My Muted Obamamania

Bitter Medicine by webcarve

I don't usually do the t-shirt first. But this time, my reason to finally choose between Obama and Clinton resolved into this shirt I posted a couple of days ago. It's taken this long to put the reasons behind it into words.-

Endorsing Barack is not just a choice for me, it's pretty much an unavoidable choice. Barack Obama chose to tell the truth to people who needed to hear it, despite all advice to the contrary.

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

As well they might. One might call this "elitist" or "talking down" - but the fact is, the great majority of the people have every right to expect our delegated representatives to be in an informed position to understand and legislate issues, or in other words, be ABLE to "talk down to us." And every once in a while, they need to be able to swat us upside the head and force us to look at the crapfest we have allowed ourselves to indulge in rather than actually shoveling our share of the shitstorm.

We do have a right to be bitter about the results of being exploited and pandered to for political gain as a substitute for actual competent, compassionate and intelligently conservative management of our interests on our behalf. Hell, conservative voters have completely given up on the idea of government or their taxes bringing them any benefit - so long as it benefits nobody else, and so long as their frustrations are expressed in making the rubble jump somewhere far away.

But it's not enough, and it's certainly not worth three dollar gasoline and milk at 3.50 when your wages have been stagnant for a decade or two.

They - the people Clinton so swiftly assumes are dumb enough to be unthinkingly offended - are not actually that dumb. Their noses are rubbed in it every day. It's bad enough to have to shop at Wal-Mart - when it's getting hard to make ends meet even by making do and settling for less, when your grocery bill tells you that all that good economic news is complete and utter nonsense for you and everyone you know, it's time for the lies to end.



There's a saying from the great undefined middle of this nation:

"Don't pee on my boots and tell me it's sunshine."

Well, we've had eight years of that, and Clinton obviously figures that if it's worked for eight years, it will work for eight more. Just like John McCain.

As much as I'd like to vote for the first woman president - the actual result will be much more along the line of John McCain in drag.

This is Graphictruth, and Barak gets our endorsement for speaking the Graphictruth. I discount his apology - for if you read it, it's the apology I would have made, if my arm were twisted as hard as his; "I'm sorry you feel that way."

Reality is not optional in Politics. We have had far too much post-modern bullshit, and quite frankly, it's making ME want to cling to the hard cold reality that a handgun represents. A gun is simple, understandable and comforting in times of trouble - even when it's an utterly useless comfort. Even when you know perfectly well that your troubles are not ones that can be dismissed with "a whiff of grape-shot" or rightfully blamed on the symptoms of malfeasance and greed, such as outsourcing and illegal immigration.

We have the right to expect leaders who understand that it's their job to keep things from getting to such a point where we start to think wistfully about deploying Occam's Machine-Gun.

We also have the 2nd Amendment right to employ our arms at need to insist on such leadership.
I don't know if Barack Obama understands the full import of the second amendment and it's precursor, the preamble to the Declaration of Independence - but it was not that long ago, actually, that another president did.

He is known as FDR, and he pretty much ran roughshod over the letter of the Constitution, in order to fulfil it's intent in a time of far greater emergency than our history books would like to admit. We were a whisker away from outright revolution, because the Constitution was being used as a reason to NOT meet the needs of the great majority, while the "important people," "the People Who Matter" were being feted at the White House.

Herbert Hoover was very lucky that his time in office ran out, considering the alternative.

This time has come again. And while I'm a constitutional absolutist, as one Justice observed, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."

What it is, above all, is a document that outlines what government is intended to achieve and delegates powers sufficient to that end. Well, our current leaders - and this neocon abomination goes right down to the local level, where the taser fetish has become a cliche' - are clearly fearful of and contemptuous toward the individual liberties the Constitution holds sacred.

"To promote the general welfare and to provide for the common defense." I don't recall any exception in duty toward persons making less than five figures.

We can only hope he's also smart enough to call upon the services of Ron Paul to help him make his instincts constitutionally bullet-proof, because the Supreme Court is three to two against common sense and the rights of the individual.

Give the Gift of Greg Palast

Greg Palast would like you to leverage some of your holiday green to support his work. And, my fellow bloggers, we need him working. And while an autographed copy of “The Elections Files: The Theft of 2008," might not be a new plasma TV, it's not socks and underwear either.

