Back in USSR

This whole right-wing laissez-faire free-market inspired investment bank meltdown has me pretty scared. Not scared about what it will do to the economy, I believe we can bounce back from that, but scared about how it will drive the conversation in this country. Will everything suddenly be about the economy? Drunk driving? It's about the economy. The death penalty? It's about the economy. Health care? The Environment? National Security? They're all about the economy.
I remember that's how a lot of the nanny-laws got passed in the 80's: the effect on the economy. Seatbelt laws. Helmet laws. Smoking bans. They got passed because the backers of the laws successfully controlled the debate from one of freedom of choice, to one of economic necessity. "Look at how much seatbelt-less drivers are costing the economy each year!" They said, and people listened. I view this as an insidious creep against our personal freedoms: viewing everything others do in terms of how if affects you economically. It's now 'unconstitutional' to view it in religious, racial, gender, etc.. terms, but how does one protect against the claim that a Gay Pride Parade negatively affects the economic potential of a city because it creates a back-lash from the right against that city? Is hasn't happened yet, but I can see it soon.
Once civil rights and the economy are conflated, and the economic rights of a person become the paramount rights of the land, then the change from a Progressive and Free Democracy to a Oligarchical conservative quasi-fascist state that has been happening since the 80's will have become complete.
That's what scares me. Not the share price of my 401(k). Who gives a shit about retirement when one can see person freedoms and civil liberties shriveling under the pressure from an $11.6 trillion debt?
How did the great fascist governments of the 20th century come into power? Through the manipulation of the economic fears of its' people. Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, the USSR. I include the USSR as a facist country because under a fascist regime, the government and the corporations work hand in hand to prop up the power of the other, and in the USSR, the government WAS the corporation. Stain the ultimate CEO of the world's largest corpse factory, with DOW chemicals coming in a close second.

waste not...

The one time I was arrested was because my dad refused to ever stop the car on long road trips.
It was 2000, and driving alone from Chicago, I hoped to make Cheyenne by dinnertime. I hate stopping for dinner on the road, and instead prefer to order out from my hotel room, so it was important to get to Cheyenne before six.
I was driving fast along I-90 through South Dakota and playing the "name that land-form" from my childhood road-trip days. "What's that?" my dad would say, "An alluvial fan!” or " A glacial moraine!" my brother and I would yell together, hoping to beat the other one to the answer first.
That day I was the first in the car to blurt out "The breaks of the Missouri!" when I spied an exit with a sign for a gas station/convenience store. I had drank up my last coke back in Minnesota and at the sight was suddenly thirsty for some more, as one can only get thirsty for a soda during a long drive without air conditioning in South Dakota in July.
I hated stopping for something as minor as a coke because it would blow my whole schedule. My dad always prided himself on his trip planning and his speed "Just like Napoleon marching towards Moscow, but with better logistics." I checked the clock, and since I had been moving fast, had just enough time to stop and buy something and move on again.
The door closed off the dry wind and petroleum smell behind me and the sweat on my back chilled when I entered the store to head for the fogged-up glass doors of the soda section. I considered buying a six-pack for the motel that night, but, since I didn't have a cooler with me, figured I'd just get one in Cheyenne. I grabbed a $1.00, 20oz bottle of coke from the cooler and went to pay with my only available source of money at the time: a credit card. She pointed to a sign that said "No credit card purchases under $10.00."
"Ten bucks?" I said.
"Yeah. Sorry." she said, then tried to help me with: "Why don't you buy some gas?"
I thought about it, but explained, "I'm on 3/4 of a tank, that's just a waste of time." I ignored her queer look and walked back and bought 6 more bottles of coke, a bag of tortilla chips, and a jar of salsa. $11.56. Perfect.
One coke down and half an hour later I had to pee, so I busted out my half-filled Mason jar and, using skills perfected many years before, filled that bottle up. I passed exits, but I couldn't stop so soon. Even if the last time we had stopped was four hours ago, if my brother or I had to go, it was "We can't stop so soon! Why didn't you do it when you had the chance?" and the Mason jar would be passed back. We only ever had one, and both my brother and I had to use it, even if the other had been the last to go. Chucking the contents out the window "just wouldn't do", so it was always emptied into a urinal at a gas station at our next fill-up. My dad relented once for me when the jar was full, and he pulled over by the side of the highway. I stood and peed into the ditch, but then the wind changed and I had to face the freeway to pee. Truckers honked, my brother laughed, and my dad said, "Next time you'll go when you have the chance."
Even though I prefer the raw beauty of the trip through the Bad Lands, and then cutting south just west of the Black Hills to get to Cheyenne, I had time to keep, so I opted turning south at Murdo and going through the Reservation and the Sand Hills to get to 80. It was the old route: the route dad always took because we could avoid both the traffic of Omaha on 29, and the winding roads of the Black Hills. Once when I was little and going through Mission we were caught in a cloud burst that turned the dirt roads of that Reservation town to mud. My dad spun out on the turn south and all the Indians on the street stared and laughed. I put my hand to my mouth and let out my woo-woo-woo noise all white kids make when playing cowboys and Indians. My mom said:” Be careful Johnny. They like to scalp little blonde heads" She loved to tell that story, and how she saw my "head get lower and lower in the seat." That was back in the 70's, and by this time the highway was paved through town. Among Country Music, Preachers, and Heavy Metal, I somehow found Car Talk on the radio out there. I love Click and Clack, so I rolled up the driver's side window to listen.
Anyway, I made it through Mission scalp in check, and headed south for the long road through the Sand Hills to 80. I've always liked that road because it reminds me of the basin and range in miniature of 50 through Nevada.
I grabbed my second coke and realized it had started to get warm. I drank it, but since I carried no cooler, realized I'd have to polish off the rest of the coke if they were to be at all drinkable. I had my chips and salsa, and together with the dry day and the long drive, I was thirsty.
I sucked down the coke, ate my chips, listened to the Tappets and flew down the road. I was making great time on a sunny day and going to a town I knew. When the salsa ran out I pitched the jar into the passenger seat where it bounced off and flew into my mason jar.. Both shattered. Instantly the smell of old urine and spicy jalapeño salsa filled the car.
The four cokes spewed out my mouth. I turned my head to let the torrent of carbonated vomit escape out the window, but it hit the closed window. The puke sprayed back into my face, increasing my convulsions so that I began to expel even the convenience store wiener I'd eaten for breakfast.
I tried to open my window and grab the chip bag, looking for anywhere to puke besides my dashboard and windshield.
Later, during the arraignment, the cop I'd passed said he'd noticed my car weaving and that is why he decided to pull me over. When he grabbed me from my car, my stomach empty but still heaving, I stumbled into him and dripped my vomit onto his pants and smeared it onto his shirt. Lacking any coherent explanation for any of this, I couldn't stop him from throwing me to the ground, hand cuffing me, and putting me into the back of his cruiser.
When we got back into Mission and I was hauled into the county jail, the Indians were there again, staring and laughing.
As they booked me, I could not help but think of the story of François Mitterrand and Henry Kissinger. Mitterrand flew on the Concorde from Paris to New York and when greeted by Kissinger, said to him, "I just saved three hours on that plane!"
Kissinger retorted: " And what did you do with those three hours?"

