Post-election, I watched a softball interview with George W. Bush inside an airport. I studied the outgoing president, curious and open-minded, hoping to see the charming, warm person I’ve heard about for so long coming into public view. I held the same hope viewing a television spot featuring Sarah Palin.
Watching and listening, I felt a hungry frustration for something to latch on to, some indication that they had thought through the issues and had reflected upon them in a meaningful way. What I heard, instead, were two ideologues reviewing the same talking points, and not even rendering them well. Not chasing popularity, Bush said, did what I believed was right . . . honoring the fallen . . . etc. etc. ad infinitum.
Watching him reminded me of seeing bad actors on screen. I have my list .. Madonna, Keanu Reeves ... you have yours. When I enter that movie house, I want to be moved, to be convinced. I want to believe. But I end up with that junk food feeling: I ate, I swallowed, but there was little nutrition, and I’ve consumed ingredients that aren’t good for me, that sometimes aren’t even really food.
And so it is with talking points. Words are coming out, but what of substance is being said? It’s a question that’s haunted our country for almost eight years: Is he serious? And now, with Sarah Palin: Is she for real? Or is it just more bad acting?
If The Terminator, say, cracked these two open, would the ideologue hush up and a real person step out, thoughtful, articulate, complex, able to listen? Or, if, using special effects, of course, they were cut up into dozens of tiny pieces, would each of those pieces spout the same bit-byte rhetoric? According to the results of my informal poll, I am afraid the conclusion is the latter. They’re not acting. They believe it. That’s what being an ideologue means, whatever the stripe.
As a listener, the moment of anguish in the Bush interview came when he said, I just want to go home . . . write my book. He wants to go home, to Texas, to his ranch. He spoke this wistfully, confidently, as though he had a perfect right to this comfort and security. Hearing this, I felt the familiar visceral repulsion at this man’s blind entitlement.
My mind was flooded with a rush of images of American soldiers secreted back home in coffins, or with Traumatic Brain Injury, or redeployed for another round of service; images of the residents of the Ninth Ward who lost their homes; Iraqi civilians whose homes are now rubble; people whose homes were built in the mountains of Appalachia. Those homes are torn down and the mountains along with them. A near infinite number of perished and poisoned wildlife whose habitat has disappeared. I thought of all those families displaced because their homes have been foreclosed. I thought of the homeless on the streets of our cities.
George W. Bush and his cabinet had an active hand in all of this. Their policies and decisions separated people from their homes, caused their home lives to be forever changed. And now this man, who despite his Ivy-League education, has trouble putting a sentence together, just wants to go home and write his book.
He just wants to go home.
Yeah, George W., we know you feel.
Showing posts with label George W. Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George W. Bush. Show all posts
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Friday, February 24, 2006
UP IN ARMS
I was recently talking to a friend about the list of unfortunate actions taken by the current Bush Administration. My friend remarked that surely Bush would not mess with a particular freedom, because everyone would be up in arms.
Every week, this administration fails us in some way, yet we are not up in arms. Our privacies and liberties are invaded, our earth damaged irreparably, our illegal war fought and paid for by the poor. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5195533 Our right to choose an abortion is back in question, our right to choose a leader in serious Diebold doubt.
Still, we go on about our lives.
We do not take it to the streets.
What might constitute the final straw that would get us out from in front our televisions and computers and movie screens and form a public outcry that must me heard?
Will we respond as the good citizens of Nazi Germany, and allow the unthinkable because it happened in degrees?
Are we too complacent, lazy, busy, comfortable, blind?
Is protest inconvenient?
Or do we just feel helpless?
A few months ago, I stood with dozens of people at a vigil in Somerville’s Davis Square, holding a candle and sending my silent thoughts to Cindy Sheehan. On Wednesday, a similar vigil was held in protest of unwarranted wiretapping.
It was a moving occasion, but what was its practical purpose?
Consider the work of the Raja Yogas who have conducted several experiments over the years to test the effects of meditation.
In June 1999, the Social Indicators Research journal reported one of the most dramatic sociological experiments ever undertaken.
Intense group meditation was done over an eight-week period in Washington, DC, during the summer of 1993. Researchers, before the experiment, had predicted a reduction in crime of at least 20 per cent.
Findings later showed that violent crime--including rapes, murders and assaults--had decreased by 23 per cent during the June 7 to July 30 experimental period.
