Our Friend

I keep trying to be strong, to quip appropriately and to express the appropriate moments of gravity. I keep thinking (I know...), what would Jared do? I'll be honest, I don't have the strength to be funny or to talk about Janice or to do anything. I can barely work and I feel utterly lost. Because, I can't help but think about her right now. And, frankly, it doesn't help. So, I'm lost. Drunk and crying alone in the middle of the night completely helpless and just...well, sobbing, listening to sad songs and crying. I am a utter, fucking mess. Everything I do everyday doesn't mean anything anymore. So, I get drunk and cry. I guess that's it.

Except, change is coming...

DMFJ

So, we went and saw old DJ the other night. Since the only people who read this were there, I'll spare everyone the recap (nice sweater!) As always, that asshole inspires me. He inspires me against my better judgment, he inspires he against my rationale self. That floppy haired, D&D-playing, non-dresser somehow makes me want to quit my job and blow up a dam (of course, then I'd go live under a log somewhere and play with baby foxes (kits?), live in harmony with nature...until a hungry bear ate me.)

I read his work and it changed everything. Now, I didn't and don't buy it completely, but I buy enough that I keep listening, I keep reading. Once I read the latest, I think I will probably have read more words by him than any other author. He has a way of framing ideas that are both disputable and inspiring. Who cares if he is inconsistent in his numbers for rates of sexual assault against women? If his most conservative estimates are close, it's still far too many. Who cares if it's not "90%" of the fish in the ocean? Say, it's 60% and it's only the large fish. That's still too many. Say there's not dioxin in "every" woman's breast milk. One is far too many.

Let's talk about what we can do. We can go and blow up dams(for shits and giggles - more shits that giggles, btw - google "number of dams in us"), take down cell phone towers, or lop off the heads of CEOs. The unfortunate thing is that this isn't The Monkey Wrench Gang and that they will kill or imprison us. We lose. One dam blown up, one dead white guy, one stupid cell phone tower down and that's it. They rebuild the dam; like the hydra, another CEO pops up in its place. We cannot win. Whether it means "getting there first with the most...," or "in war, they will kill some of us; but we will destroy all of them," we lose. We lose no matter which way you count it. Or spell it. Or sing it. Or dance it.

We can have well attended protests, beautiful and inspiring words, we hustle door to door to get out the vote. We lose. No one gets to a position to being elected without selling out, without being a corporate shill. That includes Obama, whose race occludes the fact that he is an agent of the status quo, and Clinton (both of them), who are agents of industry. They don't care about you, me, us. But this is old hat...

Let's talk about how this isn't a war to be won. Let's look at each other and be frank and honest. The war is lost. It was never a war; it was a slaughter. Any bloodshed that could have (maybe...) made a difference happened a century before we were born. Let us look at each other and admit that we are not going to change the world. Whether we are woofies or school teachers, bartenders or longshoremen. Yea, we can change a life here or there; we can work in a soup kitchen, or protest outside the SeaTac Mall (or Federal Way Commons - not ironic at all - or whatever it's called), or try to teach kids to read in our "spare" time, or we can do whatever, but what we are doing is useless. I'll spare you obnoxious metaphors about tweezers and sand. What we are doing amounts to vanity projects, to padding our social resume or appeasing our guilty consciences so we can go back to eating fast food at 3AM, smoking, porn, teen romance television, getting drunk, or whatever.

Full disclosure. More than you probably want to know (although it is a blog...), so if you don't want to go there, then click away.

Porn. Ok, so it was porn, smoking, and baseball. Now it's porn, football and eating meat. Which, after typing that out, sounds really gay...These are the concessions that I make that I am not proud of. I'll allow myself some porn erstwhile feeling guilty, not because I am watching porn, but because how the women are treated. I'm almost exhausted typing that because it's such a trope, but really, if you doubt it at all, then go to you porn and check that shit out. It's awful. Best case scenario, it's actresses pretending like they like to be raped. It's fucking awful. More than likely, it's a whole lot of women who have been assaulted, are sad, lonely, desperate, and don't even really know it. I remember reading Endgame when I was in Mexico and just wanting to hug the strippers or the girls pressing their tits into tourists faces. And like so many things, the feeling faded away with time. Now, porn.

But it's not ok. It's not ok to watch women get fucked, women who most likely have been assaulted early on (get there first with the most) and whose assault reverberates throughout their lives now reenact the violence for our carnal pleasure. Everytime. Every single fucking time I look at porn, whether I am out of mind (for whatever reason) or dead-to-rights sober, I think, "She's been raped." I know it in my belly. It's the same way I know it when I see it. Still, I left click until I find something that is not quite so disconcerting, take care of business as quickly as possible, then move on about my day. But, to be completely honest, I know what just happened. I know what I watched. I know what I did. It's despicable and I should be ashamed.
Lest anyone thinks that this is me being crazy about sex and all that, I have no problem with porn (eerily enough, the same way I have no problem with the death penalty) in and of itself; it's the knowledge that a fair number of the women participating are not doing so from an exhibitionist desire ("Yah, I totally want you to fuck me in the ass on camera so lonely, sad human beings can watch it on their computers late at night..." That conversation happens...), but from something far more unhealthy.*

Porn is bad. Porn is bad because of the probability or merely the possibility that these women are only doing this because they've been assaulted. Period.

Ever since reading DMFJ for the first time, I've been unable to reconcile any idea of resistance with the fact that I smoked. I was consoled by the fact that many other people who read him or felt the same way smoked as well. Janice died. That was the last night I smoked.**

I banged most of this out with ESPN on in the background. K gets whatever teen romance makes her forget her shitty day, I have baseball and football. I can do better. We can do better. Nate once challenged me to stop watching, listening to, and reading sports. In return, he would give up meat (except at the mom's, which is fair to middlin).*** I failed long before I had a chance to catch up to see where he was at. Progress not perfection, I suppose.

Here is what we do. We are all very busy folks. This makes dinners difficult. So we rally when we can. We get together, we stay in touch, we stay close. When we get together for dinners and drinks, we savor it and appreciate it. And.

And.

We make dates. Ya, let's have dinner and rally the troops. Let's get greased and talk politics. Let's scare our more timid friends and inspire those that are ready (it's happened already...). Let's also go shoot guns, take gun safety courses, and learn how to clean and maintain firearms. Let's go fishing. Clean and gut fish. Let's garden. Then we can have real dinner parties, the way it really should happen. Harvest celebration. Let's talk first aid, preservation techniques (see gardening). Let's have pickle and jam parties. Let's have stitch and bitch, all genders welcome. Let's talk self-defense. What do we do? Let's stockpile food and each summer, if the worst hasn't happened, tap into it for our camping. Then build it back up each year. Let's be creative about this. What's the worst that can happen? And in the interim, we can work to make our community better, our world better. Hell, we can and should challenge each other continually. We can be better than we are in virtually every imaginable way.