FICTION

Helpless

There is a bar in Kamiah, Idaho where Nickel miners go to stop-up their bleeding need for air. Many years ago I found myself there looking for company while on a children's theatre tour. Never mind the name of the theatre, suffice to say it was me and a woman and a Ford Ranger driving across North America teaching theatre to kids.
Anyway, I had been in this bar for two nights and I talked to a guy who worked in the mines named Steve. I sat down on a stool next to him and we talked the whole night until the lights came on and I went back to the house where I was staying.
I stayed in a new house owned by a lady who had moved there from the East to "escape" after her divorce. It was a great house built like a cabin, very lofty and wooden sides and all that. The roads of her new subdivision were gravel, but were better than most roads in town besides the highway going through down town, which was asphalt.
A Nickel strike was in progress so there was a new town outside of Kamiah of trailers and tents. Transient miners will go where there's work, and it doesn't matter what's pulled out of the ground. There's a need and they fill it, no matter what it does to them and their own. They know their jobs and they keep moving in order to keep doing their jobs. Think about it next time you use a piece of man-made material.
Anyway, this guy Steve had a kid in the show I was directing, so that night we talked about his kid and about moving from strike to strike. He had a good job there, though. He had been hired on as a manager, and it looked to be a good strike, so he was set, and had even bought a real house and all.
The next night I sat at the bar and Steve came in. I said "Hey, Steve!" and he sat next to me.
" What's your problem" he said.
"I... what?" I said.
"What's your problem?"
"I'm John, man, we talked last night."
"What the fuck IS your problem?" He had risen off the stool and was starting to face me off.
"Hey man, no problem, just saying hi, you know?"
"Oh" he said and sat down to his beer.
The bartender, well she came up when Steve went to the juke box, and said, "You ok?"
"Yeah. No worries."
We got to talking and it turned out she was new to the town. Her dad had followed the nickel strike, and she'd followed him. Her husband had been beating on her, so she moved herself and her two kids into her father's trailer and had gotten this job, only her second night doing it. Her dad didn't really want her there, but what could he do?
"The kids make a mess and leave their toys everywhere, and he just wants peace when he comes out of the hole."
She hoped to be able to buy a little two-bedroom house near the bar the next fall. She looked at me the whole time, knowing I was not from there and would be soon going away, but asking me and needing me with her look anyway. Then she said:
"Ever heard the song 'Helpless' by Neil Young?"
"I Love that song," I said.
"I want to go THERE."
Someone called her over and the next day was the show and the mayor took me out and got me drunk and then I left for the next town and did it all over again.
Except this time it was an old biker from the Sierras who played the piano and he wanted me to say hi to his buddies back in Sonora and Twain Flats when I went back there. Everywhere I went I met people who saw in me a young wandering man with a purpose, and who went with me in their minds. They were there: stuck, not rooted.
Wandering in their minds.
There was the transvestite in Wetaskawin, Alberta who told me of his deliriums in Vancouver where he had been Queen Elizabeth. He wanted sex with me in my motel room after a 12 pack of Miller and then smashed the lamp on my head when I demurred. That night I tore up my Room. I broke that fucker and smeared my shit on the bathroom walls and yelled "No"
while thinking of the day I'd had.
It was May first: May Day. ( May Day May Day...). From a payphone in a bar in Edmonton I had spoken to my fiancée and she finally broke everything off with me two months before the wedding because she was now seeing someone else.
My tour Partner was a snake charming Pentecostal woman who counseled me to seek Jesus. I then faced hundreds of miles of asphalt while listening to her tell the tale of the lord raining down on her like cool water.
What I saught was a bottle instead and that town in North Ontario with a clear crystalline wind blowing across my flesh to scourge, bless, cleanse me.