The odds of this result are two in one billion.
The demonstration had involved nearly 4,000 practitioners of Transcendental Meditation from 81 countries.
Hagelin stated: "Previous research had shown that these meditation techniques create a state of deep relaxation and coherence in the individual and simultaneously appear to produce an effect that spreads into the environment, influencing people who are not practicing the techniques and who have no knowledge of the experiments themselves."
Hagelin, an eminent physicist, drew terminology from quantum field theories to refer to the results of meditation as "a field effect of consciousness."
"It's analogous to the way that a magnet creates an invisible field that causes iron filings to organize themselves into an orderly pattern," Hagelin said.
He also said that meditation has been shown to create high levels of coherence and orderliness in individual practitioners.
This "orderliness" appears to spill over into society and can be measured directly through the positive changes that occur.
Dr. Ann Hughes, a professor of Sociology and Government at the University of the District of Columbia, later said of the experiment: "What we are looking at here is a new paradigm of viewing crime and violence. Hughes was part of a 27-member project review board composed of independent scientists and civic leaders who approved the research protocol and monitored and the process."
Sr. Jasmine, co-ordinator of the center, said that the most powerful instrument known to man is the power of thought.
"Crime begins as a thought," Sr. Jasmine said.
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_features?id=42868702
I love it. Hard science and the New Age together at last.
Because the problems appear overwhelming, many of us default into despair, believing that what we do does not count,
that one person cannot effect change.
But what we do does count, and you know it.
And one person can effect change.
Cindy Sheehan proved that once again.
As a proponent of peaceable solutions,
I don’t believe that up in arms is the best way to go.
Up in arms is the bully route. Up in arms ain’t working, just take a look around.
I believe we should continue to sign petitions, call and write our representatives, make sure our voting machines work, and hang onto our democracy however we can.
Take it to the streets? Yes, more ande more of us. March on Washington? I'm ready.
Imagine a public outcry transformed to peaceful silence.
Imagine those up in arms, laying them down.
What do you think?
Every week, this administration fails us in some way, yet we are not up in arms. Our privacies and liberties are invaded, our earth damaged irreparably, our illegal war fought and paid for by the poor. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5195533 Our right to choose an abortion is back in question, our right to choose a leader in serious Diebold doubt.
Still, we go on about our lives.
We do not take it to the streets.
What might constitute the final straw that would get us out from in front our televisions and computers and movie screens and form a public outcry that must me heard?
Will we respond as the good citizens of Nazi Germany, and allow the unthinkable because it happened in degrees?
Are we too complacent, lazy, busy, comfortable, blind?
Is protest inconvenient?
Or do we just feel helpless?
A few months ago, I stood with dozens of people at a vigil in Somerville’s Davis Square, holding a candle and sending my silent thoughts to Cindy Sheehan. On Wednesday, a similar vigil was held in protest of unwarranted wiretapping.
It was a moving occasion, but what was its practical purpose?
Consider the work of the Raja Yogas who have conducted several experiments over the years to test the effects of meditation.
In June 1999, the Social Indicators Research journal reported one of the most dramatic sociological experiments ever undertaken.
Intense group meditation was done over an eight-week period in Washington, DC, during the summer of 1993. Researchers, before the experiment, had predicted a reduction in crime of at least 20 per cent.
Findings later showed that violent crime--including rapes, murders and assaults--had decreased by 23 per cent during the June 7 to July 30 experimental period.
The odds of this result are two in one billion.
The demonstration had involved nearly 4,000 practitioners of Transcendental Meditation from 81 countries.
Hagelin stated: "Previous research had shown that these meditation techniques create a state of deep relaxation and coherence in the individual and simultaneously appear to produce an effect that spreads into the environment, influencing people who are not practicing the techniques and who have no knowledge of the experiments themselves."
Hagelin, an eminent physicist, drew terminology from quantum field theories to refer to the results of meditation as "a field effect of consciousness."
"It's analogous to the way that a magnet creates an invisible field that causes iron filings to organize themselves into an orderly pattern," Hagelin said.
He also said that meditation has been shown to create high levels of coherence and orderliness in individual practitioners.
This "orderliness" appears to spill over into society and can be measured directly through the positive changes that occur.