And in the meantime, if there's any question of what we can or should do, I would say rally around the family...




*This most definitely is not the word I want, but I'm going with it for the sake of expediency.

**On an edit of the last paragraph, I'd left a sentence that I'd thought read, "And I hope I'll never do it again." I read it multiple times and I had a subsequent paragraph that mas o menos responded to the idea of hope. Well, the actual sentence was lacking the never. It took multiple passes for me to notice. While sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes it's a cigarette haunting you.

***Give me the opportunity again. I'll both go vegan and throw down with the sports abstinence. If you got it in you...

I'm without a title

I bartend Monday nights now, which, not-so-coincidentally, is Industry night. So every Monday night all of my tips are going to a local charity. Everyone should come in for fancy cocktails, and all of you service industry cats who are coming in and getting hooked up, your cash is going to a good place...

For October, I'm giving all of my Monday night tips to the local YWCA. Given current events, I think that this is a great place to start.

Show up for a cocktail, throw some coins in the coffers. Drink for a good cause this time.

And thanks to Nate for returning the volley. This medium is important. Don't walk away now...

Falling Down

I'm an angry person. Not in a marketable, sexy kinda way. I'm angry in the kinda way where when I start to let go the polite facade slips (see last post) and I'm no good in front of anyone. Like, not only am I no good in mixed company, I am no good in company. I am no good venting in front of "people who would understand." Because really, I'm that guy. I've always been. I remember my first girlfriend explaining that she broke up with me because I'm "angry with rocks." Yeah, a very insightful young lady saw to the heart of things. I'm bitter and angry. Like I want to, not yell, but spit, nigger, faggot, cunt. I want to burn down houses of the privileged middle class. Like everything in the north end. I want to send my neighbors to work camps to make techo-fetishists gadgets that I can by from the pawnshop after their families pawn them for taco bell coupons. I'm filled with an explicable amount of hate and rage. This is my caveat.

I was half in the bag when I got home tonight (shocking) when I decided to cook and listen to AM radio. Coast to Coast to be exact. They had some nonsense segment about the Ouija boards that got me thinking, free associating really, about mistakes that me make. And this leads me to this:
We excuse you men and women for entering the military when they are young and impressionable. Whatever excuses we use (poor families, lack of options, blah blah blah), we are comfortable using them for military service but not for other choices. Now, (another caveat) some of the people in my life who I care about most are ex-military. These people are the kindest, smartest people I've ever had the privilege to meet. Ok, so all of this being said, and here's where I went from Ouija boards, if someone is young and they make the mistake to join the military where they are obligated to kill poor, sometimes defenseless people a world away if ordered, then we forgive them. Because, you know, they did it for our country. Or they were cajoled, indoctrinated, or they didn't think they had any other options. Or whatever.

Now, if some dood is half (or entirely) wasted at a frat party and he fucks a passed out girl, do we forgive him? Or if he commits any of the other myriad versions of rape that occur, do we forgive him? What if he does it again? And again? what if he's an alcoholic and it only happens when he drinks? What if it happens enough that he gets the moniker "Date Rape..."? What if, what if, what if...

What if he feels like he doesn't have any options and he joins the service? What if he drops bombs on an Afghan village in pursuit of a terrorist? Google Afghan village, btw.

Moreover, so say we know someone who raped someone or who killed someone. What if he killed someone we know? What if he assaulted someone we know? It's so easy for us to quote Derrick Jensen, who is being fed peanut butter sandwiches from his mother while he pounds out jeremiads on keyboards manufactured by Korean children, while we go to rallies or tour the pre-industrial world on vacations that are exploications.

I'm so close to saying something that I can't take back. I'm that pissed. And not just at you. At me. Because when I go to sleep I don't see all of the shit I don't like about you. All of your selling out or buying in or hypocrisy or sophistry goes away. Because we're family and I love you. What doesn't go away is everything I've done or abide by; is everything that I've sanctioned by silence.

The best of us fail. And the best of us are guilty. What I wonder everyday is where that leaves us.

Crash Course and required reading

I just finished watching Chris Martenson's The Crash Course (h/t to Nate.) This is the required reading Derrick Jensen's The Culture of Make Believe, James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency, and finally Alan Weisman's The World Without Us. Watch Martenson's Crash Course. Next time we meet for dinner, bocce, drinks, or to run, we are going to talk about what we need to do. Then we will keep talking about it. Now, you tell me what I should be reading.

Ah, music...

O dear Siren, I haven't heard your call in quite sometime. I stopped thinking about music before I stopped playing having been burned and hollowed by years of playing. I was exhausted; I had nothing left. I started playing not to become a rockstar, to play arenas and get blowjobs from groupies, but to play small venues with a devoted group of people who were into the punk rock, DIY thing that had me driving to Canada to watch Botch and Harkonen play in a cafe in the nineties. So I did what I did between Carmenzito and The Assailant and I haven't looked back (very much) since. Until this weekend.

It started at work when a couple of old Tacoma musicians sitting at the rail were geeking out about music. It started with one of the going on about how the music on MJ's Thriller was so fantastic. He was playing air drums while singing the guitar parts with (to be honest) a puerile exuberance. His friend humored him until it was his turn to geek out about Helmet's AmRep records. Eavesdropping on their drunken euphoria sent me spinning off into a Neverland where I started playing music again in a heavy, indie, noise-type band that was some hybrid of early Helmet and Jesus Lizard. The feeling lingered until the end of the night when a young kid who'd seen the assailant came in. We ended up talking music with the conversation coming around to the old Paradox (U-District, not Tacoma...) and The Edge of Quarrel movie. I went home sad and nostalgic that night...

