Month: October 2002

My Stubborn Streak Reappears

Like Dave at Time’s Shadow, I too am tiring of the constant barrage of warblogging. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m as tolerant as Dave. After several times reading “great articles” that turn out to be nothing more than propaganda, I tend to return to the blog that referred them less than I used to, even if it means missing out on other views I used to find interesting.

As I’ve said before, I too am fed up with illogical, emotional arguments that rely on name calling rather than logic to prove their argument, whether pro-Iraqi or anti-Iraqi. There are arguments to support both views, but few people bother to look at possible scenarios and then argue how those scenarios support their view.

When Christopher Hitchens loads the beginning of his essay in the Washington Post with words like “Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter” and “America’s peace-mongers” and “the Left could have a regime-change perspective of its own, based on solidarity with its comrades abroad” you know that his argument is not going to be based on anything resembling logic. How any blogger can pass this on as a “well-written op-ed” is beyond me. In a very real sense, I begin to lose confidence in that blogger’s wisdom and objectivity.

I’d like to think I’m no more masochistic than Dave. So that leaves me asking myself why I continue to plow through this stuff looking for something that resembles an intelligent argument and continue to offer my own counter arguments. Perhaps I agree with Jonathon that it’s important to “hold and articulate a stance that supports the elimination of Al Quaeda and the Islamic Fascists while opposing Bush’s oil-driven war against Iraq.” At the very least, people need to have reasonable alternatives to those views. They need to be remnded that there are other possibilities that offer more rational solutions to complex problems

Perhaps I believe it’s just too important of an issue to leave it to those who would try to drum up emotions to justify their own irrational fears and hatred. Of course, Dorothea might be right that my damn stubborn streak is bound to cause me pain because it won’t allow me to simply accept the reality that the invasion of Iraq is inevitable and there is nothing I can do about it. My time would be better spent getting the garden ready for a long, wet winter.

However, I spent most of my life trying to teach students how to think critically for themselves. I guess I’m still not ready to give up on that belief even though I’m no longer teaching. I still believe the world will be a far better place when people learn to make important decisions based on rational arguments not merely on emotions.

All Over but the Shooting and Dying

Despite what Jonathon Delacour and Joe Duemer may think, I personally feel that the debate over Iraq, for better or worse, is over in America. THEY, the Bush administration, are simply waiting for elections to disappear before beginning the invasion.

Now, Duemer may well be right that the far left and far right will unite in protest against the war. However, since there is no draft and since the energy for effective protests probably comes from young men who fear they may soon be headed off to war, they will continue to be limited to small protests in Portland, Oregon, with aged hippies marching through the streets, soon dissolving into small groups of quaint discontents as protestors head off to get a warming Latte. All rather nostalgic and colorful, but in the end meaningless and ineffective.

I also tend to agree with Jonathon’s assessment that we should have continued to pursue our attempts to eradicate Al Queda and Bin Laden rather than divert our energies to striking Saddam. While it would have been even better if we could have limited that attempt to “police” forces, portraying them as the criminals they are rather than as armed combatants in a “holy war” against the United States, for the most part our attempts to root out Al Queda have been reasonable attempts of people to defend themselves against criminal acts, though I would still argue that caging people for months in Cuba, only to quietly admit that many of them were probably wrongfully incarcerated was just plain immoral, and, more importantly, is unlikely to win many converts to our cause.

Certainly international law and common sense would allow us to pursue those who operate outside the law and strike the innocent with impunity. The war against Saddam will effectively short-circuit that attempt, though, as it is unlikely that America will have the personnel or energy to carry out both “wars” at the same time.

In the long run, I suspect that our invasion of Iraq will contribute to, not diminish, the Al Queda movement. Does anyone really believe that such an invasion, justified or not, will not further alienate Muslims from the United States? Who, beside the oil-rich ruling classes who have already allied themselves with the Republican administration, can see this as anything but an attempt by the West to impose its will on their Muslim bretheren?

I find myself more and more agreeing with Dave of Time’s Shadow that the real problem is that no one, no one, has really seen the problem through and figured out an end game. The same stupid administrators who created Bin Laden’s myth of “Holy Saviour of the Muslim Faith” in their earlier attempts to overthrow the evil communist empire in Afghanistan are about to repeat that mistake once again, creating another martyr in the Muslim cause.

Like Israel in earlier battles, we will probably again easily defeat Saddam in this battle and pat ourselves on the back after another Great Victory (One Granada, Two Granada …). Who can deny it? The real question, of course, the one the Republican Administration neither asks nor answers, is whether we will end up in precisely the same position the Israelis find themselves twenty years after their “resounding victories,” mired in an on-going struggle that diminishes not only the lives of the Palestinians but of the Israelis themselves.