Dr. Ann Hughes, a professor of Sociology and Government at the University of the District of Columbia, later said of the experiment: "What we are looking at here is a new paradigm of viewing crime and violence. Hughes was part of a 27-member project review board composed of independent scientists and civic leaders who approved the research protocol and monitored and the process."
Sr. Jasmine, co-ordinator of the center, said that the most powerful instrument known to man is the power of thought.
"Crime begins as a thought," Sr. Jasmine said.
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_features?id=42868702
I love it. Hard science and the New Age together at last.
Because the problems appear overwhelming, many of us default into despair, believing that what we do does not count,
that one person cannot effect change.
But what we do does count, and you know it.
And one person can effect change.
Cindy Sheehan proved that once again.
As a proponent of peaceable solutions,
I don’t believe that up in arms is the best way to go.
Up in arms is the bully route. Up in arms ain’t working, just take a look around.
I believe we should continue to sign petitions, call and write our representatives, make sure our voting machines work, and hang onto our democracy however we can.
Take it to the streets? Yes, more ande more of us. March on Washington? I'm ready.
Imagine a public outcry transformed to peaceful silence.
Imagine those up in arms, laying them down.
What do you think?
Friday, January 14, 2005
Voices from A Red State
Although, I am an agoraphobic, reluctant traveler, I decided to go on a reconnaissance mission to another planet -- Kentucky. If you recall the U.S. map on election night, the garland of blue across the top and northern flanks, then the heartland, expanded, overworked, massively enlarged. After the results of that night, those of us living in the biosphere of New England have been forced to open a window and look out:
What the heck is going on out there?
Did somebody mess with Texas?
Are you mad because we call you the fly-over people?
Kentucky is my home state. The rich food and rich culture fuel the most intimate mechanisms of my psyche. I go home as often as I can to replenish, gathering in experiences. I savor them through the New England winter like the honey bell oranges my father and I used to buy from a truck in the Kroger parking lot on Christmas Eve. The oranges had been picked ripe that morning and trucked up from Florida, their sunny flesh bursting with juice.
Southern language is as rich as its culture, full of euphemism, intricate manners and code; its accents, timing, phrasing and shades of meaning almost infinitely complex. If I’m out of practice, I lose my knack. One miscue in my tone of voice and I can come off insulting or insincere. Like any living language, Southern speech changes and evolves. If I’ve been gone too long, I have to listen hard to catch up. There are 120 counties in Kentucky; a listener with good ear can tell you which county you’re from.
In the stunned days after the election, pundits flooded national media theorizing about all that red. One hypothesis blamed abortion and gay marriage. Turns out, that false inference was based on a multiple choice question which included moral values. The theory was discredited when individuals began to articulate exactly what those values were. Obviously, every voter in the country chose based on moral values.
Speculation spewed forth.
--Southerners like Bush because he’s a redneck cowboy like them…
--Southerners think Kerry is part of the effete elite…
--Southerners are Hawks…
So, unlike John Kerry, I went there. I packed my lagoon-blue Jetta and, accompanied by my Himilayan cat, Savannah May, drove the 1,000 miles to my old Kentucky home.
I asked people who they voted for and why. So, anecdotally, non-scientifically, non-double blindedly, here is what I found:
The reason folks voted as they did are as multiple and various as the culture.
There are 120 counties in my state, thousands of people in those counties. These people are divided within social classes, within their families, even within themselves.
I have an aunt who went to the polls to vote for one candidate and voted for the other. She took the election very seriously, but when I asked her why she switched at the last minute, she replied with consternation,
“I don’t know.”
I interviewed a former exotic dancer, now turned evangelical Christian. Kerry supporter. Her church welcomes open homosexuals into their congregation.
I spoke to several Sierra Club members, an openly gay minister, an enclave of left-thinking writers, who actively canvassed for the Democrats based on their desire to protect the environment, civil liberties, the arts.
One farmer said he voted for Bush because of the estate taxes, while another, who voted for Bush in the last election, said he voted for Kerry this time around because he is “not completely uninformed.”
When I playfully accused one farmer of voting Republican, he replied in low-key Clint Eastwood whisper,
“Now, you may not have done all your homework.”
I talked at length with a lesbian couple who had recently celebrated their 17th Anniversary. They had spent the months leading up to the election canvassing door-to-door to defeat the marriage amendment. With their friends, they helped raise the NO BAN vote dramatically in their county.