So, tonight, Independence Day, I ended the social part of the evening talking for an hour or two in the kitchen with Liza's new bf, a nu-metal guy who vaguely understands DIY and hardcore/punk, but has toured and knows what it means to play loud music then get old. The night ended with K putting on 20 from Colera and Liza and her bf indulging us for about 1/2 the song. Nevertheless, I teared up as I thought about how it was the last song I ever played live. So, I'll try to avoid the semi-turgid prose and give you a few snapshots:

I honestly don't remember this show. We played so many at Camp Nowhere and eventually they were all packed to the rafters and some sort of nuts. It was so hot and close, these were the types of shows that got me into this. Maybe we influenced somebody there like Botch did at the Velvet Elvis did for me. It was what I wanted shows to be like. This pic kinda sums up the goofy, crazy energy that was at every show.
I want to say the funny thing about this pic is...but really there's so much. I'm drunk on a balcony in an apartment in the center of Paris in between the Iranian and Chinese embassies explaining to Rye where the bruise and knot on my head came from (basement show in the Latin Quarter where, packed to the rafters, Nate's drumset keeps moving and I held it in place as people spilled over me the entire set. At one point Jon cracked me in the skull with his head stock.) That same night in that same spot Ryan broke down crying because he was so happy. He couldn't believe that he was on tour and had just played an amazing show in Paris. All of these cute French girls crowded around to comfort him because they couldn't understand why he was crying...

Our last tour was rough. We did mas o menos 5 weeks with Elphaba around the country. As bad as it was (it's the only tour that does not shine in the flattering glow of memory), there were still great moments. We played an awesome show in Detroit, but really we played the same whether it was 10 kids freaking out or ninety. This pic kinda sums that up for me. It was a long day and not a lot of people, but I remember it because it seemed so quintessential...

I've talked about this show a lot this weekend. I didn't want to play it as I've always stubbornly resisted bar shows. I gave in to Ryan and Casey and I'm glad I did. It was the Akimbo record release show and one of our last. It was everything that I wanted out of shows. The place was packed, everyone had fun, and frankly, it reminded me of Europe.

I sit here now with a glass of bourbon reminiscing bittersweetly about it all. About how much has changed. How I work differently now. How my friends are half a world away or they work for me. About how I balance a checkbook and plan vacations. About how I worry about the future, my health, and my relationship. The Assailant was the apex of my youth where I didn't give a shit; I would quit any job or leave anything to play music, tour, to do it. Now, I work 60 hours a week running a business. Now I try to save money not to tour, but for the simple fact that I feel like I ought to have money in the bank. I don't write, I don't make music. All of my creative energy pours into the business and its management. My mental energy is drained by managing talented but willful personalities. I bring the same monomania to business that I brought to music, but with much different results. Ultimately, I am constantly exhausted and unsatisfied.

Why Obama will not win the election

I have long asserted that virtually every single white person in the U.S. is racist. Despite a strong ground game and a lot of money in the coffers, I have been betting friends for months that Barack Obama will not be elected President. I was originally going to write that "we are not ready for a black president." However, that is more code that obfuscates the issue: this is a racist country1. So, maybe more "civilized" people will address the issue differently:




Ok, so I did not hear anyone calling him a nigger, but is the insinuation or flat out assertion that he is a terrorist merely code for the same thing? Are those backwoods rednecks in the first video saying what all of these other people are wanting to say, but are constrained by normative behavior? I believe that instead of using racial epithets, they instead choose to emphasize his middle name, to try to draw parallels between Obama and a 60's radical (or domestic terrorist, if you prefer), and to propogate a whisper campaign that he is in fact a Muslim.


I worry deeply, not only for this election but generally, that there are dark currents that flow beneath the surface of our culture. One in three women report being physically or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. We continue to discriminate against the LGBT community. Children growing up in poor communities lack the opportunities that are available to the affluent, to the White. All of this while we promote a culture of violence that desensitizes each generation to the abstract, unmanned warfare in impoverished countries that is required to sustain our lifestyle. I worry constantly about what we are doing to the planet. But right now I am worried about the Bradley effect. I am worried that these polls are a mirage (I just saw a clip on CNN where Gergen was saying that despite a commanding lead by Obama, the race was far from over because Obama is black. He went on to mention a study done by Stanford that stated Obama might take as much as a six point hit in the polls due to race. Sorry I cannot find the link - in a bit of a hurry. Edit: Here is a link to part of the Gergen quote and a correction about the Stanford survey. Thanks, K.) What happens if Obama loses? Moreover, what happens if he loses but appears to be leading in the polls? Or, if McCain is able to whittle down the impressive national lead through withering, scurrilous attacks? Best case scenario is that the young voters who were excited are irreparably disenfranchised. More to the point, the minority vote who already look upon the establishment with skepticism after the voter suppression in the last two elections decides that they want nothing to do with a system2.

But maybe this is not the worst case scenario. Our politicians (our politicians? Are these my politicians?) are in the pocket of corporations. They manufacture both foreign and domestic policy not with the interest of working people of the world (or the planet), but with the capitalists, i.e. those who hold the means of production. The bottom line for the corporations is profit; the corporations are beholden to their shareholders and not the communities they exploit. By proxy, politicians use money given to their campaigns to get elected (or re-elected), at which point the perpetuate the policies that are in the corporations best interest. So, not matter who wins, we lose. It is only a question of how much we lose. I am going to leave off with my favorite premises from Derrick Jensen's Endgame:

PREMISE ONE: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

PREMISE THREE: Our way of living - industrial civilization - is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

PREMISE FOUR: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those on the lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher on the hierarchy is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

PREMISE FIVE: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the loves of those below.

PREMISE SIX: Civilization is not redeemable.

PREMISE TWELVE: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people.

PREMISE THIRTEEN: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of the illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.

PREMISE EIGHTEEN: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.


1. More than a racist country, it is a country where we marginalize and/or oppress the poor, chilldren, women, gays, and every ethnic background that is not Western European.
2. I originally meant to write "the system," but that typo seems to work just as well.

The Etymythology of Maverick

The term maverick is from the 19th century American Southwest denoting unbranded cattle. The term came from the Texas pioneer Samuel A. Maverick who refused to brand his cattle, but the term quickly entered the lexicon as someone who was a recalcitrant independent. Neighboring ranchers suspected that Maverick avoided branding his cattle not because his stated reason of not wanting to hurt the animals, but instead because it allowed him to gather all unbranded cattle as his own. Why the term came to mean someone who is independent and stands against their associates as opposed to one who is a conniving opportunist is a mystery. What is ironic, however, is that John McCain has branded himself as a maverick when he is in fact the conniving opportunist who has made a career out of nepotism and cronyism. As we enter the home stretch of the 2008 Presidential campaign, we are going to see a barrage on untruth from both sides. For instance, while Phil Gramm is something of a douche and McCain's economic adviser, Clinton and congress have as much blood on their hands w/r/t the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. McCain's long and sordid public history has enough to take him to task w/o specious linkages. As the Rolling Stone article does a good job of demonstrating, McCain is not only not a maverick in the traditional sense of the term, he is also not a straight talker or a good person. And while we are at it, this war hero mythology is utter nonsense. He was a terrible soldier and terrible pilot who was willfully engaged in an ideological conflict that pitted U.S. containment against the threat of Communist expansion. The war cost the lives of nearly 60,000 servicemen and and upwards of 5 million Vietnamese (1 million combatants and 4 million civilians, or 2/3 of the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. More evidence that Jensen was right in that "every holocaust looks different depending on the class to which the observer belongs" [Jensen, Endgame Volume II, pg 865] ). This is a man who when he was shot down flying a combat mission where he was bombing Hanoi was willfully engaging in a conflict that killed millions.