On September 12, 2001, President Bush asked Americans to go shopping. And the Bush-bots did as told.

I’ve got a better idea: don’t shop - give a tax deductible donation to support my crew. Donate to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund and I will sign and send, in gratitude, a gift to you - or your friends or family. I’ll sign each item - just tell us the names of the gifted ones by December 14.

Make your tax-deductible donations at www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org

BTW, since he's signing them, I don't imagine he'd object to including a personal message - if you sweeten the pot a little. So that might be an added bonus to a particularly appropriate (and perhaps even welcome) gift.

Oh, and for those gifts of obligation:

Make a donation to the Palast Investigative Fund in someone’s name - and we’ll send them a thank you card. You get a tax donation - and ‘just the facts, ma’am.’

Just the right gift for your Congresscritter or local newspaper editor, don't you think?

tag: Gifts, giving, Christmas, Greg Palast, Investigative Reporting

"Transparency"= "Now that we know where you live, maybe you'll shut up about your civil rights, liberal assholes."

Every once in a while I drop Jon Swift a suggestion via Stumbleupon, and sometimes he even takes the hint. Today I noticed that he'd dropped by and so I went to see what, if anything he'd made of my latest study in reasoned incoherence, which is noted for pithy observations such as this:

the only cure for such offensive pornography is, as the saying goes, "more and better pornography." We must not abandon the most reliable handle upon the future behavior of our youth to those who would wank them to destruction.

and this...

Those who seek power over others - sexually, in politics, in commerce, in life - do it because that is a visceral need for them. It's not because they deserve it, or because they can be assumed to be able or willing to do anything useful with that power when they have it. Using power wisely and well is a skill, as well as an under-acknowledged responsibility. Understanding and acceptance that there IS a price to power is, sadly, almost never something that comes with the kink itself. And yes, folks, the need to hold power over others is a psycho-sexual kink, to the point of being a disastrous character flaw if not admitted. (CF. George W. Bush; Hillary Clinton, Wahabism.)

If those who need power like vampires need blood are not trained and guided to seek power wisely and use it well, they will fail - and it will almost by definition be a cascade failure of catastrophic proportions. (CF. George W. Bush; Hillary Clinton, Saudi Arabian Justice)

And while Jon made no reference to any of the points I raised here, he did raise an essential point dear to my heart; anonymity on the net, contrasted by the truly bizarre idea that divulging my name, rank and social security number somehow enhances my credibility. This idea, referred to as "transparency," suggests that if you know someone's real name, real job, real phone number and real address, you should somehow find them more credible than someone like Jon Swift, "Publius," famous psudonym of the authors of the federalist papers, or most humbly, myself.

I find it to be a bizarre, if not wildly delusional viewpoint, considering who lives and works at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and their established credibility.

Jon asks, rhetorically:

Did Publius lack "integrity, maturity and courage," Mr. McKeen? Publius was the pseudonym Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay used when they wrote The Federalist Papers. What about Senex, who many people believe was Patrick Henry? Or Phocion, better know as Alexander Hamilton? Without these great Pseudonym-Americans the United States would not exist or, even worse, might be part of Canada today. Indeed, many great men and women in history used pseudonyms at one time or another. I don't think François-Marie Arouet (better known as Voltaire) was a coward. And Marion Morrison, despite his very effeminate sounding name, was more of a man than Scott McKeen will ever be. At least when he called himself John Wayne. Perhaps we Pseudonym-Americans would feel better about ourselves if we knew how many great people in history, and how many accomplished people today, are just like us. Unfortunately, they don't usually teach this in schools.

Publius would argue, I suspect, that a pseudonym can at times be a useful means to assure that an argument be evaluated on it's own merits, and not upon the reader's prejudgment of the motives, morals and political ambitions of the authors. Jon Swift might add that sometimes knowing an irrelevant personal detail can suck all the fun out of a running gag.

I mean, is the Unknown Comic as funny now that we know who's under the bag? More importantly, what does it say about those who are convinced that they somehow have the right to know who or what is behind the mask?