At the annual Christmas dinner, thirty or so members of my mother’s extended family participated in a candle-lighting ceremony. Among those gathered -- my Uncle, a member of George Bush’s inauguration committee/ his daughter, a Washington attorney who flew to Arizona to work for the Kerry campaign/ my cousin, a corporate businessman with dollar signs in his eyes who was very pleased by the election results/ an unemployed uncle/ a cousin who cares about nothing except UK basketball/ an aunt who is a visual artist furious about the rampant government spending while cutting funding for the arts. Our host closed the prayer with a blessing for the troops fighting for “freedom.”
The mood was jovial that night, but by New Year’s Eve, our manners had flagged. I ended up in a fight with two of my uncles, one of whom called me a fool and stormed out, slamming the door of my grandmother’s house where I’d spent most of my childhood. I opened the door and yelled, “We’ll never understand each if we don’t listen.” I then added, and this was uncalled for, “Why don’t you turn off the sports channel and read a decent newspaper?” When I closed the door, my other uncle lit into me, attacking me personally for nearly an hour while his wife silently looked on. We had veered from a political discussion, to a disturbing repetition of the pathology in my familyæ strong women who marry weak men whose egos they protect. I had broken a code, questioned the men. I was alone.
At another gathering, I found myself in a stand-up argument with my best friend from high school. “Do you really believe what you’re saying?” she asked me incredulous. When I asked her the same question, I saw the realization spread over her face. “Well, yes I do,” she said. If she believed, then I must, too.
I learned that the liberals I talked to in Kentucky are far more left than any liberals I know in New England.
My own mother reminds me of Shirley Chisholm, unbought and unbossed. Yet, I find her list of favorites, which include Dennis Kucinich, Jerry Falwell, the Ayatollah Khomeni completely mind-boggling.
I found a total of one person who said they actually liked Bush.
I found no one who just loved Kerry.
Within my tiny sample, I found only one person who didn’t vote.
“It don’t make no difference,” he explained. “If I had of voted, it would have been for the other guy.”
Despite the complexity and inner conflict, these folks did their best with the two choices they had. Kentucky is a state which recently lost its price support for raising tobacco. Many who do not live there applaud this ruling, with a shallow understanding of the history behind it and how many farmers will lose their land because of it.
From my travels, I observe that the people of Kentucky are engaged in a bloodless (so far) civil war.
I have no firsthand info on what’s going on in Georgia or Arizona. If you live in California or Connecticut, you can’t see all the way to Arkansas. You can’t see what a factory worker, a farmer, a day laborer faces in her daily life. You can’t hear the music in their voices, you can’t smell the barbecue. If you want to know first hand, I encourage you to go on your own scouting mission. I recommend you ask. I recommend you listen.
We can read our newspaper and ricochet around cyberspace, but let’s trust your own eyes too, these sources may not be independent, and they may not have done their homework.
What the heck is going on out there?
Did somebody mess with Texas?
Are you mad because we call you the fly-over people?
Kentucky is my home state. The rich food and rich culture fuel the most intimate mechanisms of my psyche. I go home as often as I can to replenish, gathering in experiences. I savor them through the New England winter like the honey bell oranges my father and I used to buy from a truck in the Kroger parking lot on Christmas Eve. The oranges had been picked ripe that morning and trucked up from Florida, their sunny flesh bursting with juice.
Southern language is as rich as its culture, full of euphemism, intricate manners and code; its accents, timing, phrasing and shades of meaning almost infinitely complex. If I’m out of practice, I lose my knack. One miscue in my tone of voice and I can come off insulting or insincere. Like any living language, Southern speech changes and evolves. If I’ve been gone too long, I have to listen hard to catch up. There are 120 counties in Kentucky; a listener with good ear can tell you which county you’re from.
In the stunned days after the election, pundits flooded national media theorizing about all that red. One hypothesis blamed abortion and gay marriage. Turns out, that false inference was based on a multiple choice question which included moral values. The theory was discredited when individuals began to articulate exactly what those values were. Obviously, every voter in the country chose based on moral values.
Speculation spewed forth.
--Southerners like Bush because he’s a redneck cowboy like them…
--Southerners think Kerry is part of the effete elite…
--Southerners are Hawks…
So, unlike John Kerry, I went there. I packed my lagoon-blue Jetta and, accompanied by my Himilayan cat, Savannah May, drove the 1,000 miles to my old Kentucky home.