I want people to stop and think about the scale of death involved in the war that this pampered, elitist, spoiled child was willfully engaging in. It would be the equivalent of over the course of 16 years of conflict every single man, and child was killed in the city of Los Angeles. Or Chicago. Or Houston. Or any other city in the United States other than New York City. Or how about this: Roughly more than less than half of the states in the U.S. have a population of under 4 million. So, imagine that over the course of 16 years (say from the waning days of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign until today) every single human being was killed in Oregon or Iowa or Utah. Better yet, imagine that over the course of 16 years of napalm and gifts of dioxin from the likes of Dow Chemical and Monsanto along with more conventional munitions, every single human being was killed in Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, and Delaware1.

Every single one of them.

And make no mistake, these people died horrifically as "heroes" like John McCain rained death down from above. This womanizer who publicly mocked a teenager girl (Chelsea Clinton) for being unattractive and called his wife a cunt for teasing him about going bald. This is not a good man. John McCain and Sarah Palin (who I will get to later) are not just bad politicians and indifferent to the plight of the working man, they are enemies of humanity and the planet in general. I cannot overstate my disdain for the Republican ticket and what their election might portend.

1. All population numbers are from here.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The good is that Obama has gathered a sizable lead in the polls as we head down the home stretch. As we expectantly await the October Surprise, we begin to feel the perfidious specter of Hope that the lead is substantial enough to weather whatever comes next.

The bad? It could be anything from the McCain still being competitive after running an awful campaign and Palin being an absolute embarrassment to the media not handing these people their asses for being dishonest, inconsistent, and barely coherent. The latter is exemplified by the fact that in the famous satirization of Palin by Tina Fey, they use direct quotes from the transcripts. And as for the dishonesty, let us call it what it is: Sarah Palin and John McCain are liars. All politicians prevaricate, equivocate, or otherwise challenge or skirt the truth in ways that are unimaginable in everyday life. However, these two have managed drag political discourse into the mud by focusing on soundbites, deception, and innuendo.

This leads me to the ugly: the presidential campaign is about to shift from any semblance of issue driven discourse to personal attacks. Obama was ready for McCain to play the Ayers card with a short video demonstrating the relationships between McCain and Phil Gramm and Charles Keating. In turn, McCain is going to commit an act of ledgerdemain by representing Obama as "the Other." The necessary for preconditions for this narrative to function will be the public having the attention span of a gadfly and the persistance and ubiquitousness of doublethink. The Other that McCain is going represent Obama as is an angry black man who associates with terrorists; as an effete intellectual who is out of touch with middle America, which is actually how he is an uppity nigger; how he is a threat to your safety, which, in terms of him being a black man is mas o menos that his is going to steal your blonde girlfriend after carjacking you. Barack Obama is both a terrorist loving, angry, black Muslim man and a faggoty, prissy intellectual who, as Hillary Clinton said, will fold like a paper doll when attacked. Either way, he is a threat to your freedom and the safety of your women, cars, and VCRs. People do not care about Ayers or Rev. Wright or any of this other nonsense, what they care about is that all of these stories point to his Otherness, which leads back to his blackness. Now, this is where it gets really ugly: Obama cannot win the narrative by directly addressing the narrative of his Otherness. He cannot take a time out and discuss the metanarrative of race relations or how it is being leveraged against him, he cannot unpack or dismantle the individual claims w/r/t the implicit assumptions, and he cannot ignore them. I think (and I sincerely hope I am wrong) that his only viable tactic is to counterattack. He needs to relentlessly dismantle McCain's claims, exploit Palin's gaffes, and take apart the idea of the maverick. Finally, I think that he needs his surrogates to perform the bloodiest of the operations, which will entail painting McCain/Palin as racist, soulless liars. As much as possible, he needs to stay above the fray so as to not tarnish the ideas of hope and change that he has branded himself with. He needs to be seen and heard as much as possible so as to make it easier for the public to understand that he is not the Other, but instead a smooth talking liberal who wants what is best for this country. The next for weeks are going to get very ugly. We all need to be prepared.

The Etymythology of Hope

Hope is defined as: “Expectation of something desired; desire combined with expectation; feeling of trust or confidence; expectation (without implication of desire, or of a thing not desired); prospect.” It is recorded first in Old English from which it metastasizes through other Northern European languages1. The idea is traced back further to Elpis, the personification of hope, the last of the evils in Pandora’s jar2 to be unleashed upon the world. This story, through which we can trace the Christian creation myth, began with a plea from Prometheus for a back entrance to Olympus, which Athena granted. He then proceeded to take a coal from the chariot of the sun and, stealing away, gave fire to mankind. Zeus was outraged, so to exact revenge he ordered Hephaestus to fashion the most beautiful woman ever created out of clay, which Hermes delivered to Epimetheus, Prometheus’s brother. However, Epimetheus, having been forewarned to never take gifts from the Olympian gods, declined. In a fury, Zeus chained Prometheus naked to a pillar in the Caucausian mountains where he was subjected to the unremitting torment of a vulture feasting on his liver during the day, and as it regrew during the night he was subjected to the elements. In fear that he might experience a similar fate, Epimetheus married Pandora who was “as foolish, mischievous, and idle as she was beautiful.” Not soon after she, being afflicted with a curious temperament as well, opened a forbidden jar which contained all of the evils of the world such as: “Old Age, Labour, Sickness, Insanity, Vice, and Passion.” Freed from the jar, these evils afflicted mankind leaving behind only the “delusive Hope…whom Prometheus had also shut in the jar, [which] discouraged [humanity] by her lies from a general suicide.”3
The mythology is interesting for a couple of initial points. First, man is punished by the gods for one of the most primitive uses of technology. Have we told these stories from the beginning because of an innate fear of technology? If so, is the irrational belief that technology is evil an enthymeme in all discourse on progress? How do we contextualize anarcho-primitivism and industrial/post-industrial culture vis-à-vis the politics of resistance?

