Argo Search Your Conscience

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.

This month was at our house, and we’d picked Argo, 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.

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.

“What?  What don’t you get?” asked Don.

“Well, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?” she said.

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.”

““But don’t you remember the opening minutes of the film?” she asked.

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?” 

“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.”

“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.” 

“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?”

“Why do you say the historical stuff wasn’t important?  It’s all 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 we 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?”

“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.” 

“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.”

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.

“That would be my guess,” said Don.

“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.

I’d forgotten about that, but now that she mentioned it....

  “That could very well have been the reality,” said Ellen.  “Not just for him, but for thousands of other people.”

“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.  

“That’s probably pretty standard operating procedure for embassies,” I pointed out.

“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.

“So are you claiming that the Iranian militants were the good guys and Ben Affleck was a bad guy?” I said indignantly.

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.”

“Well what are you saying?” I asked.

“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?”

“What do you mean ‘Where’s the justice?’” asked Don.

  “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 all got away with something.”

“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 is the message.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Ace, sometimes I worry that you’ll drown in a puddle,” Patty said. 

© Tony Russell, 2014

Political Climate Change Is Real

“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?”

“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.”

“Who’s at risk, Rebecca?”

“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 all 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.” 

“Could you do a quick run-through of some of those recent atmospheric disturbances for our viewers, Rebecca?”

“Sure.  Just in the past few months we’ve had:

• a gunman shooting six people at a FedEx facility and then killing himself; 
• an Iraq war veteran killing three people, injuring sixteen, and then shooting himself at Fort Hood; 
• 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’; 
• 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; 
• 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;
• 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.;
• 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;
• 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; 
• a Democratic president who boasts of maintaining a ‘kill list’; 
• 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’.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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?”

“Sure.  Let’s take the last one, Sarah Palin’s speech before the NRA where she boasted about her eagerness to waterboard terrorists.”

“Okay.  And its significance?”

“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.”

“And the National Weather Bureau has included this speech among the bizarre events plugged into its Insanity Index?”

“Definitely.”

“Can you explain why?  We have one minute left.”
 

“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.”

“And when Ms. Palin jokes about waterboarding as a form of baptism....?”

“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 anti-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.”

“Treatment in the form of....?”

“Therapy or spiritual counseling.”

“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.”

© Tony Russell, 2014

Cowbirds, the Gold Rush, and Charter Schools

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?”  

He took his time.  Walt knows his own mind.  He’s a pessimist, but usually a cheerful one.

“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.”

“Yeah?” I said.  “Why’s that?”

“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.”

“I don’t get it,” I said.  “They’re all there for the same purpose, aren’t they?  To teach kids?”

“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 is 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.”

“And you’re saying charter schools are different?”

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 do make a profit--and they’re owned by the same people who operate the supposedly non-profit schools.”

“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 you drew a paycheck.”

“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.”

“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?”

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.” 

“Oh.”

“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.”

“Okay, I get it.  They’re businesses.  So?”

  “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?”

“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.”

“That’s always the claim, isn’t it, for these privatizers?” Walt asked--a little testily, I thought.  “They don’t 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?” 

“I’m not sure I could stop you,” I joked.

“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.  

“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.

“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.”

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!”

“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.

 

“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.”

“You’re claiming charter schools are part of a broader movement?”

“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.”

“Hey, I’m getting swamped with similes and metaphors,” I complained.

“When you’re driving a nail into hard wood, you have to hit it more than one time,” he said.

© Tony Russell, 2014

The World’s Longest and Quietest Coup d’Etat

I woke up with a start this morning.  “What is it, Ace?” asked Patty.

“I don’t know,” I muttered sleepily.  “There’s something different.”  I looked around.  “I just can’t put my finger on it.”

“Different how?” she asked.  “Different good or different bad.”

“Good, it feels good.”

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!”

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.

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.”

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.”

“You’re always carrying a heap of books, Abdul,” I said, “but you might have broken the record this time.”

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “my name is Aadil, not Abdul.”

“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.”  

“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.”

“Why all the books?  Got a big test coming up?”

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.”

“How so?” I said.  “What’re you working on?”

“My dissertation is an attempt to statistically verify the proposition that democracy in government is directly proportional to the degree of income equality.”

“Could you break that down to ordinary English?” I said.

He paused.  “The idea is that the more evenly the wealth of a country is shared, the more it operates democratically.  And the more unevenly the wealth is divided, with more and more of the wealth going to fewer and fewer people, the less it operates democratically.”

“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?”

He hesitated.  “The coup d’état of April 2,” he said finally.  

“Coup d’état?” I said. “Where?”

“Where?” he said, looking puzzled.  “In the United States.  Surely as a newsman, sir, you have been following a story of such magnitude closely.”