All Newsed Out

Despite fighting an ongoing cold and a fear that I might hurt myself while using new tools with sharp edges (considering last week’s events), I’ve been driven out into the yard to finish up late summer chores by the onslaught of what increasingly passes for “news” on television.

Generally, when I’m just too “out of it” to accomplish anything truly worthwhile, I’ll settle down in front of the television and watch the news. After all, there’s very little justification for cable television if you can’t find something to watch during the day. It used to seem that CNN, CNN Headlines, MSNBC, or FOX would offer some kind of meaningful diversion for those moments when you’re too tired to do something “real.”

Lately, though, what’s passing for “news” has forced me to look for other means of passing the time. Tell me, what is “news” about pictures of an empty array of microphones awaiting imminent announcements, which often turn out to be little more than “no comment”? In what sense is repeated showing of pictures of traffic stopped while police search for a demented killer news? How “newsworthy” is the empty theorizing of experts on serial killers, especially when they lack any “facts” to hang their theories on?

I don’t want to sound callous, but local newspapers are little better when the front page is dominated by stories on the sniper. Realistically, how likely is it that the sniper will suddenly strike in VANCOUVER WASHINGTON?

On the other hand, mail-in ballots for the November election have just appeared in the mail, but, other than a short editorial endorsing this candidate or that candidate (trust us, you don’t need a reason to vote for him) there has been little or no coverage of the issues or the voting records of candidates.

Apparently, as far as local channels are concerned, they are more than willing to have voters base their decisions of the local ads that flood the air-time, ads that are worse than meaningless, ads that are, even by the best candidates, usually full of half-truths and outright lies.

Is our country really in such great shape that it makes no difference who voters elect? Could it be that Tom Paine is right when it asks, “Is This News? Most TV Stations Aren’t Covering The Election.”

Do you think it might be more important for local papers to cover facts like those discussed in "Upstairs/Downstairs: Disturbing Disparities In Wealth And Privilege" than focusing exclusively on a story that appeals more to irrational fears and our national obsession with violence?

Shouldn’t the news help us to understand the forces that shape our world today and will determine our futures and the futures of our children rather than merely “entertaining” us by obsessing on a story that has been blown way out of proportion to its true influence on our life?

Tasteless Pornography

Caution, you are entering a censored site. Further reading may endanger your physical or mental well-being.

Browsing through my referrer log yesterday, I happened to follow some odd links to a server where a parent had apparently over-ridden a block on my site. Further research revealed that In a Dark Time has been blocked by Family. NET by Clearsail.

Because there’s no clear indication on why my site has been banned, I’m unsure whether to be honored that someone has actually noticed that this site exists or to get pissed off be upset that it has been censored by the Moral Guardians of Christendom.

Hopefully, it’s been censored because of its pornographic content, because I would hate to think that it’s being censored because it’s merely tasteless (one of Clearsail’s motto is “Protecting the Net from Pornography and Tastelessness). Personally, I prefer to think of much of what I write as merely harmless, empty chatter rather than tasteless or pornographic, though there is a certain blandness to it.

Since I received no explanation of why, or even notification, my site was being blocked, I can’t be certain that I’m not being blocked because of the corrupt writings of my former accomplice Diane McCormick, who has abandoned me to write her novel. I do remember cringing over her review of certain Anne Sexton and Allen Ginsberg poems, envisioning the kind of perverted searches that would surely follow such depravity. It would be truly ironic if the writings of that grandmotherly patriarch of the Episcopal church should have brought down censorship on the head of a mere transcendental heathen such as myself.

Perhaps, though, the censorship has stemmed from my unprincipled defense of that anti-American classic To Kill a Mockingbird on the Banned Book Project. In that case, such censorship would at least be understandable. After all, as Emerson remarked years ago, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Perhaps if I had been pre-warned that I was about to be blocked I would not have included a discussion of the infamous homosexual poet Walt Whitman for I could easily have omitted his works from the canons of American greats in order to avoid appearing “tasteless.”

Checking out Clearsail’s site, though, I quickly got the impression that I did not belong in such noble company. Clearly listed as the most visited sites on their home page were such Christian staples as David Bach’s FinishRich, Epicurious.com, and Biltmore Estate. Surely, I, with my emphasis on voluntary simplicity and environmental concerns, would be inappropriate company for such Christian-oriented company. I wonder if Epicurious offers an alternative menu for the “Last Supper?”

My apologies to Clearsail and their noble efforts to keep the internet free of such polluting ideas. If I had not already been banned from “their internet” I would have gladly purged my links to such revolutionary sites as Visible Darkness, Riley Dog, etc., in order to prove my moral purity.

For, as Milton so poetically argued in his Christian classic, Aeropagitica, “I can ONLY praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”