tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-145446172024-03-14T00:28:21.438-07:00Of Principalities and PowersTony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.comBlogger238125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-86490907609829129222017-07-10T06:39:00.000-07:002017-07-10T06:44:03.511-07:00Would You Look at the Actual Science? Please?<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">My last column, “Global Warming in a Nutshell,” drew a brief comment from a reader named David Cutright. In case you missed it, he wrote:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>You conveniently ignore discussion of any other theories as to the cause of Global Warming, and they ALL are theories. The other issue is that every solution proposed, including the Paris Accord, sends trillions from the US to other countries while allowing those other countries to continue to increase CO2 production for several years without a significant reduction in Average Global Temperatures.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At this point in our planetary history, given the mounting danger posed by global warming, it feels irresponsible to let such claims go unchallenged. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I don’t know Mr. Cutright, although I remember a <a href="http://www.hurherald.com/cgi-bin/db_scripts/articles?Action=user_view&db=hurheral_articles&id=56918"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(2, 30, 170); color: #021eaa;">long letter</span></a> chock full of attacks on global warming that he wrote several years ago to the editor of the <i>Hur Herald.</i> I assume he is sincere and well-meaning, even though almost nothing he writes is trustworthy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">With that as background, here’s a more analytical take on his comment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He says that I “conveniently ignore” alternative theories for what might be causing global warming, implying that I deliberately left out legitimate alternatives. If I understand him correctly, that would be <i>all </i>other theories, because one theory is apparently as good as another. They’re all just theories, you know.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">That’s nonsense, of course. All theories aren’t equally plausible, and when a theory is proven wrong by advances in science or real-world observations, it’s discarded. Theories that consistently match the facts, on the other hand, are called “robust” by scientists, meaning they’re very likely to be true.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So either he doesn’t understand how science works, or he has missed the point of my column. Or maybe he’s just so bent on making his own points that mine might as well be written in water. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Although he didn’t specify what other theories he had in mind, the chief alternative explanations for what’s causing global warming have been: 1) solar activity, and 2) variations in heat coming from Earth’s core. For several years climate contrarians were keen on the solar activity theory—the idea that an increase in sunspots and solar flares has been causing Earth’s temperature to rise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But neither of those theories matches up with real world observations. Solar activity has actually been <a href="https://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(2, 30, 170); color: #021eaa;">declining</span></a> while temperatures have been rising. And only a relatively small, steady amount of heat actually flows <a href="https://www.skepticalscience.com/heatflow.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(2, 30, 170); color: #021eaa;">from Earth’s core to its surface</span></a>. So those theories have been invalidated by the evidence. That’s why I ignored them. They no longer belong in the conversation. Like the theory that the universe revolves around our home planet, they’ve been added to science’s scrap heap.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">By contrast, there is an abundance of evidence confirming that our planet is steadily warming, that rising levels of greenhouse gases are responsible, and that it is humans who are boosting those levels. My column laid out these steps, each<a href="http://ofprincipalitiesandpowers.blogspot.com/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(2, 30, 170); color: #021eaa;"> backed by links</span></a> to the underlying science. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Because of their familiarity with that evidence, scientists who focus on climate overwhelmingly identify the greenhouse effect as the engine driving modern global warming. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In fact, in a number of surveys, about <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002/pdf"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(2, 30, 170); color: #021eaa;">97% </span></a>of those highly-qualified specialists <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/04/13/3769104/climate-scientific-consensus-real/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(2, 30, 170); color: #021eaa;">have confirmed</span></a> that this particular theory fits the facts. <a href="https://www.opr.ca.gov/s_listoforganizations.php"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #021eaa;">All of the major scientific organizations in the world</span></a>, <i>with not a single exception,</i> say the same thing. As we laypeople would put it: It’s true.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s ironic to have Mr. Cutright complain that I’m ignoring other (discredited) theories—and then himself ignore the entire body of my column, as well as the science which undergirds it. Instead he attacks the Paris Accord, which I didn’t mention at all. (Rather than get sidetracked with that issue, I’ll take it up in my next column.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Each item in my “Global Warming in a Nutshell” column was drawn from mainstream science and, as I’ve mentioned, was linked to supporting documentation. Everything in Mr. Cutright’s comment and his earlier letter to the editor is drawn from <a href="https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(2, 30, 170); color: #021eaa;">the familiar grab-bag of denialist talking points</span></a>, and none of it is sourced or supported. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mr. Cutright has obviously invested a good deal of time in studying denial literature. But the more he “learns,” the less he actually knows, because all of that accumulated misinformation blocks him from learning the genuine, high grade science that would call it into question. The shelves of his mental warehouse are crammed with half-truths, cherry-picked facts, and outright lies. There’s no room on the shelves for anything else. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">That’s a real loss. The world needs people with his passion and initiative. But it needs them to to be operating from a sound scientific basis. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mr. Cutright’s comment, as brief as it is, as well as his earlier letter to the editor, are fair samples of what the denial industry eventually produces. <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/global-warming-facts-and-fossil-fuel-industry-disinformation-tactics.html%23.WV42B1dqlJF"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(2, 30, 170); color: #021eaa;">Their strategy</span></a> is to ignore the actual peer-reviewed science, smear those who promote the science, deflect the argument, and keep throwing out the same lies over and over again. Their hope is that the public will mistake the confusion they've created for actual debate within the scientific community about what causes global warming. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But there <i>is</i> no scientific debate. None. Just a barrage of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(2, 30, 170); color: #021eaa;">anti-science propaganda</span></a> created by highly paid PR firms, bankrolled by fossil fuel billionaires, and parroted by their political front men. Well-meaning though he may be, Mr. Cutright is serving as their agent. As our climate situation becomes increasingly desperate, that makes him an unwitting agent of ignorance and evil, nudging us toward disaster.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If you’re going to weigh in on global warming, you have a moral obligation to first familiarize yourself with the peer-reviewed research related to it, as well as the current state of understanding among climate scientists. Otherwise you’re at the mercy of any con man, zealot, or flimflam artist—and your own biases.</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-12055691855804965082017-06-26T12:22:00.001-07:002017-06-28T08:10:05.693-07:00Global Warming in a Nutshell<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Last week the 29th anniversary of James Hansen’s historic appearance before the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health & Natural Resources passed by virtually unnoticed. Hansen, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html?pagewanted=all"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">testified </span></a>back on June 23, 1988, that “Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Hansen added, ''It is already happening now.’’</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The year of Hansen’s testimony—1988—was warmer at the time than any other year in the global temperature records, which began in 1880. Now, it doesn’t even make the top ten. So far our new century has seen <a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201513"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">16 of the top 17</span></a> warmest years ever recorded, with each of <a href="http://www.noaa.gov/stories/2016-marks-three-consecutive-years-of-record-warmth-for-globe"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">the last three years</span></a> setting a new all-time record. That is not a natural progression.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For 29 years now we have been officially on notice that global warming is taking place and poses serious threats to life as we know it. And for 29 years, as global temperatures have climbed, we have been unable to muster a serious response.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The core science linking the greenhouse effect and global warming can be summed up in three logical steps:</span></div>
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<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">Carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases <a href="http://www.apple.com/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">trap heat</span></a> by absorbing infrared radiation.</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is <a href="http://www.apple.com/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">steadily increasing</span></a>, so more and more heat is being trapped, thus warming the planet.</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">Human production of carbon dioxide is <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/global-warming-faq.html#.WU12J1dqlJE"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">almost entirely responsible</span></a> for the increased carbon dioxide levels, and hence for much of the warming.</span></li>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">All three of these steps are easily verifiable. They are based on settled physics and indisputable measurements.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When <a href="http://www.apple.com/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">air sampling</span></a> began at the remote Pacific island of Mauna Loa, back in 1958, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was at a level of 280 parts per million (ppm). <a href="http://www.apple.com/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This year the CO₂ level reached 410 ppm.</span></a> That is a <i>48% increase</i> of heat-trapping CO₂ in less than 60 years, and the level is still climbing. Look no further for a reason the world is heating up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">An instrument called a mass spectrometer is used to measure the CO₂ and other gases in the air samples from Mauna Loa and other centers around the globe. Since CO₂ emitted by the burning of fossil fuels lacks a carbon isotope called C14,<a href="http://oilprice.com/The-Environment/Global-Warming/Carbon-Isotopes-Prove-Humans-Have-Caused-Global-Warming.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"> the mass spectrometer can tell us how much of the CO₂ being added to the atmosphere is from human burning of fossil fuels</span></a>. The answer is: virtually all of it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Claims that we don’t know whether human use of fossil fuels is responsible for global warming are false. The science demonstrating that they are false has been known for years. As James Powell <a href="http://oilprice.com/The-Environment/Global-Warming/Carbon-Isotopes-Prove-Humans-Have-Caused-Global-Warming.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">has written</span></a>, “Unlike people, isotopes do not lie.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Most people now understand that we need to transition away from CO₂-producing fossil fuels and adopt clean, renewable forms of energy that don’t load the atmosphere with <i>more</i> greenhouse gases. What they may <i>not </i>be aware of is how quickly we need to cut greenhouse gases, and how deep those cuts must be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here’s the problem. The ocean, plants on land, and other carbon absorbers can only take up about half of the CO₂ humans are currently producing each year. The other half goes into the atmosphere, where different portions last for differing amounts of time. The brutal, seldom-discussed reality is that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100206"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">twenty percent or more of the CO₂</span></a><i> humans produce annually will remain in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years.</i> That 20% annual addition, on a human scale, is close to permanent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So to stabilize CO₂ levels in the atmosphere, most of the goals and timelines being set by governments at all levels don’t come close to doing the job. Even ambitious-sounding goals actually result in dumping more and more gas into the atmosphere, where a good deal of it will remain long term. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The numbers are simple and straightforward. If we cut CO₂ emissions by 20%? Then 30% will still go into the atmosphere, CO₂ levels will keep on climbing, and more long-term warming will be locked in. Cut emissions by 40%? Then 10% will still worsen the problem. <i>Every year we don’t cut emissions to 50% of current levels, we’re making things worse. </i> Much worse.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In short, the <i>minimum </i>realistic goal is to cut CO₂ emissions by 50%, and the realistic timeline is <i>as soon as humanly possible. </i> Then we can taper down toward zero emissions. We can’t afford to settle for cuts that are easily palatable. Our realism should be rooted in <i>physical </i>reality, the real-life consequences of continued greenhouse buildup. The deadly heat waves, drying out of soils, increased flooding, more violent storms, mass migrations of plant and animal species, melting of ice caps and glaciers, and all the rest of it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What we think of as “other issues” keep pressing themselves on us. Health care. Terrorism. Poverty. Immigration. Hunger. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The fact is, global warming will worsen <i>every one of these </i>dramatically, on a planetary scale, and will do irreparable harm in many other ways. Global warming is the biggest, most comprehensive threat the world faces. Dealing with it <i>must</i> become the number one priority on our political agenda. </span></div>
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Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-6931005364596297112017-03-13T10:30:00.001-07:002017-03-14T14:59:48.652-07:00Dishonorable<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’m sitting in front of my computer reading part of an interview last Thursday with Scott Pruitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. The article includes a photo of Pruitt, with a placard in front of him reading “Hon. E. Scott Pruitt.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Before being named to the EPA post, Pruitt was the Attorney General of Oklahoma. In that position, one of his main accomplishments was bringing fossil fuel corporations and lobbying groups into the Republican Attorneys General Association. He also acted as a conduit for Devon Energy, Oklahoma’s largest oil and gas firm, when he sent a letter to the EPA accusing it of federal overreach. His contribution was the signature; attorneys for Devon Energy actually wrote the letter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Republican AG group welcomed its fossil fuel funders by forming a nonprofit called the “Rule of Law Defense Fund.” The fund had the deliberately vague purpose of pursuing “issues relevant to the nation’s Republican attorneys general.” Pruitt is a board member. The organization has received at least $175,000 from the Koch brothers’ Freedom Partners super PAC.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That is the background for Pruitt’s astonishing statement in his interview: “… no, I would not agree that [carbon dioxide is] a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. ... we don’t know that yet ... we need to continue debate and continue the review and the analysis."</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is a familiar industry line. First with the tobacco industry, now with the fossil fuel industry. “We don’t know that cigarettes cause cancer.” “We don’t know that burning oil and gas and coal causes global warming.” “The science is uncertain.” “We need further studies.” Et cetera. What is so sickening is hearing these words from the head of the EPA.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Debate, review, analyze .... What they really stand for is <i>delay, delay, delay</i>. The longer an industry fights off action, whether it be on smoking or climate change, the longer the money rolls in… and the more people die from lung cancer or unprecedented flooding or heat stroke or climate-driven drought.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We <i>do </i>know that humans' burning of fossil fuel is driving our current global warming, and have known it with certainty for decades<i>. </i>There are few things more firmly established in modern science than the primary role of human-generated carbon dioxide in causing the planetary warming we’re experiencing. Pruitt might as well have claimed that there is no proof that Earth is round, that we need to keep debating and reviewing and analyzing that issue. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But there’s no money in pushing a flat Earth agenda; there’s plenty of money available for people like Pruitt, who will swap their integrity for a few lies about climate change (and the high positions and salaries that reward their willingness to spread those lies in front of cameras). </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What are the consequences of lies about global warming?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Rising sea levels moving steadily inward on beaches and coastal plains around the world. More intense, deadly heat waves that have already killed thousands. The death of coral reefs and bleaching of many more, even in the most remote, pristine areas of the planet. Ever larger and more intense forest fires, thousand-year floods, and mega-droughts. The looming extinction of untold numbers of plant and animal species.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And that’s just a brief sample. What Pruitt and this administration are furthering is death, loss, suffering, and destruction across a wide swath of the planet—while their supporters cheer on the madness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is Esau’s trading of his birthright for a mess of pottage that long since turned foul and rotten. I’m thinking again of that placard in the photo of Pruitt. We use the title “the Honorable” so routinely. So cheaply. Few things could be more <i>dis</i>honorable, and more despicable, than carrying lies for such a morally indefensible cause. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2017<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-72648124583097062802017-02-22T12:57:00.000-08:002017-03-13T12:59:02.831-07:00Hypocrisy or Democracy? The DNC Has a Fateful Choice<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(35, 35, 35); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #232323; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Democratic National Committee will choose a new chair at its February 23-26 Winter Meeting in Atlanta. That choice will be a fateful one. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></i>Despite being the smaller party, Republicans hold the country in an iron grip. Their dream of dismantling New Deal social programs is within reach. They’re racing to accelerate global warming by mining, drilling, and burning all the fossil fuels they can lay their hands on. They seem bent on stripping millions of families of health care, threatening more millions of immigrant families, and demonizing 3.3 million Muslims who are our fellow students, co-workers, neighbors, and friends. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A lot of responsibility for that falls on the DNC’s shoulders. The party’s collapse this past election was obviously a stunning rejection of Hillary Clinton. But the rejection wasn’t just personal, it was systemic. Millions of voters were turned off by the party’s hypocrisy and the DNC’s subservience to corporate money. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Let’s tell it like it is. The DNC gamed its own system, killed enthusiasm, and drove huge numbers of newly-engaged voters out of the campaign. They ushered Hillary Clinton into the nomination and the party over a cliff.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>What needs to be fixed?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Don’t underestimate the problems. The less difficult fixes are managerial, and even those will require major effort to accomplish. But after one of the most humiliating defeats in U.S. history, all of the candidates for chair agree they need to happen. Those fixes include:</span></div>