“A coup d’état in the United States?” I said, as we got caught by a red light.  “What are you talking about?”

  “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.”

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?”

“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.”

I was starting to feel dizzy.  “The Supreme Court did that?” How?”

“With the McCutcheon versus Federal Election Commission ruling they delivered on April 2,” he said, as if he expected me to know what he was talking about.  “It follows their earlier Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission of January, 2010.  You may remember our conversation about that decision last fall.”

“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?

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

The dizziness was back.  “Selections?  Instead of elections?”

“The wealthy few will now have carte blanche to select candidates, spend as they wish on campaigns, and usher their choices into office.”  

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.” 

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.  

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.

“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.

“As you can see,” he said.   “Here is some more information you may have missed.”  He handed me more papers.

“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.

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.

“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.

“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.”

“What in the world was the Court thinking?” I wondered.

“They believe that spending your money to support a candidate is a form of free speech,” he reminded me.

“And people who don’t have any money?  Who are broke?”

“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.”

“And people who have a lot of money?”  

“They are able to talk nonstop.  And pass it on to their children, who will be able to speak even louder and longer.”

“B-b-but that’s unfair,” I sputtered.

“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.”  

“You sound happy about it,” I said, with some bitterness.

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

© Tony Russell, 2014

It’s Just the Dream’s File

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.  

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.

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.”  

“Hi, Ace,” he said.  “Sorry, guess I was preoccupied there.”

“No problem,” I reassured him.  “Something wrong?  You don’t look so good.”

“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.”

“Is it something you can talk about?” I asked.  “Maybe that would help.”

“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.”

“I didn’t realize you were seeing a ...” I began.

“I’m not,” he said.  “I’ve never seen a psychoanalyst or psychiatrist or anyone like that.  That’s all the dream’s idea.”

“Oh.  Hmm.  Okay, what then?”

“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.”

“Wow!” I said, “wonder what was in that file?”

He glanced at me sharply.  “There is no file,” he said.  “It’s just the dream’s file.”

“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.”

“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.”

“So what’s the issue then?” I asked.

“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 violated in some horrible way that I can’t quite explain or describe.”

“That must be pretty important to you, if you were going to call it quits after thirty years of marriage and three kids.”

He hung his head wearily.  “I guess so.  I just don’t know why the whole thing came up in my dream.”

We sat there silently for a while, both caught up in the aftermath of something real in the unreal.

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?”

“Not much,” he said.  “Why?”

© Tony Russell, 2014

Who’s Interested in Ancient History?

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?”

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.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.  “It’s not Dean, is it?  He hasn’t had a relapse with that ‘acceptance’ thing?”

“No, no,” she said.  “It’s our daughter Jeannie.”

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?”

“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 quizzical 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’.”

“Not using her cellphone?” I said, baffled.

“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.” 

“A drastic change in behavior like that....  You’re not thinking it’s drugs?” I asked hesitantly.

“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.”

“What did she have to say, if it’s okay to talk about it?”

“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.”

“Huh,” I said, “what would be disturbing about that?”

“Apparently this guy was really far out.”

“Yeah?  What kinds of things did he have to say?”

  “That’s the funny part.  Mostly he just asked questions.”

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.

“Questions?  Like what?”

“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?’”

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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“I googled it.  They took place back in 1919-1920,” she said.  “I believe that predates the NFL by two or three years.”

“Huh,” I said.  “Predated the NFL?  What did they manage to do with themselves?”

“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.”

“I seem to remember hearing about that somewhere,” I said.

  “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.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“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.”

“You can’t blame the kids,” I said.  “Who’s interested in ancient history?”

“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.”

“What was his point?”

“He didn’t say, but it seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

“Uhh...,” I began, but Boris evidently thought I was growling, and turned toward me, his body stiffening.

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.”

I was getting interested.  “This guy must have been a real trip,” I mused.  “What did he say next?”

“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?’”

“Wow!  What kind of question is that to ask?” I said.

“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....”

“I get it,” I said.  “Life.”

Ann sighed.  “Exactly.  We like to put a pretty face on it, but underneath the makeup, we all have complexion problems.”

I was really curious now.  “And then?”  

“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?’”

“And you were thinking Jeannie might have started thinking about Dean and some of his mental health issues?”

“Well, that, but... you know, I’m not perfect either.  And some of Jeannie’s friends have gone through some pretty rough times.”

“I guess we all have,” I admitted.  

“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.”

“Is that some of the material Snowden leaked?” I asked.

“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.”

“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.

“It doesn’t look like the freedom we brag about?” said Ann.  “It sounds like 1984, The Sequel?  Like the machinery is being put in place for government control to become almost absolute?”  

“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.”

“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.

© Tony Russell, 2014