The second point that I want to briefly touch on is that the gods, or really only one particularly jealous and vengeful one in this story, punish man’s acceptance of technology by providing him with a woman of unsurpassed beauty who is afflicted with curiosity, laziness, and a proclivity for getting in trouble? Is this an early variation on the Madonna/whore complex and if so, have we held this forever? What does it say about us as a culture that we continue to tell these stories about women?

Both of these points raise a large number of questions that are better left for another time. What I am most interested in is the final scourge of humanity in Pandora’s box: Hope. It is interesting that the Greeks placed Elpis, the personification of Hope, in a jar with the world’s other evils, but does Elpis translate as hope or something else?4 As it turns out, it does not seem to matter too much. The OED defines expectation as, “1. The action of waiting; the action or state of waiting for or awaiting “something”. Now with only a mixture of sense;” and, “2. Expectant waiting.”5

What is missing from both definitions is any agency in the future events. Here is where context is important: we never speak of being hopeful for something over which we have agency; that is to say, we never have hope for something to occur that we ourselves can accomplish. It is nonsensical to say that we hope for something that we know we can achieve; we simply enact whatever we desire. However, if we do not have the power to do so, or the future is ambiguous enough that we might not have the power, then we hope. For instance, we hope that the Cubs do well in the playoffs; we hope that we get a job or promotion; we hope that a pregnant woman’s baby is born alive. What we do not hope for is a bologna sandwich. Provided we have the necessary components of the sandwich, we get up, walk to the kitchen, make the sandwich, and then return to the living room where we resume watching the Cubs game and hoping for a miracle. We hope for a good life constituted of love, shelter, minimal hardship, etc. What exactly we have agency over is a bit contentious and we experience hope for that which is in doubt, but only because of that doubt. It is the dubious nature of agency that makes hope aptly described as delusive. This is also why it is such a powerful rhetorical tool for politicians in trying times. They are playing on our unquestioned and perhaps unacknowledged feelings of powerlessness by offering hope; i.e., they are offering to affect a future outcome over which we have no direct agency.

Make no mistake my friends: Hope is the enemy of man. It seems counterintuitive, but there is mounting evidence that those who accept that which they have agency over are healthier and happier than those who are hopeful, those that dream of a future that is better than the present. This is not to say that the prisoner sentenced to life without parole or the colostomy patient are without hope, it might simply be that they are hopeful for other things (cigarettes, good weather, etc.). It may be the case that hope, like fear, is essential to the human condition. If this is the case, then it is yet another of our innate aspects that should be guarded against. We are constantly at odds with ourselves, our more primitive brain functions seeking to undermine the order established by the higher brain.

Hope, Elpis, daughter of Nyx the primordial goddess of night, is a demon that creates a vicarious world, a world of dreams that we stumble through praying or waiting expectantly for the best. Instead of living meekly in a world contingent upon the blessings of fate or the good will of others, I propose we accept the Serenity Prayer, which works just as well without religion or appeal to higher authority:

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

If we accept this as a mantra and we live nec spe, nec metu, then we will begin down the path to being conscientious citizens of the world, which is in and of itself an act of resistance.8

1. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1971
2. As noted in the Pandora wiki article, the early references were to a jar and not a box.
3. Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths 38g-j
4. The definition of the word elpis has been the subject of much debate with some scholars translating it as “expectation.” Again, see the Pandora wiki article for a synopsis on this debate.
5. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 19718.
6. NYtimes article here.
7. Also, see The Whitehall studies where the relative health of British civil servants is examined.
8. I've been using a Mac all day and there seems to be formatting issues, user error issues, etc. I want to throw this goddamned thing out the window. If you've made it this far, thanks for the patience.

Green is this year's black

I'll return to work in a couple of weeks and I feel a sense of urgency w/r/t a few projects that I've started. While I'm happy about some of the preparations I've made for the apocalypse and my brief Mexico excursion, I am still disappointed that I haven't accomplished more. So, without further ado, here's where I am at so far:
- Volunteer at 2nd Cycle bicycle collective. This has been a great experience. I get to work with my hands on one of the most efficient engines ever created and learn about something that I use everyday that I didn't really know anything about a few months ago. The practical experience has been gratifying; I'm curious whether the administrative will prove to be equally so. We are doing something that is good for the community as well.
- Gardening. I've been teaching myself to garden by working in the community space down the street and in my own yard. Yesterday I built to 6'x6' garden boxes from cedar planks and salvaged wood from an old couch and a box spring, both of which contained a remarkable amount of easily salvaged pine. My goal is to grow most of my produce by next year. In the next couple of weeks I'm going to work on building a removable green house and a compost bin. Maybe soon a chicken coop as well...if not, then maybe a dog house.
- Writing. I've made my return to fiction. I've been writing everyday and excitedly researching a number of projects. I probably have the publication of an old story in PICTURE|STORY|SONG to thank for this. The bulk of my fiction will probably end up being graphic novels. Rob agreed to help me with 3 book proposals that I hope to have done soon.
-Sewing. I've started mending my clothes and I'm hoping to make panniers before the end of the summer. I have a feeling that this project is probably bigger than I realize.
-We've been brainstorming ways to make our house "green." We recycle significantly more than we throw out, but we still need to compost (the last attempt ended, er, badly), and I would like to reclaim graywater. Along the same lines, I need to build/salvage rain barrels. Any advice for this or any other project that promotes self-reliance or living locally, send my way.

I've got more projects on the horizon as well. I'm really excited and happy, not only because it's my birthday. Did I mention it's my birthday? Yea, so, no big deal or anything, but you know, it's my birthday. K got me awesome presents and there's going to be a party here on Saturday.

Welcome to the Machine

We do not need any of DARPA's gadgets, FISA's allowance for dubious activities, or the umbrella of the PATRIOT ACT to keep us safe. All we need is to make sure that we watch out for each other. To that end, the US government has created a Terrorism Liaison Officer where civilians like you and me can do there part by watching other civilians like you and me. Suspicious activities include, but are not limited to, overheard threats, graffiti of a man holding a gun, the legal purchase of something that has a very quotidian use, but can also be used to inspire terror, and taking pictures or shooting video that has no apparent aesthetic value. I have always thought that crappy photography and ill-conceived video installations were not with us, but against us. Every third Thursday when I go to the local galleries during Art Walk, I am always thinking to myself, "wouldn't the world be better served with this asshole getting waterboarded at Gitmo?" Well, now I too can make the world a better place.