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<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(35, 35, 35); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #232323; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">reviving the 50-state (plus 7-territories) strategy; </span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(35, 35, 35); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #232323; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">pouring substantial resources into making the party competitive in state and local levels; </span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(35, 35, 35); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #232323; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">contesting races up and down the entire ticket rather than beginning and ending at the top; </span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(35, 35, 35); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #232323; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">supporting, not starving, progressive candidates; </span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(35, 35, 35); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #232323; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">listening to the grassroots. </span></li>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Publicly, that’s all the candidates are willing to discuss. The corporate wing of the party wants to keep it that way. What they <i>don’t</i> want is to own their part in the problem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was the corporatists who abandoned Howard Dean’s 50-state approach, sucked the money and support away from downticket efforts, and sought out lobbyists and big-dollar donors—and they don’t intend to change their ways. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The corporatists’ basic pitch in framing the DNC’s choice of a new chair is a bureaucratic two-step. 1) The party needs to bury its “philosophical differences” over big donors (i.e., keep on living off corporate handouts), ignore the outrageous abuses of the last campaign, and unify. 2) The best fit for heading the rebuilding job is a good manager who will reach out and rebuild the party at its lower levels. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In other words, their recipe for success is a better-run version of the status quo. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Why is that not enough?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That argument may sound plausible. But it won’t work. In fact, it’s actually a recipe for further disaster. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Young people, working class people, and people of color deserted the party in droves this last election. Even the shock of a Donald Trump administration won’t be enough to bring them back unless there is major systemic change—starting with the chair. In their encounters with the Democratic Party last primary season, attempts to squelch them were every bit as ugly and undemocratic as Republicans’ efforts to suppress minority votes. They’ve had it with the cynicism and hypocrisy of corporate Democrats.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Beyond that, there are structural problems plaguing the DNC like multiple cancers--the caucus system, the superdelegate system, and the core issue destroying the party: its dependence on donations from corporate lobbyists. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>What <i>really </i>needs to be fixed?</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The DNC is sick. It has an addiction to corporate money. And your dealers don’t stop coming around just because you’ve lost your house, been fired from your job, and been rejected by your kids. You’re the dealers’ mealticket, and in their own way, they’re as sick as you are. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As any addict or member of an addict’s family will tell you, recovery begins by acknowledging that you have a problem. That was Bernie Sanders’ role in the last campaign. He was the unlikely young boy who blurted out—in a Brooklyn accent—that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes. The wonder wasn’t just that Sanders couldn’t be bullied or bought; it was that he actually talked about Wall Street and corporate money as corrupting democracy. He broke the party’s sick silence. It was the greatest contribution he could have made to the party—and the party turned it down. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Once the silence was broken, volunteers poured into Sanders’ campaign. His massive support via small donations was unprecedented. Hundreds of thousands of those same folks, along with other energized, passionate people, are now out jamming airports, filling our cities’ streets, and hounding members of Congress. They’re pouring millions of dollars into the ACLU. Do the powers-that-be in the DNC actually believe that managerial fixes will satisfy people’s demands for change? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As crazy as that sounds, they may. Never underestimate addicts’ ability to delude themselves. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>How do things look at the moment?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Early on, Keith Ellison, a strong progressive and early Bernie Sanders supporter, was the clear frontrunner to become the new DNC chair. But the party’s Clinton/Obama corporate wing, threatened by the prospect of real reform, pushed Tom Perez into the race. Perez, ex-Labor Secretary under Obama and one-time prospect to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate, is now Ellison’s main competition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Unfortunately for Perez, he had a temporary lapse into frankness. He told county leaders in Kansas, “We heard loudly and clearly yesterday from Bernie supporters that the [party’s primary] process was rigged, and it was. And you’ve got to be honest about it. That’s why we need a chair who is transparent.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>His straight talk was quickly followed by a humiliating flurry of tweets in which he claimed he “misspoke” and that “Hillary became our nominee fair and square, and she won more votes in the primary—and general—than her opponents.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That Clinton won more votes is obviously true; that she won the nomination “fair and square” is a lie. Emails released via Wikileaks, as well as the debate schedule, the stacked deck in debate questions, and the abuses in party caucuses all confirmed the process was rigged. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>By now we all cringe each time Kellyanne Conway debases herself by excusing or lying about yet another vile thing Donald Trump has said or done. But here’s Tom Perez doing the same thing, flip-flopping at Clinton’s command. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The speed with which Clinton//Wall Street forces were able to pull Perez’s strings and jerk him back into line is all we need to know about his fitness for the job. The last thing the DNC needs is a male version of Debbie Wasserman Schultz at its helm. Nevertheless, Perez now claims he has the support of at least 180 DNC members.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Keith Ellison has been low key, presumably because he’s trying not to poke a stick in the eye of people he’ll need to work with if elected. But Sam Ronan’s late entry into the race is a plus for Ellison because the young Ohio vet is making Ellison’s case for him, putting 2016’s rigged nomination front and center and demanding the DNC hold itself accountable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ellison’s bid has also been bolstered in the last few days by a strong endorsement from Ray Buckley, who dropped out of the race. Of key importance here is that Buckley is not only the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, but also President of the Association of State Democratic Chairs and Vice Chair of the DNC. He has been engaged in Democratic politics since he was eight years old and is widely respected. His endorsement carries a lot of weight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If the DNC blows this one, it can kiss the party’s future—and ours—goodbye.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>What can you do?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Call your state’s members on the DNC. If you can’t find out who they are, get their names and contact info from your state’s Democratic Party office. Don’t put it off; time is short. Tell the DNC members what you want and who you support. Let them know the public is watching, and expects real reform.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2017</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-22965232495868124362017-02-20T10:08:00.001-08:002017-02-21T18:24:35.419-08:00“I’m Going to Have to Wear That Phrase Like Sackcloth”<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Kellyanne, good gracious! What’s wrong with you, honey, you look terrible!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Please, I don’t need to hear that. I already know. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and I get up in the morning exhausted. Everybody at work is going non-stop, and it makes me look like a slacker to take time off, but I had to take a break.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What’s the matter, sweetie? What is it? Are you ... you and George aren’t having problems, are you?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No, no, nothing like that. George and I are fine. He’s been great. It’s... it’s my job.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, we’ve been so proud of you, Kellyanne. You were always such a hard worker. Picking blueberries all those summers. We knew you’d make something of yourself. And you have. First the president’s campaign manager and now Counselor to the President!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Awkwardly: “That’s the problem, really. <i>I’m </i>not proud of myself anymore.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Why in the world not? You’ve worked hard for everything you’ve got. You’re an American success story, honey. You earned a law degree, you started your own polling business, and now you’re working in the Oval Office!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Eyes turning downward, her voice quivering: “Right. And I felt good about those things and about myself. But now, every day, I have to go on TV and lie in front of millions of people. I cringe. I toss and turn for hours every night wondering what stupid lie I’m going to have to go out and defend the next day.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What are you saying, Kellyanne?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, I shouldn’t be telling you these things, but you’ve always been there for me. Please don’t repeat this to anybody.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You know you can depend on me, Kellyanne. What is it, child?” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“He just makes things up, he contradicts himself, he exaggerates so much that he’s like a three-year-old. It was sort of fun for a while. It was lively and different from all those canned speeches and scripted talking points, you know? But he can’t help himself; it’s like a disease. He lies nonstop.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well that’s his problem, isn’t it?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s not how it works. I’m his spokesperson. What am I supposed to do when he claims he had the biggest inauguration crowd ever and there are all these photos that show huge empty spaces on the Mall? When he claims thousands of people were bused from Massachusetts to vote in New Hampshire illegally, but there’s zero evidence to support that claim? When he says that he’ll release his tax returns when the audit is completed, and then after the election says he won’t release them? When he says that Mexico will pay for the wall and then it turns out <i>we’re </i>going to pay for the wall? He lies about important stuff and he lies about <i>trivia</i>! And then I have to go on TV and double down on the lies.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sympathetically. “Have you been going to confession, Kellyanne? Don’t you think it would help to unburden yourself and do an act of contrition?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’ve thought of it, but I’ve been avoiding it. What am I going to say? That I know I’m sinning, but I’m going to keep on doing it because that’s basically what my job consists of? That I go out and lie, day after day, in order to defend a president who lies, day after day?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Come on, Kellyanne, this isn’t like you. Buck up. You can figure your way out of this. You were Phi Beta Kappa<i> </i>in college!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Don’t remind me. When I came up with that phrase ‘alternative facts,‘ I thought it was clever. Now it just sounds idiotic. When people hear my name, that’s what they think of--that cheesy way to recast a lie. <i> </i>I’m going to have to wear that phrase like sackcloth for the rest of my life. Then there was that horrible ‘Bowling Green massacre’ fiasco. And that <i>Fatal Attraction </i>skit on <i>Saturday Night Live </i>to top things off.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I saw a clip of that, Kellyanne. I thought it was mean. You’re nothing like that woman.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It stung. But the bottom-line is, it’s true.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What do you mean it’s true? You’d never go after somebody with a knife. Don’t be silly.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Of course I wouldn’t attack anybody with a knife. But I’ve been acting just as crazy as Glenn Close in the film. I’m attached to this man who uses me but would drop me like a red-hot horseshoe if it suited him. I’m sick enough to go out and humiliate myself time and time again, for his sake, when I don’t mean anything to him.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Is it really that bad?”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s worse. Have you been watching when I go on TV news shows now? I’m a laughing stock! I start to offer some explanation for the latest whopper from the White House and TV hosts just cut me off. Or giggle uncontrollably. Do you know how embarrassing that is—to have some veteran TV person unable to stop giggling because what you’ve said is so ridiculous? I’ve even been banned from <i>Morning Joe—Morning Joe</i>, for crying out loud—because of my ‘propensity to bring forth falsehoods on multiple occasions’.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh sweetie, that must really hurt.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m starting to go numb. When somebody acts as if what I’ve just said is nonsense, I don’t even have a comeback. I catch myself staring at them for a minute like ‘Don’t make me do this again, will you not? Please?’”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Kellyanne, it sounds as if you hit rock bottom when you reached the top.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What do you mean?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s like that monkey trap, where the monkey sticks her hand through a hole to grab a banana and then traps herself because she won’t let go. Maybe you need to start asking yourself what your success is worth.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2017</span></div>
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Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-19886246302145733382017-02-15T12:50:00.000-08:002017-03-13T12:53:26.315-07:00“If We Could Change Ourselves”: The DNC and Transformational Change<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Democratic sweep of 2008 built on an overwhelming public hunger for a shift in the direction the country was moving. In a skillfully crafted campaign, Barack Obama presented himself as the personification of hope and change. He and the party turned pent-up demand for a more equal society and a less belligerent foreign policy into a smashing victory. Obama swept into office along with Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yet as soon as he was inaugurated, Obama installed a Wall Street-selected cabinet and economic team, and chose Rahm Emanuel—an abrasive cynic, former investment banker, and pipeline to donors and powerbrokers—as his Chief of Staff. The new Democratic administration failed to deliver the kinds of change people had voted for, and its Congressional majority rapidly eroded.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Republican sweep of 2016 drew on an even greater public hunger for a change of course. Donald Trump ran as a bull-in-a-china-shop outsider who would break up a rigged system, shred trade agreements that had devastated American factories and their workers’ lives, and “Make America Great Again.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>By contrast, Hillary Clinton ran as the embodiment of the status quo. She downsized voters’ expectations, preaching incremental change in tiny steps. And instead of an inspirational campaign slogan, she offered “I’m with Her”--a tone-deaf choice that focused attention exclusively on herself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The new Republican administration, like the 2008 Democratic administration, immediately set about disappointing the voters who put it into office. But unlike Democrats in 2008, Republicans are bulldozing their brutal agenda through with the throttle wide open. It’s change on a mammoth scale, but it’s not the change people were hoping for. Instead it’s a return to the robber barons‘ heyday at the turn of the last century.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So whether the Democratic Party recognizes it or not, the election of a new DNC chair pivots on a double-barreled question: Will the DNC offer change, and what kind of changes is the party willing to commit itself to? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The first part is easy: Change is coming. The second part is what the election of a new chair is all about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Will it be a limited, strategic change that mainly involves reinvesting in local and state party structures? That’s the kind of change the party’s establishment wants. That’s what they’re offering with Tom Perez. It’s what they were offering with Jaime Harrison too before he dropped out and threw his support to Perez.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The change Perez and Harrison represent is from the top down. Perez was recruited by Obama and Clinton insiders once it looked as if Keith Ellison was going to win the DNC job. Perez appears to be a decent guy, but his constituency is the insiders, the lobbyists, the big donors, and the network they’ve built up inside the DNC. Harrison, also a likable and capable person, is a lobbyist with The Podesta Group, formed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta and his brother. The Podesta Group is the primary funnel for corporate cash into the top levels of the DNC.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Keith Ellison represents transformational change, change from the bottom up. He voices the hopes and dreams of ordinary people as well as the overwhelming majority of young people. He represents a bridge between what the party is and what it needs to become. The party needs him, or someone like him, in ways it may not appreciate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ellison is on the right side of history. He’s on the right side of opportunity, equality, and salvaging democracy. He’s on the right side to draw in fired-up citizens eager to be put to work. He’s on the right side in terms of holding the party together. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Contrast Ellison’s openness with that of Marcel Groen, chair of Pennsylvania Democrats, who responded to the groundswell of emails and calls he was receiving in support of Ellison by announcing his support of Perez. Groen wrote, “You don’t want 300 people calling you and telling you what to do.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>You don’t? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That’s a head-scratcher. Isn’t input from the grassroots what the party is now claiming it wants? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Being flooded by calls from energized, passionate people should be an organizer’s dream. It’s the key to rebuilding the party at the county and state levels. It’s democracy at work. And you respond by thumbing your nose at people, telling them to shut up and get lost?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That kind of rejection is more than spiteful. It’s also short-sighted and counter-productive. It alienates people who are fired up to do good work, and it instantly pulls the plug on a vast reservoir of untapped energy. It opens the door to numerous challenges in Democratic primaries, and maybe even to the development of a vote-siphoning third party. It shouldn’t have to be said that for people who are claiming that party unity is critical, this is <i>not</i> the way to go about it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Gandhi once wrote, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.” That’s true not just of individuals; it’s true of political parties as well. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2017</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-78152854185832594402016-02-19T07:01:00.000-08:002016-02-19T14:35:20.304-08:00“If Sand Can Glow in the Dark”<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Corpse in street of Nagasaki, the day after the atomic bombing<br />
Photo by Yosuke Yamaha<br />
August 10, 1945<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We were about ready to get started with our book group when the doorbell rang again. “Pardon me,” I told the others, and hurried to the door. When I opened it, I stood there for a minute, unable to recognize the person standing there.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, aren’t you going to let me in?” came a plaintive voice.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Liz!” I exclaimed. “I couldn’t figure out who you were! What’s with the dark glasses and the head scarf and turned-up collar? Are you on the lam from the cops?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s not funny,” she said, as I took her coat and hung it up. “How would you feel if you were a Republican nowadays?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh Liz,” I said, giving her a quick hug. “Come on in. It’s not your fault. Nobody is blaming you for all the vile things your candidates in the presidential debates are spouting.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She stepped into the living room as tentatively as a kid dipping a toe in a lake in December. But she brightened up when the other women greeted her with a chorus of “So glad you could make it!” and other cheerful welcomes. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Thank you all so much,” she said with relief. “I was afraid I was going to be a pariah.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I know things have really been going downhill,” I said, “but has something pushed you past the tipping point?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I guess you haven’t seen the news this morning,” Liz said. “The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks all these white supremacists and other hate groups. They’ve been doing it for years now. This morning they released a report linking the extreme anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric pouring out of our GOP primary debates with attacks on Muslims and a major growth spurt among hate groups. God, I’m so embarrassed.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You shouldn’t take it personally,” said Lynn gently. “We know what kind of person you are. When Donald Trump says that people coming here from Mexico are basically drug dealers and criminals and rapists, we know you feel the same way we do--that Trump’s claim is a hateful, despicable, racist lie. And when he says he would bar all Muslim foreigners from entering the United States, we know you’re as appalled as any other decent person.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I appreciate your support so much,” said Liz miserably. “But after he said those things, plus the insults and bullying and boasting and all kinds of crude sexist comments about Carly Fiorina’s face and blood coming out of Megyn Kelly’s ‘wherever’--what happened? He went straight to the top of the party’s polls. I couldn’t believe it. I kept asking myself, ‘What’s that say about the GOP I’ve belonged to for over twenty-five years?’” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I feel for you,” said Nora. “When Marco Rubio got all hysterical claiming that Obama was dividing the country because the president went to a mosque in Baltimore and talked about <i>inclusion</i>, I thought the top of my head would blow off. Obama tries to pull people together and Rubio accuses him of trying to divide us. That’s grotesque. It's Orwellian doublespeak if I’ve ever heard it. No offense, Liz,” she added quickly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I have to say that when the Republican candidates tried to outdo each other on how they would torture suspected terrorists, I couldn’t help but think of you. In a sympathetic way,” Ann added as Liz flinched.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I did too,” I admitted. “When Trump said ‘I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,’ and Chris Christie said waterboarding isn’t torture and he would use it, and Marco Rubio threw in that he’d ‘haul captured terrorists to Guantánamo Bay’ and ‘find out everything they know,’ I just had to turn off my TV in disgust. I said to myself, ‘I hope Liz isn’t watching’.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Thanks, Patty,” Liz murmured. “Unfortunately, I was.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I guess I bottomed out when Ted Cruz gave his plan for fighting the Islamic State," said Ruth. ‘We will utterly destroy them. We will carpet bomb them into oblivion,’ he said. Doesn’t he understand that he’s talking about wiping out whole cities of men, women, and children? Or doesn’t he even care? I kept thinking, ‘Poor Liz. How can she handle being associated with men like these?’”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Of course he understands!” said Lynn. “After Trump said that to fight terrorism you need to take out their families--and he said it three times, just for emphasis--it was like they were in a contest to see who could be the most bloodthirsty.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well in that case, Cruz was the winner,” said Nora. “He got as extreme as you can get when he talked about going nuclear, and gloated about it. Remember when he said, ‘I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out.’ This is the favorite candidate of evangelical Christians, mind you, bragging about his eagerness to obliterate whole populations with atomic bombs. These guys don’t seem to have any boundaries. I don’t mind telling you, they scare the hell out of me. I shudder to think of one of them actually becoming president. I can’t imagine being in your place, Liz.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Liz bowed her head. “A huge chunk of the people in my party are eating this stuff up. It just floors me,” she confessed. “Where are the normal, sensible people that made me a Republican in the first place? It’s as if I walked out of my childhood home and wandered into a facility for the criminally insane. I feel so guilty.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You haven’t done anything wrong, Liz,” said Nora kindly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, I should have spoken out, I know it. But I kept telling myself, who would listen to me? I’m a nobody.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Nonsense,” said Dorothy firmly. “If there’s one thing we all agree on, it’s that we’re each a <i>somebody</i>, not a <i>nobody. </i>You didn’t create this mess, but you’re caught up in it. We all sympathize with the situation you’re in. But it’s time to stop feeling sorry for yourself and decide what you’re going to do about it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2016</span></div>