Tookie and Jack Are Brothers

Whatever happened to redemption? I mean, is it too much to ask for us all to be treated equally?

Two nights ago I went to a meeting regarding my son's upcoming first Confession, or the Sacrament of Reconciliation. During the meeting the priest (or "father" as I have come to refer to him) spoke about the meaning of this sacrament. It is, he said, a chance to speak about those actions of ours that we feel badly about, and to ask forgiveness. This, in turn, would make us reflect on our actions and make us less-likely to do them again. We would then be redeemed in God's eyes. Everyone who comes before God to confess and apologize and atone will be redeemed. The weak and the mighty. The rich and the poor. The pius and the sinner. All are equal in God's eyes. I thought that was a great way to look at it.

Even though I am one who believes there is no God, I still have a great respect for the equality and ethics espoused in the New Testament. As this is a profoundly Christian nation, and as our laws are based in part upon the notions of morality of the Christian Bible, I think it would be great if the equality of redemption worked that way in our civil society. Unfortunately, there seems to be a double-standard of redemption among our modern American Civil Leaders. Most of whom, by the way, profess themselves to be religious men and women.

Consider the recent case of "Tookie" Williams in California. He was not granted clemency because he was not, in the Governor's mind, redeemed because he refused to apologize for the crimes he has never confessed to. On the surface, this would seem to fit into the catholic notion of redemption through confession. It follows the same plot-line: confess of your sins and ask forgiveness before your appointed time of death and I (God, the State) will not kill you. But, what we fail to consider is that unlike the Christian God, mortal man is not without the ability to make mistakes. The State, acting through the Governor, had no way of knowing that "Tookie" never would confess his crimes. Niether does the State know with 100% surety that he did the crimes he is accused of. Not one member of the Jury was there, nor was any member of the court there. The only people who were there were the victims and the murderer. I do not mean to say that he was innocent of the crimes for which he was executed, but that he was sentenced to die by circumstantial evidence that could have been wrong. The Governor's faith in our legal system is such that he took the findings of the jury as fact and therefore cut off any possibility of the redemption he had been looking for. "Tookie's" anti-gang actions from jail were apparently not enough for the Governor. He wanted a full blown confession of sin and asking for forgiveness in order to grant him redemption in the form of clemency.

O.K. That's what he wanted, he didn't get it, and so the sentence was carried out to it's conclusion. Right or wrong. Many people across the country expressed a great satisfaction with the fact that "Tookie" was executed. Many op-ed pieces said if he had confessed and asked for forgiveness he should have been spared, but since he didn't , he shouldn't. His actions attesting to a changed life, and his attempted attonement for his past criminal behavior in gang-life were not enough. His attepmts to fix a problem he helped create were not enough. His attonement was not enough without his confession and apology, and so he paid.

Jump ahead a few weeks and we now have members of Congress and the White House, including the President, rushing to give the money received from Jack Abramoff to one charity or another. I guess they are doing this in an attempt to attone for their own wrong-doings, which, in this case, include taking money from a sleazy lobbyist.

Even the New York Times noticed this in an op-ed piece published today, when they said:

"In the blink of a news cycle, lawmakers and President Bush were turning over tainted donations from the Abramoff money machine to charity, as if they were buying indulgences for a political inquisition to come. They gave no sign of heeding the real messages of the week.
One was that true redemption can come only from a full reform of Congress's porous to nonexistent rules governing members' dealings with lobbyists." (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/opinion/07sat1.html)

Notice that the Times says the Politicians will be redeemed by making up for their actions by fixing a problem they created. They will not be redeemed by confessing and asking for forgiveness, but by making attonement by changing their ways.

