described in the post and that got the national testosterone flowing once again. But the military adventurism of Reagan was just foreplay, Gulf War I was a full blown national orgasm. Greenwald does a great job of exposing that here:

"... But the most consequential force pushing Americans to lose their instinctive resistance to war was probably the First Persian Gulf War -- everyone's favorite. It was the first fully televised war, and it made war seem like nothing more significant than killing bad people by zapping them from the sky with super high-tech, precision weaponry that risked nothing -- war as video game, cheered on safely and clinically from a distance."

The true disgrace of the Bush administration is that they believe that America will yield unlimited political and judicial power to any politician who generates enough testosterone. It has nothing to do with policy and very little to do with philosophy but it has everything to do with POWER. To use this technique to manipulate a nation and (for all practical purposes) hijack its collective soul is immoral beyond description.

Greenwalds comments made many, many good points after his post but this one struck me enough to recommend it to you also.

Recommended reading re: my comment above:http://www.amazon.com/End-Victory-Culture-Disillusioning-Generation/dp/1558491333The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation by Tom Engelhardt.

And just how does all this affect us? Are we selling testosterone? Is it having an effect? Click on the link below and see what nationally syndicated radio hostess, Laura Ingraham had to say about the popular Fox Network Television series "24".
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2006/221106Ingraham.htm

Get that?

The popularity of the series "24" according to the right wing shows that Americans approve of torturing "terrorists"...because that's the way the hero of "24", Jack, treats "terrorists....I've watched the show once, during the Thanksgiving holidays because my Brother-in-law is a big fan and didn't want to miss the show. It was jaw-dropping in it's machismo, testosterone-dripping, violence all wrapped up in Uber-patriotic ....tripe... It was probably good entertainment but for it to become a "referendum" on American foreign policy is

ludicrous....

and yet, maybe that's what we have become.


(Note: "24" is making news again because of their most recent episode where terrorists ignite a smal-yield nuke in LA...is it entertainment? Or is it propaganda?)

I've done what I am so fond of doing. Identifying a problem but offering no solution...I'll leave that to you and your comments.

No! I don't care!

All I'm hearing is Golden Globes this and Golden Globes that....


So...who ARE these people anyway?

—Actress, Drama: Kyra Sedgwick, "The Closer"
—Actor, Drama: Hugh Laurie, "House"
—Series, Musical or Comedy: "Ugly Betty," ABC
—Actress, Musical or Comedy: America Ferrera, "Ugly Betty"
—Actor, Musical or Comedy: Alec Baldwin, "30 Rock"
—Miniseries or movie: "Elizabeth I," HBO
—Actress, Miniseries or Movie: Helen Mirren, "Elizabeth I"
—Actor, Miniseries or Movie: Bill Nighy, "Gideon's Daughter"
—Supporting Actress, Series, Miniseries or Movie: Emily Blunt, "Gideon's Daughter"
—Supporting Actor, Series, Miniseries or Movie: Jeremy Irons, "Elizabeth I"

I

don't

care!

Just got my haircut....I need a smoke.....

A Very Different Conservative....

I wanted to post on this yesterday but deferred in observation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Day.

I got the lead from James Wolcott of Vanity Fair who, in turn, directed us to the American Conservative columnists Heather MacDonald(bio here). MacDonald is a different kind of conservative, you see, she's an atheist. In her blog, Gene Expression, she explains why and the discussion is incredibly revealing. Here are some snippets:


I wrote The American Conservative piece out of frustration with the preening piety of conservative pundits. I attended a New York cocktail party in 2003, for example, where a prominent columnist said to the group standing around him: "We all know that what makes Republicans superior to Democrats is their religious faith." This sentiment has been repeated in print ad nauseam, along with its twin: "We all know that morality is not possible without religion." I didn't then have the courage to point out to the prominent columnist that quite a few conservatives and Republicans of the highest standing had no religious faith, without apparent injury to their principles or their behavior.

snip


As I was pondering whether any of these practices could be reconciled with rationality, the religious gloating of the conservative intelligentsia only grew louder. The onset of the Iraq war expanded the domain of religious triumphalism to transatlantic relations: what makes America superior to Europe, we were told by conservative opinionizers, is its religious faith and its willingness to invade Iraq. George Bush made the connection between religious beliefs and the Iraq war explicit, with his childlike claim that freedom was God's gift to humanity and that he was delivering that gift himself by invading Iraq.

snip

So in the American Conservative piece I wanted to offer some resistance to the assumption of conservative religious unanimity. I tried to point out that conservatism has no necessary relation to religious belief, and that rational thought, not revelation, is all that is required to arrive at the fundamental conservative principles of personal responsibility and the rule of law. I find it depressing that every organ of conservative opinion reflexively cheers on creationism and intelligent design, while delivering snide pot shots at the Enlightenment. Which of the astounding fruits of empiricism would these Enlightenment-bashers dispense with: the conquest of cholera and other infectious diseases, emergency room medicine, jet travel, or the internet, to name just a handful of the millions of human triumphs that we take for granted?


I wonder if she'll be "drummed out" of the Republican Party? For all their talk about the "big tent" I doubt if the rather extremist group which controls the party would tolerate such talk from within.

It's a great article/post...click on the link there's lots more than I posted.

In honor of Dr. King.....

There's a lot of good stuff on the web today that we can talk about. Importantly though, we do need to take the time to seriously observe that this is the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Day. To those of us coming of age in the '60s, Dr King was a towering figure in our lives. He seemed to be everywhere at all times and he held up a mirror to us through which we could examine ourselves, and, in a broader sense, our society.