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Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-22700945242506028762016-02-09T12:50:00.000-08:002016-02-09T15:10:17.015-08:00"It Really Is Not a Big Deal"<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Four of us got there early for choir practice--Shirley, Mabel, Serena, and myself--and while we were waiting we fell to griping about our husbands, something that’s been known to happen when a group of women get together.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I could just strangle Andy,” Shirley said. “His blood pressure keeps going up and up. It was 165 over something last month, and the doctor told him he really needed to lose weight, change his diet, and get some exercise. I’m scared to death he’s going to have a heart attack. But Andy just shrugs it off. He says your blood pressure is either going up or down at any point in time, so it's really not a big deal.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Huh,” said Mable. “You know what? Rodney told me almost exactly the same thing when I got after him about his weight. He waved it off. Claimed your weight is always either going up or down at any point in time, so it really isn’t a big deal. When I mentioned that his only seems to go one direction--up--he just repeated himself and heaped some more mashed potatoes and gravy on his plate.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Gee, that’s funny,” said Serena. “Lou’s cholesterol has climbed up over 240, and our doctor wanted to put him on some medication and an exercise program. But Lou brushed him off. He said your cholesterol is always going either up or down, so it’s not really that big a deal. I told Lou that when it gets up as high as his is, it’s definitely a big deal, but he just sat there watching that TV. I’m not sure he even heard me.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Hmm. You know what? I’ve been getting that same excuse from Ace,” I volunteered. “He’s been dragging around, having headaches, and losing weight, but he won’t do anything about it. His blood sugar level was 190 when we checked it yesterday. I’m afraid he’s going to have foot problems or go blind if he doesn’t start taking care of himself, but he just pretends nothing's wrong. Where are they getting all this nonsense?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I came right out and asked Lou,” said Donna, “He’s been following the presidential primaries really closely. And it turns out that when Dr. Carson gets asked about global warming--the way the planet keeps getting hotter and hotter--he just says....”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I guess the light went on for all of us simultaneously. Before she could finish her sentence, we all chimed in: "... the temperature's either going up or down at any point in time, so it really is not a big deal."</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2016</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-91486394539319358272015-06-29T06:57:00.002-07:002015-06-29T08:55:28.832-07:00Golden Calf, Bronze Bull<div style="font-size: 18px;">
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Arturo Di Modica, <i>Charging Bull</i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">When the people had lost their way, their leaders called on them to rise up early and make their way to Wall Street, bearing burnt sacrifices, and to lay their communion offerings at the hooves of the bronze bull erected there. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They invited the people to eat and drink and indulge in revelry, at their corporate sponsors’ expense. Men and women alike, giddy with visions of wealth and domination, crowded around to stroke the bull’s gleaming scrotum, all the while giggling and joking drunkenly. “This is your god, who brought you up out of the wilderness,” their leaders told them. “Let the good times roll!” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Then the Lord said to Francis, “I have seen these people, and they are a stiff-necked people. They steal from their brethren and plunder my creation, then call themselves creators of wealth. They treat the world I have given them as their private preserve, made for those with the quickest hands to grab the most for themselves.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“They have turned away from what I commanded them, and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a bull. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘The market is our god, and the bronze bull is his image. He is the pure energy of greed run free, able to trample all in his path. The market is the answer to all questions, the solution to all problems, the measure of all things. All power and praise be to the market!’”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The smoke from their sacrifices, in exhaust fumes and emissions from belching smokestacks, has reached even heaven,” said the Lord. “Now leave me alone, so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Let the seas rise and flood their coasts, droughts scorch their crops, fires turn their forests to ashes, heat waves fell them in their cities and fields, and violent storms flatten their houses and business places. Let them become nations of helpless wanderers, with no place to lay their head and call home.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But Francis sought the favor of the Lord, and tried to avert his wrath. “Turn away from your fierce anger,” he pleaded. “Relent, and do not bring such disasters on your people.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Lord heard Francis’s plea, and said, “I shall stay the full force of my righteous anger for a spell. You have but a brief moment in time; let us see whether you can recall the people from their idolatry and blasphemy.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Francis turned and hurried down the mountain, with the text of an encyclical in his hands, pages inscribed on both sides, front and back. He spoke to the people, trying to summon them back to the God who had given them the land and the sea and the air they had fouled and despoiled. He thundered against the worship of money and markets. He shone the light of truth on an economy that widens inequality and tosses aside billions of people like soiled disposable diapers. “Such an economy kills,” he proclaimed. “The culture of prosperity deadens us.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And Francis warned the idol-worshippers that a system with a selfish ideal as its foundation is like a house built over a worked-out mine shaft. “Those who dwell therein are poised above the abyss,” he cried. “They are doomed to indifference. They turn deaf ears to the cries of the poor and lose their ability to weep for other people’s pain.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But the leaders at the church of avarice would not be swayed. They understood the mesmerizing power of bombast joined with paranoia, so they took to their iPads and talk shows, calling Francis “a meddlesome egoist and an ideologue,” who dared to speak out against the god they had forged. “He does not preach the true religion,” they complained. “He is an adherent of a modern pagan green religion.” “His rantings are nothing more than Marxism, nothing more than communism.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The people listened and pondered these things, while God waited and looked on. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2015</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-19502504660708260542015-06-15T04:00:00.000-07:002015-06-29T07:19:29.145-07:00“So What’s Your Question, Larry?”<div style="font-size: 18px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>RUSH TRANSCRIPT</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>PRESS CONFERENCE WITH GOVERNOR RICKETTS</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>LINCOLN, NEBRASKA</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reporter #1:</b> Governor, Nebraska is the latest state to repeal capital punishment, now that the legislature has overridden your veto. You’ve said you’re still going to go ahead and execute the ten people already on death row here. None of the other eighteen states that have done away with capital punishment have executed anyone after their new law passed. Why are you so hellbent on executing people? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Governor:</b> Look at it this way, Chet: if the state’s chief executive can’t execute, what’s the point? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reporter #2:</b> Since 1973, there have been 143 prisoners on death row in the U.S. who were found to be innocent of the crime for which they were convicted. Doesn’t that make you just a little uneasy?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Governor:</b> Not at all, Danny. I don’t second guess the justice system--just the legislature. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reporter #2:</b> But obviously people who <i>do </i>second guess the justice system have found a lot of mistakes and wrongful convictions.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Governor: </b>So be it. Nobody likes a Monday-morning quarterback.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reporter #3: </b> Almost all the prisoners on death row, here and around the country, are poor, uneducated, black, Hispanic, or some combination of those things, Governor. Are you comfortable with the way income, education, and race seem to affect who gets the death penalty?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Governor:</b> Not as long as I’m rich, educated, white, and a home-grown English speaker, Marcia. (Has a second thought) Don’t quote me on that.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reporter #4:</b> Governor, how do you explain all these legislators who voted to do away with the death penalty? Most of them are well-off, educated, white, English-speaking conservatives, just like yourself. But they opposed you on this capital punishment thing. They argued that the death penalty is horribly expensive, is ineffective as a deterrent, puts the lives of innocent people at risk, and gives government too much unnecessary power.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Governor:</b> What you have to understand, Glen, is that we conservatives say we don’t like government spending, but the fact is we’ll <i>pour</i> money into things that matter. (Delivers standard applause line) And what matters the most is security: protecting the people of this great state and country from murderers at home and abroad. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reporter #3:</b> But if you execute these ten people--or even one of them, as far as that goes--doesn’t that make you one of those murderers we need to protect ourselves against?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Governor:</b> (Exasperated) Where do you people come up with ideas like that? Executions aren’t murders, Marcia. The first is legal and good, the other is illegal and evil.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reporter #3:</b> But as I understand it, Governor, the legislature just decided executions are <i>not </i>legal and <i>not</i> good.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Governor:</b> That may be their opinion going forward, but it’s not retroactive. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reporter #2:</b> Still, doesn’t it make sense that you’d honor the spirit of their decision?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Governor:</b> They have their spirit; I have mine. And as long as I’m the governor, mine’s the one that counts. (Glances at his watch) Okay, we’ve got time for one more question. (Points to a reporter who has his hand up) Larry?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reporter #5:</b> Speaking of spirit, Governor, you’re a Roman Catholic. (Consults his notes) The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has opposed the death penalty for the last 38 years, saying that we can’t defend life by taking life. The Catholic bishops here in Nebraska have issued a joint statement calling for the end of capital punishment. And Pope Francis called on all men and women of good will to help abolish the death penalty in all of its forms.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Governor:</b> So what’s your question, Larry?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2015</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-67572648649460684662014-07-21T03:30:00.000-07:002015-06-29T07:31:50.376-07:00Mend Thine Every Flaw<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Naturalization Ceremony at Monticello<br />Photo by Waldo Jaquith<br />from Wikimedia Commons</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The naturalization ceremony at Monticello each 4th of July, where people who have come to the U.S. from all over the world stand and take the oath of citizenship, is a stirring event. Bob thought it would be a feel-good story for these troubled times, and sent me to do a feature this year. “Be sure and get some interviews,” he reminded me as I was heading out the door. “First-hand accounts are what make history come alive.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sure thing, Chief,” I told him. “Patriotic music, a celebration of democracy in action, and heartwarming stories. I could write this in my sleep.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Ah, so that’s why your stories usually sound the way they do,” he said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Glad you like them,” I said. “I’ll try to meet my usual standard.” He said something in reply, but it was muffled by the loud slam of the door behind me. It must have been caught by the wind. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The mood at Monticello was festive and the ceremony moving. After the speakers, the administration of the oath, and the rest of the formal agenda, the band began playing, kids were rolling hoops and running around happily, and I had a couple of ice cream cones to tide me over until lunch. Then I walked around looking for newly-minted citizens to talk with, humming along as the band gave a nice rendition of “America the Beautiful.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>America! America! <br />
God mend thine every flaw, <br />
Confirm thy soul in self-control, <br />
Thy liberty in law! </i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The first new citizen I approached turned out to be from Chile. “Congratulations!” I told her, shaking her hand. “How long have you lived in this country?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I came with my mother in the late 1970s when I was just a young girl,” she said. “It took me a long while, but I finally decided to become a citizen here.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Just you and your mother?” I said. “What about the rest of your family.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She looked a bit awkward. “Maybe you remember the years of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Not really,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well,” she explained, “when the CIA engineered a military coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of President Allende, General Pinochet’s men herded my father and twelve-year-old brother into the national stadium, along with hundreds of others, where they were both tortured and killed.” She began to tear up at the memory.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What can you say after something like that? “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, stunned. “Uh, well, congratulations again on your naturalization. Best of luck to you.” And I quickly went looking for someone else to interview.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The next new citizen I approached told me he was from Guatemala, and was working as an orderly in a local hospital. “Actually, I was a doctor specializing in rural medicine back home,” he said, “but after death squads murdered four of my colleagues at night in front of their families, I fled for my life.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s a shame your country has such a history of unrest, dictatorships, and violence,” I said. “It must be a relief to become part of a country like ours with its long tradition of democracy and freedom.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He nodded. “It’s bittersweet,” he said. “It was the stability in this country that finally led me to apply for citizenship. But at the same time, enjoying that safety here is painful because it was the United States that organized the overthrow of our peaceful, democratically-elected government and replaced it with dictators who carried out decades of genocide.” He paused, his eyes down, and then looked up at me. “The U.S. trained the death squads and early on gave them a list of names of doctors, journalists, teachers, community activists, labor organizers, and student leaders to ‘neutralize’,” he said quietly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh. I didn’t realize. I ... uh .... ”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I understand,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. “Most people here seem completely unaware of these things.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Right,” I said, anxious to get out of this situation. “Listen, it’s been great talking with you. Good luck.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The band was now playing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” and the words of the song ran through my mind as I hurriedly walked away.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Our father's God, to Thee,<br />
Author of liberty,<br />
To Thee we sing.<br />
Long may our land be bright<br />
With freedom's holy light;<br />
Protect us by Thy might,<br />
Great God, our King!</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Maybe Latin America was the problem, I reflected. Then I noticed what appeared to be a Middle Eastern woman standing alone. I introduced myself, and asked where she was from originally.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Iran,” she said, and nothing more. She seemed wary, so I tried to put her at ease. “I’m a newspaper reporter doing a human interest story on new citizens naturalized today,” I said. “Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I suppose it’s okay.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Great. Can you tell me how does it feel to become a citizen in a free and democratic country like ours?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Freedom and democracy are wonderful things,” she said. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>After a pause she added, “My grandmother would tell me, when she was alive, about how proud Iranians were when we elected Mohammed Mossadegh Prime Minister in a free, fair, and open vote. But when Mossadegh decided to cancel the British monopoly control of Iranian oil and nationalize the oil company, Britain and the U.S. decided he had to go. The CIA was used to overthrow him. It took two years. They bribed newspaper editors, created a fake communist party, organized and financed opposition, and then orchestrated a coup that put the Shah in power. Years of dictatorship followed, with unspeakable horrors. Over 3,000 people were killed by the Shah’s regime. My grandfather’s brother was tortured and killed by the Shah’s secret police.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You know,” I said, shaking my head, “you may find this hard to believe, but three people now, from three different countries, have just told me basically the same story.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She gave me a hard stare. “I don’t find it hard to believe at all,” she said. “Don’t you know your own history? We in Iran were the original success story for the CIA’s overthrow of governments the U.S. wanted to replace. The coup in Iran in 1953, and the dictatorship that was installed in its place, became the prototype for U.S. foreign interventions all around the globe. There have been at least eighty coups organized against foreign governments by the U.S. since then.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I said. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Would anyone joke about such a thing?” she said. “And it’s certainly not a joke to all the people who have suffered the consequences--who have seen their own freedoms and dreams destroyed.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What countries are you talking about?” I asked.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“There have been so many I don’t know if I can remember them all,” she said. “After Iran, there was the overthrow of President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. The U.S. called that coup ‘Operation PRSUCCESS.‘ About 200,000 people--mostly peasants--were killed by the U.S.-backed security forces over the years. Then came the coup in Thailand in 1957, and the one in Laos between 1958 and 1960. Of course there was the coup in the Congo in 1960, after the Belgian Congo finally gained its independence. Remember Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister who was imprisoned and executed?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Never heard of him,” I said. “These things all took place before I was even born.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So you’re only aware of history that occurred during your lifetime?” she asked somewhat sharply.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Of course not,” I said, a bit ruffled. “I’ve heard of the American Revolution and the Civil War and the First World War and the Korean War .... wait, I’ve forgotten some. The War of 1812, the Spanish-American War....”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s what history is for you?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “A series of wars the U.S. has fought?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Time to switch the subject. “No, no,” I said. “What I meant was that those coups you mentioned were a part of the past. We’ve moved on from there.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Don’t kid yourself,” she said--a phrase which sounded odd when spoken with her accent. “The pattern of coups organized by the U.S. has continued through your own lifetime and right up to the present day.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, “but that’s ridiculous. I’m a newspaper reporter. If the United States was routinely undermining democratic governments and replacing them with dictatorships, don’t you think I’d be aware of it?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She stared at me for a moment, then said, “Well, are you?” She waited, but I didn’t answer. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Not all of these countries were democracies, but all of them were the victims of U.S.-backed coups,” she said, and began to recite: “Turkey in 1960, 1971, and 1980; Ecuador in 1961 and 1963; South Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and Argentina, all in 1963; Honduras, also 1963 and then again in 2009; Iraq in 1963 and 2003; the overthrow of President Goulart in Brazil in 1964; Bolivia three times, including 1964, 1971 and 1980. In 1965, the U.S. gave the Indonesian army the names of 5,000 Communists, who were hunted down and killed as part of the quarter of a million Indonesians slaughtered by the military. The U.S. orchestrated the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana in 1966; a coup in Greece in 1967; the overthrow of President Arias in Panama in 1968 after he demanded the return of the Canal Zone to Panamanian jurisdiction, and then again in 1989 with the replacement of Manuel Noriega; the removal of Prince Sihanouk in Cambodia in 1970; the overthrow of President Allende of Chile in 1973; Bangladesh in 1975; ‘Operation Fair Play,’ the military coup that removed Prime Minister Bhutto of Pakistan in 1977; the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983; Mauritania and Guinea in 1984; Burkina Faso in 1987; Paraguay in 1989; Haiti in 1991 and again in 2004; Russia in 1993; Uganda in 1996; and Libya in 2011.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Huh,” I thought to myself. “Looks as if it’s not just Latin America. She’s talking about countries in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Middle East, even Europe.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But what I said was, “Wow, it’s amazing you can rattle off a list that long, with all those names and dates.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Victims tend to have longer memories than aggressors,” she answered. “And it helps that I’m a historian.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, thanks for your time,” I said, waving goodbye. None of what I had so far was usable; I needed to find some folks with more upbeat stories before everybody headed home. I had a little time yet, I thought, because I could hear the strains of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” wafting across the mountaintop:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, </i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: </i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, </i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>While God is marching on.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>One thing all those songs agreed on, I noticed: God seemed to be with our country on its mission. Or were we with Him? Regardless, I was eager to gather a few of the right kind of interviews before I headed home and wrote my story while I was taking a nap.</span></div>