I have a very personal insight in that matter, because for me, as a multiple personality, it's a matter of more than philosophical significance. At least at first blush, and certainly in more direct and practical terms. My birth name has very little reality to me; indeed, it implies associations that I do not actually have and would have to publicly disavow if they were credited to me. It's a very old and Terribly English name. The use of my birth name would in fact tend to suggest political, religious and cultural associations and beliefs that would be anything but factual, whether or not you thought they reflected well upon me personally.

I mention this for a couple of reasons. First, because the whole idea of multiple personality has a long history of making the sort of people who insist on knowing who people "REALLY" are experience massive virtual cranial detonation. And second, to illustrate what a truly slippery concept it is.

I'm Bob King. It's a use-name, one so well-used that it may as well be my "real name." Indeed, the only reason that has not become my legal name is the expense and inconvenience. It's the name I sign my artwork with, and frankly, that makes it a good deal more personally "real" to me than the name on my birth certificate.

I started to use the name a long long time ago, not because I was embarrassed about it's frankly adult subject matter as I would have been deeply offended and embarrassed at family reactions to "airing my dirty laundry." Like many people of WASP ancestry, the assumption of an impervious facade of denial of a childhood filled with shame, guilt and soul-destroying oppression. And that, I add, is without any presumption of literal incest or physical abuse. Anonomous servers such as anon.penet.fi made a lot of people feel safe enough to discuss these issues among themselves and realize that there experiences, far from being a bizarre therapeutically-induced delusion, was a depressingly common circumstance that was only possible because it could be assumed that nobody would ever talk about it for fear that they would lose all credibility in every other area of life - and of course, for fear of more direct and personal reprisals.

The very existance of that venerable anonomous remailer shows how very long this tension between annonymity and "transparancy" has gone on, and the history of the service as recorded by WikiPedia and the attacks upon it by the Church of Scientology that eventually required it be shut down should inform you of what sort of people are most concerned about knowing "who people really are."

As far as I'm concerned, unless you owe ME money or I owe YOU money, that's as real a name as you have any right to expect. Frankly, you will find out a lot more about me that's useful to you in evaluating the worth of my written views by googling that name as opposed to a birth name I don't use even in Meatlife social contexts.

But those who are deeply suspicious of the motives of those who wish to hold powerful people publicly accountable for their alleged misdeeds have actually tried to criminalize the "annoyance" of people without a "real name" attached. It's not going to survive it's first court challenge; it's merely one more example of ingrown Republicanism and it's annoyance with the awkwardness of living within the dire strictures of the US Constitution.

Much of this whole thrust toward "transparancy" seems to me both delusional and gutless; the idea that, by being "brave" enough to reveal your "real" name, you are somehow more "authoratative" than someone such as myself, or Jon, who have to rely on the actual content of our arguments rather than the results of a data mining operation to convince you of the merit of our words. Jen (That's My Real Name, I PROMISE) Flannigan asserts this principle in her post called "peek-a-boo."

An even bigger reason not to hide is that there is so little to be gained that way. Even if no one ever invests the effort in finding your true identity and you remain safely masked, what do you gain that way? Making yourself heard is very powerful. But what good is it really if it then can’t be used to connect you to communities and people and opportunities. What kind of power do you really have if all you ever do is hide in an office or a living room somewhere and fire off nameless missives into the void? Isn’t the real power in connecting and opening doors for yourself and others? Doesn’t that require more of a presence than a fake name? What is the goal and the power of hiding behind your own words?

So, essentially, you assume that there is "something to be gained" in terms of personal power and influence IF people can be reassured they know who you "really are" and what strings you can "really" pull - and what shibboleths you will endeavor to help preserve.

It seems to me, then, that people who make a great big fat hairy deal about this "real name" thing are pointing toward that which is, paradoxically, the least real thing about them - their personal and social facade. And by insisting that everyone they deal with accede to these same standards, it seems to me that they are investing in a personal and public "network" much invested in keeping all kinds of unpalitable facts and insights at bay.

Jen is choosing to use her "real" name in the same way as masons who stick decals on their Caddy's - and for that matter, choose to drive a chrome-encrusted codpiece instead of something a little more... erm.. anonymous.