The Poetics of Slavery

CROSS POSTED AND REPRINTED WITHOUT PERMISSION:
A vast array of pharmaceuticals (AP) -- including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones - have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs - and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen - in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas - from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

How do the drugs get into the water?

People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies - which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public - have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.

"We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Members of the AP National Investigative Team reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants and interviewed more than 230 officials, academics and scientists. They also surveyed the nation's 50 largest cities and a dozen other major water providers, as well as smaller community water providers in all 50 states.

Here are some of the key test results obtained by the AP:

-Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

-Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

-Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

-A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water.

-The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

-Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.

The federal government doesn't require any testing and hasn't set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Among the 34 that haven't: Houston, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Phoenix, Boston and New York City's Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.

Some providers screen only for one or two pharmaceuticals, leaving open the possibility that others are present.

The AP's investigation also indicates that watersheds, the natural sources of most of the nation's water supply, also are contaminated. Tests were conducted in the watersheds of 35 of the 62 major providers surveyed by the AP, and pharmaceuticals were detected in 28.

Yet officials in six of those 28 metropolitan areas said they did not go on to test their drinking water - Fairfax, Va.; Montgomery County in Maryland; Omaha, Neb.; Oklahoma City; Santa Clara, Calif., and New York City.

The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city's water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.

City water officials declined repeated requests for an interview. In a statement, they insisted that "New York City's drinking water continues to meet all federal and state regulations regarding drinking water quality in the watershed and the distribution system" - regulations that do not address trace pharmaceuticals.

In several cases, officials at municipal or regional water providers told the AP that pharmaceuticals had not been detected, but the AP obtained the results of tests conducted by independent researchers that showed otherwise. For example, water department officials in New Orleans said their water had not been tested for pharmaceuticals, but a Tulane University researcher and his students have published a study that found the pain reliever naproxen, the sex hormone estrone and the anti-cholesterol drug byproduct clofibric acid in treated drinking water.

Of the 28 major metropolitan areas where tests were performed on drinking water supplies, only Albuquerque; Austin, Texas; and Virginia Beach, Va.; said tests were negative. The drinking water in Dallas has been tested, but officials are awaiting results. Arlington, Texas, acknowledged that traces of a pharmaceutical were detected in its drinking water but cited post-9/11 security concerns in refusing to identify the drug.

The AP also contacted 52 small water providers - one in each state, and two each in Missouri and Texas - that serve communities with populations around 25,000. All but one said their drinking water had not been screened for pharmaceuticals; officials in Emporia, Kan., refused to answer AP's questions, also citing post-9/11 issues.

Rural consumers who draw water from their own wells aren't in the clear either, experts say.

The Stroud Water Research Center, in Avondale, Pa., has measured water samples from New York City's upstate watershed for caffeine, a common contaminant that scientists often look for as a possible signal for the presence of other pharmaceuticals. Though more caffeine was detected at suburban sites, researcher Anthony Aufdenkampe was struck by the relatively high levels even in less populated areas.

He suspects it escapes from failed septic tanks, maybe with other drugs. "Septic systems are essentially small treatment plants that are essentially unmanaged and therefore tend to fail," Aufdenkampe said.

Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don't necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry's main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.

Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe - even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.

For example, in Canada, a study of 20 Ontario drinking water treatment plants by a national research institute found nine different drugs in water samples. Japanese health officials in December called for human health impact studies after detecting prescription drugs in drinking water at seven different sites.

In the United States, the problem isn't confined to surface waters. Pharmaceuticals also permeate aquifers deep underground, source of 40 percent of the nation's water supply. Federal scientists who drew water in 24 states from aquifers near contaminant sources such as landfills and animal feed lots found minuscule levels of hormones, antibiotics and other drugs.

Perhaps it's because Americans have been taking drugs - and flushing them unmetabolized or unused - in growing amounts. Over the past five years, the number of U.S. prescriptions rose 12 percent to a record 3.7 billion, while nonprescription drug purchases held steady around 3.3 billion, according to IMS Health and The Nielsen Co.

"People think that if they take a medication, their body absorbs it and it disappears, but of course that's not the case," said EPA scientist Christian Daughton, one of the first to draw attention to the issue of pharmaceuticals in water in the United States.

Some drugs, including widely used cholesterol fighters, tranquilizers and anti-epileptic medications, resist modern drinking water and wastewater treatment processes. Plus, the EPA says there are no sewage treatment systems specifically engineered to remove pharmaceuticals.

One technology, reverse osmosis, removes virtually all pharmaceutical contaminants but is very expensive for large-scale use and leaves several gallons of polluted water for every one that is made drinkable.

Another issue: There's evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.

Human waste isn't the only source of contamination. Cattle, for example, are given ear implants that provide a slow release of trenbolone, an anabolic steroid used by some bodybuilders, which causes cattle to bulk up. But not all the trenbolone circulating in a steer is metabolized. A German study showed 10 percent of the steroid passed right through the animals.

Water sampled downstream of a Nebraska feedlot had steroid levels four times as high as the water taken upstream. Male fathead minnows living in that downstream area had low testosterone levels and small heads.

Other veterinary drugs also play a role. Pets are now treated for arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, dementia, and even obesity - sometimes with the same drugs as humans. The inflation-adjusted value of veterinary drugs rose by 8 percent, to $5.2 billion, over the past five years, according to an analysis of data from the Animal Health Institute.

Ask the pharmaceutical industry whether the contamination of water supplies is a problem, and officials will tell you no. "Based on what we now know, I would say we find there's little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health," said microbiologist Thomas White, a consultant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

But at a conference last summer, Mary Buzby - director of environmental technology for drug maker Merck & Co. Inc. - said: "There's no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they're at, could be causing impacts to human health or to aquatic organisms."

Recent laboratory research has found that small amounts of medication have affected human embryonic kidney cells, human blood cells and human breast cancer cells. The cancer cells proliferated too quickly; the kidney cells grew too slowly; and the blood cells showed biological activity associated with inflammation.

Also, pharmaceuticals in waterways are damaging wildlife across the nation and around the globe, research shows. Notably, male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females. Pharmaceuticals also are affecting sentinel species at the foundation of the pyramid of life - such as earth worms in the wild and zooplankton in the laboratory, studies show.

Some scientists stress that the research is extremely limited, and there are too many unknowns. They say, though, that the documented health problems in wildlife are disconcerting.