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<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">© Tony Russell, 2014</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Note: The list of coups rattled off by the woman from Iran in the column is a much-modified version of a list contained in an <a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/americas-coup-machine-destroying-democracy-1953">AlterNet article by Nicolas J.S. Davies</a>, which itself draws on William Blum's book <i>Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.</i></span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-39980944978786787292014-07-02T11:31:00.000-07:002014-07-02T11:31:46.699-07:00Supreme Faith<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Somebody finally moved into that house two doors down--the one that’s been empty for almost a year,” Patty said while we were eating dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Thank goodness,” I said. “It’s about time. Did you meet them?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No, all I saw were the movers. They have a strange assortment of furniture, though. A lot of file cabinets, computer equipment, printers, and that kind of thing. No beds or dining room sets or couches or end tables.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Huh,” I said, “that’s odd. This neighborhood is zoned for residential use only. Maybe one of them works at home, and the rest of their stuff is coming in another moving van.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Patty looked a little doubtful. “Could be, I guess,” she said. “Anyway, I baked a gooseberry pie to welcome them. Why don’t you take it over after supper and introduce yourself? Maybe you can find out more about them.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So after supper Patty set the pie in a little cardboard box, and I walked up to the new neighbor’s door, with the scent of warm gooseberries and cinnamon rising from the box in my hands. My mouth was watering, even though she’d baked two, and I had finished off half of ours for dessert.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I managed to press the doorbell with my elbow, and after a small delay a file cabinet opened the door. “Oh, hi,” I said. “We live up the street and just wanted to say hello and welcome you to the neighborhood. My wife Patty sent along this pie for you.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Why thanks so much! We appreciate the thoughtfulness,” said the file cabinet, its top drawer sliding back and forth like a jaw opening and closing. “It smells wonderful. I’m sure the family will love it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“How big is your family, if you don’t mind my asking?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“We’re a family of fifteen at the moment,” it said. “I’m the parent company, with fourteen subsidiaries. But I’m buying, selling, merging, and wiping out subsidiaries all the time, so the number of family members varies from year to year.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You buy new family members?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Our acquisition department is always looking for attractive, undervalued companies out there.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“And you kill off some of the family members?” I asked. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“When I’ve stripped them of their assets, or they’re not performing up to expectations,” it said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Hmm. Kevin didn’t make the honor role this last grading period,” I said, making a chopping motion with my hand, and we both laughed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Say, while you’re here, could you tell me where the nearest Episcopal Church is?” it asked. “I never miss a Sunday service.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You’re an Episcopalian?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Born and raised,” it said proudly. “Figuratively speaking. Or maybe literally. I'm not sure how far the Court's rulings extend.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I have to confess that I didn’t know that for-profit corporations had a faith or religious beliefs,” I said. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No need to apologize,” said the file cabinet. “It takes time. Why, even the Supreme Court didn’t notice it until this week. But their Hobby Lobby decision put religion in the heart of corporations where it belongs.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m a little vague on that ruling,” I said. “I heard ‘Hobby Lobby’ mentioned, and I thought maybe it was a doll company or something.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Heavens no,” it said. “The Court ruled, in its usual 5-4 wisdom, that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs, except for tax laws.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Holy cow! That’s really a sweeping decision,” I marveled. “Is everybody in your corporation Episcopalian then?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Lord no,” it laughed. “We’re an international firm. We have Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, and a boatload of Catholics and Baptists, as well as Mormons, Methodists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, you name it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So how do you go about making decisions based on your faith when the people in your corporation come from such a variety of religious traditions?” I asked.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It waved a drawer dismissively. “Our employees’ faith isn’t a factor,” it said. “The corporate conscience is what matters. Our Board of Directors and our legal department will designate our articles of faith on a case-by-case basis.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I remember having to memorize Joyce Kilmer’s poem ‘Trees’ when I was in grade school,’ I said slowly. “It ended ‘Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree’. Now it turns out that the Supreme Court can make people out of corporations and then endow them with souls and consciences. And I thought all this time you just existed to make money.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You’re forgiven,” it said, swaying its second drawer from side to side in what I took to be a sign of benediction.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“And thanks for the pie.”</span></div>
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Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-68585764529564049972014-06-23T07:51:00.001-07:002014-06-23T10:32:05.737-07:00Face-off at the DMV<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I took Kevin to the DMV yesterday to get his learners permit. I’d planned on sleeping in, but Patty roused us at 7. “It could take most of the morning,” she said, “and you’ll never get the grass cut if you sleep in.” She seemed to believe that was a negative.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We got there early, before the doors opened, but two dozen people were already ahead of us. We slowly worked our way toward the front of the line, and were almost there by 10 am. I’d read the sports section of the paper twice, and Kevin stayed busy texting on his phone. But then things took an odd turn. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The lady in front of us had been dragging a box full of files behind her as she moved along, although I couldn’t see a strap or rope attached to it. When she finished at the counter and started to walk away, I yelled after her, “Ma’am, you’ve forgotten your files!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She turned and glanced at the box, looking puzzled. “You’re mistaken,” she said. “That’s not mine.” And she left.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Huh,” I said. “Surely that wasn’t moving itself.” And just at that instant, the file box gave a lurch and leaped to the counter, while Kevin and I stared, astonished. The clerk, however--who must have seen almost everything by now--simply asked, “Do you have your birth certificate?” in a bored tone.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Uh, I have this charter of incorporation,” said a muffled voice, as the box ejected a thick file. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The clerk barely glanced at it. “We require an official, certified birth certificate,” she said, handing it back. She stared past it to us. “Next.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Kevin and I started to step forward, but the file box didn’t give up that easily. “According to the Supreme Court,” it said, “a corporation is legally a person. Do I need to get my lawyers?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She glared at it and waved a supervisor over. He pulled her aside, and the two of them huddled for a heated conversation. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she was clearly agitated, while the supervisor seemed to be trying to explain some technicalities to her.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Kevin leaned close to me and whispered, “Why does it need a driver’s license anyway?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It drives the economy,” I whispered back. “And the nation’s political agenda. I don’t know how it’s been managing this long without a license. It’s lucky it didn’t get pulled over.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, now I get it. I see what you’re saying,” he said. “It drives global warming, too. All kinds of things, I bet. I wonder what kind of drivers exam it has to pass. You wouldn’t think they’d give it the same test the rest of us take.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Maybe it gets a commercial license,” I offered.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Just then the clerk returned to the counter, and she was clearly in a bad mood. “We have to accept your charter of incorporation as a form of birth certificate,” she told it reluctantly. “Let’s get the rest of the required information. What were your parents’ names?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It flipped to the back of the charter and waved a list of corporate officers.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“All of these people are your parents?” she said incredulously, as if she were dealing with some alien life form. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Charles and David? But they’re brothers!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What’s the difference?” it said, obviously irritated. “Take it up with the Court.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She went down the page. “What’s your date of birth?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It flipped to another page. “Right here: Conglomerate. Founded in 1940.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Height and weight? What color are your eyes?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It glared at her. “I’m a legal fiction. I don’t have any real substance. How can I have height and weight and eye coloration?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I can’t write down that you weigh zero pounds and have no eyes. That means you’re too small to get behind the wheel and legally blind.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t need to see where I’m going. All I care about is the bottom line. Everything else is beside the point.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“We can’t turn somebody with no vision and no conscience loose on the highway!” she exclaimed. “That would be dangerous. Irresponsible. Criminal!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Look,” it said, “I’ve been cleared to manipulate the leadership of the entire country, steer the economy, handle defense contracts for trillions of dollars of military hardware, market billions of pounds of pesticides, clear forests for strip malls, manufacture and sell drugs, and frack for oil in the middle of your water supply. And you’re going to give me grief over a driver’s license? I don’t think so.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Think what you want,” snorted the clerk, “but you’re not getting a driver’s license as long as I’m standing here.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And then one of those unexpected magic moments occurred. While the file folder threw a tizzy and blew out the door, loose papers flying like trash in a windstorm, everyone in the office began clapping, and together we let out a cheer for an ordinary clerk in the DMV, who had more gumption and common sense than the majority of the justices on our country’s highest court.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2014</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-29314139425814439672014-05-14T10:22:00.001-07:002014-05-14T11:25:07.517-07:00Argo Search Your Conscience<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>For the last couple of years, we’ve gotten together with our neighbors Don and Ellen once a month to watch a movie together. We alternate: one month at our house, the next month at theirs, with the host couple picking the film. It was all Patty’s idea; she refers to it as “double date night,” which gives you some idea of what a wild night life we lead.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This month was at our house, and we’d picked <i>Argo, </i>the 2012 film about a scheme to free six Americans trapped in the Canadian embassy in Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis. The film is based on a real event, with a CIA “extractor”--played by Ben Affleck--who comes up with the crazy idea of getting the six out of Iran by pretending they’re Canadians scouting out locations for a science fiction film in the Iranian desert.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The film’s a thriller, and when it was over, we sat there for a minute, in that post-movie limbo where you transition back into the reality around you. Ellen was the first to come out of movie-world. “I don’t get it,” she said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What? What don’t you get?” asked Don.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?” she said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was finishing off the half-popped kernels left in the popcorn bowl, but I looked up at her. “Oh come on, Ellen,” I said. “What’s so hard to figure out? Ben Affleck gets a medal at the end. He’s a hero. He keeps his cool and rescues all six of these very frightened people when mobs of furious Iranians surround them and armed Iranian militants are everywhere. It’s cowboys versus Indians, white hats versus black hats, good guys versus bad guys. Ben Affleck is John Wayne.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>““But don’t you remember the opening minutes of the film?” she asked.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She caught me scraping out the last of the cheese dip with a nacho, and I waved the nacho at her until I could respond. “I missed a few minutes there at the beginning. I was out in the kitchen microwaving another bag of popcorn,” I told her. “What about the opening?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I think I see where she’s coming from,” said Patty thoughtfully. “You only missed a couple of minutes, Ace, but that was where a narrator gave us the historical context for the Iran hostage crisis. We never saw her, we just heard her voice. She said that Iran had a democratically elected Prime Minister, but when he called for the nationalization of Iranian oil, the CIA and British M16 organized a military coup in 1953 that kicked him out and installed the Shah as a dictator. The Shah paid back the favor by signing over 40% of Iran’s oil fields to U.S. companies. The Shah’s regime was oppressive, brutal, and corrupt, which didn’t matter to the U.S. so long as he served our interests and our oil companies controlled their oil production.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, yeah,” said Don. “It’s coming back to me now. The Islamic revolution took everybody by surprise. Iranians rose up and booted out the Shah. He was a tyrant that everybody hated, and only U.S. military and financial aid and a vicious secret police force kept him on the throne. With the revolution, the Shah fled to the U.S., and the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. That’s the point where the movie switched to ‘live action,’ with the U.S. embassy being overrun.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s where I came in,” I nodded. “I’m amazed you guys paid any attention to all that historical stuff. It wasn’t really important. It was just a quick way of giving us background for the real story. Pass me that bowl of mixed nuts, will you?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Why do you say the historical stuff wasn’t important? It’s <i>all</i> the real story, isn’t it?” said Ellen. “History doesn’t start or stop where we want it to. It sounds to me, judging from the background stuff, as if <i>we</i> were the bad guys who were mostly responsible for the situation Ben Affleck and the embassy staff were in. We bribed and coerced the Iranian army to get a democratically elected leader kicked out and thrown in jail, then underwrote the Shah, who had anybody he mistrusted tortured and shot. He was our guy. Most Iranians hated him, and we drove off with Iran’s oil. If Iran had backed a military coup in the U.S., installed a friendly torturer as a dictator, and siphoned off billions of dollars worth of our assets, you don’t think people in the U.S. might feel a tad bit resentful?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“But Ben Affleck didn’t hurt anybody,” I protested. “And the people from our embassy he helped looked like nice people. They were terrified, and they had every reason to be. They were surrounded by Iranians screaming for their blood and toting automatic weapons.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You know, I think I remember reading somewhere that the Iranian revolution was non-violent originally,” said Don, his face scrunched up as he tried to grab something that had almost slipped away. “I guess that got lost in the desire to settle old scores, or maybe to make sure the revolution wasn’t undermined by the people behind the Shah who were still around.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We were all quiet for a minute. “People like the CIA? Like the U.S. manipulators of their government, operating out of our embassy? Like Iranians who were secretly on our payroll?” Patty ventured.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That would be my guess,” said Don.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Do you remember that scene in the bazaar where the angry crowd is pressing in on the six Americans, and a gray-bearded man keeps yelling ‘The bullet that killed my son came from America!’ or something like that?” said Ellen.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’d forgotten about that, but now that she mentioned it....</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That could very well have been the reality,” said Ellen. “Not just for him, but for thousands of other people.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It makes me think of those scenes of panicked embassy officials rushing to shred documents when Iranians were swarming over the compound’s walls,” said Patty. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s probably pretty standard operating procedure for embassies,” I pointed out.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Especially if you have information in your files about who on your staff is actually CIA, who the Iranians are that are collaborating with you, and how Washington is involved in propping up the Shah’s regime and helping target people for the Shah to torture or murder,” said Ellen rather sharply.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So are you claiming that the Iranian militants were the good guys and Ben Affleck was a bad guy?” I said indignantly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ellen looked frustrated. “What Tony Mendez--the guy Ben Affleck played--did was brave, and he probably saved six people’s lives. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well what <i>are </i>you saying?” I asked.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t know,” she said, looking even more frustrated. “Tony Mendez was part of the CIA, and the CIA did horrible things to Iran. He probably didn’t do anything wrong personally, but the CIA and the U.S. government certainly did. The same thing could be true for the six people who worked at the U.S. embassy. They may not have done anything evil themselves, but the whole U.S. presence there was to sustain an evil. So Mendez keeps these six U.S. citizens from being the victims of vengeance, and that’s great. I always thought vengeance was ugly, and justice was beautiful. But sometimes now I can’t tell them apart. Where’s the justice here?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What do you mean ‘Where’s the justice?’” asked Don.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“We never admitted any wrongdoing, never took any responsibility for the atrocities committed on our dime and on our behalf,” said Ellen. “Why do we end up feeling so good about ourselves at the end of the movie? Escaping vengeance is one thing; skipping out on responsibility is another. The Iranians are closing in on Mendez and the six while the film is building to a climax, and there’s one hair-breadth escape after another. Their airplane finally takes off, with armored vehicles in hot pursuit all the way down the runway, and we breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate. But as they get away, it seems as if we<i> all</i> got away with something.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You know, now that you mention it, I’m thinking about that joke the movie guys, Alan Arkin and John Goodman, who helped put together the fake movie scheme, kept coming up with: ‘Argo f**k yourself.” said Don. “In a way, that <i>is</i> the message.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Part of the problem is the power of stories, isn’t it?” said Ellen. “We get more than two decades of sordid history as two minutes of dry facts. Then we get two hours up-close of a daring rescue and the bravery and the overwhelming relief when they’re safe, all with real faces and visible emotions. What if instead of this rescue, the story had been about that father whose son was murdered with an American bullet? What if we’d seen all of that played out, and watched his family suffering?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Hey, look, we just came together to watch a movie and have a good time,” I complained. “This is getting a little too deep for me.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Ace, sometimes I worry that you’ll drown in a puddle,” Patty said. </span></div>
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<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">© Tony Russell, 2014</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-49217957953732819722014-05-05T07:48:00.000-07:002015-06-29T18:01:34.783-07:00Political Climate Change Is Real<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Turning to the weather forecast, the National Weather Bureau has issued a ‘severe alert’ for violent storms. Joining us now is psychometeorologist Dr. Rebecca Engel to interpret the Bureau’s warning. Rebecca, how serious is this threat?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Very serious, Lorna. The atmosphere is highly charged; political climate change is real. What were once considered freak events are occurring almost daily. We haven’t heard rhetoric at this level of lunacy since Germany in the 1930s. The Insanity Index is at the highest level I’ve seen in my career.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Who’s at risk, Rebecca?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s the usual victims. The old, the young, women, the poor, and the marginalized are most at risk. Ideally, children should have caring, nurturing, and stable environments [gives a nervous laugh]--well, ideally we should <i>all </i>have caring, nurturing, and stable environments--but children are the least able to deal intellectually and emotionally with the kind of bizarre incidents we’ve been seeing.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Could you do a quick run-through of some of those recent atmospheric disturbances for our viewers, Rebecca?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sure. Just in the past few months we’ve had:</span></div>
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<li style="font: 18.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> a gunman shooting six people at a FedEx facility and then killing himself; </span></li>
<li style="font: 18.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">an Iraq war veteran killing three people, injuring sixteen, and then shooting himself at Fort Hood; </span></li>
<li style="font: 18.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a report issued by the Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers concluding that doctors and psychologists working for the U.S. military and the CIA violated their profession ethical code of conduct by participating in the ‘cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment and torture of detainees’; </span></li>