I was, as most of you know, raised in the South where Dr. King was not ....shall we say....respected? The Yaaa-hooooos! (rednecks in other areas) hated three people vehemently: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Earl Warren. (I can still close my eyes and see the "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards in my home town.) And when our town saw the "outside agitators" came to town, the locals decided to prevent an incident by virtually ignoring them; that included the newspaper, radio and TV outlets who literally conspired to keep them out of public site. Some of the ....ummmmm....."less enlightened" (probably FkA, or Future Klansmen of America)***guys at the high school walked the hallways chanting "Ignore the Niggers with Vig-ha (vigor)" Thus insulting Kennedy and the civil rights movement in a one chant. Sort of a "two-fer".

(***No, there really isn't such an organization, I'm taking extensive literary license)

Most of the younger generations have heard the famous "I have a dream" speech in Washington D.C.. It is perhaps his most famous work. I've given a link to a video of it below. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day. See the video of the "I have a dream" speech here

But there was another speech that was important then and perhaps forgotten until now. We tend to forget that Dr. King saw the war in Viet Nam as a civil rights issue on a scale much, much grander than the movement in the United States. He gave a speech, entitled "Beyond Viet Nam" and it is as relevant today as it was back then. Here are two "snippets" to show you what I mean.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

That bears repeating: "The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours."

Is that true of the Iraq war?

Certainly the "great initiative" was/is ours. So does it follow that it is also our initiative to stop it? The alternative, of course is to get caught up in the cycle of Jacobian Tragedy I wrote about last week and seek revenge for revenge, blood for blood until we destroy not just our enemies, but ourselves.

Maybe that's the lesson of Dr. King. Maybe what he wanted us to know all along that we had to have the courage and wisdom to reject the path of violence.

He did.

It cost him his life, but he personally rejected violence.

on edit: I found a link..(video link) that the "Beyond Viet Nam" speech here.

Yeah....right (rolls eyes)

Our friends at The Onion have a nice "take" on the "Surge" (ESCALATION)

and here's a snippet or two to whet your appetite:

WASHINGTON, DC—Citing a desire to finally make a difference in Iraq, in the past two weeks, more than 800,000 young people from upper-middle- and upper-class families have put aside their education, careers, and physical well-being to enlist in the military, new data from the Department Of Defense shows.

snip

At the on-campus temporary recruitment table at Reed College in Portland, OR, the line of students eager to sign up for active duty stretched around the block Monday. Recruiters across the country reported a similar trend, with scores of young people asking how soon they could be ready to go to battle in Iraq.

"They don't have these recruitment centers where I live," said Daniel Feldman, 26, who resides in the affluent neighborhood of Brookline, MA and recently passed his bar exam. "I didn't realize you could just sign up, but now that I do, all of my friends from law school, yoga class, and temple are going to join, too. And not the Reserves either. We're talking down and dirty, right on the front lines."

I don't think blogger.com likes us to use the famous emoticons....but if they did I'd display "eyse-rolling emoticons" all over the place.

In the way of commentary I'll offer only this: During Viet Nam, it was always thus. The rich boys walked around town showing off their spiffy National Guard uniforms or recently discovered "Medical Deferrments". The black kids lined up at the bus station for the trip to the induction center. It never was fair.

Al Gore and Condoms?

Sometimes I think the universe is ordered strictly around your own, personal reality. That is, events come together in that strange phenonemon we call coincidence...but it's not really that....it's some kind of cosmic plan.

So last night I finally got to go see An Inconvenient Truth. I've wanted to see it forever (okay, at least since it came out)and last night everything came together and I got to go see it along with some of my bloggier type friends.

I decided I would view the movie with "an open mind"...that is, I would try to approach it with a critical, analytical and objective mind and refrain from gushing over Al Gore or maybe even go off the deep end over global warming. I listened carefully to what he said and tried to absorb the documentation as much as it was presented and form my own opinion...

It thought the data was dumbed down for the general public but since I have two meteorologists in the family I knew what the charts meant and understood some of the concepts better than they were explained in the movie. To me the data is pretty clear, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are at levels greater than they've been in 600,000 years. Worse yet, historically, much more minor variations in the levels have meant huge changes in global climate.

But here's the cosmic crazieness of it all.

Take a look at this article from Huffington Post:

Here's the crazy snippet:

This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth."
After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a computer presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting scientists' findings.


Al Gore's documentary about global warming may not be shown unless the teacher also presents an "opposing view."

and the "money quote"?

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

Nutzoid!

Completely, 100% certified, prime NUTZOID!

It crossed my mind last night while watching the film, that when Gore showed scientists measuring the "ice cores" that traced climate chemical history for 650,000 years, that some of the religious fundamentalists would freak out.....What surprises me is that the above quoted Frosty Hardison says that the earth is 14,000 years old when other fundie cults claim the bible only supports that the earth is 6,000 years old.

But the universe did come to a cosmic convergence for me see the film, evaluate it for myself and then to watch the extrordinary lengths some people will go to deny....

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

A Reminder about a FREE SHOWING

If you need details, see this post:

http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8062439&postID=116838759986806373

The definitive film on Global Warming will be shown free tonight at the First Presbyterian Church in Marshfield at 7PM. (It's the new church on the corner of Adler and Lincoln)/

Again, their licensing agreement will not allow them to give the title of the film but it is widely known by many.....

I've received emails from Sybylla and madashell (from another blog) as well as Broca indicating that they will probably be there....cool ....just like some of the debate parties during the campaigns....lots of fun....

e