You see, the reason you advocate "transparency" is the exact reason I do NOT want my "real name" out there. I do not want people seeing exactly who I HOPE to impress, and presume to know exactly what personal and social advantage I'm perusing. I'm not fanatical about this - but I want to read my stuff before my "credentials," rather than the other way around. Jen's reasoning is exactly what I would have said about many who make more complicated arguments, and who approve of the "real name" policies of social networking venues such as Facebook.

I understand that she and many others attach credibility with the ability to do a quick "due diligence" on a potential contact, and if I were involved in network marketing or dealing in negotiable securities, I would agree within that limited context. But I'm not. I'm a blogger and an artist and there's nothing in my financial data that would aid you in evaluating the truth of what I have said. There is a great deal in it that could be used to convince me to stop telling the truth. Read the story of anon.penet.fi again.

The second reported compromise of the Penet remailer occurred in February 1995 at the behest of the Church of Scientology. Claiming that a file had been stolen from one of the Church's internal computer servers and posted to the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology by a Penet user, representatives of the Church contacted Interpol, who in turn contacted the Finnish police, who issued a search warrant demanding that Julf hand over data on the users of the Penet remailer. Initially Julf was asked to turn over the identities of all users of his remailer (which numbered over 300,000 at the time), but he managed a compromise and revealed only the single user being sought by the Church of Scientology.

The anonymous user in question used the handle "-AB-" when posting anonymously, and their real e-mail address indicated that they were an alumnus or alumna of the California Institute of Technology. The document that they posted was a police report of an incident that had occurred involving a man named Tom Klemesrud, a BBS operator involved in the Scientology versus the Internet controversy. The confusing story became popular as the "Miss Blood Incident".

Eventually the Church learned the real identity of "-AB-" to be Tom Rummelhart, a computer operator responsible for some of the maintenance of the Church of Scientology's INCOMM computer system. The fate of "-AB-" after the Church of Scientology learned his true identity is unknown. Years later in 2003, a two-part story entitled "What Really Happened in INCOMM - Part 1" and "What Really Happened in INCOMM – Part 2" was posted to alt.religion.scientology by a former Scientologist named Dan Garvin, which described events within the Church leading up to and stemming from the Penet posting by "-AB-".

If I need facts, I establish those facts independently of my own word. That's just plain good journalism. I very much try to avoid situations where the whole point relies on the objective factuality of my own experience, although I'll admit that there are special interests of my own - multiple personality, asperger's/autism and all subjectives filtered through those particular wetware biases that must simply fall into the category of "believe it or don't."

But frankly, I cannot imagine how knowing my "real" name or my home address helps you in deciding what value to place on my purely subjective experience. It's only real value is in it's potential to be used against me, or to discredit me, should you or some powerful entity decides I'm a threat. So, this insistence on "transparency" is, I think, not so much about making those decisions about the credibility of insight into socially awkward issues as a "gentleman's agreement" to never raise such issues in the first place.

Remember that my "real" name is attached to many data points that have little or nothing to do with the facts or reasoning of what I might say, but there are many pointy-headed people out there who think that my socioeconmic status, my ethnicity or my age provide them compelling reasons to not be bothered to consider my arguments in the first place.

But, by insisting that I put those things out there, by insisting that internet communities behave as if they were small towns in Siberia, mid-America or Saudi Arabia where everyone knows everyone else's business. What IS assured in such circumstances is that the very conventional values of conformity and intolerance for significant differences in values will be upheld in public by all, no matter how patently and obviously false those values are.

For myself, I don't see any good reason to make it easy for for stalkers and saboteurs to use virtual or actual force against me. I'm not particularly paranoid about it, but I'm of the opinion that waving your personal details out there for any idiot to use means that some idiot is likely to use it.

Let us remember that there are people like Ted Kaczynski out there, who in their delusion think an explosive device is a reasonable response for opinions and views they find offensive.

Or indeed, those who think that a gang rape is an appropriate consequence for a woman who choses to associate with a man who is not a direct relative.

Goddess forbid she have the choice to engage in premarital; possibly even recreational sex that doesn't actually hurt. And this is aside from the religious and cultural rationalizations and justifications which I dismiss as being just that - justifications and rationalizations.

But for every Ted, or even more odious wankers who think it's their religious duty to rape uppity women, there's a far greater threat; people who think they have a right to interfere in your personal life based on what you have said in public against their treasured causes.