<li style="font: 18.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a freeloading Nevada rancher who hasn’t paid any fees since 1996 for grazing his cattle on public land pulling together a group of armed supporters to intimidate Bureau of Land Management officials who were trying to collect money he owes, with Sean Hannity, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Arizona state Sen. Kelli Ward, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, and a slew of other Nevada politicians lavishing praise on him or defending him; </span></li>
<li style="font: 18.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a subsequent speech by the same Nevada rancher in which he said blacks might have been better off when they were slaves picking cotton--at which point Sean Hannity, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Arizona state Sen. Kelli Ward, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, and a slew of other Nevada politicians dropped him like a red-hot horseshoe;</span></li>
<li style="font: 18.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a CIA station chief in Milan who oversaw the kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric and flew him to a torture site in Egypt being arrested in Panama on an Interpol warrant, and then suddenly spirited out of custody and flown back to the U.S.;</span></li>
<li style="font: 18.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a revelation by Dianne Feinstein that the CIA had secretly removed documents originally provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee and then lied about it, and had spied on the work of the Senate committee by secretly searching its computers;</span></li>
<li style="font: 18.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination whose name and political philosophy are derived from a novel glorifying the greed and arrogance of power-hungry sociopaths; </span></li>
<li style="font: 18.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a Democratic president who boasts of maintaining a ‘kill list’; </span></li>
<li style="font: 18.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">and a former vice-presidential nominee on the Republican ticket, a woman who could have been a heartbeat away from the presidency, bragging that, if she were in charge, ‘waterboarding is how we’d baptize terrorists’.”</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s certainly a sobering list. But weather events like these have always happened. You can’t prove these particular events were caused by political climate change, can you?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Our Insanity Index has been fine-tuned over more than three decades of public affairs, Lorna, and its ability to predict the quality of our future has steadily increased. If you look at this graph of pure political lunacy and moral degeneracy over that period, the red line shows the heat of political rhetoric sharply ascending, with only minor fluctuations typical of a year-to-year record. The yellow line tracks acts of war and other politically-motivated violence, mass shootings, kidnappings, torture, and outrageous political acts. As you can see, it follows the red line very closely. The purple line tracks income inequality; what’s interesting is that line closely parallels the other two. So no, you can’t prove a single political storm was caused by all that hot air, but the overall pattern is simply undeniable.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“We’re running out of time here. Could you, very quickly, take us through one of these recent atmospheric disturbances you’ve listed and explain why it matters?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sure. Let’s take the last one, Sarah Palin’s speech before the NRA where she boasted about her eagerness to waterboard terrorists.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Okay. And its significance?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“First of all, waterboarding is undeniably an act of torture. It’s a clear violation of international law. In addition to being illegal, it’s also ineffective and immoral. Secondly, the so-called ‘terrorists’ we’ve been torturing by waterboard have overwhelmingly proven to be innocent people. So she’s building on quicksand. If she were making this speech in front of an audience with a shred of moral sensitivity, they would greet it with shocked silence, then get up and quietly exit the auditorium.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“And the National Weather Bureau has included this speech among the bizarre events plugged into its Insanity Index?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Definitely.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Can you explain why? We have one minute left.”<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s insane in so many ways--both her comments and the audience’s enthusiastic response--that we may run out of time. You have to understand that Ms. Palin is a self-identified Christian who doesn’t miss an opportunity to trumpet her faith. Baptism for Christians is a way of bringing people into the community of the church. It’s an occasion of rejoicing when the person baptized receives forgiveness for all of his or her sins and is filled with the Holy Spirit.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“And when Ms. Palin jokes about waterboarding as a form of baptism....?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s despicable from the perspective of any civilized human being. But in Ms. Palin’s case it’s a stunning betrayal of the faith she claims to hold. Waterboarding is an <i>anti</i>-baptism. It’s hateful, not loving; condemning, not forgiving; political, not spiritual; a disgrace, not grace. It’s a perversion of everything baptism stands for. For someone to preen and laugh about torturing other human beings, and compare it to a holy sacrament, is such a toxic blend of false religion, perverted patriotism, and political pandering that anyone exposed to it should receive treatment immediately.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Treatment in the form of....?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Therapy or spiritual counseling.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Thanks, Rebecca. [Turns to face another camera] More storms forecast for tomorrow; don’t forget your umbrellas, raincoats, emergency flares, and therapist’s telephone number. That’s tonight’s weather report.”</span></div>
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<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">© Tony Russell, 2014</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-78056787237783388212014-04-28T08:22:00.001-07:002014-05-06T14:28:53.504-07:00Cowbirds, the Gold Rush, and Charter Schools<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We had Patty’s folks over for a cookout last night. Patty’s dad taught high school biology for 35 years, God bless him, and while we were grilling the veggie-burgers, I asked him about charter schools. “They seem to be popping up everywhere,” I said. “They must be doing a bang-up job. Are they going to replace public schools?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He took his time. Walt knows his own mind. He’s a pessimist, but usually a cheerful one.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I spent my whole career in public schools, of course,” he began. “So maybe I’m biased. I know you can find dedicated, passionate, effective teachers in all kinds of schools--public, religious, charter, private, what have you. So I’m not going to knock teachers anywhere who love kids and pour everything they’ve got into teaching. But if we’re talking about a system rather than teachers in it, I’m opposed to charter schools.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Yeah?” I said. “Why’s that?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The thing about charter schools is that they’re public schools, in one sense, because they operate with public money,” he said. “But they’re private in the sense that they’re not staffed or managed or operated by the public. I think you need to begin by asking yourself why these different schools exist.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t get it,” I said. “They’re all there for the same purpose, aren’t they? To teach kids?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Not quite,” Walt said. “The public schools that took shape after John Dewey--the kind I was a part of--had two reasons for existing: to help kids develop their interests and abilities as far as they could go, and to prepare them to be informed and active citizens in a democracy. Those two things go together. When all kids have the chance to chase their dreams, democracy is promoted and energized. Good public education really <i>is</i> the cornerstone of democracy. Or at least it was before unequal funding, the explosion of private schools following desegregation, and that test-driven No Child Left Behind abomination.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“And you’re saying charter schools are different?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He started flipping the burgers over. “I’m sure there are some charter schools operated by intelligent and well-meaning people who are doing their best to provide a great education for kids. Those are a minority, and I’m not talking about them. The bulk of charter schools are corporate creations. They exist to make money. To be fair, some of them are run as non-profits. But even then, some that are technically non-profits are actually hooked up with corporations that supply materials and equipment. Those corporations <i>do </i>make a profit--and they’re owned by the same people who operate the supposedly non-profit schools.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So the corporate operators make some money. What’s the problem?” I asked. “Teachers and principals and school secretaries and cooks and janitors--they don’t work for nothing. I don’t mean to step on your toes, but <i>you</i> drew a paycheck.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I didn’t exactly get rich,” he said ruefully. “If I had, we’d be grilling filet mignon instead of veggie-burgers. You’re right, but you’re missing something.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’ve been told that all my life,” I said. “I’m beginning to think there’s more of me missing than is actually here. What is it this time?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Walt laughed. “In both charter schools and public schools it’s tax money footing the bill. When the money goes to real public schools, 100% of it goes to provide education. But these charter school corporations are looking for say a 10% to 15% return on their investment. So only 85% to 90% of the money they get goes to provide education. The rest goes into corporate executives’ or shareholders’ pockets as profit. For school systems of any size, that’s millions skimmed off that could have been spent to benefit kids.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“A lot of these charter schools are businesses. Just keep reminding yourself of that. Whatever pretty face they put on it, making money is why they were created. That’s the nature of business, right? It’s profit driven. So by their very nature, kids and everything else take second place. And I can pretty much guarantee you that their corporate goals don’t include nourishing democracy.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Okay, I get it. They’re businesses. So?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So what do you as a taxpayer want? A system that has profit as its primary motive or a system that has education as its primary motive? Do you want a system where 10% or 15% of your education budget gets siphoned off, or one where 100% of it goes toward educating kids?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, it’s probably not that simple,” I countered. “The charter schools may just operate more efficiently, and deliver a better product for less money. That’s the beauty of private enterprise.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s always the claim, isn’t it, for these privatizers?” Walt asked--a little testily, I thought. “They <i>don’t </i>deliver a better product. In study after study, regular public schools do just as well as charter schools or actually outperform them. But charter school promoters ignore actual outcomes and keep on claiming they can deliver superior results You seem to have bought into it. Do you want me to tell you what their ‘efficiency’ actually consists of?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m not sure I could stop you,” I joked.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“These things are about done,” he said, poking a fork into a couple. “Hold that platter and I’ll start pulling them from the grill.” Without breaking conversational stride he said, “Their so-called efficiency comes down to three things.” He jabbed the fork sharply into a patty and threw it on the platter. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“One,” he said. “Do less. Focus on math and reading, because those are the be-all and end-all of test scores. To hell with art and music and history and civics and phys ed.” He angrily speared another patty.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Two,” he bellowed. “Staff less! Set kids in front of computers part of the day and run them through drills and online programs. Computers are cheaper than teachers. They don’t unionize, and you don’t have to pay into Social Security, unemployment insurance, and teachers retirement funds for them.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He was getting red in the face. “Three!” he bellowed, running the fork clear through a patty and splitting it in two. “Pay less! Get the cheapest staff you can! If you’re lucky, you’ll get some idealistic teachers who want to be part of something new that will help kids. But a lot of the staff you get will likely be young or desperate, inexperienced or under-qualified. Whoever will work for bottom dollar!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Calm down there, Walt,” I counseled him, “or we’re not gonna have enough burgers to go around.” He took a deep breath, like a basketball player at the foul line. “You know, there’s something about what you’re saying that sounds familiar,” I told him, scratching my head.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It ought to,” he said. “Whether it’s schools or private prisons or all these military contractors or private water corporations or the prescription drug program, it’s the same strategies and the same pitch: ‘Anything public is bureaucratic and second class. We can do it better for less.’ Charter schools are a way of throwing in the towel on public education. They divert money and energy and attention away from solving real problems in public schools and into corporate executives‘ pockets. At worst, they’re part of a deliberate attempt to discredit and undermine public institutions and the unions that have traditionally been associated with them.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You’re claiming charter schools are part of a broader movement?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sure. There’s no government service too good for privatizers to screw up while they’re making a buck. They’re like cowbirds, always looking for another public nest to parasitize, always croaking the same tune. Public money is the new frontier for entrepreneurs. We’re living a modern version of the destruction of the commons. It’s like a gold rush to loot public funds.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Hey, I’m getting swamped with similes and metaphors,” I complained.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“When you’re driving a nail into hard wood, you have to hit it more than one time,” he said.</span></div>
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<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">© Tony Russell, 2014</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-12820941023391682882014-04-21T03:30:00.000-07:002014-06-24T18:10:50.134-07:00The World’s Longest and Quietest Coup d’Etat<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I woke up with a start this morning. “What is it, Ace?” asked Patty.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t know,” I muttered sleepily. “There’s something different.” I looked around. “I just can’t put my finger on it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Different how?” she asked. “Different good or different bad.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Good, it feels good.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Her eyes swept the room, and then she gave a little laugh. “It’s sunshine, Ace. With daylight savings time, and after that long stretch of gray days and white snows, it’s really spring! We’re waking up to sunshine!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So I was feeling pretty chipper after I’d had my bacon and eggs and cereal and banana and orange juice and was on my way to work. And there, just leaving the house down the block was my neighbor’s foreign exchange student.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Why not? Feeling expansive, I gave a beep of the horn. When he looked back at me, I rolled down the window and yelled, “I’m going your way. Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He trudged over, as loaded down as a prospector’s mule. “Good morning, sir,” he said. “Thank you for stopping. I would welcome a lift.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You’re always carrying a heap of books, Abdul,” I said, “but you might have broken the record this time.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “my name is Aadil, not Abdul.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh. Sorry about that,” I apologized. “It’s hard to remember strange combinations of letters that don’t mean anything. It’s like those tests where they ask you to memorize a list of nonsense words. They go in one ear and out the other.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Yes, I am familiar with such experiments,” he said carefully. “In Arabic, my name means ‘honorable’ or ‘just,‘ but of course it is alien to your culture.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Why all the books? Got a big test coming up?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>His face lit up. “No, no test,” he said. “I have changed the direction of my research, and there is so much background I must master in a very brief time. But this is truly an exciting opportunity for me.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“How so?” I said. “What’re you working on?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“My dissertation is an attempt to statistically verify the proposition that democracy in government is directly proportional to the degree of income equality.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Could you break that down to ordinary English?” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He paused. “The idea is that the more evenly the wealth of a country is shared, the more it operates democratically. And the more<i> un</i>evenly the wealth is divided, with more and more of the wealth going to fewer and fewer people, the less it operates democratically.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Ah, I get it,” I said. “The more equal the incomes, the more democracy. The less equal the incomes, the less democracy. So what’s the new direction in your research that has you all fired up?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He hesitated. “The coup d’état of April 2,” he said finally. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Coup d’état?” I said. “Where?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Where?” he said, looking puzzled. “In the United States. Surely as a newsman, sir, you have been following a story of such magnitude closely.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“A coup d’état in the United States?” I said, as we got caught by a red light. “What are you talking about?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The conversion of your form of government from a democracy to an oligarchy.” he explained. “The coup that culminated just two weeks ago when your Supreme Court took the final step in overthrowing your democracy.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A cloud must have drifted overhead. The bright sunlight of a few minutes ago was dimming. “Overthrowing our democracy?” I said. “I haven’t heard anything about it. Are you sure?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m afraid so, sir. Of course this has been a long time unfolding: the world’s longest and quietest coup d’état! It had none of the usual trappings. No troops rolling into the heart of the capital in tanks, no gunfire, no generals making announcements that they would be ruling until a new civilian leader was installed, no new figurehead promoted to head of state. With its lack of dramatic video footage, the coup simply wasn’t made for TV.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was starting to feel dizzy. “The Supreme Court did that?” How?”<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“With the <i>McCutcheon versus Federal Election Commission</i> ruling they delivered on April 2,” he said, as if he expected me to know what he was talking about. “It follows their earlier <i>Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission</i> of January, 2010. You may remember our conversation about that decision last fall.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Now that you mention it, yes,” I said, and my head was still swimming. Or was it the world around me that was swirling, at the same time it seemed to be growing darker and darker?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“All it required was the votes of five of your Supreme Court justices, as they are called. Are their titles not ironic, sir? They formally withdrew control of your government from the people in common and ceded it to a wealthy few. The Court’s latest decision was simply the crowning act, if you will, bestowing constitutional blessing on the coup.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” I said, shaking my head to clear it. “Why is it so dark? Is an eclipse taking place today?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You didn’t notice the coup, sir?” he asked. “According to my preliminary polling, that is one of its most remarkable aspects. Few of your citizens are even aware of what has happened. Yet with the Court’s decisions, the democratic legitimacy of your government was destroyed. Your elections have been replaced by selections.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The dizziness was back. “Selections? Instead of elections?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The wealthy few will now have carte blanche to select candidates, spend as they wish on campaigns, and usher their choices into office.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This guy was a raving lunatic, I thought, wondering if it was safe to be in the car with him. “Don’t be absurd,” I told him. “It will never come to that.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He just looked at me, a little sadly, then reached into a folder and pulled out several sheets of paper. “It is already happening, and from now on it will become the norm. Please take a look at this material I printed from the Internet a few days ago,” he said, and handed it to me. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I pulled over to the curb, and he sat quietly, looking out the window, while I turned on the dome light and read it. It was a report on a four-day retreat for Republican donors, hosted by Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas multi-billionaire who made his fortune with gambling casinos. He spent $100 million backing Republican candidates in 2012, and plans to spend more the next time around. He had summoned several GOP presidential prospects to audition in front of his guests and himself--including Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Scott Walker.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The guy summons potential presidents to his conference as if they were auditioning for the lead in a play he’s producing?” I said, incredulous.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“As you can see,” he said. “Here is some more information you may have missed.” He handed me more papers.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t know what’s wrong with this dome light,” I said. “That’s not bright enough to read by. Reach under your seat and get me the flashlight, will you?” He looked at me oddly, and then pulled out the flashlight and handed it to me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I skimmed the articles. The Koch brothers and their ally Art Pope, a millionaire discount department store owner whose chains include Roses, Maxway, Super Dollar, Treasure Mart, and Value Mart stores, had financed a takeover of the North Carolina state government by the most far-right elements of the Republican Party. The Koch-Pope-financed governor, Pat McCrory, had then put Pope in charge of the North Carolina state budget.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“They flipped the government of an entire state by only spending a few million dollars?” I asked. I was starting to sweat, although it was growing colder and even darker outside.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Your state governments seem to be relatively easy to purchase,” Aadil replied. “But now that money is no object, the federal government will likely be just as simple to take over. The money it will take to do it may seem like a fortune to people like ourselves, but it is a pittance to people at the top of the income ladder.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What in the world was the Court thinking?” I wondered.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“They believe that spending your money to support a candidate is a form of free speech,” he reminded me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“And people who don’t have any money? Who are broke?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Obviously they can’t speak--at least through TV ads, mailings, phone banks, and all of the other expensive mainstays of modern political campaigns. If one’s home is being foreclosed on, or if one has huge medical bills, or works for minimum wage, or is out of work, or any of a number of other possibilities, one simply doesn’t have the money to ‘speak’ in the political arena.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“And people who have a <i>lot </i>of money?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“They are able to talk nonstop. And pass it on to their children, who will be able to speak even louder and longer.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“B-b-but that’s unfair,” I sputtered.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, no doubt,” said Aadil. “And also undemocratic. As I said, it’s oligarchic. Your court’s rulings have swept away any pretense of equality in the electoral process.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You sound happy about it,” I said, with some bitterness.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh no, sir,” he said. “Please forgive me if my scholarly zeal has left that impression. The death of your democracy saddens me greatly. But for a poor student like myself, to be given this opportunity, to be here on the scene at the moment this has occurred--it is an unexpected blessing. Praise Allah that I have been put here to witness and chronicle these events. I pray I may be worthy of the task.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Listen,” I said, “I’m feeling a little strange, and it’s getting so dark. I hope you don’t mind walking the rest of the way; you can keep the flashlight. And would you mind calling me a taxi with your cellphone?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh sir!” he exclaimed, as I swayed in my seat. “Please forgive me! I had no idea that shining the light on your nation’s affairs would lead you into such darkness.”</span></div>