Why should we grant this redemption through simple attonement for our civil leaders, but not for our civil citizens? A crime is a crime and all should be punished or redeemed according to the same rules.

Hamlet does not kill the murderer of his father when he has the chance. Why? Because Polonius has just confessed to God, and Hamlet wants Polonius to go to Hell after he is killed. Hamlet then says he will wait until Polonius is in the "full flower of his sin" before he enacts his revenge. Polonius has tried to attone for his sin by being a good king, a good husband, and a good step-father to Hamlet, but it is his confession of sin that stays Hamlet's sword until a more oppotune time.

We should do no less than that. We should require a full accounting from our leaders of their wrongs, and not sit meekly back and accept another "I was out of the loop". Even Bill Clinton came before a national audience to tell us what he had done wrong and ask for our forgiveness. It seems that our current crop of civil leaders, on both sides of the aisle, do not even have the strenght of character to do the one thing we ask of our civil citizenry: say "I'm sorry."

-FP

christmas shopping with facists

I went x-mass shopping today to get a few small things and suddenly realized why this x-mass seemed diffrent than the ones before: The facists are now commanding my allegiance during the holidays. I was talking with some guy while looking at a pretty cool game for my son, and when it came time to go about my business and walk away I suddenly began to analyze what type of well-wishes I should offer. Should I say "Merry Christmas" and risk being characterized as a religious zealot, or should I say "Happy Holidays" and be tarred as a Politically Correct nut-job? My simple want to wish this guy well turned political on me in a flash, and it occured to me that both sides have created an entirely new way to separate ourselves from those we don't agree with.
Now, I'm a pretty secular guy. Last week when Penn Jillet spoke on NPR about how he belived there was no God, I thought, "Yes! Finally someone in the public eye can stand up and say what I want to, but am afraid to because of social censure!" Then my son spoke up and said, "Hey dad, he's just like us." He was so happy to hear a positive word spoken about atheism, he just gushed. Then I dropped him off at school. Catholic School.
My religious up-bringing consisted of my father saying things like: " God is in people's minds," and my mother saying:"I just can't wrap my mind around God. It just doesn't make sense." Then we would go to the grand parent's on vacation and go to church with them. My best friend as a child took me with him to his Baptist church many Sundays a year. I even performed in their plays and sang in their choir for awhile, but I never believed. I just thought the plays and the singing were fun. One Summer I went to Boy's Brigade Baptist camp, and came home to announce to my family that I was now a Christian. My parents politely smiled and my brother said "I knew this would happen." My conversion lasted about a week, even if it was in name only. My whole life I have embraced religions of all sorts. I have never believed in any of them, and relegate all religion to the same space on my bookshelf as the Greek and Arthurian Myths, but I have tried to learn from them as I have tried to learn from Shakespeare, Mill, Cummings, and all of the philosophers, writers, and poets I have read.
Does this mean that I can't, with a full and healthy and pure wish of well-being for another, say to another person "Merry Christmas"? Does this mean I can't ever mean it?
I say to my Jewish Friends, " Happy Hannukah", and they say it back to me. I like that. I love Easter and Passover as an expression of life. It's Spring and life is saved and renewed each and every year. I like to celebrate that. I just happen to like the Christian and Jewish celebrations more than I like dancing with garland in a Faerie circle in the woods. I like Franencense better than Patchoulli. So kill me. But more power to those with whom I disagree, I say!
On Chinese New Year I say "Gung Hey Fat Choy!" to everyone. On Saint Patrick's Day I wear a little green, and even though I have no idea what the heck "Erin Go Braugh" means, I try to celebrate it. I read the Declaration on the 4th. I try to eat a little less during Ramadan. I listen to some Dr. King on his birthday. I even sing "Oh, Canada!" on July 1st.
We have reasons enough to be dour throught the year, no matter what our persuasion. What we need are more reasons to celebrate.
This beautiful, glorious country of ours has people from everywhere who believe everything, and they each have a moment in their calander in which they celebrate something. Shouldn't we all find it within ourselves to celebrate with them? Are our beliefs so shaky that we need to intitutionalize celebrations of ourselves and our heritage in order to keep them intact? Are our beliefs so shaky that we need celebrations to be de-institutionalized to keep them intact?
The facists would say, yes, we need to institutionalize that which we belive in, and de-institutionalize that which we don't. The rationalist, humanist will say, no, because it doesn't really matter in the long run. At the end of the long, hot day that is life, we will die and find out for ourselves whether we were right or not. So shouldn't we just find as much to celebrate about our common humanity as possible and leave it at that?