"It brings a question to people's minds that if the fish were affected ... might there be a potential problem for humans?" EPA research biologist Vickie Wilson told the AP. "It could be that the fish are just exquisitely sensitive because of their physiology or something. We haven't gotten far enough along."

With limited research funds, said Shane Snyder, research and development project manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a greater emphasis should be put on studying the effects of drugs in water.

"I think it's a shame that so much money is going into monitoring to figure out if these things are out there, and so little is being spent on human health," said Snyder. "They need to just accept that these things are everywhere - every chemical and pharmaceutical could be there. It's time for the EPA to step up to the plate and make a statement about the need to study effects, both human and environmental."

To the degree that the EPA is focused on the issue, it appears to be looking at detection. Grumbles acknowledged that just late last year the agency developed three new methods to "detect and quantify pharmaceuticals" in wastewater. "We realize that we have a limited amount of data on the concentrations," he said. "We're going to be able to learn a lot more."

While Grumbles said the EPA had analyzed 287 pharmaceuticals for possible inclusion on a draft list of candidates for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, he said only one, nitroglycerin, was on the list. Nitroglycerin can be used as a drug for heart problems, but the key reason it's being considered is its widespread use in making explosives.

So much is unknown. Many independent scientists are skeptical that trace concentrations will ultimately prove to be harmful to humans. Confidence about human safety is based largely on studies that poison lab animals with much higher amounts.

There's growing concern in the scientific community, meanwhile, that certain drugs - or combinations of drugs - may harm humans over decades because water, unlike most specific foods, is consumed in sizable amounts every day.

Our bodies may shrug off a relatively big one-time dose, yet suffer from a smaller amount delivered continuously over a half century, perhaps subtly stirring allergies or nerve damage. Pregnant women, the elderly and the very ill might be more sensitive.

Many concerns about chronic low-level exposure focus on certain drug classes: chemotherapy that can act as a powerful poison; hormones that can hamper reproduction or development; medicines for depression and epilepsy that can damage the brain or change behavior; antibiotics that can allow human germs to mutate into more dangerous forms; pain relievers and blood-pressure diuretics.

For several decades, federal environmental officials and nonprofit watchdog environmental groups have focused on regulated contaminants - pesticides, lead, PCBs - which are present in higher concentrations and clearly pose a health risk.

However, some experts say medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body.

"These are chemicals that are designed to have very specific effects at very low concentrations. That's what pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should not be a shock to people that they have effects," says zoologist John Sumpter at Brunel University in London, who has studied trace hormones, heart medicine and other drugs.

And while drugs are tested to be safe for humans, the timeframe is usually over a matter of months, not a lifetime. Pharmaceuticals also can produce side effects and interact with other drugs at normal medical doses. That's why - aside from therapeutic doses of fluoride injected into potable water supplies - pharmaceuticals are prescribed to people who need them, not delivered to everyone in their drinking water.

"We know we are being exposed to other people's drugs through our drinking water, and that can't be good," says Dr. David Carpenter, who directs the Institute for Health and the Environment of the State University of New York at Albany.

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The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate (at) ap.org

The continuation of politics by other means: Part II

Blackwater is defined as wastewater containing bodily or other biological wastes, such as from toilets, kitchen sinks, etc. This is to be compared with graywater that is wastewater from household baths and washing machines that is recycled and used for gardening or flushing toilets.

An alternate definition of Blackwater is the private military company that is one the U.S. State Department’s three largest security contractors, which was founded by ex-Navy SEAL cum-millionaire Erik Prince who not only has all sorts of ties to the Republican Party, but is also is a board member of Christian Freedom International. Now I know it is a huge fallacy to extrapolate anything about the private security contractors on the ground in Iraq or their blatant disregard for the value of human life from the founder of the company’s apparent ideology, but I will say that it is amusing in a laugh-at-a-particularly –funny-Holocaust-joke-kind-of-way. Crusades, anyone?

The last definition that I am proffering today is hubris: excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance, which is from the Greek hybris meaning “wanton violence, insolence, outrage,” originally “presumption toward the gods.” Now here’s the question: is it their hubris thinking that they can go into another country and kill and maim people indiscriminately without significant consequences or is it our hubris in that we are being presumptuous that the gods of commerce will hear or care about our moral outrage w/r/t what they do to preserve our way of life? More specifically, isn’t this moral outrage a little hollow when we continue to invest with groups such are JP Morgan Chase, Fidelity, and Capital Group/American Funds, which in turn are some of the largest U.S. investors in PetroChina, the public arm of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). So, as we feign moral outrage about mercenaries (let’s call these private security contractors what they are) indiscriminately using force against Iraqi citizens for perceived threats, we are feeding our IRAs, which in turn are being used to help fund the genocide in Sudan (our [well, not mine…restaurants do not help much in terms of retirement…] money goes into our IRAs, is then re-invested into PetroChina, then is in turn used by CNPC to operate the Greater Nile Petroleum Company, Sudan’s largest oil producer.)[1]

I know, I know, progress not perfection. We drive our cars to our rallies and protest about NAFTA or American Imperialism then go home feeling as if we’ve made some sort of difference. We write polemics in blogs that no one reads and less people care about that ultimately let us gain a moral neutral buoyancy so that we can sip our lattes and run our miles, but aren’t we really just assuaging our ubiquitous White Guilt? Does any of this really matter? Could we, even if we were willing to, extract ourselves from a significant percentage of the culture of oppression and domination of which we are integral parts? Everything we purchase and consume is the moral equivalent of a blood diamond. How do we resist? Stop consuming? Write our Congressmen? Blow up a dam?

It is funny, Nate challenged me to quit watching and reading about sports and he would in turn stop eating meat. I’ve found it more difficult than quitting smoking. How many other comforts will I have great difficulty giving up? Coffee? Rice? Fish? The Internet? Cable TV? Alcohol? Cell phone? Pornography in all of its many forms? As I sit here free-associating on my laptop that cost 1/15^th the estimated value of an Iraqi citizen’s life (at least according the State Departments Diplomatic Security Service) on my day off from a restaurant where people spend more on meal than I make in a week, I am at a total loss. I am not even angry anymore, only confused and depressed.