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<br />Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-73131051971628252792014-03-26T09:59:00.001-07:002014-04-29T05:18:33.272-07:00It’s Just the Dream’s File<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was one of those sunny days we’ve been getting between the snows, temperatures in the low 60s, while the buds on the trees and the early spring flowers stayed bundled up, wondering whether it was safe yet to take a peek. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I decided to take advantage of the break in the weather and walk Scrappy over to the park. He was almost frantic, trying to mark every tree we passed, and my arms were wearing out trying to tug him along. “Let’s give it a break, Scrappy,” I told him, and dropped down on a bench beside Fred, one of our longtime neighbors.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When he didn’t immediately say hello, I looked at him more closely. “Hey, Fred,” I said, “are you okay? You look a little shaky.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Hi, Ace,” he said. “Sorry, guess I was preoccupied there.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No problem,” I reassured him. “Something wrong? You don’t look so good.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s nothing, really,” he said. “I woke up in the middle of the night with a bad dream, that’s all. I had a hard time getting back to sleep, and I haven’t been able to put it behind me yet.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Is it something you can talk about?” I asked. “Maybe that would help.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“There’s no reason not to talk about it,” he said. “In the dream I left a copy of my psychoanalyst’s file about our sessions lying on the dining room table while I went upstairs to find a dictionary. When I got back downstairs, I found Viola reading the file, and I just went nuts.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I didn’t realize you were seeing a ...” I began.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m not,” he said. “I’ve never seen a psychoanalyst or psychiatrist or anyone like that. That’s all the dream’s idea.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh. Hmm. Okay, what then?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I screamed at her, I told her anyone could see that it was marked ‘confidential’ and she had invaded my privacy and done something unforgivable. She kept trying to calm me down, but I wouldn’t have it. I told her this was a breach of trust between us and that we were through. She grabbed my arm and pleaded with me, but I shook her off and raged around the house, yelling and smashing things. It just kept going on and on. When I woke up, my stomach was churning, and I’ve been upset ever since. And I don’t even know why. It was just a dream.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Wow!” I said, “wonder what was in that file?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He glanced at me sharply. “There is no file,” he said. “It’s just the dream’s file.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“But the dream must have had some idea of what would be in a file like that,” I speculated. “Maybe you have some secret you’re ashamed to have Viola find.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sure there are things I’ve said or done that I’d rather Viola didn’t know about,” he said. “But after thirty years of marriage, she’s seen and managed to forgive the worst of me. I don’t think this is about what might or might not be in a file.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So what’s the issue then?” I asked.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I keep trying to figure that out,” he said. “It has something to do with respecting each other’s privacy. With honoring the other person’s right to decide whether or not to share something with you. With the boundaries of intimacy. And she didn’t ask. She just saw it and picked it up and read it. I felt <i>violated</i> in some horrible way that I can’t quite explain or describe.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That must be pretty important to you, if you were going to call it quits after thirty years of marriage and three kids.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He hung his head wearily. “I guess so. I just don’t know why the whole thing came up in my dream.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We sat there silently for a while, both caught up in the aftermath of something real in the unreal.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Finally I broke the silence. “This may be a long shot,” I said, “but have you been paying any attention to the news reports on ways the NSA is spying on all of us?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Not much,” he said. “Why?”</span></div>
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Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-37709099530669264112014-02-10T03:30:00.001-08:002014-02-10T03:30:00.577-08:00Who’s Interested in Ancient History?<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was setting out our trash when Ann Willard came up the street, walking their St. Bernard, Boris. “How’ya doing, Ann?” I said. “Have a good holiday?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She looked a little red-faced, but that was probably the stiff, cold wind gusting up from the river. Or being a hundred pound woman being dragged by a two hundred pound dog. “I don’t want to sound like a complainer,” she said, “but we’ve had better.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “It’s not Dean, is it? He hasn’t had a relapse with that ‘acceptance’ thing?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No, no,” she said. “It’s our daughter Jeannie.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jeannie is a few years older than Kevin. Nice girl, friendly, kind of the perky type. She’s off to college somewhere--should be a sophomore or maybe a junior now. “Is she okay?” I asked. “She hasn’t caught that flu that’s going around, has she?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Nothing like that,” said Ann, “although I thought she might be coming down sick at first. She was too quiet. Serious. Would go for walks by herself, and look up at the sky. And she had this... what’s the word I’m looking for?... this <i>quizzical </i>expression on her face. It looked unnatural on her. I said to Dean, ‘There’s something different about her, but I can’t put my finger on it.’ And he said, ‘It’s her cellphone. She’s not using her cellphone. And she hasn’t been driving; she walks everywhere’.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Not using her cellphone?” I said, baffled.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, you know how it is with these kids, Ace. Their cellphones are like another bodily organ for them. They can’t live without it. You’re sitting in church, praying, and glance up, and half the kids in the congregation are hunched over their cellphones, texting away. I’ve got to give Dean credit. He spotted it, and I’d missed it.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“A drastic change in behavior like that.... You’re not thinking it’s drugs?” I asked hesitantly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Honestly, I didn’t know what to think,” she said. “So when we were cleaning up the kitchen after supper last night, just the two of us, I just came out and asked her about it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What did she have to say, if it’s okay to talk about it?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“She hemmed and hawed, but I finally got it out of her. She said that right before she left campus, they’d had a speaker in her political science class. Some newspaper man talking about government surveillance.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Huh,” I said, “what would be disturbing about that?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Apparently this guy was really far out.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Yeah? What kinds of things did he have to say?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s the funny part. Mostly he just asked questions.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She paused, and I wasn’t sure she was going to go on. Boris was clearly getting restless, and his four feet determined to move on were gaining traction against her two feet trying to stay.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Questions? Like what?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, the first one was ‘How many of you think our government is ideal--fair, honest, open, efficient, trustworthy, with liberty and justice for all--and always will be? That there isn’t, and never will be, a reason to complain or protest about anything it does or says?’”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I snorted. “That’s ridiculous! I love this country, but come on! No country is perfect. This isn’t utopia! There are plenty of things to complain about with our government, and always will be. We go through spells where we do some downright stupid and scary things. But that’s true of every other country too.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sure,” she said. “I think that was his point. Then he asked them to raise their hands if they’d ever heard about the Palmer Raids, where the U.S. Attorney General organized raids on foreign-born workers, who were beaten, arrested, brutally interrogated, and then deported. All of that without trials, for nothing more than exercising their right to free speech. Nobody raised a hand, of course. I mean, who’s heard of the Palmer Raids?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Not me,” I said. “But then I’ve been kind of tied up the last month or so with the playoffs and the Super Bowl.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I googled it. They took place back in 1919-1920,” she said. “I believe that predates the NFL by two or three years.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Huh,” I said. “Predated the NFL? What did they manage to do with themselves?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I can’t imagine. Maybe they had families,” she said--somewhat tartly, I thought. “But back to this speaker. The next thing he asked was if they had heard about the FBI’s tapping Martin Luther King’s phones, spying on him, and--when they found out about some sexual escapades--trying to blackmail him into stopping his protests. Quite a few students raised their hands.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I seem to remember hearing about that somewhere,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Then he asked them if they knew about the FBI’s COINTELPRO program to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the US--with the Southern Christian Leadership Council, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Nation of Islam among the targets. Did they know of the FBI’s role in the murder of Black Panther Party members and the ultimate destruction of the Party? They’d never heard any of that.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Me neither,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s hard for me to remember everything Jeannie said he asked, but I think the next thing was if they knew about President Nixon’s using the IRS to target political enemies, and CIA people to burgle Democratic headquarters. But apparently Nixon is as remote as James Madison as far as these kids are concerned. Only two students raised their hands.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You can’t blame the kids,” I said. “Who’s interested in ancient history?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Then he asked them if they knew that the government orchestrated the destruction of the Occupy protests that were spreading across the country back in the winter of 2011-2012. That it conducted surveillance of protestors, shared information with banks and universities and local police, and provided strategies for dismantling local encampments. Nobody raised a hand. They’d all heard of the Occupy Movement, but none of them knew about the coordinated effort to destroy it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What was his point?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“He didn’t say, but it seems obvious, doesn’t it?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Uhh...,” I began, but Boris evidently thought I was growling, and turned toward me, his body stiffening.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ann ignored him. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Ace! He was just showing that governments, definitely including ours, are as fallible as anything else people lay their hands to. Sooner or later, some leader with access to information about people’s private lives will use that information to go after organizations critical of government policies or supporters of causes the leader doesn’t like. The government will try to stamp out legitimate protests and to crush opposition. His questions were meant to show that that kind of thing has already happened here not once but many times.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was getting interested. “This guy must have been a real trip,” I mused. “What did he say next?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The next part was kind of scary for Jeannie. He asked, ‘How many of you have led blameless, guilt-free lives? Have never said or done anything you would be ashamed or embarrassed for the world to know? Have nothing you would mind your parents, your friends, and everybody in this room hearing about you?’”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Wow! What kind of question is that to ask?” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Apparently it made kids in the class kind of nervous too,” said Ann. “They were all looking sideways at each other. Jeannie said you could almost see them thinking. About that fake ID, about cheating on their girlfriend or boyfriend, about plagiarizing on a paper, getting treated for an STD, some shoplifting, bouncing a few checks, spending time on porn sites, lying to a friend or a professor, being sexually assaulted, having an abortion, getting mad and threatening to kill somebody, smoking pot and trying some of the harder stuff, visiting a counselor because you’re depressed or having panic attacks....”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I get it,” I said. “Life.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ann sighed. “Exactly. We like to put a pretty face on it, but underneath the makeup, we all have complexion problems.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was really curious now. “And then?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The next question was similar. ‘How about your family and friends? Are they all exemplary in every way? Nothing in their lives they wouldn’t want in a headline in the morning paper?’”<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“And you were thinking Jeannie might have started thinking about Dean and some of his mental health issues?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, that, but... you know, I’m not perfect either. And some of Jeannie’s friends have gone through some pretty rough times.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I guess we all have,” I admitted. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Then he asked people to raise their hands if they already knew that the government has secret backdoor entrances to all databases, which it then searches for information, and that the NSA sifts through records of internet activity to show nearly everything a person does online. A few raised their hands.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Is that some of the material Snowden leaked?” I asked.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Just a tiny fraction,” said Ann. “Then he talked about the way our cellphone calls are not only monitored, but the cellphones themselves are used to track our movements, every minute, where we go and who we meet with. And about new technology being adopted that reads our license plates whenever we’re on the road, showing where we’re going and where we stop.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What!?” I said, startled. “That’s bad stuff! I mean, if you start to put those things together, and think of all the power information like that gives the government to intimidate and blackmail, and then factor in the temptation to use all that information once you have it.... it makes it a near-certainty that sooner or later the government will use that power to monitor and destroy opposition, it ....” I was fumbling around, having trouble finishing my sentences.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It doesn’t look like the freedom we brag about?” said Ann. “It sounds like <i>1984, The Sequel</i>? Like the machinery is being put in place for government control to become almost absolute?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s it,” I said. “But that’s a terrible thing to tell college kids who just want to flirt and go to football games and keggers and get an education on the side.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Not to mention the effect on their parents when they go home,” Ann sighed. At that moment, when she was momentarily off guard, Boris gave a lunge, nearly bowling her over, and I watched as he tore off down the street, Ann hanging on for dear life, screeching futilely for him to stop as he lumbered after our cat. I wasn’t worried; the cat can take care of itself.</span></div>
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Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-75189864944894168812014-02-03T03:30:00.000-08:002015-06-29T20:46:13.432-07:00It’s Not News, It’s Propaganda, Part 2<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You said that the F.B.I. cleared Edward Snowden of acting with anyone else or as part of a spy ring. Why are we even talking about this then? How can Mike Rogers pretend the F.B.I. report doesn’t exist, go on TV, and accuse Snowden of being a spy for the Russian secret police?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“When you’re trying to sell a lie,” said Tom, “you don’t acknowledge the truth and apologize. You don’t shut your mouth and slink away. You ignore the truth and boldly repeat the lie. You repeat it over and over, and in this case Snowden’s attackers got TV talk shows to offer them a forum to spew their falsehoods on three major networks on one Sunday. Tell me, doesn’t that strike you as a bit strange--this massive, one-sided, simultaneous attack on Snowden?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Now that you mention it,” I said, “it does seem weird. It’s just too great a coincidence to think that three networks all decided independently to feature attacks on Snowden on the same day. Somebody had to have coordinated it. Orchestrated it. To pretend it just happened accidentally is as likely as numerous Japanese planes all just happening to descend on Pearl Harbor at the same time on the same day in 1941.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Tom nodded agreement. “I think of it as ‘the sound of one tongue flapping’,” he said. “The congressional leadership on intelligence, the NSA, the administration, and the main stream media have formed a chorus, all singing the same melody with the same lyrics, trying to drown out Mr. Snowden’s message.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t know if many people have followed all the details, though, Tom. It’s a lot to keep up with.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m not sure people have to, Ace. Besides looking at the evidence, which we’ve already done, there’s a different method people often use to decide who’s likely to be telling the truth. It’s not based on a legal model, with evidence and witnesses, but it’s a rough-and-ready method that people have been using for centuries.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You mean torture?” I gasped.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No, no,” he said, startled. “I mean just asking yourself what people stand to gain in a situation. That often makes pretty clear who’s likely to be lying.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Ah, I’ve got it now. Sure. Shoot,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Not a good choice of words, Ace,” said Tom. “Several anonymous members of our spy agencies have said they’d like to kill Mr. Snowden.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, right. Sorry,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Anyway,” Tom went on, “What did Mr. Snowden gain when he decided to take his knowledge of the NSA’s secret surveillance to the public?” Again he started ticking off points on his fingers. “It cost him his well-paying job and his career. It threw him into exile, separated him from his family and girlfriend, held a strong likelihood of capture and long-term imprisonment, exposed him to personal attacks and slander, and--as I mentioned--drew predictable threats of assassination.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s a lot to sacrifice,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Those <i>are</i> losses--enormous losses,” agreed Tom. “So what did he gain? He’s poorer, lonelier, isolated, and under attack. He knew full well what the consequences would be when he made his decision. His only gains are intangibles: a clear conscience and the knowledge that he has offered the public a chance to make an informed decision on living under a surveillance state. He says that if he ends up in a ditch somewhere, it still will have been worth it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“When you lay it out that way, he’s somebody you just have to admire,” I said. “I don’t think I could do what he did.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Don’t think badly of yourself,” Tom said kindly. “Cesar Chavez once said that ‘To be a man is to suffer for others.‘ I don’t think Chavez meant that in a sexist way; I think he meant that shouldering your responsibilities to your family, your community, or your country, even at great personal cost, is the price you must be willing to pay if you want to hold on to your self-respect and your integrity. I’m sure that, faced with a similar choice, you’d make the right decision.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I didn’t know what to say for a minute. I hadn’t expected his last comment. It may have been the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me--and I wasn’t sure he was right. “Thanks, Tom,” I managed. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You’re welcome, Ace,” he said. “You know, integrity isn’t easy or cheap. If it were, there would be a Hallelujah Chorus of whistleblowers in the NSA, and congress would be an honored gallery of respected public servants. Edward Snowden was in a position where he had a choice to make, but in some respects, everyone he worked with was faced with the same choice. He could continue to be a faceless part of an enormous secret bureaucracy that is striking at the very heart of our democracy. Or he could be a man, expose the secrets and lies, and suffer the consequences.”