Faux New's John Gibson, who asserts White House deserves medal for outing Plame, in essence arguing that Plaime's "higher duty" was to her Fuhrer Leader President, and NOT to the Constitution. Recall that she took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. As an intelligence professional, concerned with the very vital issue of nuclear proliferation, that very explicitly does NOT exclude would-be "Dear Leaders" of any nationality - especially not our own.

Aside from the utter immorality of such Brownshirt Media apologias I can't even begin to summarize the towering stupidity of Gibson's argument, any more than I can imagine what news organization with any remaining pretensions of journalistic integrity and independence would air such nonsense. We tolerated the Iraqi Information Minister because everyone knew perfectly well what would happen to him if he did not dispense his twaddle with all the sincerity he could muster. One could even admire his ability to play the game so well, knowing that everyone knew it was a game.

But one does wonder why Gibson is playing the same game with no greater hope of success. Is it because, in having sold his soul and integrity to Faux News, he has the uncomfortable realization that he could be a victim of "Transparency" himself?

I didn't use the term "Brownshirt Media" as a simple or casual insult - go look up on what happened to the SA just as soon as Hitler consolidated power. It is a cautionary historical allusion that all who presume upon the gratitude of those they help place into unquestioned, totalitarian power.

I've tried for a day or two to find an angle to respond more directly to the Gibson video, but this parenthetical aside is the best that I can come up with, that Gibson and his ilk are the people most concerned with knowing who is responsible for observations of their moral and mental failures. Them, and the Bush Administration - to the extent there is a distinction between the two, of course.

Again, the actual history of the Brownshirts doesn't give one much comfort - knowing what happened to people who's addresses they, the SS and Gestapo knew at various pivotal points in German history. Nor does one have to rely on German history for such incidents - it just happens to be a rather good, accessible record of some very old ideas implemented with - I must say - a great deal more competence and determination than exhibited by George Bush and people who could only be compared unfavorably to Joseph Goebbels.

An Inconvenient Simularity

As Al Gore spoke, I was personally struck by how much he talks like I write - and how LONG he talks. But then, nobody ever once accused me of writing two short. And like me, he tosses out ten-dollar words that are outside the common vocabulary without thinking twice about it. In fact, probably without thinking about it at all; much less that it might affect how people view him. Professor Gore is in fine form here, actually managing to appear as non-robotic as I've ever seen him.

But never mind the presentation. Listen to what he has to say. Take his words at face value - and don't be embarrassed if you have to pause and look up "venial." No one has to know and doing that makes you twice as smart as people who won't, three times as smart as those who will pretend they know what the word means. Because in this case, he's using the word precisely in context, and there is no other word that would mean precisely that.

This is the full, excruciatingly long, way over 15 minutes full version of Al Gore's speech about his new book, "The Assault on Reason," presented May 29, 2007.

You can find all sorts of "condensed" and "highlights" versions on YouTube, but I think it's important to endure the entire thing, rather than going for the largely political applause lines. In fact, the main context of this speech is a completely apolitical history lesson regarding the origins of our political system and the importance it places on a free, fertile and passionate "marketplace of ideas."

He's clearly done his homework, and frankly, up to the point where he starts drawing conclusions from the facts he presents, I don't think it's possible for a reasonable person to disagree. I do not happen to disagree with his conclusions, such as "the invasion of Iraq was a mistake," though we may well have some significant disagreement as to whether his facts or mine were more significant in determining it.

Where we do agree is that reasonable people can - and indeed MUST disagree, that it's their patriotic DUTY to argue in the public square until every angle and objection has been aired, examined and the full truth emerges. If the "truth" is a foregone conclusion, presented you on a platter for you to disseminate, this is not the American democratic process as envisioned by our Founders.

He quotes M. Scott Peck who said in "A Road Less Traveled;" "Evil is the absence of truth." And I find that is a concept I must agree with; from every perspective from practical to spiritual.

Far too much of the "information" presented the American people, the information they need to form reasoned and informed decisions are, in fact, lies; lies of ommission and commission. Furthermore, this rot has been going on for a very long time. I can think of examples dating back to the Spanish-American War.

I have much more to say about this, and perhaps I'll get the chance to expand this further, but it's looking like a long weekend filled with Real Life, so I'll just stop now.