War is the continuation of the absence of politics by other means[2]; it is corporate sponsored states using force and propaganda to control the resources of those with less power. Mussolini said of Fascism that, “[it] should be more appropriately called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.”[3] This brings to mind what might be “the central delusion of [our] culture, the delusion that there are rich and there are poor, that monetary wealth – and by extension food and land (which means food) – is held by anything more than social contract and force.”[4] We live in a world where we vote with our dollar and we are not really given any other choice. Freedom? “You can have all the freedom you want as long as the authorities consider it unimportant.” [5] Or at least so stated Ted Kaczynski. I doubt there can be any real freedom, much less democracy, in a capitalist state.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/business/worldbusiness/30oil.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[2] Eh, The Spirit of Terrorism, Jean Baudrillard

[3] Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization, Derrick Jensen

[4] ibid.

[5] ibid.

We are all Germans

The thing that surprised me most about the concentration camp at Dachau was not that I was visiting a place where tens of thousands of people were murdered, or that I was confronted by throngs of teenagers, undoubtedly out on school trips (we did the same when I was young, except we visited museums commemorating the internment of Japanese and Asian Americans during WWII), or the ovens and how serene the setting was, or how one could walk along a wooded trail and come across plaques marking where people were lined up against the wall and executed. What surprised me most, and today I still have the hardest time reconciling, is that the city of Dachau comes right up to the walls of the concentration camp. In the shadow of these walls are townhouses and small yards with children’s toys not unlike ones you would find in Federal Way or any other suburb, the notable difference being the knowledge that on the other side was the most efficient concentration camp of the Holocaust: Dachau.

I wondered then and I wonder now, how did they live there? How did they stay as the ash from the ovens fell over the city? Moreover, how do they continue to live there with its dark history? It is an easy question to ask, and probably an even easier question to answer. As I write this from my apartment in Tacoma, WA, I look out my living room window at Mount Rainier from which this city gets its name. Originally “known as Tahoma or Tacoma, from the Puyallup word tacobet ("mother of waters"),”[i] the mountain has since been renamed Mount Rainier. It reminds me that my hometown, which I am particularly fond of and that I have a misplaced affinity for its blue collar sentimentality, is here because of conquest, Manifest Destiny, and genocide. Succinctly, I am here because of a holocaust. I can sit here and unflinchingly sing the praises of a town built because of the eradication of the indigenous people while simultaneously criticizing the people of Dachau. Now, there is a longer timeline here, so I can make claims to that the collective amnesia has had more time to set in, but really as I type this I hear Jen and Nate in my head calling shenanigans. We do not need time for the amnesia to set in, we turn our heads and ignore atrocities as they are committed. Hence, the amnesia is virtually instantaneous.

If Iraqi Body Count and its lack of publicity (though the fatalites of our soldiers, currently around 2400, gets plenty of press when it hits the arbitrary marks) is not enough for you, then take a look at the estimated casualties from UN sanctions against Iraq from the first Gulf War until the second: “Critics of the sanctions say that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, disproportionately children, died as a result of them, [2] although certain skeptics claim the numbers to be less. [3] [4][5] UNICEF has put the number of child deaths to 500,000.”[ii] The now famous quote from Madeleine Albright that “we think the price is worth it” pretty much sums up our culture’s feelings on the subject. That we are willing to strangle another country so that the impoverished die from disease, malnutrition, and starvation, is indicative of the fact that we value “the abstract over the particular: of production over life; of economic…systems over living beings.”[iii] We are unperturbed by the deaths of these people, mostly children. Is it because they are brown? Is it because they live on the other side of the planet? Or is it because “every holocaust looks different, depending on the class to which the observer belongs.”[iv] To the class benefitting from such atrocities, do they even appear to be such? Can we distinguish these atrocities from the tide of history, from the progress of civilization where the conquered are subjected to the whims of the conquerors? Maybe for the class benefitting “(t)he holocaust will feel like economics. It will feel like progress. It will feel like technological innovation. It will feel like civilization. It will feel like the way things are.”[v]

We have sites like Iraqi Body Count because there is something of interest in Iraq: oil. We are not overly concerned about the conflict Sudan, AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, much less human rights violations in China (Ramsey Clark, attorney general during LBJ’s administration, stated that the purpose of US foreign policy is “to dominate for the exploitation of resources,”[vi] which is probably why we and/or the media are not particularly concerned with these places).

What strikes me when thinking about censorship in China is its heavy handedness. It seems to me that if you limit what people can read, say, or do, you create a black market for these things, you fetishize them. People will search these things out and eventually form a counterculture or resistance around what is banned. Whereas, if you hide them in plain sight, so to speak, then people are just as easily going to be unconcerned or unbothered by them. This is shown by our government’s making public record such things as Project for the New American Century, School of the Americas/Western Hemishphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or simply by the decriminilization of lighter drugs in Holland and parts of Canada. It is no longer as compelling for most people if it is out in the open, it becomes transparent so that it is no longer noticed. It is no accident that the current administration, while having the reputation for being one of the most secretive administrations this country has ever seen, has had leaks about such things as NSA wiretaps, the collecting of virtually everyone’s phone records, secret prisons around the world, falsification of intelligence that led us to war, and so and so forth. These things were not simply leaked, but the battlefield (being public opinion), was softened first, then we were made aware of these things. And, while the president’s poll numbers are significantly down, he and the rest of the people in power have yet to be held accountable for any number of illegal acts.

Joseph Goebbels, mastermind behind the Nazi propaganda machine, understood how to keep the masses in a perpetual state of agitated content: “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”[vii] Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? What sounds even more familiar is this: “The broadcasting programmes need to be put together in such a way that while they still cater for sophisticated tastes, they are also pleasing and accessible to less demanding listeners [or viewers, I suppose]…They should offer an intelligent and skillful blend of what is informative, stimulating, relaxing, and entertaining. Of these, relaxation deserves special care…giving them a right to recuperate and refresh themselves during the few hours when they are off work.”[viii] Distract us with an enemy, placate (anesthetize) us at home with entertainment, and conceal in plain sight exactly what you are doing.

So, my question is, if there was something occurring right now that was analagous to the Holocaust, would we notice? Would we even care? When I go to work tonight at the bar, people are going to be more than willing to talk about the beautiful weather we are having, LeBron James hitting a game winning shot, The Da Vinci Code’s luke warm reception at Cannes, but are we, as they sip their $8 cocktails and as I mix them, really wanting, even if we are capable, to discuss the potential that we are all Germans living under the shadow of that wall?

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[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier

[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions

[iii] The Culture of Make Believe, pg. 601, Derrick Jensen

[iv] ibid. Pg. 592

[v] ibid. Pg. 593-594

[vi] ibid. Pg. 577

[vii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie

[viii] The Culture of Make Believe, pg. 594, Derrick Jensen