<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Okay,” I said. “So you've laid out what Snowden lost and gained. But what about his attackers?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Tom paused and thought for a moment. “We can only make guesses as to what Mr. Rogers, Ms. Feinstein, and Mr. McCaul stand to gain,” he said, “but they stand to lose nothing--with the possible exception of self-respect. They have cast their lot with the powers that be, and there’s safety and security in that. They’ve received publicity and an additional measure of fame. Their political fortunes will continue to prosper, since they’ve proven to be reliably on the side of secrecy, control, and authoritarianism. At the worst, they will remain well paid, powerful, and ‘respectable’.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So they made out pretty well in the deal,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He held me with his eyes. “That’s the world’s way of looking at it, Ace. There’s another way. ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That’s what makes conversations with Tom so unsettling. You’re having a conversation at a normal level about some topic, and then suddenly he takes you to a different place entirely. I didn’t feel <i>corrected</i> exactly. More like uncomfortably enlarged.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“We can’t read their minds or hearts,” Tom went on. “We don’t know what their motives were or what pressure was brought to bear on them. Still, from the outside, it’s hard not to be skeptical. Perhaps they were attempting to divert the public’s attention from their own collusion in hiding the extent to which the NSA is spying on all of us. The Constitution expects congress to put a check on attempts by the executive branch to grab dangerous power. Instead, these leaders have acted as bipartisan enablers for the dismantling of democracy. It goes against the grain to speak of people that way, but what else is there to do when they’re apologists for the construction of a police state that makes <i>1984 </i>look like <i>Summerhill</i>?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You seem to be describing them not as real leaders or powerful decision makers, but as servants of someone or something else,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I guess I am,” said Tom. “Despite the high offices Mr. Rogers, Ms. Feinstein, and Mr. McCaul hold, I believe it would be a mistake to see them as anything other than pawns in the hands of the national security state. Mr. Snowden has challenged the nature and the intentions of the security apparatus, so he must be condemned, slandered, discredited, or silenced by any means necessary. Now, in both a geographic and a spiritual sense, he's beyond their control, and that must infuriate them. In a way few of us can claim to be, he is a free man. He has been willing to risk everything to share that freedom. I just don’t know if the rest of us are willing to take the risk of joining him.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Why’s he doing it, Tom? What motivates him?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s a good question, Ace. Who knows? It’s hard to discredit him in the usual ways, because his critics can’t pin a label on him and pigeonhole him. I’ve come to think of him as an ‘odd prophet.’ He’s leading a solitary, almost cloistered life, devoid of luxuries and even ordinary things most of us think of as necessities. He’s living the lifestyle of a monk, but doesn’t seem to be religious. He’s not preaching fire and brimstone, nor is he a political firebrand, out to destroy capitalism on the one hand or to promote socialism or communism on the other. He’s not a Democrat or a Republican.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So we’re stuck with thinking of him with negatives? What he’s not?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t think so, Ace. He’s an honest man and a courageous man. He seems patriotic; he has been careful not to damage our country. The best way I can come up with to describe his motivation and faith is that they’re those of a good systems analyst: ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ He approaches democracy as if it’s a kind of computer for making decisions. Citizens need clean data coming in. Instead, we were getting bad numbers and lies, and that was something he ultimately couldn’t tolerate. So he provided us with clean data--the truth about the NSA’s spying--and said now the decision is up to us.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He stopped. “Thanks for listening to all that, Ace,” he said. “That was almost as good as shoveling snow.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You’re welcome,” I told him. “If you’ll hand me that shovel and hold my dog for a minute, I think I could use a dose of that manual meditation myself.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2014</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-76604025700998015232014-01-30T06:44:00.001-08:002014-01-31T06:45:00.997-08:00It’s Not News, It’s Propaganda, Part 1<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was out walking my dog the other morning, and my neighbor Tom--known locally as “the gentle radical”--was out shoveling the snow from his walk. He was puffing, and I asked him if he’d like to take a break and give me a turn at the shovel.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Thanks for the offer, Ace,” he said with a smile, “but I need to do things like this to work off my frustration. If I couldn’t shovel snow, rake leaves, and tend to my garden, I think the top of my head might periodically blow off.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The dog had lain down at my feet and wasn’t in any hurry to get anywhere, and Tom seemed ready for some friendly conversation. “What’s challenged your blood pressure this time?” I asked.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The media,” he said. “Especially TV at the moment. The way they handle this Snowden affair is so unprofessional and unjust that they ought to be ashamed to call themselves part of the ‘free press.‘ Present company excepted, of course. Your sports reporting seems unhindered by any constraints.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Ah, thanks, Tom. I guess. What about Snowden coverage has you so upset?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Most recently, the Sunday talk shows. Last week they allowed themselves to be used in an attempt to smear Mr. Snowden by alleging that he’s a Russian spy. That happened on<i> </i>all three of the old mainstream networks. NBC’s<i> Meet the Press, </i>CBS’s <i>Face the Nation</i>, and ABC’s <i>This Week.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></i>“I don’t get it,” I admitted. “Why would they do that?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It was one colossal diversion,” said Tom, “a desperate attempt to make Snowden the issue and turn attention away from the massive secret spying on all of us that he has exposed.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I never watch those Sunday talk shows,” I said. “What exactly went on?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Mike Rogers, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Intelligence; Michael McCaul, Republican chair of the House Homeland Security Committee; and Diane Feinstein, the Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, all took a swing at Mr. Snowden. Mr. Rogers was the one who weighed in most heavily, if you could use that phrase to describe such an empty case.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What do you mean, ‘an empty case’?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, for starters, there was no evidence offered, mind you. Nor were there any demands for evidence by the hosts. Nor was any person with an opposite viewpoint there to respond. How unfair can you get? It’s one-sided, and it’s an abdication of the networks’ responsibility to the public. It’s not news, it’s propaganda.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The more Tom talked, the redder his face grew. “Excuse me for a minute,” he said, then turned and began shoveling. After a couple of minutes he stopped, heaved a sigh, and said, “Where were we?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You were just criticizing the Sunday talk shows.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Ah, right. You know, I don’t blame you for not watching them. That kind of dishonest political theater can tear your heart out, if you really care about your country.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“But suppose they’re right and Snowden actually <i>is </i>a Russian spy?” I worried.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s a good question, Ace. We have a problem here, don’t we. Clearly, somebody is lying to us ... either Edward Snowden, or all of the powerful figures lined up against him. Who should we believe? The honorable thing to do is to give a fair hearing to both sides. Let’s look at the evidence, shall we?” And he began to sum up the evidence, ticking off the points on his fingers.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“One, despite revelation after revelation from Mr. Snowden of the scope and nature of NSA spying, no one has ever denied that his revelations are accurate. In fact, they appear to have been chosen with extreme care to do just what he claims they were intended to do: give the people of the U.S. the information they need to make an informed choice about whether the NSA’s total surveillance is really the kind of society they want to live in.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Two, despite a lot of loose talk about Mr. Snowden’s endangering people’s lives, not a single instance has been produced where that has actually occurred.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Three, Mr. Snowden’s itinerary clearly shows he had no intention of staying in Russia. He was trapped there when the U.S. invalidated his passport.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Four, he ended up stuck for forty days in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. As Mr. Snowden joked--accurately, I think--, ‘Spies get treated better than that.’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Five, with the NSA having the surveillance capacity Mr. Snowden has described, they should already have been able to locate any phone calls, e-mails, or other contacts he had with Russian spymasters. No such evidence has been produced, which is a strong indication that such contacts never took place.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Six, nobody talks about Edward Snowden’s politics. Do you know why? Because he’s a libertarian, a free-market advocate, even an opponent of Social Security. He’s to the right of Ted Cruz! To think he’d spy for the Russians strains credulity. Beyond that, he appears to have been a hard-working, honest, model citizen. Believe me, if he had major skeletons in his closet, the administrations wouldn’t have waited five minutes before they posted them on billboards in Times Square. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Seven, the F.B.I. has already concluded that Mr. Snowden acted alone, and its conclusion was reported last week in the New York <i>Times.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s a long list,” I said. “It’s always hard to prove a negative, but the case against his being a secret operative for a foreign power sounds awfully convincing. What’s the case on the other side of the argument? “ </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, first, we looked at Mr. Snowden’s track record. His information has been accurate. He has been open about what he found and why he felt obliged to expose it. Now let’s look at the record of those attacking him. Snowden’s revelations made it clear that the NSA has lied in sworn testimony about the nature and extent of its spying.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“They lied to Congress? To the people who are supposed to be representing us?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“They sure did. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, lied under oath to Congress back in March of 2013, when he was asked whether the NSA collected ‘any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans‘ — and Clapper said, ‘No, sir ... not wittingly’. Then Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, admitted last October that his testimony that NSA surveillance had foiled 54 terrorist plots was bogus. One Republican congressman told Alan Grayson that he doesn’t even attend intelligence briefings anymore because ‘they always lie’. Grayson says that many congress members believe that the congressional intelligence committees go right along with the NSA, and are more loyal to the ‘intelligence community’ than to the Constitution. These committee chairs who attacked Snowden are working hand in glove with the NSA they’re supposed to be overseeing.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What evidence did these intelligence committee chairs offer on Sunday then? They must have had some good stuff if they’re so close to the spies.”<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No evidence, but a good amount of innuendo--which makes you think that there <i>isn’t </i>any evidence. Mr. Rogers implied that, because the U.S. government stopped Mr. Snowden’s flight in transit, resulting in his being stranded in Russia, he must have been spying for the Russians. Is that logical?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’ll admit that sometimes I’m logically-challenged, but no, that doesn’t make any sense.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Mr. Rogers also implied that Mr. Snowden’s having a go-bag ready was proof that he was a spy.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Wait a minute,” I said, “you lost me there. What’s a go-bag?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Some people call them ‘bug-out bags,’ or ‘GOOD bags,’ for Get Out Of Dodge’,” explained Tom. “ They’re kits that people keep packed full of the things they would need to get through the next 72 hours if there’s an emergency or disaster. It would have been pretty standard for anyone in a position like Mr. Snowden’s to have one while working with the CIA and the NSA. If you arrested everyone who had a go-bag, the CIA and NSA would be half-empty.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s pretty thin, then,” I said. “What else?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m afraid that’s it.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s it? That’s nuts!” I said. “If you could convict people on flimsy stuff like that, you could sentence anyone for anything. I’ve got a scope-mounted Remington 700 for deer hunting. Does that mean somebody could accuse me of planning to assassinate the President?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Very good, Ace,” he said, with a slight look of surprise. “That’s precisely the kind of thinking I was talking about.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2014</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-75227555683940299902014-01-22T14:10:00.001-08:002015-06-29T21:10:50.631-07:00A Banner for Losers to Gather Under<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You have a funny look on your face, Ace. What’s up?” asked Patty.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t know,” I told her. “I guess I’m still thinking about my stop at the library at lunchtime.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She gave an exaggerated look of surprise. “The library? What were you doing in the library?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Come on, Patty,” I said, “quit pulling my leg. You know darned well I read sometimes if there’s not a good game on. But I went today because Kevin had a book due, and he asked me to drop it off while I was downtown.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So what got your attention there?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I just wasn’t expecting the place to be so full,” I said. “There were people at all the computer stations, most of the chairs were filled, people were at the newspaper rack... it was a bustling place.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Huh,” she said, “that does sound a little odd. We have a great library, but I don’t remember its being that busy when I used to take Kevin to the children’s room.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I asked a woman at the desk if they were having some kind of event or giving away prizes to draw so many people, and she told me it’s like that almost every day now. When I asked her why that was, she whispered that a lot of the folks there come in almost every day. Either they’re homeless or they’re out of work. For the homeless it’s a warm, safe place to hang out that will also let them use the restrooms. For the unemployed folks, it’s a place to check the Help Wanted section of the newspapers, fill out job applications online, or use the printer to run off resumes and cover letters. Others have given up, and are killing time there instead of sitting around the house trying to find something worth watching on daytime TV. They still have lots of other patrons, but they’ve also become a kind of adult day care center.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Gee,” Patty said, “I knew things were getting worse for a lot of people, but I didn’t realize they were that bad.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s not just <i>our</i> library,” I said. “She told me that it’s like that in libraries all over the country. I had about the same reaction you did, and she asked me if I’d seen the new Oxfam report, W<i>orking for the Few</i>. When I said ‘no’ she told me I ought to read it, so I waited a few minutes until one of the computers came open and googled it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What’s it say?” asked Patty, curious.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s a 32 page pdf file,” I said, “so I didn’t print it all off, but here are the highlights.” I skimmed through what I’d printed. “They report that 70% of the world’s people live in countries where economic inequality has increased over the past 30 years. They also say that ‘The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012’.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I guess I’m too focused on our own country,” said Patty. “But really, what they’re describing is what you’d expect with multinational corporations getting a stranglehold on business worldwide."</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> "Oh, you know. How all these trade agreements paved the way for companies to send jobs overseas, to poorer and poorer countries with pitiful wages. First to Mexico, then to Taiwan and India and China. Companies like Walmart squeeze their suppliers to make stuff cheaper and cheaper. That’s all got to add up to something.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It sure does. More profits for the big boys, more pain and less freedom for everybody else,” I said. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"You know, we used to think of ourselves as the land of opportunity, where each generation could work and educate itself toward a better life than the one before," Patty mused. "That looks as remote as the Garden of Eden now. No more upward mobility; it’s downward mobility in high gear." </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"You got that right," I told her. "The report says that ‘In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer’.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Whoa! Are you serious?” said Patty.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I kept on skimming the report. “Listen to this. The 85 richest people in the world own as much wealth as... take a guess.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, you know I’m no good at this kind of thing, Ace. Let me see. Eighty-five people. Hmm. I’m going to guess they own as much as ... I’ll say the poorest one hundred million people.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You’re too kind, as always,” I said. “The richest 85 own as much as ... the entire bottom half of the world’s population. About 3.5 <i>billion </i>people.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Patty gawked. “Three and a half billion?” she exclaimed. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“Can I use your pencil and grocery bag for a minute?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I watched while she did some quick division. She looked up at me with a shocked expression. “Ace,” she said, “if you average it out, each one of your 85 richest people has the same wealth as 41,176,470 poor people combined.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“One person’s wealth is equivalent to that of more than 41 <i>million </i>people?!” I asked incredulously. “No way that’s fair or just or humane or right or democratic or .....” I realized I was sputtering, and stopped.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s wrong,” said Patty. “It’s immoral. It’s evil.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You know,” I told her, “even if the size of the actual numbers shocks us, it’s not as if we didn’t already have a pretty good idea that most of us are getting screwed.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s true,” she said, and we stood there for a moment. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Maybe people think the game’s already decided,” I said. “It’s March madness, it’s the World Series, the Kentucky Derby, the NBA champion, the Super Bowl. At the end of the season, there’s only one winner. Everybody can’t be a winner.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Patty got a glint in her eye. “You mean all of us except maybe 85 people are losers? Seven billion of us are losers? That’s what you’re saying? It doesn’t matter to you that the game is rigged?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What do you mean, it’s rigged?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh come on, Ace. Think about it. The rich have the law on their side; they write the laws. They own the courts. They own Congress. Now they’re buying up state legislatures. They own the media that report the news--that decide what gets reported and how it’s reported. They own the corporations we work for. They run the universities our kids attend. They see and hear everything we do or say on computers and telephones. Doesn’t that sound like a stacked deck to you?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Remember that old American saying, ‘You can’t fight City Hall’,” I responded.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, great,” snapped Patty. “That’s a real banner for losers to gather under. Give up without a fight! That’s a sure-fire guarantee you lose. What about those other old American sayings? Where’s that land-of-the-free-and-home-of-the-brave-don’t-tread-on-me-government-of-the-people-by-the-people-for-the-people-all-men-are-created-equal spirit when it really matters?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, I’m no Crispus Attucks and you’re no Betsy Ross, but what do you think we ought to do about it?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2014</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">[Note: Readers who would like to see the full <i>Working for the Few </i>report can see it <a href="http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en.pdf">here.</a>] </span></div>