I asked people who they voted for and why. So, anecdotally, non-scientifically, non-double blindedly, here is what I found:
The reason folks voted as they did are as multiple and various as the culture.
There are 120 counties in my state, thousands of people in those counties. These people are divided within social classes, within their families, even within themselves.
I have an aunt who went to the polls to vote for one candidate and voted for the other. She took the election very seriously, but when I asked her why she switched at the last minute, she replied with consternation,
“I don’t know.”
I interviewed a former exotic dancer, now turned evangelical Christian. Kerry supporter. Her church welcomes open homosexuals into their congregation.
I spoke to several Sierra Club members, an openly gay minister, an enclave of left-thinking writers, who actively canvassed for the Democrats based on their desire to protect the environment, civil liberties, the arts.
One farmer said he voted for Bush because of the estate taxes, while another, who voted for Bush in the last election, said he voted for Kerry this time around because he is “not completely uninformed.”
When I playfully accused one farmer of voting Republican, he replied in low-key Clint Eastwood whisper,
“Now, you may not have done all your homework.”
I talked at length with a lesbian couple who had recently celebrated their 17th Anniversary. They had spent the months leading up to the election canvassing door-to-door to defeat the marriage amendment. With their friends, they helped raise the NO BAN vote dramatically in their county.
At the annual Christmas dinner, thirty or so members of my mother’s extended family participated in a candle-lighting ceremony. Among those gathered -- my Uncle, a member of George Bush’s inauguration committee/ his daughter, a Washington attorney who flew to Arizona to work for the Kerry campaign/ my cousin, a corporate businessman with dollar signs in his eyes who was very pleased by the election results/ an unemployed uncle/ a cousin who cares about nothing except UK basketball/ an aunt who is a visual artist furious about the rampant government spending while cutting funding for the arts. Our host closed the prayer with a blessing for the troops fighting for “freedom.”
The mood was jovial that night, but by New Year’s Eve, our manners had flagged. I ended up in a fight with two of my uncles, one of whom called me a fool and stormed out, slamming the door of my grandmother’s house where I’d spent most of my childhood. I opened the door and yelled, “We’ll never understand each if we don’t listen.” I then added, and this was uncalled for, “Why don’t you turn off the sports channel and read a decent newspaper?” When I closed the door, my other uncle lit into me, attacking me personally for nearly an hour while his wife silently looked on. We had veered from a political discussion, to a disturbing repetition of the pathology in my familyæ strong women who marry weak men whose egos they protect. I had broken a code, questioned the men. I was alone.
At another gathering, I found myself in a stand-up argument with my best friend from high school. “Do you really believe what you’re saying?” she asked me incredulous. When I asked her the same question, I saw the realization spread over her face. “Well, yes I do,” she said. If she believed, then I must, too.
I learned that the liberals I talked to in Kentucky are far more left than any liberals I know in New England.
My own mother reminds me of Shirley Chisholm, unbought and unbossed. Yet, I find her list of favorites, which include Dennis Kucinich, Jerry Falwell, the Ayatollah Khomeni completely mind-boggling.
I found a total of one person who said they actually liked Bush.
I found no one who just loved Kerry.
Within my tiny sample, I found only one person who didn’t vote.
“It don’t make no difference,” he explained. “If I had of voted, it would have been for the other guy.”
Despite the complexity and inner conflict, these folks did their best with the two choices they had. Kentucky is a state which recently lost its price support for raising tobacco. Many who do not live there applaud this ruling, with a shallow understanding of the history behind it and how many farmers will lose their land because of it.
From my travels, I observe that the people of Kentucky are engaged in a bloodless (so far) civil war.
I have no firsthand info on what’s going on in Georgia or Arizona. If you live in California or Connecticut, you can’t see all the way to Arkansas. You can’t see what a factory worker, a farmer, a day laborer faces in her daily life. You can’t hear the music in their voices, you can’t smell the barbecue. If you want to know first hand, I encourage you to go on your own scouting mission. I recommend you ask. I recommend you listen.
We can read our newspaper and ricochet around cyberspace, but let’s trust your own eyes too, these sources may not be independent, and they may not have done their homework.
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