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Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-25008135285540726142014-01-15T10:47:00.001-08:002014-01-15T12:37:46.840-08:00Austerity and Hard Times<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He was listening to the news, and his granddaughter was proudly making a hat for him with the new knitting needles she got for Christmas. “Grandpa,” said the little girl without looking up, “what’s ‘austerity’ mean?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It’s funny what kids will pick up when you have no idea they’re paying attention to what’s happening around them, he thought, not for the first time. He studied her for a minute. He’d known this day would come, but he hadn’t expected it to come so soon. Was she old enough to have this discussion? “Heck,” he finally said to himself, “if she’s old enough for Harry Potter novels, she’s old enough to be told about austerity.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“‘Austerity’ is another word for what we used to call ‘hard times’ back when I was a boy,” he began.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Giving her a different name for it didn’t give her much to go on. He knew that. She needed to picture it in her mind to make it come to life, so he wasn’t surprised when she said, “Oh. Well, what’s hard about hard times?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In some ways he hated to tell her. She was young to be carrying the freight of that knowledge. But you couldn’t shelter kids forever. You needed to be honest with them about the world they were growing into.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“In hard times--what they call ‘austerity’ nowadays--lots of people lose their jobs or their farms. They can’t find a new job, or the job they have pays less and less, with fewer benefits. After a while they can’t pay their bills. They lose their home. They lose things they were buying on credit. They sell off whatever they have that’s valuable, just to get some cash. They can’t pay their loans. They can’t afford to go see a dentist or a doctor. They buy cheaper and cheaper food. They get discouraged and depressed.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Gosh, Grandpa, that sounds horrible,” she said. “What makes austerity happen?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Now came an even harder part: talking about the dark side of human nature to someone who had been cared for and cherished all her life, who had never known anything but consideration and kindness. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It doesn’t happen by accident,” he said. “Some people choose to cause hard times for other people. They make it happen with laws and policies that benefit themselves and hurt the other people.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What kind of people would do that?” asked the little girl, clearly struggling to understand the notion of a world with those kinds of people in it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Austerity is caused by rich people who want to get even richer,” he said. “They do things to squeeze more money out of people like us, and they don’t care whether people who don’t have as much as they do get poorer or even lose everything.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s mean!” exclaimed the little girl. “Why are they so mean?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And how do you answer that, in a way that’s fair but honest? He tried.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Some of them are mean because of the way they were raised,” he said. “They were always around other rich people, and they thought they were entitled to good things because they were better than other folks. We know that’s not right, but they never learned it. They weren’t brought up right. Others are mean unintentionally, because they have rigid ideas that they think are right, and they get stubborn. They stick to those ideas, even when there are all kinds of evidence they don’t work. Others <i>choose</i> to be hard-hearted. They decide they’d rather be mean and rich than kind and poor. And some work in big businesses called corporations, and they do mean things to make the corporation more profitable, things that they’d probably never think of doing to people or places on their own.”<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She thought for a moment, still trying to puzzle things out. “<i>Where</i> is austerity, Grandpa?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Now that was really a tough one. He wasn’t sure how to answer. He got up, walked over to the bookcase in the corner, and took the globe off the top shelf. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m not sure I can answer that, sweetheart. It seems to be almost everywhere. Over a hundred countries--119 I think the man just said on the radio--cut their budgets last year. The ones that get all the publicity are the ones in Europe, like Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Italy,” he continued, pointing to them. “But three-fourths of the countries being hit are in developing countries. Most of those are down here.” He ran his hand over the southern hemisphere. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The little girl nodded. “Can you show me where Greece is again?” she asked, and he did. “What’s it mean they cut their budgets?” was her next question.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You ask a lot of questions,” he said. “That’s a good habit to get into. Keep it up. ‘Cutting their budget’ means they didn’t spend as much money,” he said. “Mostly they eliminated jobs and cut what we call public spending. That means they cut money for things like health care, education, housing, pensions, and unemployment.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Why did they have to do that?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, sweetheart, they <i>didn’t </i>have to do that. Instead of taking away things from ordinary people--what some folks call the 99%--they could have provided jobs and improved the lives of most of the people in their countries. All they had to do was ch</span>ange their tax systems, so the richest people contributed more and corporations paid a fair share. They could have stopped rich people and corporations from hiding their money in places called tax havens. They could have eliminated tax gimmicks that kept rich people from not paying taxes. They could have cracked down on people who cheated on their tax returns. But they didn’t do those things, because those cheating rich people and corporations were their friends and supporters. So they took the money instead from the rest of us. The rich have more than they’ll ever need, the poor don’t have enough to live on, and the people in between are having a harder and harder time.”</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s not nice,” declared the little girl firmly. “I don’t want to be that way when I grow up.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m glad to hear it, sweetheart,” said the old man. “Just remember that if the world tries to change you.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She seemed to catch the solemnity of his words. “I won’t change,” she promised.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s my girl,” he said, giving her a hug. Then he turned off the radio. “Enough of listening to that thing,” he said, and picked up his fiddle, plucked the strings, and adjusted the tuning. “Here’s an old song we used to sing when I was your age. Do you know it? It’s called ‘Hard Times’.” He began to sing as he scratched out the tune. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Oh, I know that one,” she said. “Mommy sings it sometimes.” And she joined him, adding her sweet young voice to his as they sang Stephen Foster’s opening verse:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>As we pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears<br />
While we all sup sorrow with the poor<br />
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears:<br />
Oh, hard times, come again no more.</i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Could we change ‘hard times’ to ‘austerity’ in the chorus?” she asked quickly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sure,” he said. “We can do whatever we want with a song.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2014</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-71586243146138494292014-01-06T11:07:00.001-08:002014-01-06T20:28:14.098-08:00Big Brother on Steroids<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Uncle Jimmy was in for the holidays, and I pulled him aside after dinner last night. I knew he was going to leave early Monday morning to drive back up to his job at the Pentagon, and there was something I wanted to ask him about.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Jimmy,” I said, “I saw a headline on Yahoo! What’s the deal with Bernie Sanders asking the NSA if it spies on Congress? That’s crazy talk, isn’t it? Why would he even think such a thing?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jimmy looked surprised. “The NSA's spying on people in Congress was the <i>first</i> thing<i> </i>I<i> </i>thought about when Snowden’s revelations started popping up,” he said. “Any intelligence service, sooner or later, targets the people who are supposed to oversee it. Sooner, usually. That’s where their money comes from, and where the power lies. When news came out that the NSA spies on the UN, and then that it spies on the leaders of our allies, it was obvious these guys are operating in a free fire zone.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That definitely wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “What I don’t understand, Jimmy, is that Sanders asked a ‘yes or no’ question, but the NSA didn’t give him a ‘yes’ or ‘no‘ answer. Sanders asked, ‘Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?‘ And what the NSA wrote back was, ‘Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all US persons’.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jimmy laughed. “Oh, Sanders got his answer all right. ‘<i>The same privacy protections as all US persons</i>’ means Congress members don’t have<i> any</i> privacy protections. None. Zero. The message the NSA is sending loud and clear is ‘YES, we spy on Congress and other elected officials--and people in the administration too. You didn’t think you were exempt from the spying that you’re approving for everybody else, did you?‘ The NSA did everything but give Congress the finger with that answer. It makes you scratch your head. Did those people in Congress really think that the great fishnet in the sky had a catch-and-release program for them because they’re big fish?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Wait a minute,” I said. “What do you mean when you say that having the same protections as all US persons means they don’t have <i>any </i>protections?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He gave me a look of disbelief. I get that a lot. “Lord have mercy, boy, don’t you read your own newspaper? Or listen to the news on NPR? Or get news <i>some</i>where?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Mostly the sports page,” I admitted. “Actually, <i>only</i> the sports page. Well, and the comic strips. And sometimes my horoscope.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He groaned. I get that a lot too. “An informed citizenry is the cornerstone of democracy,” he muttered. “Okay, Ace, here’s what we know at this point. Edward Snowden said these NSA programs ‘put entire populations under an all-seeing eye and save copies forever.’ The NSA collects and stores data on every phone call made in the United States. They also track and store the information on hundreds of millions of cellphone users on a minute-to-minute basis around the world--including our exact locations at each moment, where we’re going, who we meet, and where we meet.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“They’re tracking me everywhere through my cellphone?!” I asked incredulously.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Yep. The NSA also broke into the global data centers of Yahoo! and Google, which enables them to collect information at will about hundreds of millions of people. They search our e-mails, our online chats, and our browser histories. They also bribed the company that provides encryption programs for computer security to create a ‘back door’ enabling them to enter and spy on supposedly secure data and communications.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was stunned. “What does all that mean?” I asked, still trying to take it all in.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Basically it means none of us have <i>any </i>privacy when we use any electronic communication device, or when information about us goes into <i>any</i> electronic data system.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My mind started racing over things I’d looked at or written online. Whoa! “That’s scary,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It sure is,” Jimmy said. “There’s a saying that ‘information is power.’ Nobody in the world has ever had anything even close to as much information as the NSA. If that saying is correct, the NSA is now the most powerful institution in the history of the planet.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Another saying is that ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’,” I threw in.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That too,” Jimmy agreed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“But now that Congress members know their lives are under a microscope just like the rest of us, they’ll do something about it, won’t they?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well,” said Jimmy, “from the NSA’s standpoint, that’s the beauty of it. Congresspeople are just as human as the rest of us, with the same weaknesses and vices--maybe even more, because the sheer expense of running for office, along with the lure of the political spotlight, guarantees that Congress will have more than its share of the ambitious, the vain, and the power-hungry.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So while members of Congress are thinking about the NSA’s response, they’ll also start thinking about that stretch they spent in rehab. About their confessions to their AA sponsors, which they thought were private. About the affair they’re having with a staffer, and the e-mails they’ve sent each other and the telephone calls between them--all part of their NSA record. About the bribe they took for a vote. About the information on their medical record--now converted into an electronic health record which the NSA can break into. About lies they’ve told. About their gambling habit. No need to go on; you get the idea.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It doesn’t take much of a scandal or hint of weakness to derail a political career,” I mused.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No, we definitely operate with a strange standard,” said Jimmy. “‘For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,’ according to the Good Book. But that doesn’t help somebody at the ballot box. And if the congressperson feels fairly secure about his or her own life--which sure isn’t guaranteed--, what about their spouse, their kids, their brothers and sisters? When you get right down to it, we’re all vulnerable. And now congresspeople are on notice. If you don’t vote right, if you try to stop the NSA or even make an effort to curtail its power, they can hurt you. Really hurt you. Your life is an open book to them, and they wouldn’t hesitate to make a best-seller out of it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“What’s gonna happen then? Can the NSA keep on getting away with all this? It’s like Big Brother on steroids!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jimmy frowned. “It doesn’t look good,” he said. “James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, lied under oath back in March of 2013, when Ron Wyden asked him if the NSA collected any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans. ‘No sir... not wittingly,’ said Clapper. Just three months later, in June, NSA director Keith Alexander lied to Congress when he claimed that 54 terrorist plots had been thwarted through use of mass phone surveillance. Eventually Alexander admitted that the number 54 was entirely fictitious, that maybe one or two plots have been affected in some way. At a bare minimum, both should have been fired immediately and the NSA reined in. Both could and probably should have been charged with perjury and contempt of Congress. But neither paid the slightest price for lying. Which probably gives you a pretty good indication of the leverage they have over Congress.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I don’t get it, Jimmy,” I said. “What you’re describing sounds more like a police state than the land of the free and the home of the brave.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Those are your words, not mine,” he said. “I’d be careful not to use them in an e-mail or on a telephone.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>© Tony Russell, 2014</span></div>
Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14544617.post-5056563082698434362013-12-24T16:11:00.001-08:002013-12-27T12:44:11.807-08:00A Christmas Carol (2013)<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We had dragged in at 9:30, after six hours of last-minute Christmas shopping, leaving the last of the other desperate shoppers still in the littered stores with their long lines at the registers and their exhausted cashiers. Dumping the bags full of packages just inside the door, we simply stood and looked at each other for a minute, almost too tired to think. Finally Patty gave me a peck on the cheek and said, “Just leave those where they fell, Ace. I’m going on up to bed. We’ll wrap them in the morning.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be up in a bit. I’m too wound up to go to sleep right now. I think I’ll see what’s on TV. If I remember right, one of the movie channels is doing a Christmas Eve marathon of the top ten versions of <i>A Christmas Carol</i>. Maybe that will relax me.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As Patty traipsed up the stairs, I grabbed a beer from the fridge, then settled back in my recliner and fired up the TV. I was in luck. The 1984 adaptation of Dickens’ work, with George C. Scott playing Scrooge, was just coming on. That’s one of my favorites, and I watched it through to the end. At that point I was feeling drowsy, but the 1999 production with Patrick Stewart was next up, and that version--although it’s too grim to be what you’d call a good time--is an excellent one as well, so I got another beer and plopped back down in my chair while the opening scene began to roll, with a horse-drawn hearse bearing Jacob Marley to the graveyard. There beside the hole in the ground stands Scrooge, the lone mourner.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I must have dozed off. I don’t know how long I had been asleep, but I woke abruptly, with my limbs heavy and my back stiff. The house was as still and dark as a tomb, the only light being a ghastly pale green emanating from the television screen. “Huh. I must have slept through the end of the marathon,” I thought. I started to reach for the remote, to switch off the TV and head off to bed, and discovered I couldn’t move! Groggily I stared down, and realized that my body was wrapped in a heavy chain, which was coiled around me and pinning me to the chair like some metallic anaconda squeezing its prey.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was frightened; I’m not going to deny it. I was about to call to Patty for help when figures appeared on the screen, insubstantial things, themselves the same appalling green from which they emerged. One by one they stepped out of the screen and moved toward me, glowing and pale but vaguely human-like forms, moaning as they came. I cringed back in my chair as more and more of them appeared. They formed a circle, crowding around me. They too were in chains, which clanked as they dragged them across the floor, and their countenances were haggard and forlorn.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Speak, dread spirits,” I said through trembling lips. “Tell me, who are you, and what do you want of me?” (That’s not my normal style, but waking out of a Dickens marathon, and given the timing, it seemed appropriate.)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Instead of speaking, however, they turned as one, and pointed toward our flat screen TV. The eerie green light faded, and in grainy black and white, scenes began to unfold, one after the other. I saw a river ignite and burn, and marveled. I saw majestic mountains gouged and scraped into rubble and piles of waste, and mourned. I watched smokestacks turn the sky dark gray, while their ash fell on women hanging sheets and diapers on clotheslines, and shrank back. I watched dead fish floating in a river’s current, their bodies deformed, their skins marred with lesions, and bowed my head. I watched ‘thalidomide babies’ trying to write, holding their pencils with shrunken limbs or flippers, and I wept. I watched seven CEOs of tobacco companies declare, under oath, before a congressional committee, that nicotine is not addictive, and raged. I watched children flee from a burning hut in a tropical landscape, with a jellylike flame searing their flesh, and I screamed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Stop! I beg of you, stop! I can stand no more!” I pleaded.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The ghosts took pity on me, and the screen went blank.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shaken, I asked again, my voice trembling, “Tell me, tell me. Who are you, spirits? “ </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Someone who watches as much TV as you do, and you ask a question like that?” They gave a hollow laugh. “Over the years we have assured hundreds of millions of viewers that ‘you’re in good hands’; that ‘like a good neighbor,’ we’ll be there; that we are creating ‘a better world, through chemistry’; that we are ‘strength on your side’; that we are ‘taking you forward’; that we are ‘listening, answering’; that we are ‘engineered for life’; that ‘we never forget who we’re working for’; that we’re ‘resourceful by nature’; that we offer ‘science for a better life’; that we’re ‘delivering results that endure’.“ </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I recognize the slogans,” I said. “But what’s that have to do with you? You look like people. Those are corporate slogans. You aren’t corporations. Corporations aren’t people.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They looked at one another, and then in an ominous chorus declared: “We <i>are</i> corporations. We resemble your kind in the minds of a handful of judges, who have declared us to be persons. We are as fictitious or as real as Dickens’ creations--legal fictions rather than literary fictions, the ghosts of corporations past and present.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This was not reassuring, but I persisted. “What is it you want with me, and why are you and I in chains?”<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Speaking of ourselves, we are enchained by our own greed. We are ‘persons‘ without a conscience, without morality, without love or pity or mercy. We exist--are devoted to--profit. Nothing more and nothing less. Our Higher Power is our daily stock quote. Call us the quintessential Scrooges.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“That’s you,” I said, “and I’m genuinely sorry you’re in that kind of shape. But what about me? Why am <i>I</i> wrapped up in these chains?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You too are ensnared in the monetization of life,” they began, and I knew they didn’t mean that as a good thing. “You consume more of Earth’s goods than any one person has any need for, wasting much and stealing from the future. You accept the right of us and others like us to shape your wants, to do what we wish with the land and seas and skies, to purchase laws and governments. You allow us to decide what news you will receive and what news will be denied. You turn over to us your children’s education, and the shaping of their desires.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And all I wanted to do was watch a movie, I thought. Did I ask for any of this? No, I didn’t. Still, I couldn’t deny what they had said. They were right. “So all of us are in bad shape,” I finally said. “I’m complicit. What do you want?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“We want you to free us so you may free yourself,” they said as one, their voices full of anxiety and even fear. “We may not bear a conscience, but at least we have a survival instinct. End this charade. We’re not people and never will be. Strike down our phony personhood. Please. Otherwise, we, you, and Earth itself are doomed.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Earth doomed?” I said. “Whoa! That’s taking ‘serious’ to another level. What’s that about?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You have witnessed Christmases past and present,” they said. “These are Christmases of the future.” Once again they turned and pointed to the TV screen.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Together we watched as glaciers and ice caps melted, oceans rose, and millions of coastal residents fled before tides racing inland. As forests vanished. As cities in deserts finished draining their aquifers, and the rivers they had diverted dwindled to a trickle. As permafrost melted and clouds of methane rose into the air. As plant and animal species disappeared--millions of years of creation’s work gone in an evolutionary minute. As unimaginably violent storms flattened towns, flooded rivers, threw automobiles through the air like children’s toys. As starving people watched farmland turn barren, the soil baking and cracked under the sun.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was stunned. They had known what was coming, and yet they too were stunned. Finally I spoke. “That’s really what’s going to happen?” I asked. “There’s no way to avoid it? Please, tell me, spirits! Tell me it doesn’t have to be that way! Tell me I can do something!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They opened their mouths to speak, and then I heard Patty’s voice, calling from the stairwell. “Ace, what in the world is going on down there? Why are you yelling?” I twisted in my chair. The chains were nowhere to be seen. Neither were the ghosts of corporations. Nonplussed, I looked at the TV screen. There was Kermit the Frog, playing Bob Cratchit in <i>A Muppet Christmas Carol</i>, sitting down to Christmas dinner with Miss Piggy as his wife. I rubbed my forehead. “Patty,” I said, “your voice may be the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. And God save us, every one!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Don’t you mean ‘God <i>bless</i> us, every one’?” she asked curiously.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Wrong century,” I said. “And I’m not Tiny Tim.”</span></div>
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Tony Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04229243258533358337noreply@blogger.com2